Schools Need Redesign, Not “Recovery”
Schools Need Redesign, not “Recovery” Michael S. Martin, EdD In this moment, as we come through the pandemic, there has been a great deal of discussion in the press about how students are falling behind. While Vermont students in most cases have lost instructional time, the popular idea that students are “falling behind” is problematic. […]
Dialogue: Now is the Time to Model and Teach what we hope to see in our world.
Recently, a couple of things happened that made me reflect even more deeply on the state of dialogue in our world. A community member who I have publicly and respectfully disagreed with on Facebook unfriended me. Normally, this wouldn’t feel like such a big deal, but today it makes me wonder; we haven’t even exchanged […]
Improving Equity and Empathy at School
Last spring a group of students representing our Gender Sexuality Alliance asked to have a meeting with our district’s curriculum director and myself. We sat down in my office and the students began to make a calm, thoughtful, and well reasoned case for more LGBTQ+ representation in our curriculum. The students made a persuasive case […]
Allyship is About Asking
When I was sixteen, I took the first steps of a lifelong journey to learn about the privilege I live in as a white, hetero, able-bodied cismale; and also the power that I have because of that privilege. All of that learning, then and since, has helped me realize one thing I’d like to share […]
Empathy is a Skill
It seems that when it comes to race in America, everyone has something say. When student leaders at Montpelier High School made national headlines by raising a Black Lives Matter flag this year, news outlets spread the story and the opinions poured in. At the heart of the many lessons learned in our ongoing shared […]