The best scholarship conveys more than theory, notes and data. It crafts stories and arguments that give one pause, that interrupt the expected and make you stop, wonder and think. Eve L. Ewing‘s Ghosts in the Schoolyard is that sort of work. It’s an award-winning book that is even better than anticipated. Ewing weaves together…
Rowing Can Be Beautiful
Reading A Most Beautiful Thing is a moving experience. It’s a book about the country’s first All-Black High School rowing team, a group of young men from Manley High School on the West Side of Chicago who made history in the 1990s. It is a first-person account by one of the rowers, Arshay Cooper, and…
Continuing the Dream
Here’s the scenario, dear educational colleagues: you are to meet with some newly empowered decision-makers, officials who are smart, curious and uninformed about community colleges. They want your guidance, particularly with all of the discussions at the federal level about enhanced funding for community colleges. They know about your interest in education and your expertise.…
Honoring Chandler Davidson, Social Justice Scholar and Teacher
Good teachers teach students a subject. Great teachers do that and more. They change how we think. Chandler Davidson was a great teacher. I was fortunate to learn from him in my undergraduate days at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Davidson, sadly, recently passed away. Reading his obituary brought back memories and a deeper appreciation…
A Fresh Look At A Visionary Leader – Ida B. Wells
If you’re looking for a hero in American history whose work and words have increasing relevance today, it would be difficult to find a better candidate than Ida B. Wells. Born in 1862 in slavery and living until 1931, Wells had an extraordinarily productive and courageous life, fighting for racial and social justice. She truly…
Not So Sporting: A Scandalous Reminder
All the way back in 1989, seemingly hundreds of years ago, David Whitford wrote A Payroll To Meet: A Story of Greed, Corruption, and Football at SMU. I picked it up at a used book store, curious about a scandal I had heard about, but did not really follow. I’m glad that I read it.…
Leaders & Leadership: Revisiting Guidance
Leading effectively can be a life’s work. Inherently situational, leadership is defined and informed by context, people and circumstance, all of which constantly change. Recent experience hammers this home: figuring out how to lead in a pandemic, in the crucible of the recent crises, calls out for tools that can offer assistance and perspective. Recently…