Health & Social
Faculty and Student Wellness: Embracing the Interdependence
Earlier this summer, during an online discussion about grading practices, a teacher made a familiar, yet rarely challenged assertion: “When a student gets a D/F—or even an A—in my class, that’s the grade they earned.” My translation: “I provide opportunities for students to succeed. Their failure is on them, not me. It’s their choice.” In…
Read MoreUnique Challenges for Black Individuals with Mental Health Conditions
According to a 2018 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 16% of African American adults reported having a mental illness in the previous year, and 22.4% of that group reported a serious mental illness. The same survey showed that, of the nearly 5 million African Americans with a mental illness, close to 70% hadn’t received treatment (Williams, 2020). Still…
Read MoreThe reign of influencers needs to end
“I was excited to connect the Harvard community.” That’s how Mark Zuckerberg recalled the night he started Facebook during his 2017 commencement speech at Harvard University. He went on to tell the graduating students that “to keep our society moving forward, we have a generational challenge — to not only create new jobs, but create…
Read MoreLet’s not conflate white supremacy with white people
I never thought I’d hear a U.S. president explicitly call out white supremacy in an inauguration address. For President Joe Biden to follow it up a week later with a slate of executive orders aimed at pursuing a racial equity agenda offers an encouraging start to the much more difficult project of healing the divisions…
Read MoreCreating Environments Where Black Students Can Thrive
As white adoptive parents raising a biracial son, my husband and I set out to equip him and ourselves with the tools to navigate an experience far more complex than our own. Long before he was born, we tried to prepare, educating ourselves by devouring research and resources about race and racism and talking to…
Read MoreHow high schools failed victims of sexual assault
Sexual assault may seem like a distant fear for some, but on college campuses, it is an everyday reality. Of course, the combination of freedom and alcohol creates a dangerous environment and enhances teens’ raging hormones, thus increasing the likelihood of assault occurring. But the problem does not entirely arise from students seeking to indulge…
Read MoreOh to Be a Girl
To be unaware of the broken glass at your feet, to leap straight through historic shards, bare, bold, free. To hail from sugar, cayenne, and so much more than nice. To envision a future beyond a shower of rice, to be shown you can be anything, to believe it, well beyond childhood dreams, to not…
Read MoreVoices from the Invisible: The Reality of Black Lives in Our Schools
School people, especially boards and heads, are really good at spinning words into fluffy fantasies of utopian worlds where they have “created diverse, inclusive communities,” “protected and empowered the most vulnerable” and “cultivated environments to unlock the richness of diversity.” Lofty sentences appear in glossy catalogs and websites and swaddle prospective parents and students of…
Read MoreMother of Black Sons
Last Memorial Day, while most were celebrating the holiday with a well-needed break from COVID-confinement, I announced to my children that they would be catching up on all the assignments that remained missing on their Google classroom logs. After some complaining, they each picked the easiest assignment they could find and went to work. My…
Read MoreHumility: We Need It Now More Than Ever
When was the last time your child sulked when you asked her to take out the garbage? How loudly did your son complain when his sibling took the last cookie? Does your daughter regularly ignore your pleas to get in the car as she and her friends giggle and stare at their phones? Or how…
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