I am a middle school teacher at heart. They are my people. Between my two MS stints, I taught 8 years at an elementary school. I am a better teacher for that. And I love all of the memories popping up from K kids who will going into HS this year. I’m so blessed to have spent so much time w/them.

A lot of folks aren’t gonna like this or agree and that’s okay! But I ask that you consider the argument and how it shows up in your world and learning spaces. #Blackexcellence in practice harms Black folks, Black children specifically, and it’s crucial that we interrogate that harm.

Because it doesn't matter if it's April and I'm exhausted, I signed up for a class on teaching poetry at UVA on Saturday. @heymrsbond.com, @marcusluther.bsky.social, & @thevogelman.bsky.social, I'm sharing this just in case you haven't heard of the program. www.jmu.edu/furiousflowe...

Our school is closing at the end of May. Bc of today's referendum (vote YES!), there's a work day. I'm trying to purge & pack. I have so much stuff & it's all so heavy. I'm going to need eleventy million (or more) boxes. Anyway...now everything is a mess & I have curriculum work to do too.

I’m off to vote YES this morning. Just a reminder for those who might be mad about that: We’re only here because Trump decided that gerrymandering FL and TX was a good idea. To pararphrase the queen, state Senator Louise Lucas, we didn’t start this, but we’ll sure as hell finish it.

Help! Need to raise $359.07 to buy 10 copies of “We Are Owed.” by Ariana Brown & 10 copies of “The Intentions of Thunder” by Patricia Smith for my American Literature final project. I will make up the difference, but any help would be appreciated! All 💴 apps= heymrsbond #EduSky #MutualAid

Sorry Charlottesville. I took home all of my morning cold weather car line gear on Friday. I can only assume that's why it's so cold this morning.

Math tournament is over. I was done with the student-facing stuff by 1:45, the clean up by 2:30. I'm still sitting at my desk at school because I'm too tired to get up and leave. So...there's that.

At school on Saturday for a math tournament. Realizing you forgot several important things. One of which is going to be a literal mess later. So...while kids are working you're busy updating your "next year" file with all of the things you didn't do this year for this event...

Dr. Cerina Fairfax

Everything you've been posting over the past 24 hours is completely ahistorical. 161 years after Emancipation, millions of lives have been damaged by the "reconciliation work" of the UDC. The UDC has had real-world material effects on Black Americans and this nation. www.vox.com/videos/2017/...

I truly love supporting our math teams for the girls' math tournament this weekend. I do, but I'm not going to lie, I'm also SO HAPPY that today was the last after school practice. I love the energy AND it's exhausting.

No politician, no academic, no movement organizer, no comedian-there is no role that the person is so irreplaceable that we must overlook sexual assault. Every one of them is replaceable. Good fucking riddance.

Every single one of the astronauts who went to the moon and back on Artemis II was educated at a public school. Thinking of the teachers who poured into Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen tonight. You helped send a kid to the moon! 🌕 💛

In January, 1986 I was in HS. We were having midterms, so I didn't watch the Challenger explosion live. My brother, a 3rd grader, was home sick. He's the one who told me. I didn't believe him. I saw the replay over and over and over again. My sisters watched it at school that day.

Come on then, and remove him.

Let me say this plainly: Iranian children have as much of a right to live and thrive as American children. Their babies MUST be as precious to me as my 6 niblings and my baby grandnib are IF I want them to have a future. If I want a future for my kin AND humanity, I MUST act like it. So must you.

Barely on threads for a minute & I’ve got a teacher up in her feelings bc I said not speaking out was a choice when they framed it as being unable to bc they’re a public school teacher. No judgement abt their choice, but it is a choice. Anyway, I’m on spring break this week. I have the time.

The apology needed to be as loud as the disgusting offense. This is pathetic. Entitled white man confronts a woman, a Black woman (he would’ve never pulled that with a man), because he got beaten by, out coached by, outclassed by, and owned by a Black woman. Her name is Dawn Staley.

Today is the first day of spring break. I just spent 2 hours putting together a small cabinet I bought over winter break. Maybe now I'll get my act together. Right?

I want Genos apology to be a loud as he just showed his ass today.

Anyone else holding their breath during that launch? Whew. Gen X trauma response right there.

Believe in kids. Always. Sometimes that's all that it takes to change the course of a student's journey. We had a student start the year at the 4th percentile on the MAP test. They'll end the year at 35th. Is there still work to do? Yep. Did I need this test to tell me what I could see? Nope.

First it was they will never overturn Roe. Now it's they'll never take away your birth control. Always being told we are overreacting when Reproductive Justice advocates have been telling you this is coming & that it always criminalizes Black women, girls, non-binary femmes & Black trans women first

Working w/small group first thing this morning. Friends tell me one of the kids is in the nurse's office. Looked fine when I saw him earlier, but shows up abt 10 mins later. This is a story of don't ask middle school students questions about anything because they're going to tell you all the deets.

For the first time in YEARS, we're in school on April Fool's Day AND it's a full moon. It's fine. It's all fine.

I'm never teaching to the test. Ever. It's not my goal. I try to make sure it's not my student's goal, but being able to show students how much they've grown in a year will never not be great, especially for students who have historically struggled. I've known this one student since kindergarten.

Anti- DEI efforts are driven by what many call “polite racism” — the strategic use of coded language that appears neutral but works to maintain social hierarchies & suppress marginalized voices in practice. "The Perversion of Woke" assesses how this language masks exclusion: https://bit.ly/4usMRC8

I mean this with all the love I have left in my heart. Dear colleagues, It is March. I am trying to remember to give people grace when they need it, but some of you used up my stores of grace before winter break. Please stop expecting me to do all of the mental work you do not wish to do. ❤️‍🩹 Espo

Protect trans kids. Always. 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍🌈 Fuck this author. Fuck everyone who is involved with this.

I love my job. We get Scholastic Scope every month for the sixth graders. It's my job to take the magazine and create activities that are tied to what we're doing in class. I've just started April's. This is going to make kids crash out.

“They got money for wars, but can’t feed the poor.” — Tupac said it years ago… and here we are. The Pentagon is now asking for an additional $200 BILLION for this war. We always find the money for war. But when it comes to housing, healthcare, or feeding people? Suddenly it’s crickets.

I love middle school kids. This AM, getting my bagel, my # was 67. I knew I was going to see this one student later. Told her. Student: You didn't even take a picture for me. Me: No. I know you. I kept the receipt for you. Student leaves my office w/receipt, singing abt being the queen of 6 7.

When a big part of your job requires thinking ahead so you start next year’s ideas notebook and you realize that, if nothing changes, next year is going to be one big, long 6-7 joke.

It absolutely beats the alternative, but getting older is not for the weak. Today my knee was like, "Nah. Not today, friend." I quad rolled it into (somewhat) submission, but seriously, WTF?

💀

I need March to be over.

**CONFIRMED: the temperature fall from 87° yesterday to 33° today in 21 hours is a record temeprature fall for Charlottesville (54 degrees) since records began at CHO in 1961. Big props to Peter Forister (GOAT) for the information!

Current situation: We have the 6th gr Oratorical Fest on Fri. I'm coordinating judges & covering HR for practice. Solve Like a Girl Tournament coming up in April. Practices started yesterday. I'm coordinating practices & day of logistics. School mentor program: Working individually w/4 students.

Sometimes, in your math group, a student asks, "WWIII has started. Why are we even here?" You have to make space for kids who are worried and afraid. I didn't have any answers, but I let them talk and answered the questions I could.

Welp. It’s March and I’m a teacher. Daylight Saving Time got me this morning. Now, can I make it through the day without the kids noticing? 🤣

The fact that Kristi Noem was removed and Pete Hegseth was not should tell white women everything they need to know about their relationship to power. It won’t, but it should.

It’s that time of year where I start thinking about next year. It can be really hard to tweak existing pre-packaged curriculum to make it work for our students but every year we get a little closer.

When you have a fabulous principal, take the risk & follow them wherever they go. It’s worth it. The text I sent 5 minutes after she announced she was leaving our elementary school w/o knowing which of the middle schools she was going to. Turns out it was to the one that was closing. No regrets.

And then they announce that your principal is going to become the principal of newly reconfigured middle school and your whole life just became eleventy million times better.

When the district originally scheduled today as a mental health day, but due to snow it's now a rescheduled PD day and it's going to be in the 70s and sunny.

anyone in education who supports this needs to leave right now and not look back

I don’t know that Kamala Harris would have been better about Israel. I feel pretty certain that she would have been better about so many other things that, if she started a war with Iran, we’d collectively have energy enough to be shocked and outraged.

We killed 85 schoolgirls. We are not the good guys.