Experienced education journalist Jeff Bryant is collecting stories about successful community schools and he would like to hear from you.

Jeff writes:

Education Writers, Bloggers, Podcasters, Content Sharers WantedA national network has organized a project to lift up stories from public schools about their success in using the community schools approach for transformational school improvement. There is a treasure trove of powerful stories about community schools ready to be told. There is authoritative research to validate the approach. And there are audiences eager to learn of an alternative to decades of failed education policies. But we need people – writers, podcasters, TV and print journalists, videographers and community leaders — to tell those stories to the American public. We can connect you to people in these communities so you can tell their stories through your own outlet, your social media channels, or in a regional or national media outlet…

I Am Still Waiting for Green Mornings
by Carol A. Stephen

I woke this morning to snow on the dwarf
spruce, small dustings on its branches, lovely
come December, but it’s April now.

Last summer was too hot for green, while autumn
was a bold blur of red, yellow, orange, until lockdown
washed all colour from the world.

I am still waiting for those green mornings, for unpremeditated
rapture, for Perpetual Wonder, and for animals to fall like rain
in a painted tangle of green in Mikhail Vrubel’s Morning.

But now, everyone runs in place; I run in circles, and we’re all
still waiting for the final “all-clear.” In the garden, lilacs are budding,
robins have returned, and along the Riverwalk, forest babies wait

for their next meal. White-tailed deer forage under the snow.
Herons, otters and mink dive in the river for fish. The ospreys are back
to their…

What Am I Still Waiting For
by Terrence Sykes

I am still waiting
for this fog to lift
from my mizzle laden brain
from these steep city streets
rain of course lies in wait
but what do I wait for

city lights draw me in
comfort for a wayward
never felt in place soul
yet my soles are bare
like these bare bones
of unknowing

bare knuckles
from the daily grin
grinding my teeth
as I toss in restless waiting
for sleep or my dream or plans
to come but what lies in wait

when will I know that
I will never find yet
do I wait in Coney Island
or have I waited in San Fran
will I ever quote or question
am I still waiting

PHOTO: San Francisco, California (Polaroid) by Lee Otis (2009).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I asked myself…what am I waiting for…this surreal pandemic to…

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, reports that the Republican Governor and Legislature are determined to stop teachers from teaching about racism, sexism, and bias because such topics Dow discord and racism. This “cancel culture” at its worst. Every sentient adult who has studied American history knows that racism runs deep and strong in our history and present culture and the best way to eliminate it to confront it honestly.

Thompson writes:

AsEducation Weekexplained, across the nation, legislators are attempting to “make it harder for teachers to talk about racism, sexism, and bias in the classroom,”and directly or indirectly ban Critical Race Theory. Oklahoma passed HR 1775 banning mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling, while implicitly threatening lessons about racism.

Oklahoma provides just one example of the way public education and civil discussions are under assault. But it allows us to take inventory of…

The Art of Waiting
by Anne Namatsi Lutomia

The long-awaited letter arrives
Announcing good news
Giving permission to work
Making the next level possible
Signaling permanency
The boxes are packed for moving
Three states in eighteen months
Still waiting to be loaded and move to the third state
Waiting to settle in a midwestern small college town

Spring comes seed are sowed
I watch the ground to see the sprouting
My impatience drives me to watching everyday
There is nothing for some time
Then there is something
The seeds have germinated
I am still waiting for them to grow into plants
For the blooming of the flowers
For the green leaves
For the bees and butterflies
For the harvest

PAINTING:Flowering Plant by Shibata Zeshin (1878).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Last year and this year have taught me to be patient and in the moment. This poem is inspired by…

The Point Where the Circle Begins
by Kerfe Roig

I am still waiting for the moon—
face against the window,
staring between the buildings
to where it appeared once before.

I draw
a circle not quite
an enso but still
opening
to let the inside out.

I am still waiting for the night
to grow ravens’ wings—
black on black, glittering, quivering—
almost a color, escaping form.

The inside
is never really empty—
there is always more
to reveal
always more to hide.

I am still waiting for the wind
to take the shadow branches
and dance against the sky, against
the moon, flying on ravens’ wings.

Those gestures
turning on nothing
at all and then
suddenly
returning to all that is. 

PAINTING:Moonlight Crows by Bernadette Resha (2014).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: When I first moved into my current apartment in August, I could see the moon out my…

Cover image of the character William Stoner.

Real life isn’t fair, and the same goes for fiction. Some stellar novels deserve more reader love, but remain relatively obscure.

Among the many books that should be much better known is one I just read after it was enthusiastically recommended by several of this blog’s frequent visitors (credited in the comments section). The novel is John Williams’ Stoner, and it left me absolutely gobsmacked with admiration. It’s exquisitely written, with a near-perfect authorial voice. Plus one feels such sympathy for the beleaguered, achingly three-dimensional protagonist William Stoner (yes, the 1965 novel’s title is the last name of its lead character, not a reference to being stoned).

So the question is why Stoner didn’t become as famous as other exceptional 1960s novels such as One Hundred Years of Solitude, To Kill a Mockingbird, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Catch-22. I’ll offer…

Jacket2: On Brion Gysin, ‘Minutes to Go’

“Two months before 1960 commenced, Stanley Kunitz in Harper’s Magazine redefined the word ‘experimental’ to mean the inevitable resistance to any prevailing style for the sake of ‘keep[ing] it supple.’ Yet at the time of his writing, the turn of this new decade, ‘the nature of that resistance is in effect a backward look.’ The recent Pulitzer Prize winner added: ‘This happens not to be a time of great innovation in poetic technique: it is rather a period in which the technical gains of past decades, particularly the twenties, are being tested and consolidated.’ By using the phrase ‘the twenties’ Kunitz was referring to modernism’s American heyday. He meant expatriation, avid rule-breaking, aesthetic hijinx coinciding with social high hilarity. The Sixties, starting now, he averred, would be a time of modest ‘consolidation’ rather than of experiment.  Kunitz’s historical generalization would make better sense…

Present Continuous, Meaning Past,
Implying Future
by Paula J. Lambert

I am waiting for the train and
I am thinking how much I like

trains (the present tense here,
the present continuous, means

past, past tense, and implies
how often this happens) and

I am thinking of all that trains
have taught me: the way out,

a way back in, the journey
(journey is overused, of course,

but still useful) that tangle of
meaning when trains approach

tunnels (no way to stop a train,
etc., but I’d rather not go down

that particular track) and I am
standing here squinting toward

perspective (you don’t forget
that point once you’ve learned it,

don’t stop seeing it, searching
for it) and I am straining to hear

the whistle blow and I can’t stop
glancing over my shoulder to

where the tracks lead: mystery,
adventure, forward, yonder,

the destination (that’s another
tired phrase…