A friend calls it the rhyme of circumstances. The way pieces of our lives are marked by constants we cannot explain.
My daughter was born in August. My husband’s father was dying at the time. He made it to our home, and he held her. He died just a few weeks later, right...
Almost two years ago my daughter’s history teacher and I planned a Mississippi history trip. It was an unbelievably moving trip for me (and, I hope, for the students and parents who attended), but other than sending our itinerary out to my colleagues, I haven’t written...
The week our semester started, NPR published a crowd-sourced “Where I’m From” poem that included submissions from people all around the world. I admit that I am always relatively emotional at the beginning of a new semester, but I found myself crying happy tears listen...
My daughter is going to run in two different events at a track meet today. The fact that I spent the morning preparing to sit outside on a beautiful spring day to watch this child sprint around a track in south Mississippi is a bit surreal. It was just five years ago t...
“I'm the person who likes creating more than completing, who answers the Meyers-Briggs question about whether you prefer starting to finishing with "starting," who generally looks ahead and not back--so the end of the semester, especially Spring semester which is the e...
Since Wednesday, February 14th, my social media outlets have been filled with responses to the tragic school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Some of these responses involve condolences and prayers; others critique the value of such expressions of symp...
I am teaching a digital literacies class this semester, and the first writing assignment asks students to consider their reliance on digital devices by giving up their technologies for twenty-four hours and then writing about the experience. I often write with my stude...
It is the first day of classes, and, as is typical, my mind is racing with thoughts and ideas about the new semester. Excitement about getting to know new groups of students. Trepidation about my syllabi and whether the courses I’ve designed are going to engage our cla...
I was scrolling through Facebook today when I saw that a friend and colleague of mine wished his friends a happy new year saying “here’s to making new things in 2018 and breaking all the things that need to be broken.” I am struck by the sentiment. It resonates with me...
I am sitting in my office preparing for my classes this week. Tomorrow we will discuss excerpts from bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress and John Duffy’s “The Good Writer: Virtue Ethics and the Teaching of Writing.” I read Duffy’s line that “virtue retains for some its...
