Hello to all the beautiful people near and far,
It's been a while. Much too long, in fact. I haven't blogged in well over a year and a half, and my, a lot has changed in both my personal and academic life. Academically--and dare I say "professionally"--I have now completed my first year as a doctoral student and research fellow at Columbia University and Teachers College's Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME), respectively. I have a clear(er) view of my historical scholarship and have successfully navigated my second year of directing the Youth Historians program, which has been a great success driven by a group of extremely talented and inquisitive high school students. Personally, I've lost a loved one in my family, have emotionally internalized that I am now a New Yorker, and have admittedly become just a pinch less idealistic (but certainly not cynical), although, I guess this latter point is to be expected as I continue my ever-going maturation of life. But, I'm just as hopeful as ever for the future--the youth I interact with daily assure me that if we can help guide students in ways that are empowering and culturally relevant, yet rigorous and intellectually stimulating (if we treat students like the scholars they can be), then anything is possible.
Blog posts will be consistently infrequent--does that make sense?--and I look forward to sharing my thoughts and reflections when I can. Many of the blogs, appropriately, will focus on education, but I'll will also write about life, love, humanity, society, and everything in between. (I've posted two older blogs from 2012 and 2014 to archive for new and old readers, so please feel free to read them below.) Of course, education intersects with all these things, and so although certain blogs may seem like digressions, most likely, if you (and I), look deep enough, we'll find threads that are relevant to education.
Thanks for stopping by and reading--and I look forward to your comments. It is immensely humbling for you to take time out of life's very-real busyness to read my writing, and I don't take that lightly.
In good health,
-Barry
