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Introducing All Together Now Blog

 Hi y'all. Welcome to the All Together Now Blog. I am a mom, former UMass Boston critical reading and writing instructor and executive function coach, currently an instructional designer and online learning coach, White, queer lady, lover of fantasy and YA fiction, gardening, the great outdoors, and all around teaching and learning nerd.

I like to ask big questions and then try to figure out the answers - sometimes with semi-obsessive deep dives. These last few years I've dug in deep on educational equity. As a teacher I was enthralled by trying to figure out how to support my students, almost all of whom fell into at least one of these categories: immigrants, first generation college students, English language learners, students with disabilities, low-income students, or students who struggled with academic reading and writing. I found Universal Design for Learning to be an amazing addition to my practice. 

In 2018 I left teaching for MIT's Teaching Systems Lab, where I had the privilege of working on a free online course for educators, Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices. In the process I had my mind blown about race and income, and the way it impacts students, teachers and parents in schools. 

Now, as a parent of a young kid in Boston's public school, I'm looking at it from a more personal lens. What am I looking for in terms of my son's education? How is our district serving our city's kids? Is fighting for equity at odds with fighting for him? What does it mean for me, with all my identities plus a zillion years in education, to send my son to a global majority school? 

Anyhoo, I'm on a journey to learn and in this blog I'm trying to document some of that learning - the questions I'm asking, the answers I'm finding, and of course the questions created by the answers. Enjoy!

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Rating and Testing Part II: Could it Be Poverty Itself?

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Rating and testing Part I: "failing schools"

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Rating and testing Part III: So....what about those test scores?

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