All my pretty ones?Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?What, all my pretty chickens and their damAt one fell swoop? – Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 3 One of the hardest truths to understand about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is the deliberate targeting of children. Children and babies have been bombed, burned, mutilated—killed […]
When I was a college student in the late 1960s in Boston, I went to a teach-in at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge to hear Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky talk about the context of the Vietnam War—the history of the United States backing French colonialism in Vietnam, and, after the defeat of the French […]
Connie Carter, AWTT Director of Education offers these thoughts. Believe your eyes, believe your eyes, and not the eyes of those who would deceive you – believe your eyes! Hold out your hands, hold out your hands, across the land to neighbors who are frightened – hold out your hands! Come move your feet, come […]
Recently I can’t shake the image of a cat heaving up a hairball. It’s a head-to-tail, coast-to-coast undertaking, the cat’s whole body rhythmically contracting with the effort to separate itself from its indigestible residue—very much like the stinky stuff that plugs the trap under the bathroom sink. The cat’s straining, undulating, Massachusetts-to-California heaving, mouth gaping like San […]
When I was just a baby, my mama told me, “SonAlways be a good boy, don′t ever play with guns”But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.When I hear that whistle blowin’, I hang my head and cry (oh yeah!) – Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues One of the curious aspects […]
Ever since discovering playground kickball in the second grade, I have loved sports. In high school I ran track (a mediocre 400 meters), played football (a decent linebacker), basketball (a good corner jump shot), and baseball (always a little afraid of line drives). I loved the competition, the practice—loved improving my competence, loved team camaraderie. I enjoyed […]
“… as a teenager, I kept thinking, Why don’t the adults around here just say something? Say it so that they know we don’t accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take […]
Looking back on 2025, AWTT Education Director Connie Carter calls on all of us to find the inspiration we need to meet the challenges of 2026.
I’ve written before about the fierce negativity of the MAGA community toward Wokeness, i.e., their contention that teaching or professing the true history of racism in the United States is a terrible thing to do because it heaps shame and guilt on white children for racial sins of the past, sins they are not responsible for and […]
Many adults—teachers, parents—are overwhelmed, angry, and fearful with what is happening in the world. The wars, the environment, the political rancor, the outright cruelty being modeled by people in positions of power, the corruption and celebration of greed, the dishonesty. Anger and fear are appropriate responses. The checks and balances of our institutions have failed, […]