Voices from the Classroom: Digital pioneer
Native New Orleanian Hasan Aquil left a career in music video production for a career in the classroom. Now teaching high school digital media to a group of seriously underserved students, he cherishes...
View ArticleVoices from the Classroom: The view from 37 years
Charter school teacher Wendy DeMers has spent almost four decades years in the classroom teaching children from kindergarten to middle school, as well as mentoring young teachers just starting out. A...
View ArticleA teaching moment: Balancing the budget
With so much heated discussion about the ways we can make teaching more effective and more meaningful, it is easy to forget some of the things that make teaching fun. When I was a 23-year-old teacher,...
View ArticleHistory lessons from the classroom
Editor’s note: NolaVie contributor Folwell Dunbar shares a few lessons about education he learned in and outside of the classroom. A Tough Sell Mr. B wore nothing but tweed. His eyes bulged with...
View ArticleVoices from the Classroom: The international factor
I'm not a mom, and I’m not a certified teacher, but as an assistant teacher and a nanny, I spend most of my time around children. Naturally, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how they ...
View ArticleFrom 'Storyville': Repaying karmic debt
By Jonathan Brown This piece is written by Jonathan Brown, a poet in the MFA program at UNO. It is the third installment in WWNO and UNO’s collaborative “Storyville” project. To hear the broadcast,...
View ArticleLoyola student chronicles vanishing nomads of Mongolia
“Someone turned me on to the fact that there were still a number of nomadic herders living in Mongolia,” Loyola student Dimitri Staszewski recalls. “And after doing a little bit of research on line, I...
View Article'Rock, Paper, Scissors' beats bullying on this school playground
Edgar P. Harney Spirit of ExcellenceAcademy is an elementary and middle school in the heart of Central City. It’s the school with the chain link fence that faces Claiborne Avenue, a school many pass...
View ArticleDeveloping winners for life on the court and in the classroom
Working with NBA player Emeka Okafor, Sky Hyacinthe has created Elevate New Orleans, a basketball skill development program, free to young athletes from needs-based families, that focuses first on...
View ArticleTeaching the humanities of hacking
Chuck Gardner teaches algebra and math. He’s also the Cyber Science Coordinator, the one who runs the elective robot classes. And it's not just about the mechanics. By introducing his students to the...
View ArticleStaying in tune and out of trouble
Hear Sharon Litwin talk about Make Music NOLA on WWNO below, or click here. You can hear the almost-together violin players practicing musical scales from out in the school hallway. You don’t have to...
View ArticleSilver Threads: A certain je ne sais quois
My husband has an elderly friend who during World War II once served as an interpreter for a U.S. Army officer having dealings with a French counterpart. After he’d taken part in one day’s briefing,...
View ArticleSilver Threads: Suggested writes of passage
In my memories of the elementary school classrooms of my childhood, there are always strips of handwriting exercises tacked over the blackboards -- you know, that Spenserian script with the rows of...
View ArticleClowning around: ISL fuses education and circus arts
There’s a whole bunch of parents in New Orleans who don’t have to worry that their kids are going to get angry and run away to join the circus. That’s because, each day, their offspring get up and go...
View ArticleTeen talk: well-rounded but not well grounded?
Any student even remotely near college age can’t escape the word “well-rounded.” For a culture so strongly against actually being round, we spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over that word....
View ArticleAUDIO: "Test Takers"
Bring Your Own is a nomadic storytelling series that takes place in living rooms, backyards and other intimate spaces within the community. Each month, seven storytellers have 7 minutes to respond to a...
View ArticleSummers in NOLA widen two students' perspectives
Two Baltimore natives are continuing jazz music's long history in New Orleans, its birthplace. For five and six years, respectively, David Diongue and Sterlin Brown, both 19, have been making the trek...
View ArticleI am TOPS: A citizen of the world
For Spanish teacher Aaron Forbes, TOPS was not so much about enabling him to go to college, but about creating opportunities before he even got there. “One of the cool things about TOPS,” Forbes says,...
View ArticleTALKING BACK TO HISTORY book launch
Local publishing outfit extraordinaire The Neighborhood Story Project will celebrate the release of its newest installment, Talking Back to History, with a reception and reading from seven high school...
View ArticleThrowback Thursday: Voices from the Classroom: Some common denominators
One thing common to every teacher interviewed in our recent Voices from the Classroom series is that element of passion. You hear it in the voices, see it in the eyes. The people we spoke to online and...
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