This section holds special meaning now during the pandemic where we are finally (!) focusing on centering care and answering the endemic challenges of discrimination in our classrooms. I think multimodal tools for expression are key to knowing our students uniquely enough to communicate to them effectively. Things like Sarah Goldrick Raab's Basic Security Statement featured in a syllabus help with this, and I make my syllabus annotatable so my students can respond publicly or privately.

It's hard to read this line reflecting on my own upbringing as 1/2 Black, 1/4 Brazilian and 1/4 Italian - I was raised to not see the binaries between race that the world has chosen to impose on all of us, and our complicit choice to accept these binaries.

This is such an important distinction. New York and Harlem are not the same. Indeed, East Harlem and Harlem are not the same. Like how a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square.

The work of Langston Hughes both delights and haunts me as his works consistently pop up in my life. I recited "Let America Be America Again" in 8th grade for a poetry contest and from there, I've found his work in my life and my life in his work. This line is full circle in that my maternal grandmother is from Durham and my formative years in NYC as a working professional and designer took place in that "college on the hill above Harlem" It reminds me that as much as we open up our vulnerabilities, we create space for connection, for deeper understanding, and for extensions. It's what I hope our collective work in education will do.