اینترنت

برچسب: following

  • Fresno City College instructor placed on administrative leave following EdSource report

    Fresno City College instructor placed on administrative leave following EdSource report


    Tom Boroujeni, Fresno City College academic senate president.

    Credit: Mark Tabay / Fresno City College

    The State Center Community College District placed Fresno City College instructor and president of the school’s Academic Senate, Tom Boroujeni, on administrative leave late Thursday, district officials said in a statement.

    District officials cited no specific reason for the action. It takes effect immediately.

    The move came one day after EdSoruce reported that in 2021 Fresno State University determined that in 2015, Boroujeni “committed an act of sexual violence” against a professor who also teaches part-time at Fresno City College. He denies committing the act. 

    Chancellor Carol Goldsmith did not respond to messages Thursday night.

    Boroujeni did not respond to messages following the district’s brief announcement.

    In a message to the City College campus community Thursday, President Robert Pimentel wrote that “investigative action” was being taken, and that “the college takes allegations of this nature very seriously.” He did not explain the specific allegations.

    Boroujeni, 38, of Clovis, is also known as Farrokh Eizadiboroujeni and Tom Eizadi, documents show. He has taught at Fresno City College since 2015, the same year he began his academic career at Fresno State while still a graduate student. 

    Earlier Thursday, three female instructors in the communication department at Fresno City College refused to teach their classes, citing the EdSource report.

    Tiffany Sarkisian, the college’s program-review coordinator and a communication arts instructor, told the administration and her students that she and others decided to stay off campus in an effort to advocate for a safe teaching, learning and working environment. 

    “The environment at FCC (Fresno City College) grows more toxic and unsafe by the day, especially as an abuser has been – and continues to be – protected by various campus leaders,” she emailed college administrators.

    Late Thursday, after learning the district put  Boroujeni on administrative  leave, Sarkisian said the college’s decision was appropriate. 

    “It provides a space where other parties can feel safe to actually do the job of teaching and learning,” she said, but the paid administrative leave is “essentially rewarding (him) for behaving badly.”

    She added that the college had deeper problems than Boroujeni.  “It’s not just this individual being a bad actor; it’s institutionalized practices and structures that allowed this to continue for so long.” 

    “This (was) another example of an institution protecting the abuser and not the victim,” she told EdSource. “What happened on our campus should not have happened, and there should have been other structures in place.” 

    Boroujeni told EdSource in an interview that he also faces complaints from three female employees of the college for what he described as gender discrimination. 

    He was also reprimanded last year by Cyndie Luna, dean of the school’s Fine, Performing and Communication Arts Division, for unprofessional conduct that included allegedly referring to a colleague with an apparent racial slur and threatening “to get” the colleague, according to a copy of the reprimand letter EdSource obtained. Boroujeni claimed Luna fabricated the slur and threat she attributed to him, adding, she “makes things up all the time.” 

    He also claimed that a Fresno State professor was lying when she told an investigator that she did not consent to sex with Boroujeni in her apartment on June 21, 2015, and that he “pinned down her upper region” and that she “zoned out” during what followed.

    EdSource does not identify victims of sexual abuse or violence. The woman declined to be interviewed.

    Boroujeni told EdSource the woman made up the assault allegation in retribution for a sexual harassment allegation he brought against her, claiming she seduced him into a relationship he didn’t want but entered into out of fear that she would undermine his ability to earn a master’s degree and become a Fresno State instructor.

    That claim, which Bouroujeni linked to his removal in 2020 as coach of the school’s nationally prominent debate team, was dismissed by a university investigator.

    It was during the probe of his claim that the alleged victim told the investigator about what happened at her apartment on June 21, 2015. The investigator determined she was credible and found that Boroujeni committed what Fresno State has called “an act of sexual violence.”

    The university couldn’t discipline him because he was a graduate student when the alleged violence occurred. Boroujeni resigned from Fresno State last year after officials said a report on the matter would be placed in his personnel file when he was up for a performance review. 

    In his resignation, he agreed to not seek or accept work in the California State University system again.  

    But the matter had no immediate impact on his teaching a few miles away at Fresno City College, where the victim teaches part-time in addition to her tenured position at Fresno State.

    A State Center Community College District document obtained by EdSource shows that “in August 2021, (the victim) sought a ‘no contact order’ from Fresno City College against Tom Boroujeni… as a result of a sexual misconduct investigation at CSU Fresno.” The ‘no contact order’ was granted, the document, titled an “Administrative Determination,” states.

    The district granted Boroujeni tenure in March. He assumed the academic senate presidency in May, after a two-year term as president elect.

    Jill Wagner, spokesperson for SCCCD, told EdSource that Boroujeni’s tenure committee “considered multiple factors in favor of granting tenure, and areas of concern were not identified” at the time of the review. Asked if the committee that considered Boroujeni’s tenure had access to or was of the district’s administrative determination which confirmed Fresno State’s finding that an act of sexual violence had occurred, Wagner did not respond directly, writing instead that the district followed state law and the district’s union contract, “which prescribes what information can be included in tenure review.”  

    Boroujeni told Edsource that he “got tenured with the district’s knowledge of everything that had happened.”





    Source link

  • Federal judge orders UCLA to ensure equal access to Jewish students following pro-Palestinian protests

    Federal judge orders UCLA to ensure equal access to Jewish students following pro-Palestinian protests


    Hundreds of UCLA students protest in support of Palestinians on May 2, 2024.

    Credit: Christine Kao

    A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that goes into effect Thursday ordering UCLA to ensure equal access to Jewish students in reaction to the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian encampments last spring.

    Three Jewish students in June sued the University of California system, arguing that UCLA allowed protesters to erect an encampment that blocked Jewish students from accessing parts of campus, including classrooms and an undergraduate library.

    U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi agreed that UCLA knew students could not enter parts of campus because of their religious beliefs. 

    “In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” he wrote. 

    “UCLA does not dispute this,” Scarsi wrote. “Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.”

    The order bars the UC defendants from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.” It also gives the campus until Aug. 15 to instruct campus security, police and student affairs “not to aid or participate in any obstruction of access for Jewish students to ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas.”

    The order was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

    UCLA was one in a wave of campuses where protesters built encampments in solidarity with Palestine as part of a campaign demanding universities sever financial ties with Israel.  

    The Los Angeles Times and other news outlets have reported on incidents in which Jewish students said they were blocked from entering the encampment. An April 30 video of Jewish students being rebuffed by protesters when they attempted to walk through the camp went viral. Pro-Palestinian organizers have said restricting who could enter the camp was a measure meant to protect protesters from harassment and abuse.  

    Counter protesters attacked the camp on the evening of April 30, attempting to tear down barricades and hurling objects at the protesters. The university was criticized for not doing more to protect the pro-Palestine students. 

    The university’s police chief was temporarily reassigned in May pending a review of the school’s security processes. UC President Michael Drake has also requested an investigation into how the campus responded to the violent attack on the pro-Palestinian camp.

    Attorneys for the UC system seeking to prevent the injunction argued that the university has already taken steps to ensure its students’ safety and access to education, including by creating a new campus safety office that is “empowered to take decisive action in response to protest.” 

    Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said in a written statement that the ruling interferes with how the university can react to events on its campus.

    “UCLA is committed to fostering a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” Osako said. “The district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”

    The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Clement & Murphy PLLC represent the plaintiffs. Becket indicated in a press release about the order that UC defendants are expected to appeal the ruling.

    “UCLA is still in charge of its own campus,” Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and an attorney for the students, said in a statement to EdSource. “But the court’s order means that however UCLA decides to manage its campus, allowing the exclusion of Jewish students is not an option on the table.”

    The Los Angeles Times reported that UC leaders are working on a systemwide plan regarding how its campuses will respond should protests of the Israel-Hamas war continue in the fall. Drake has until Oct. 1 to issue a report to that effect, according to the Times. 





    Source link

  • Following your roots, faith and a special diet in college

    Following your roots, faith and a special diet in college


    I’ve disavowed potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, radish and beets. 

    Growing up as a Jain, I never ate these root vegetables or had second thoughts about my faith and this practice. At home, my mom prepared authentic Jain Gujarati meals with rotli (flatbread), daal (lentil soup), bhaat (rice) and shaak (vegetable curry). We found Jain-friendly restaurants in the Bay Area, and while traveling abroad, we microwaved meals in our hotel room and carried ready-to-eat foods. 

    It was always possible for me to follow my faith-based diet, until I enrolled in Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as a freshman two years ago. Suddenly, I would be forced to eat from a meal plan, cook in a communal dorm kitchen or find suitable off-campus dining options.

    Little known outside of India, Jainism is an ancient religious faith whose central tenet is ahimsa, or nonviolence toward all living beings. Jains traditionally do not consume animal products such as meat, eggs and honey, nor root vegetables, in accordance with this principle to avoid harming organisms living in the soil. 

    Some may perceive the Jain diet to be a list of limitations. However, it is meant to be the opposite. In fact, it has empowered me to make more mindful and compassionate choices when it comes to my lifestyle and consumption. 

    Being so closely connected to and influenced by the Bay Area’s Jain community, my faith has now become an integral aspect of my background, culture and identity, and is the reason behind my commitment to the Jain diet throughout college. 

    As I prepared to leave for Cal Poly in September 2022, I was unsure of how I would be able to find Jain food as a freshman on a meal plan. I decided to contact campus dining before starting school and, to my surprise, they responded swiftly. After exchanging preliminary emails discussing my unique dietary needs, we came up with a plan. 

    I met with Kaitlin Gibbons, a registered dietitian for the campus dining program, and we created a specialized meal plan, rotating between four dishes each week. This included pasta, stir-fry, a veggie wrap and quesadillas. She also introduced me to the chefs and kitchen staff who prepared my food as I picked it up every day.  

    Cal Poly works with students who have food allergies, gluten intolerance, follow vegan or vegetarian diets or who, like me, have faith-based diets. 

    “I (work) one-on-one with students with dietary restrictions to assist in empowering them to self-manage their dietary choices on campus, allowing them to actively participate in the college dining experience,” Gibbons said. 

    To meet the diverse needs of students, Gibbons collaborates with executive chefs like Chris Dunham and culinary teams to offer inclusive meal plans. 

    Of course, my limited range of meals meant that, unlike my peers, I could not make spontaneous lunch or dinner plans to grab food at just any eatery. I also had a number of leftover dining dollars because I couldn’t purchase most other food/snack options. To use up my dollars, I had to frivolously buy granola bars or random candies from the campus market. 

    As a result, I stocked up on snacks, homemade dehydrated foods, and brought cooking ware like an Instant Pot to make quick meals in my dorm’s kitchen.

    Nevertheless, I am grateful to Cal Poly’s dining team and to Kaitlin for understanding and accommodating my dietary needs; however, this is not the case for all students on other campuses.

    My friend Arushi Shah is a biomedical engineering sophomore at the University of California Riverside, and she similarly follows the Jain tradition of avoiding root vegetables. 

    Shah said that during her first year in college, she was not on a meal plan because her college refused to accommodate her diet and offer suitable options. 

    “I wished they could make at least one to two dishes for me,” Shah said. 

    Instead, she found creative alternatives to prepare food in her dorm all year long. This included taking dehydrated meals from home, packing non-perishables and storing frozen food in her fridge. 

    “I actually asked my mom to make me instant food items where I just add hot water and it’s ready,” Shah said. “Other times I would go upstairs to my suite kitchen and make easy dishes that didn’t require a lot of meal prep.” Some of the meals she made included sandwiches, dosa and fried rice. 

    If you are in Shah’s position, she suggests “learn how to cook if a kitchen is available, and learn how to do very simple things that don’t require much time and small amounts of ingredients.” 

    Transitioning to college is challenging, especially while navigating dietary restrictions and advocating for your needs. To take the first step, get in touch with your school’s dining program, and relay your dietary needs to them. Preferably, you can reach out before committing to a school as accommodations may not always be guaranteed. As awareness of various faith-based dietary customs grows across colleges, we can hopefully become more inclusive in how we serve our students.

    •••

    Riya Parekh is a third year political science major concentrating in pre-law at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





    Source link

  • Robert Reich: Trump Is Following Viktor Orban’s Model

    Robert Reich: Trump Is Following Viktor Orban’s Model


    Robert Reich has been a champion of democracy throughout the Trump era. An economist, he knows that we are crippled as a nation by escalating income inequality. He describes here how Viktor Orban provided a model for Trumpism and what we should do to resist our headlong plunge into oligarchy, authoritarians, and ultimately full-blown fascism. h/t to Retired Teacher, who called my attention to this article.

    Reich writes:

    Friends,

    A few days ago I had breakfast with my old friend John Shattuck, who, as president of Central European University in Budapest, saw firsthand how Viktor Orbán took over Hungary’s democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state. 

    When Trump was elected in 2016, Trump endorsed Orbán, and Orbán started attacking universities — forcing the Central European University out of Hungary. 

    John believes Trump is emulating Orbán’s playbook. (Steve Bannon once declared that “Orbán was Trump before there was Trump.”)

    Orbân’s playbook has 10 parts, according to John: 

    One: Take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using political threats and intimidation to stamp out all party dissent. 

    Two: Build your base by appealing to fear and hate, branding immigrants and cultural minorities as dangers to society, and demonizing your opponents as enemies of the people.

    Three: Use disinformation and lies to justify what you’re doing.

    Four: Use your election victory to claim a sweeping mandate — especially if you don’t win a majority.

    Five: Centralize your power by destroying the civil service.

    Six: Redefine the rule of law as rule by executive decree. Weaponize the state against all democratic opponents. Demonize anyone who doesn’t support the leader as an “enemy of the people.” 

    Seven: Eliminate checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society. Target opponents with regulatory penalties like tax audits, educational penalties such as denials of accreditation, political penalties like harassment investigations, physical penalties like withdrawing police protection, and criminal penalties like prosecution. 

    Eight: Rely on your oligarchs — hugely wealthy business and financial leaders — to supervise the economy and reward them with special access to state resources, tax cuts, and subsidies. 

    Nine: Ally yourself with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and support his effort to undermine European democracies and attack sovereign countries like Ukraine.

    Ten: Get the public to believe that all this is necessary, and that resistance is futile.

    John noted that Orbán’s influence now reaches across Europe.

    In Austria, a political party founded by former Nazis will be part of a new coalition government this year headed by a leader who has close ties to Russia and opposes European support for Ukraine. A similar nationalist far-right government has taken over next door in Slovakia.

    Europe’s three biggest countries, Italy, France and Germany, have all swung toward the far-right, but so far they remain democracies.

    Italy has a nationalist government headed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who’s followed parts of the Orbán playbook but has been pushed toward the center and has softened her position on immigration and Ukraine.

    In France, the far-right party of Marine Le Pen won last year’s parliamentary elections, but a coalition of opposition parties, prodded by Emmanuel Macron, united to deny her party a parliamentary majority. Their resistance will be tested by new elections in June.

    In Germany, the center-left government headed by Olaf Scholz fell at the end of last year. In late February, parliamentary elections took place that determined whether the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would become part of a new government. Viktor Orbán, Elon Musk, and JD Vance all endorsed the AfD before the elections, but it came in second with just under 20 percent of the vote, and polls show that 71 percent of Germans believe that the AfD is a threat to democracy because of its overt connections to the Nazi past.

    Poland, the biggest new democracy in Eastern Europe, at first adopted but is now resisting the Orbán model. A far-right government elected in 2015 almost destroyed the independence of the Polish judiciary, but opposition parties united to defend the courts and defeated the government in 2023, replacing it with a centrist regime headed by Donald Tusk, with a strong commitment to restore Polish democracy.

    What lessons can be drawn from all this?

    John believes that the best way to respond to Orbán’s right-wing populism is by building coalitions for economic populism based on health care, education, taxes, and public spending. 

    He points to historical examples of this, like the American Farmer-Labor coalition that brought together urban workers, white farmers, and Black sharecroppers and led to the Progressive Movement and the New Deal in the 20th century. Today there’s an urgent need for a new populist movement to attack economic inequality.

    John says that defending democracy should itself be a populist cause. In the Orbán playbook, the national flag was hijacked by the authoritarian leader. John believes that the flag of American democracy must be reclaimed as a symbol of the rule of law, a society built on human rights and freedoms, and international alliances and humanitarian values. 

    When these soft-power democratic assets are destroyed, a huge void opens up — to be filled by authoritarians like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who are the ultimate political models for Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump.

    John urges that we pro-democracy anti-Trumpers move quickly with protests, lawsuits, and loud resistance. He says that those who believe Democrats should just play dead and wait for the 2026 midterm elections are profoundly wrong. Speed is essential. 

    I was struck by John’s optimism. He believes that the U.S. is better situated than Hungary to resist authoritarianism. We are 30 times bigger and infinitely more diverse, and our diversity is the source of our economic and cultural strength. The U.S. has an enormous and active civil society, a judiciary that remains mostly independent, a free and open if partially captured and manipulated media, and a constitution that guarantees the rights of the people to challenge and change their government. 

    Trump won less than 50 percent of the vote in last fall’s election, and his approval rating is well below that in recent polls.

    National polls show that 70 percent of Americans today see democracy as a core American value.Resistance to the assault on democracy is not only possible, John says, but it’s essential — and it can work, as shown by the growing number of successful lawsuits that have been brought against Trump’s flood of executive decrees and the rising tide of grassroots mobilization by civil society groups across the country who are organizing demonstrations and lobbying legislators to stand up for democracy.

    For two and a half centuries, Americans have fought to expand the right to vote, to achieve equal protection, to oppose intolerance and political violence, to gain freedom of speech and religion, to guarantee due process of law. 

    These goals may now seem to be blocked by Trump, but the U.S. is not Germany in the 1930s nor Hungary in 2025. Americans across the country are beginning to resist. John believes American democracy will emerge stronger for our efforts.



    Source link

  • How a new LAUSD board member hopes to inspire change following Trump’s inauguration 

    How a new LAUSD board member hopes to inspire change following Trump’s inauguration 


    LAUSD school board member Karla Griego reading with students.

    Credit: Courtesy of Karla Griego

    A lot has changed in the life of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new board member, representing District 5. 

    In the past few months, Karla Griego was elected to LAUSD’s school board, was sworn in and now is having to find her stride as a new presidential administration takes charge on Monday. 

    While many of her priorities remain unchanged — including providing more support for community schools, investing in special education and charter school accountability — Griego said she’s rethinking some of her priorities because of another four years of President Donald Trump. 

    Despite the potential hurdles ahead, Griego, an educator of more than 19 years and backed by the district’s teacher’s union, emphasized that she is grateful to work with LAUSD’s community as part of a larger movement.  

    “Change doesn’t happen with individuals, change happens with movements,” Griego, the first Latina to serve her board district in more than 30 years, said in an interview with EdSource. 

    “And if that’s what we want in our schools — we want schools to be student centered and holistic educational experiences and schools that are healthy, green, racially just, affirming, community schools — then it’s a movement that’s going to make that happen.” 

    Here’s what she said she hopes to accomplish in her tenure on the board. 

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

    What are the most critical issues that you most want to address during your term on the Los Angeles Unified board?  

    The immigration issue is very big here in L.A. because there’s a lot of anxiety among our families, our communities, our students, and so that is definitely one thing that was not on my campaign platform, but it has now risen as a priority. And with that, I’m hoping that we could lead in having “Know Your Rights” sessions for families and parents and students, and provide social-emotional support. It was the student board member who highlighted the need for social-emotional support for students who will be dealing with a lot if their families are in fear of deportation. We saw in 2017 how children were affected by that. I am hoping that we can, as a district, lead in spearheading some of these workshops and support systems for our students and their families. 

    And then, of course, the budget is always very important. Every year, we need to make decisions. I want to make sure that I involve stakeholders, and I want to host meetings throughout my district to hear from families and parents and teachers, classified staff, administrators about what their priorities are. I want to hear from the community. I made that commitment when I was running, and so one of the first tasks is going to be to host listening sessions throughout the district. 

    And of course to expand community schools to allow them to grow and thrive as they’re meant to, and to make sure that we keep our promise to our Black students by maintaining the Black Student Achievement Plan. 

    And, just overall, that as we are making decisions, I bring that voice to the table of seeing the decisions that we make through the lens of supporting our students and supporting our students holistically— so let that be the driving force for all of our decision-making.

    You’ve already discussed supporting families who fear deportation. But beyond immigration, how has the outcome of the November election impacted your priorities, if at all?  

    I’m a special education teacher, and with the federal government threatening to disband the Department of Education, special education could be dispersed to another department, and so it won’t have as high a priority. I definitely want to make sure that we continue to center one of our most vulnerable (groups of) students in spite of all the hits that we get (and make) decisions about what’s best for them to be able to access the curriculum and schooling and to be in a safe environment that is equitable and meets their needs. 

    Special education is an area of concern for me in terms of the new presidency, but it just means that we need to work harder, and we need to bring together special ed parents, special ed students and teachers and administrators to organize and push back on any cuts to what’s already a very small budget. And even though they’re threatening to cut even more, we continue to ask for more. 

    There are so many stakeholders who sometimes have conflicting views on critical issues, ranging from policing to charter schools. How do you plan to balance all of that feedback and decide what to act on? 

    When I was a community school coordinator, I learned to do different types of assessments and surveys, but also to have focus groups and to determine to come to a consensus as to what the priorities will be. And so that’s what I’m hoping to do. 

    Few parents say we want police and, likewise, we don’t want police. The first thing that comes out generally, in my experience with talking to families throughout the campaign and even now, is we want safe schools. And so, what are you going to do to create safe schools? And that’s what they want to hear from the district. I’ve always told stakeholders that I know that there is funding in community-based safety programs. I know that there is funding for restorative practices and de-escalation techniques, and so I want to make sure that we spend that money to support our staff and support our students and to implement Safe Passages in our neighborhoods, especially those where families feel that their kids are not safe going to and from school. I want to make sure that we use that funding for those things as they were meant to be used. 

    In terms of charters, it’s accountability. That’s huge with charter schools — making sure that they are held accountable in the same way that public schools are held accountable. If they say that they accept special ed students and English language learners, then I want to see that is the case, that that is happening, that children, that families are welcomed, and families are engaged. 

    How do you plan to engage student voices?  

    The student voice is super important, and the way that I want to make sure that I engage them is by meeting with different student organizations that already exist in LAUSD. And, in particular, we have a lot of groups of students who are affinity groups: the LGBTQ, trans groups, Latino groups or Black student unions. 

    I also want to make sure that when I visit school sites, that I also engage with students at the school sites and, at these listening sessions that I’m hoping to have, there’s going to be a concerted effort to make sure that students also attend and (that I) get ideas from them. 

    What message would you like to send to LAUSD’s student body?

    Our students go through so much. All students experience so much stress either just by the mere fact that they are in the developmental stage that they’re in, or social factors. And so, what I want to tell them is to try to find joy in the things that you like and enjoy yourself as much (as you can), because you deserve it. And, yeah, it’s hard. I have an 18-year-old daughter, so I try to stress that to her, to just try to find joy. 

    There’s so much stress on our students about performance. Even if we don’t tell them, they feel it. They feel the stress of testing, performing graduation, doing better. It’s just the messages that we send to our kids sometimes are always about doing better, and how does that make us feel? That we’re never enough, that we’re just not quite there. And, I don’t want our students to feel that way. They are where they are, and they are strong and resilient. 

    And also, to lean on the support system that they may have: a sibling, cousin, a friend, an educator, a parent. Whatever that support system may be, lean on that because when you’re in community, you also feel a lot stronger.





    Source link