Journal of a Black Teacher

  The future will not be determined by whether artificial intelligence becomes more powerful. It will be determined by whether Black people remain capable of recognizing one another in a world increasingly filled with digital noise. By Don Allen I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, a state that seems determined to find itself in the national headlines every week for one reason or another. Every day brings another controversy, another scandal, another public embarrassment, or another issue that many people simply do not want to discuss honestly. Take government accountability. When billions of taxpayer dollars disappear through fraud or mismanagement, my concern is not merely with the individuals who exploited the system. My concern is with the people sitting behind government desks who approved the funding, failed to monitor it, and ignored the warning signs. Accountability does not begin with the thief. It begins with the gatekeeper. But that is a discussion for another day. What c...

By Don Allen, Ed.S., M. A. Ed., MAT (ABD) The NAACP’s “Out of Bounds” campaign may be one of the most politically theatrical - and intellectually incomplete activist campaigns launched in recent years. Not because voting rights are unimportant. They are critically important. Not because racial gerrymandering is fake. It is real. But because the NAACP decided to weaponize Black college athletes as symbolic political leverage while conveniently skipping over every adult inside the educational ecosystem who actually understands how these institutions function. Where were the teachers? Where were the professors? Where were the assistant coaches? Where were the academic advisors? Where were the trainers, tutors, custodians, support staff, and campus employees? Where were the Black faculty unions? Where were the Black studies departments? Where were the longtime HBCU scholars? Where were the actual educational practitioners? Instead, the NAACP appears to have built ...