@jmnoonan
associate professor at Salem State University in Salem, MA | studying leadership, learning, unlearning, equity | Boston dad interested in public education & politics | more at https://jamesnoonan.scholar.st | he/him | I support 🏳️⚧️ folx
I too find myself lulled by inaction. It is easy—too easy—to let fear of exposure keep me on the couch when I get a request for the neighborhood watch. But courage (and action) are democratic virtues and they are being extinguished, in part by ubiquitous access to doomscrolling.
Reading @lyndseystonebri.bsky.social’s book on Hannah Arendt, I’m struck how meek our collective instinct for courage has become. There are many examples but I’m thinking today about the video of a US Senator breaking the hand of a marine & how the entire room sat quietly with their backs turned.
I wonder if he realizes there’s a vaccine he could’ve had for that?
I’m re-reading Moby Dick, which I loved as an undergrad, to see if it holds up. It does.
And: the monomania of Ahab; the willingness of his crew to fall in line behind his vengeance; the frail resistance of his first mate… it reads differently now. It’s familiar in a way I couldn’t access in 1995.
This is the first Winter Olympics I’ve watched the biathlon pursuit, which is easily my new favorite event. It’s so intense and unpredictable and just astonishing.
This time of year, I always remember how impossible it was to get a stroller down sidewalks and through curb cuts. Same goes for wheelchairs, walkers, and other mobility-challenged folks.
If you (or anyone you know) live in Boston and are over 11 years old, you can vote for Boston’s participatory budgeting: participate.budget.boston.gov/gateway
I’m in awe of what schools are doing daily to hold kids & families up when other institutions won’t.
A lesson for ed research so committed to “schools as oppression machines” that it can’t see them as sites of care, protection, and dignity.
There’s a GoFundMe for Jonathan Ross’s legal expenses for murdering Renee Good.
This violates GoFundMe’s Terms of Service. Everyone must report it.
A thread on how to do that 🧵
The lack of CarPlay is the reason we didn’t buy a Chevy Equinox EV
Boston’s night skyline in the distance, with green and pink glow
Another one, with high exposure, from Roxbury. @universalhub.com
A city skyline at night, with a faint green glow
Faint view of the aurora from Roxbury’s Highland Park. @universalhub.com
Not that he didn’t already know, but now Trump knows for sure he can roll the Dems every time and there’s no need to negotiate for anything
Turns out that holding hungry people hostage really does work.
I'd like to offer the entire golf course for the benefit of dogs.
I was fortunate to attend a session at AERA featuring this research and it’s fabulous—evocatively highlighting the gap between the hopes we pour into professional learning and its constraints, especially when it comes to learning about race and systems of oppression. I’m so glad it’s in print!
Last night was the last meeting of the Boston School Committee before it votes on a proposed revision of its exam schools admissions policy. The changes would make the schools less diverse and halt the progress made these last four years. Here's my testimony: jamesnoonan.scholar.st/posts/4709
A copy of What Is Congress with a hand written note that changes Is to Was.
We know how hard it can be to stay current, so we updated this one ourselves
No indeed — and as someone who worked with immigrant communities there more than 20 years ago, I feel confident saying that very little has changed.
I had the same thought — and the schools, too. It’s all as appalling as it is unsurprising. I’m guessing Everett PD thinks they are immune from accountability because so many residents are vulnerable and can’t afford to protest.
Everett is a city that thrives thanks to its immigrant communities. And this is despicable — if you are sworn to protect the people, you protect all of them.
"Decision making, or action, is important in part because a stated commitment to antiracist values alone—what Ahmed (2006) calls “nonperformativity”—is too often seen as sufficient action, even though a commitment to antiracism alone still enables racism to persist."
Post-print available here: jamesnoonan.scholar.st/publications...
Pleased to share a new publication -- coauthored with @salemstate.bsky.social colleagues Drs. Jacy Ippolito and Megin Charner-Laird -- about the connection between adult development and antiracist educational leadership: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... @ucea-leadership.bsky.social
A book cover for The Human Scale, a novel by Lawrence Wright — featuring a car on fire, the orange flames and haze coloring the cover a blinding orange
Reading Lawrence Wright’s novel about Palestine and Israel (“The Human Scale”), I have to take breaks about every 15 pages. It’s brilliantly plotted and punctuated with paradoxes and history, but the weight of the story is just so heavy with sorrow.
This case — and Sumner’s brief and Robert Morris’s work — are central milestones in a course I teach on educational justice and the Brown case jamesnoonan.scholar.st/courses/3789...
If you’re interested in talking through some of the questions, I’m happy to share my take!
Attention Boston Public School parents: it’s worth wading through the morass of slides on proposed changes to the exam school policy to offer feedback, especially in the interest of preserving the equity-focused policy goals. Here’s the link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Silhouette of trees, above which lightning appears from a large gray and magenta cloud
Just after sunset, dark. Green grass leading to a lit-up house, next to which are trees silhouetted against a gray sky. A bolt of lightning appears over the trees and in the direction of the house (from Highland Park, Roxbury)
View from Highland Park in Roxbury tonight @universalhub.com
