Monthly Archives: July 2011

Thomas O’Shaughnessy, my high-school English II teacher, died on Thursday, after two years of fighting colon cancer. I heard it through our high school’s Facebook page, which shows that social networks still serve some of their core purposes: to inform and to stay connected, rather than become detached and caught up in farming games and Bananagrams. Admittedly, it’s a bit strange to start journaling my life with this event, but for some reason it felt fitting in a Circle of Life sort of way: it is around the time of his death that my life as an educator is about to begin. (more…)

Author: Thomas Chatterton Williams.

This memoir chronicles Williams’s life as he learns to navigate within the conflicting spheres of his father’s academic world and his friends’ hip-hop fueled real life. As he grows, Williams explores how education, diversity, and popular culture affect how African-Americans forge their identities. [Will review once I actually finish reading it!]