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Bear It With Me: A Different Kind of Ask
We say “bear with me” all the time. It’s a familiar phrase, tucked into emails and apologies, muttered when we fumble our words or drop...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
Jun 205 min read


Everyone's Got a Story: "What If the ‘Bad Ones’ Are Just Like Us?"
Once you get past all the talk about teaching styles and burnout, there’s one thing a lot of teachers don’t want to admit: they’re...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
Jun 25 min read


Kara Robinson Ate. But Many Still Missed the Message.
So, you saw the video. A Black woman teacher—sharp and ready to risk it all—stands in front of the Prince George’s County Board of...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
May 295 min read


Vibe Check, Part 2: When They Erase the Curriculum, They Erase the Kid
The “mind your business” culture isn’t just a vibe. Unfortunately, it is directly connected to what the current president and his allies...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
May 274 min read


What If the Whole School Went to Therapy?
In the world of post-pandemic urban education, 2025 is giving a lot. It’s Giving Unhealed Institution It’s Giving: We Were Never Trained...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
May 126 min read


A Letter to Failed Teachers. And to Taryn Elam, wherever you are, I’m sorry.
There’s this strange, gutting thing that happens when you’ve spent years studying someone’s life — not in the abstract, but intimately...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
May 75 min read


The Vibe Check We Missed: When “Mind Your Business” Backfires
As an adolescent development and trauma researcher teaching college students for a while now, I am mindful of that invisible leap young...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
May 34 min read


You Wanted Order? Welcome to Chaos: The Dangerous Fantasy of Tough-on-Kids Discipline
Another day, another viral video of a school fight. This time, it’s a substitute teacher — a Black woman — brawling with a teenage girl...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
Apr 275 min read


Excerpt from Book: The Forgotten Cost of De-Professionalizing Urban Teaching—and Why Public Education Still Deserves Our Deepest Investment
I’ve been away for a while, deep in the work of writing two books. The first is a strictly academic study based on a three-year research...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
Mar 275 min read


Why some Black teachers reject “woke cred” and resent the white teachers who embrace it
Theme 1. Firm Love The passage below from an interview with Deondra Clark (pseudonym) in 2023 illustrates the complicatedness of "woke"...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
Mar 26, 20249 min read


My Latest Study
So everyone knows I am writing a book, yeah? Here's a little more background. I did not know what to expect in 2019 (when I first...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
Feb 23, 20244 min read


Maintaining a Blog is Ambitious and I Won't Promise Perfect Results
Maintaining a blog, yikes, pray for me. I love being out in the community, but my day job comes first. I will do my best to stay on top...
Marinda Harrell-Levy
Feb 9, 20243 min read
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