Blog Posts
Find blog posts shared by the Owlstown community.
Our Collective Responsibility for School Integration
In his historical portrait of federal, state, and local efforts to integrate schools, James Ryan, former law professor at the University of Virginia and current dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), boiled down the essential mes...
Post · May 27, 2025
Living in a Time of Two Plagues
As the U.S. death toll from Covid-19 approached 100,000—the largest country total in the world—the New York Times devoted four pages of its Sunday edition to cataloging the lives of 1,000 people who had died. Read together, the one-line obituaries...
Post · May 25, 2025
Testimony Before the Boston School Committee
The following comments were delivered, via Zoom, during a meeting of the Boston School Committee on a proposal to update the admissions criteria for "exam schools" in the Boston Public Schools.
My name is James Noonan, assistant professor of educ...
Post · May 25, 2025
What We Learned in the Pandemic
The decision by the Commissioner of Education, Jeff Riley, to deny approval of remote learning days at the Curley K-8 School in Boston seems part of a determined plan by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to move forward at all c...
Post · May 25, 2025
The Unseen Lines: A Journey Through Power, Professionalism, and Personal Truth. Part 2
" Teach from your scars, not from your wounds"
This isn't just a catchy phrase; it’s a profound reminder, applicable in so many areas of life: teaching, writing, and especially for professionals. We are seeing more and more professional codes of ...
Post · May 25, 2025
The Unseen Lines: A Journey Through Power, Professionalism, and Personal Truth. Part 1
When I talk about being "disabled by society and the attitudes of others," I’m not just choosing words; I'm highlighting a lived reality. Whether it’s the constant struggle for British Sign Language (BSL) access, the exasperating lack of understan...
Post · May 25, 2025
Partnering with Parents: A Call to Action in Contextual Safeguarding
Imagine the knot of fear in a parent's stomach as they witness their child being drawn into influences and situations far beyond the safety of their home. This is the reality within contextual safeguarding, where the focus shifts to addressing har...
Post · May 25, 2025
Self-Care and Open Water Swimming #WhyISwim
In a previous post, I emphasised the importance of self-care. Ironically, that very day, a tempting message arrived: ‘Anyone up for a swim this afternoon?’ It was a clear sign I needed to embrace my own advice.
The empowering hashtag #whyisign c...
Post · May 25, 2025
Navigating the Storm: Personal Challenges, the Zeigarnik Effect, and Your PhD Journey
We've all experienced that mental itch, the nagging feeling of an incomplete task. Psychology calls this the Zeigarnik Effect: unfinished business stays present in our minds (more can be read about it here). It's why we remember that open loop, t...
Post · May 25, 2025
Active Omission Revisited: When Contextual Safeguarding Ignores the Targeted Parent
In our ongoing exploration of contextual safeguarding, we've underscored the crucial need to understand and address the harms children face outside the family home. This paradigm shift rightly moves away from solely focusing on parental actions a...
Post · May 25, 2025
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