Filed under: My Life...
I know that some of you might be thinking that it’s been a while since I posted a new blog. And you’re half right. It’s been a while since I posted a new blog here. I have finally upgraded myself into the world of real bloggers and got my own domain and customized site! I cannot tell you how excited I am! I’ve included a screenshot below, so you can see how cool it really is!
YOU CAN NOW FIND MY BLOG HERE — STUARTBMCDONALD.COM
(For all those who use readers to check me out, make sure you subscribe to the new RSS feed here.)
Filed under: Relationships
Over the weekend I was privy to an interesting conversation among some people whose opinions were, to say the least, different from mine. Any time I can hear another perspective or point of view, I take it. You never know what you might learn.
In this instance, the conversation, as it often tends to do when you have more than two single people in the same place, moved to relationships and sex. Different people spoke their pieces and some disagreed with others — the usual. What stuck out was one gentleman’s perspective when it came to sex and pleasing his partner.
(Sidebar: If you know me or have been reading my stuff for any length of time, you should know that I don’t condone sex outside of marriage. It’s because of this that I didn’t have, well, anything to contribute to the conversation.)
This man believed that, during sex, his orgasm was his responsibility and hers was hers. Continue reading
Filed under: race, Think About It | Tags: education, New York, Plessy, race, school, segregation, Students
In America, race and class are inextricably linked. Whether by chance, or more likely, by purpose, that is the reality that we must live with. Most of the children who attend New York’s Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education and Straus School, and their parents, know this all too well.
Straus and Lower Lab inhabit the same building in New York’s Upper East Side—P.S. 198—yet the two schools couldn’t be more different. The only thing they share is the building. While they utilize the same halls and bathrooms, the two schools never interact, even during lunch or recess. There’s an even more striking area they don’t share—the front door. Lower Lab, along with its student and teachers, gets to use the front door while the Straus students are forced to go around the side of the building to use the back door.
In Steven Thrasher’s article, “Inside a Divided Upper East Side Public School,” published in New York’s Village Voice, he describes the scene at P.S. 198 by saying, “If you’re a white student and you arrive at the public elementary school building on 95th Street and Third Avenue, you’ll probably walk through the front door. If you’re a black student, you’ll probably come in through the back.” Continue reading
A few days out of the week I volunteer at an elementary school in Southwest Atlanta. It’s different from the area where I grew up and went to school in almost every way I could imagine — student demographic, parental involvement, median family income, housing situations, etc. Needless to say, over the past few months I’ve learned quite a lot from the kids and the teachers. In fact, probably more than they’ve learned from me.
Yesterday, I had a chance to work with a fifth grader; we’ll call him Bobby. He is struggling in a lot of areas — reading comprehension and math primarily — and is definitely not on par with his grade level, and is nowhere near ready to enter middle school in the fall.
That morning, our focus was math. Me and math have never been the best of friends. I understood it and had little problem doing it, but it was by far my least favorite subject. So, when the teacher said multiplication and simplifying fractions, I couldn’t help but groan a little on the inside. But, I didn’t let it show. Continue reading