As Indigenous, Black, people of color in education, we have powerful stories to tell. In community, we gather this month to tell those stories—our stories—and invite you to listen, reflect, and act. #31DaysIBPOC

Follow this thread, check the site http://31DaysIBPOC.wordpress.com 

"Let me remember the foundations on which I stand.

Let me not fall for the okey doke.

We channel the spirit of Nannie Burroughs–and millions of Black women who have & will continue to be here–as we specializ[e] in the wholly impossible: yesterday, today, tomorrow." #31DaysIBPOC

And it would help if I remember to include the link to Dr. @TchKimPossible’s excellent post!

Your necessary reading for today and all days... https://twitter.com/tchkimpossible/status/1256147436885684224?s=21 #31DaysIBPOC https://twitter.com/TchKimPossible/status/1256147436885684224

MAY 2: Beautiful, powerful #31DaysIBPOC poetry from the beautiful, powerful @arcticisleteach

"Dear Black Joy,

Thank you.

You have nurtured and sustained me my entire life."

https://kinderbender.com/2020/05/02/31daysibpoc-an-open-letter-to-black-joy/

MAY 3: "I want her words tattooed inside my arm, where I can read it over and over and over, where I can honor my time as an alternative educator, where I can scar my purpose into my skin." - @DulceFlecha #31DaysIBPOC

https://medium.com/@dulcemarie.flecha/si-dios-quiere-fe1da3ec6688

MAY 4: "MY LIBERATION IS BOUND UP WITH THE LIBERATION OF OTHERS

This solidarity is not new. However, we help our students see how powerful our communities can be - and have been - when we’ve worked together." - @ltalusan #31DaysIBPOC

http://www.lizatalusan.com/to-loosen-the-mind/2020/5/2/recommitting-to-shared-liberation

MAY. 5: "I know students’ names. I am getting to know more of their stories as they unfold before our eyes. We face a new world together." - @escribescribe
#31DaysIBPOC

https://drkimparker.org/2020/05/05/31daysibpoc-day-5-guest-post-dr-r-joseph-rodriguez/

MAY 6: "I have no interest in pimping out my oppression, my trauma, my pain, for your colonial consumption. I have no interest in spilling my stories for your shallow reflections and intentional inaction." - @HKhodai #31DaysIBPOC

http://hemakhodai.com/Amma/ 

MAY 7: @ValeriaBrownEdu Marie Kondos racism, "'Don’t aim for perfection. Start off slowly & discard just one item a day.' What lovely words to ease the hearts of those who lack confidence in their ability to [tidy] achieve educational justice.” #31DaysIBPOC https://cleartheaireducation.wordpress.com/blog/ 

MAY 8: "White supremacy can be calm, quiet, sitting at a desk, following the rules, saying things beneath its breath, not calling on us... All while wearing cute sweaters in craftily decorated classrooms." - @nenagerman. #31DaysIBPOC

https://www.multiculturalclassroomconsulting.com/2020/05/what-i-remember/

MAY 9: "We are all around. We do The Work for ourselves, each other, and generations to come... We celebrate, laugh, and cry across vast differences and distances because we believe in ourselves and our value.

We have to." - @booktoss #31DaysIBPOC

https://booktoss.blog/2020/05/09/2020-the-hold-my-beer-decade/

MA 10: "I deliberately chose Mother’s Day for my #31DaysIBPOC post. Today, May 10th, is also Single Parent Families’ Day in Korea (Bae)... I honor the women who have lost children to adoption. Their stories matter." - @readingspark #31DaysIBPOC https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/silence-sorrow-and-separation/

MAY 11: "Sometimes, the choice is whether the issue is worth spending the emotional capital you have saved. Do you have it to spend? How many times have you raised a similar issue before? Is it worth the risk...?"
- @EngageReaders #31DaysIBPOC http://www.lstringfellow.com/blog/31daysibpoc-the-emotional-toll-of-speaking-up

MAY 12: "This is not a story of which I am proud, but I tell it because it illustrates how insidious racism is." - @martinmiABC #31DaysIBPOC
https://wp.me/p6rnl0-1AN 

MAY 13: "It was with these two sentences that I realized you carry what I have come to recognize is a language of active assimilation." - @AnnaOz249 #31DaysIBPOC http://annagosborn.org/dear-dad/ 

MAY 14: "It was this lemon tree that became the site of the stories my grandma & grandpa shared... It is rare to find stories like [these] documented in textbooks, & when they are, their experiences are reduced to a paragraph."
- @MsBigCastle #31DaysIBPOC https://medium.com/@irenecastillon/el-lim%C3%B3n-rooted-histories-63b1d140ddc5

MAY 15: "I never realized how much rest the children needed. How weary they were from the toll of the school day. How they, also, had been performing. How exhausting it was. School didn’t love the way my boys learned." - @izzieteaches #31DaysIBPOC

https://medium.com/@izziet1217/the-liberation-of-isolation-12009f6a6f4c

MAY 16: "We want to be seen and heard. We want a seat at the table. We want equal opportunity and representation for us and for our children. We want our accurate histories preserved. We need to work together to get there." - @SJEducate #31DaysIPBOC
https://medium.com/@educationunfiltered/my-insights-in-26-letters-5db935f2bd31

MAY. 17: "I can’t remember the first time I found out that there were people who thought spam was disgusting... I do remember what I felt in that moment, though." - @minfucious #31DaysIPOBC

https://medium.com/@minfucious/for-my-people-who-love-spam-800b6ab9d3a2

MAY 18: "Are you only an ally in the comfort of your classroom or have you moved for changes in official school policy to support us if it doesn’t already? Do you protect us or pressure us to assimilate?" - @vperezy #31DaysIBPOC

https://vperezy.wordpress.com/2020/05/17/culture-check/

MAY 19: "In that moment I felt something in my bones that I had known intellectually for years: erasure does not just hurt the person being erased, it hurts all those who are erased touch, and steals a piece of their power." - @colleen_cruz #31DaysIBPOC

https://medium.com/@mcolleencruz/nothing-to-erase-b2b6844d26b7

MAY 19: "You might be wondering why I’m writing about education during the past 150 years, as our nation works to comprehend what it means to educate and school in the wake of COVID-19. This is precisely why I am." - @SonjaCherryPaul #31DaysIBPOC

https://www.sonjacherrypaul.com/post/becoming-the-architects-of-school

MAY 20: "I’ve been thinking a lot about my roles as teacher educator, daughter, mother, partner & friend during these times... & like many of you, my mind, spirit, & body are so exhausted w/the weight of it all that it takes a whole lot to focus." - @ProfesoraEspana #31DaysIBPOC

MAY 21: "I’d rather not be haunted like this, but I nodded to Toni Morrison’s majesty... for a reason: Blackness, in this spacetime, always involves haunting.

(What do you do when you’re both the haunted and the haint?)"

- Dr. Ebony Thomas #31DaysIBPOC https://www.ebonyelizabeththomas.com/blog/shadow-thursday

MAY 22: "As a Black woman, I recognize that systems held hostage to the confines of whiteness will not acknowledge my truth, presence, or magic." - @ericabrivera #31DaysIBPOC

MAY 23: How do you carve out moments for you and your family, especially now? @misterminor on 5 Black Role Models for this week (aka: what #Transformers Soundwave and #AnimalCrossing Isabelle have in common) #31DaysIBPOC

MAY 24: "I have traded buffets for brunch and given up remnants of old love in order to love myself. It don’t mean I don’t miss them though. It just means I have learned that living truthfully requires us to miss some things in life." - @sheathescholar #31DaysIBPOC

MAY 26: "If all Ss... have a deep respect & joy for Native-authored texts, then no future young Indian girl, like myself, will have to recede away from her identity by being ridiculed for loving a book which reflects herself." - @DawnEQuigley #31DaysIBPOC https://dawnquigley.com/dawn-quigley-31daysibpoc/

MAY 27: "In this time of so much uncertainty, I’m grounded in knowing that Black women, that Black teachers are continuing to reimagine what school should be and are reclaiming the classroom as a safe space for Black joy." - @freeyourheart #31DaysIBPOC

https://medium.com/@freeyourheart/we-all-we-got-teaching-as-an-emancipatory-and-healing-practice-631e23fbb316

MAY 28: "I got these questions from white 'native' English speakers at conferences and teachers’ rooms. The unsafest spaces I have ever been to." - @ParisaMehran #31DaysIBPOC https://womenofcolorinelt.wordpress.com/2020/05/27/and-this-is-me-a-lonely-woman/

MAY 28: "There are not enough of the right words to explain why it matters & what it means to be Black & claim the outdoors, the great outdoors as one’s own, as part of one’s being, as central to one’s every breath & thought." @edifiedlistener #31DaysIBPOC https://edifiedlistener.blog/2020/05/28/black-and-outdoors-at-a-time-like-this/

MAY 28: "Thus, I have learned that cultural and racial identity is both self-constructed and constructed for you. How much this is true depends on both your zip code and how much melanin you possess." - @AliMCollins #31DaysIBPOC
https://sfpsmom.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-the-black-biracial-daughter-of-a-white-mom/

MAY 29: "I call upon las mujeres de mi familia for their wisdom... These lessons are more than lessons; they are stories that keep our voices alive. Schools need not try to replicate these lessons through a white gaze." - @tianasilvas #31DayIBPOC https://tianasilvas.org/blog/f/lessons 

MAY 29: "Block parties meant everything to the black community. They were the gathering of expression, unity, and pride. Your entire family — both biological and not, had a part to play in the block party." - Nekia Wise #31DaysIBPOC https://medium.com/@wisenekia/communities-coming-together-through-hip-hop-b7bab948586d

MAY 30: "We have the choice every day [to] stand up & fight for our Ss, raise the hand of dissent & call for those in leadership to do more & to do better—or unapologetically hold them accountable when they do not." - @teachLTL @juliaerin80 #31DaysIBPOC https://medium.com/@lamartimmons_80320/a-call-to-action-a48bbafdce78