Leaves are changing, there's a chill in the air, and it's getting darker and darker every night and every morning. And on October 31st, All Hallow's Eve, families will be getting their little ones dressed up as princesses and superheroes and ghosts and goblins to get ready to take to the streets to trick-or-treat. But not in our house.  Halloween was originally called Samhain and marked the end of the harvest season for Celtic farmers, and they believed on this one day of the year, the curtain between the living and the dead was the thinnest, and common people would light huge bonfires and disguise themselves to protect themselves from malevolent spirits.  In the 8th century in an attempt to convert the Celts from their pagan ways, Pope Gregory III established November 1st as All Hallows Day, a day honoring all saints, known and unknown. Those early Europeans accepted both, and began to celebrate Samhain as All Hallow's Eve, which has morphed into what we call Halloween...

I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at the WBUR CitySpace at the Lavine Broadcast Center on Monday night. We discussed how educators and students have changed their approach to teaching and learning during pandemic and post-pandemic education. Check it out below! WATCH: Learning With COVID: How School Has Changed And The Best Ways Students Learn After Trauma

Although school resumed this fall and every day we try to get our lives back to "normal," there are still resounding impacts from pandemic learning.  One of our ESL teachers unexpectedly did not return for this school year, and I stepped into the role as ESL Social Studies teacher for the first few weeks of school. While being in person is overall better than being remote, teaching and learning in a post-pandemic classroom is exhausting. We no longer need to keep three to six feet between us physically at all moments, but masks are still mandatory. And trying to teach a language course when my mouth is hidden from view and surrounded by 15 students whose mouths are also hidden from view presents immense challenges. It is so difficult to project my teacher voice and call attention to the class when students are sneaking side conversations behind their masks. Additionally, trying to teach enunciation and teach pronunciation is all but futile. I find myself repeating things over...

Unfortunately, the pandemic negatively impacted emergent bilinguals worst of all.