The seven Chalkbeat stories from 2017 I’ll be re-reading this holiday season

Holidays are about family, food — and best-of lists. As you step into your holiday, let me humbly suggest seven Chalkbeat reads from 2017 to make your break more delightful.

  1. Step into Olga Montellano’s child-optimized home — and get to know a neighborhood that is much more than the “child care desert” label it’s earned — with this excellent longform piece by Ann Schimke and Yesenia Robles.
  2. Get mad, but not in the I-just-spent-too-long-on-Twitter way. In that energized way, where you learn a lot at the end, with this lively and readable investigation by Shaina Cavazos, about a virtual charter school in Indiana. (Then read the sequel: the Republican governor’s response to Shaina in a one-on-one interview.)
  3. Look at Detroit’s school district through the eyes of a new superintendent who is both one of the district’s toughest critics and, at the same time, perhaps its most optimistic defender. A great profile by Erin Einhorn.
  4. Witness democracy in action, or maybe retreat?, with this story by Monica Disare — which helps you see why Monica finds the arcane-but-super-powerful governing board overseeing New York’s schools fascinating.
  5. Get inside the heads of some of the nation’s most powerful philanthropists, who are increasingly coalescing on a single idea for what public education should look like. Spoiler: it’s pretty different from what we see today, and — signature Matt Barnum — it’s a story told with scrupulous fairness and care.
  6. Follow educator Tami Sawyer on her journey from a buzzing cell phone as white supremacists marched in Charlottesville to Confederate monuments toppled this week in Memphis, a gripping, emotional story courtesy of our own Laura Kebede.
  7. We resurfaced this 2016 gem after Charlottesville, so I’m saying it counts for a 2017 list. It’s a roundup of advice from teachers about how to talk about race, and you should just bookmark it forever. Because in 2018, we all need to keep getting better at having this conversation.

Enjoy. And don’t forget to donate to Chalkbeat if you haven’t already. You know this, but I’ll say it anyway: Even tiny donations make a big difference to securing our independence. The more supporting readers we can point to and say, don’t mess with them, the better.

Thank you, and happy new year!