When my mother was going to school in the panhandle of Texas, she and her friends were punished if they spoke Spanish in school. When my brothers and I were growing up, my parents spoke English to us in the home so we would be successful in school.
Growing up with three brothers and not Catholic, quinceañeras weren’t really a thing we did. But when Yvette Guerrero turned 15 and Betty Espinosa asked me to stand up with her in the quince, I had my first real experience with the hoopla that is the quinceañera.
Driving into El Paso, Texas, at night on I-10W remains a glorious sight to behold.
Back when I was a whippersnapper wearing dungarees and walking to school and back in the snow uphill both ways, nothing beat the school book fair. When I was the K-12 English Language Arts and Reading coordinator in a small southside district in San Antonio, there was still nothing that beat the...
For his first two years of college, I drove my youngest son back and forth from San Antonio, Texas, to the University of Kansas. I drove him up for the start of each semester, picked him up and drove him back at Christmas break, and carted him home at the end of the school year.
Every time I open up Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, I’m given the option to post to stories or urged to open the stories of others. Pictures that tell stories, what a concept—that’s only been around since FOREVER. Long before we are able to string letters together to make words and words together...
In Texas, we love our air conditioning. We are a little spoiled with it and have been known to crank it up starting in early March.
In Girls Save the World in This One, by Ash Parsons, June Blue and her friends find themselves trying to survive an actual zombie invasion while at a fan con for their favorite zombie television show Human Wasteland.
I recently moved into a new house—so recently that some things are still in boxes. Two months after a move is still an acceptable time for items to remain in boxes, right? As I was unpacking, I came across those family photos you always intend to put into an album or scrapbook but never get around...
When Genie “meets” new kid Quentin Sun for the first time in The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee, it’s on her way to school and he’s getting mugged by six grown men. The next time she meets him is in her homeroom after he walks across the room on top of desks, gets in her face, and tells her,...
