I was walking home after school one day in grade twelve and felt like I was doing everything wrong. Another football season without a championship or an MVP or any local recognition just finished. Again. More importantly, another season without any interest from division one college programs. Plus the batteries…

Teaching through a pandemic makes no one a better educator. It may have made some more resourceful, more attuned to the social and emotional needs of human beings, more thoughtful about their pedagogy. But a better teacher? Those last three years could not have done that. In order to teach…

All year, I had trouble getting used to this again. Every school day felt like a winter Monday — tired before the day even started and empty by the time you returned home. As the seasons changed, I used external sources to keep me propelling forward. Shooting hoops after school…

You would think I would be so used to the sound of my morning alarm that it would no longer be able to jolt me out of my sleep. But it still does. You would think that because I’d awaken at the same time so many weekdays and weeks in…

The hip hop albums I’ve listened to, from Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle to Kendrick’s To Pimp a Butterfly, have taught me more valuable life lessons and offered more insight into my world than any education I received in school. In school, I learned other things — learned how to read, write…

I just finished texting a friend about how dope it was to see the old Aunt Viv and Aunt Vy from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the latest episode of the reboot, Bel-Air. My Sunday was complete: I had already cooked and cleaned, packed tomorrow’s lunch, transferred the last…

It started with an itch at the top of my throat. I told myself not to drink any cold water — something I did almost every morning. After online teaching, I couldn’t get off my couch. I wasn’t physically incapable of doing so, but I just didn’t feel like moving…

I wonder what my teachers were saying about me and my friends when we were in middle school. I wonder this because I am a teacher. Because of this, I am privy to conversations that take place in staffrooms amongst educators. Boy, do they be talking talking. …

[originally published on matthewrmorris.com] The barbershops I go to now are just like the ones I went to when I was a teenager. Men that differ in age and ethnicity but overlap through culture sit in side chairs, waiting for their cut. The coat tree in the corner still exists…