Along with many former coworkers, I only found out we were working for a for-profit school when I was denied credit for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. This program, which seemed like a dream come true for teachers and others struggling to pay off school loans, was out of reach. We felt duped.
Posts published by “Ilana Smith”
As a kindergarten teacher, Chad Hargrove purposely emulates the late Fred Rogers, better known as children’s television host Mister Rogers. No one in Hargrove’s class needs to be told that men can be kind and soft-spoken...
South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity is proud to announce the launch of its Critical Home Repair program, an initiative designed to provide affordable repairs to homeowners in Tumwater WA. The program aims to help families live in safe and decent homes by addressing critical repairs that would otherwise be unaffordable.
BOOK REVIEW: Males increasingly struggle in school, work and families. The reasons are varied and somewhat mysterious, says author Richard Reeves, who proposes, among other things, “a simple but radical reform:” redshirt the boys.
In the long and merited discussion of teacher pay, one group of educators in the classroom has been forgotten: paraeducators. These are the people working in and out of classrooms to fill the gaps to help ensure that vulnerable students receive a quality education and a chance at a good life.
Building on its experience and advocacy for cleaning up Black Lake, Citizens for a Clean Black Lake has applied for non-profit status as the Clean Black Lake Alliance (CBLA). CBLA is dedicated to educational and environmental research and remediation of Black Lake and its watershed.
The dictator looks over his shoulder, afraid. The actor rallies his countrymen, tired...
REFLECTION: I ask myself the same questions many others in my generation ask: Should I have kids, given the world we live in today? What will my future child’s life look like if climate projections come to fruition? How will my child’s existence affect the earth’s ecosystems, plants and animals? Will it be better to be alive, despite these challenges, than never to have been born at all?
BOOK REVIEW: Matthew Desmond has written a powerful, compelling complement to his 2017 Pulitzer Prize winning Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.
America’s social studies textbooks urgently need an update — on child labor. Our textbooks, ever since the middle of the 20th century, have been applauding the reform movement that gradually put an end to the child-labor horrors that ran widespread throughout the early Industrial Age. Now those horrors, here in…
A new Washington law, SB 5096, provides a path for workers in Washington businesses to create cooperatives. In the Spring issue of WIP, we interviewed Nora Edge, founder and former General Manager, and Paulette LaDouceur, current General Manager of Capital Homecare Cooperative. We decided to revisit some of their insights into the benefits a cooperative structure offers for workers.
Not a single kid has died in a mass reading, yet they're banning books instead of guns.
If we worshiped water and air Things like Ohio wouldn’t happen Or Valdez, Chernobyl, Deepwater Horizon There would be no DAPL to protest...
THE SPLINTER IN THE EYE: Answering this question calls for some clarification. Whose future are we talking about? What do we mean by having a future? And finally, is this question relevant?
UNCENSORED: The Rev. Dr. John R. Van Eenwyk has retired as a clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst in private practice, an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, a clinical instructor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and an Adjunct Professor at Antioch University. He co-founded the International Trauma Treatment Program here in Olympia.
PERSPECTIVE: In 2023 Washington legislators proclaimed a housing crisis. Their solution? Build more housing! Nothing to stabilize costs for families or support affordable housing. Our legislators assume that developers are the solution—when in fact they are the problem....
PERSPECTIVE: On April 20, Cleta Mitchell, a leading voice in conservative politics said this: Republicans should make it harder for young people to vote. On April 20, Cleta Mitchell, a leading voice in conservative politics said this: Republicans should make it harder for young people to vote. This brazen campaign of youth voter suppression is morally wrong. And it is especially high-stakes in this political moment, when youth turnout has been credited for electing presidents and staving off red waves.
In 1977, the brand-new storefront Co-op downtown on Columbia Street was slowly coming together, the result of volunteers building shelves, laying flooring, and setting out food. I had moved out West to find my people—the hippies. The best place to look was near co-ops and collective restaurants that sprouted up wherever hippies had settled.
Dawud Al-Malik’s story, Fifty Years in Prison for Crimes He Didn’t Commit, was told in a two-part interview with Wendy Tanowitz in the July and August 2018 issues of Works In Progress. An excerpt from his memoir is in this issue.
An excerpt from a memoir, From the Depths of Darkness, by Dawud Al-Malik, (with James O’Barr), Mud Flat Shorts (mostly Fiction), Mud Flat Press, 2022 ...I was born David Washington Riggins—what I came to think of as my slave name...
As politicians wrangled about cutting future spending on existing programs, in exchange for agreeing to raise the limit on US borrowing (“the debt ceiling”) it turns out that defense spending is untouchable. No cuts there, period. The weapons industry has institutionalized the permanent war economy...
Arbutus Open Mics ♦ Juneteenth ♦ Olympia Zine Fest ♦ Young Producers at TCTV ♦ Lacey Youth Council ♦ Juice Box Theater ♦ Community Volleyball ♦ Ranked Choice Voting
What is it about children? They can melt the hearts of the most curmudgeonly misanthrope, test the patience of Job, and show astounding awareness of the world around them—at the same time.
We speak of children as “hope for the future.”...
City officials blamed ill-informed voters. ♦ The US Navy deployed new low-yield warheads. ♦ Habitat for Humanity paid the city $1.00 for property. ♦ The state will for the first time set aside public timber acreage for carbon sequestering
Download as PDF Krystal Two Bulls, Women’s Day Speaker. March 8, 11-12:30 on zoom. Krystal Two Bulls is an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne water protector who is co-executive director of Honor the Earth (with Winona LaDuke). Two Bulls has opposed coal mining at Northern Cheyenne and an oil pipeline…