Opinion
98 results
Page 8
Children on the edge: a fourth-grade poetry teacher mourns Uvalde
They were fourth graders.
Anndee Hochman is a parent. She remembers what a horrible day for schoolkids used to mean: sniffles, the dentist’s chair, lima beans for dinner. Today, she teaches fourth graders. The fourth graders who are still alive.
Essays
6 minute read
My comedy career was taking off, but so was my anxiety. Here’s how I learned to handle it.
Losing sleep over laughs
Christina Anthony thought she was good at coping with stress, until she discovered she wanted to be a stand-up comic.
Essays
5 minute read
I just saved someone’s life. It’s easy if you know how.
A crisis at the kids’ table
The world seems chaotic and hopeless, especially over the last two years. It’s easy to feel powerless in the wake of so much grief, but Roz Warren discovered that being ready to save a life really matters in the moment.
Essays
5 minute read
A Pulitzer for Philly playwright James Ijames spotlights our arts funding crisis
Mayor Kenney’s plan for the arts
Another year, another attempt to gut city support for the arts in Philly. As one of our own artists wins a Pulitzer, a major budget cut seems like an especially bad plan. Alaina Johns considers.
Editorials
5 minute read
If the end of mask mandates means a win for freedom, who is that freedom for?
The real argument
As new rulings and lawsuits about mask mandates in Philly and throughout the country roll in this week, Alaina Johns notes what mask mandate arguments are really about: debating accessibility.
Editorials
5 minute read
What happens when you’re living a story that someone else handed you?
Who’s really telling your story?
The painful end of a long friendship helped teach Michelle Chikaonda about the power of owning her own story—thanks also to a return to another favorite Hamilton song.
Essays
5 minute read
What Walk Around Philadelphia taught me about our city’s borders—and my own
Here, there, home
Anndee Hochman’s Walk Around Philadelphia began as a refuge from the first year of the pandemic, but as her route continued into 2022, she remembered that living in Philly is a lifetime of crossings.
Essays
5 minute read
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Why terms like “people of color” are a dangerous de-evolution of language
I am not your BIPOC
“People of color,” “BIPOC,” “Latinx,” and others have become household terms in the last five years in America. But with their origins largely ignored, these terms are becoming dangerous to the people they represent. Kyle V. Hiller considers.
Essays
5 minute read
Poetry at Payne Tech: Finding the words that show where you’re from
The people who write poems
Writer Anndee Hochman makes space for poetry at a New Jersey school of technology, where students prepare for a national contest, and appreciate the masks they’re tired of wearing.
Essays
5 minute read
How working in journalism in rural Pennsylvania opened a new perspective
Learning to serve communities better
Isabel Soisson, a Philly-bred journalist with experience working in New York City, contemplates the differences in rural America that go unspoken and why it's important to capture the whole picture.
Essays
6 minute read