Heidi is a veteran fourth-grade teacher in Dennis, Massachusetts. She has been a teacher leader for several years and currently serves as co-vicepresident for grades 4 through 7 in the Dennis-Yarmouth Educators Association. Ames is passionate about creating community and sharing her love of poetry writing with her students.
Jim is an experienced writer and the former head of a school counseling department in a school with a high immigrant population. He has written for the Washington Post, USA Today Weekend, Parent magazine, Baltimore Magazine, Hopkins magazine, Washingtonian and a number of other national education publications.
These activities ask students to engage with the question of what an equitable school calendar looks like and how to make their own school calendar more inclusive.
When many students think of buses and desegregation, their minds instantly go to Rosa Parks and the 1954 Montgomery Bus Boycott. But the larger civil rights fight over transportation took place seven years later with the Freedom Rides.