The Harbour Library Journal

  I have never considered myself a poet nor a spoken word artist but the touching experience of going on a slavery tour during a teacher's fellowship at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello inspired me to tell a different story of enslaved people. Through the lens of the IB Learner Profile, I wrote and delivered a poem to celebrate the resilience of the enslaved people at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. This poem is dedicated to the loving memory of the enslaved people at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello: mothers who took the lash so that their children wouldn't have to; separated families; the people who loved and committed to one another amid pain and torture; children who sought creative ways to learn how to read and write; the people who lived and worked right where I stood to read my poem before other educators and tourists at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello - UNSUNG HEROES. We must continue to resist slavery in all forms because it degrades humanity and imposes the sub...

  Volunteering to teach children with special needs at an orphanage in Ibadan is my way of demonstrating that every child is capable of learning. #everychildmatters

 Every visit to the orphanage home for children with disabilities brings me a satisfying feeling that words can't articulate but this last visit left me with mixed emotions.  We had an engaging experience as we learned new vocabularies from the story of the Gingerbread man and the children also got a chance to make their own Gingerbread man from construction papers. While seeing the children explore these activities, something within me cried out for a different kind of impact. I realized that two of my precious girls with intellectual disabilities had attained puberty and were currently going through their menstrual cycles. It was very disturbing for me to see these girls carry on without a care because they were unaware of their bodies and didn't have a clue of what was going on inside them. There is certainly a need to do more but how do we educate vulnerable children who are being raised at an overcrowded orphanage with no government support about sexual health education?...