In a diverse high school like ours, students’ clothing can fall at two ends of the spectrum: revealing, or very conservative. Students from Dominican Republic might see a crop top as normal school wear, while a student from Yemen might see a female’s bare arms or hair as taboo. It’s an interesting balance.
Where do I stand with it?
Part of me doesn’t want to think much about it– as long as students are wearing clothes, I’m OK. When I founded our school in 2011, our students wore a uniform, but enforcing it became too much of a full-time job. Instead of saying, “Why aren’t you wearing your uniform?” I wanted to just say, “Hi!” Parents and kids said they wanted the uniform but so few wore it that we abandoned it. Now, students can mostly wear what they want.
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Like all public high schools in New York City, my school is operating remotely. Overall, it’s going well, yet it’s also easy for students to disappear. 
For some students, remote learning has been a hurdle while for others, it’s transformed their lives for the better. Today I’m going to focus on the latter.
I’ve always liked talking to students, even if they’re “in trouble.” I find it healing for me and for them. I “channel my inner 
We’re in our fourth week of remote learning after schools were closed for COVID-19. Thinking back to last month, I am still amazed by what we accomplished in three days: all teachers learned how to create Google Classrooms, film themselves teaching, and run videoconferencing “office hours” with students. We created a plan for a reasonable student workload. We distributed over 260 Chromebooks to students in one day, and created a “Student Connectivity Team” to help any families that struggled with internet access.
It has been a surprisingly rich week for me to work in a public high school. I saw my staff’s dedication in a new light, and I saw what school means to kids with the very real possibility of schools being closed.
Classroom 325 