James (JD) Dittes

“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther and Selected Writings

“It's a good moment, which is all you can count on or hope for, I think. Tiny little good moments that you catch like a firefly, and just life fireflies, you have to release them, because the whole point is that they're tiny and little and need to be with other fireflies. They aren't a pet. They aren't yours to keep. They're just moments. They're just fireflies.”
― Tim Federle, The Great American Whatever

“Students quickly receive the message that they can only be smart when they are not who they are. This, in many ways, is classroom colonialism; and it can only be addressed through a very different approach to teaching and learning.”
― Christopher Emdin, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education