Education as the practice of freedom - bell hooks
Other Writing
Writing that reaches beyond the academy to the communities it serves. Articles on
motherhood, disability, race, and challenging the systems that fail our children.
"Strict" Schools With Prison-Like Approaches Are Feeding The School-To-Prison Pipeline (2021)
Black Ballad
Available at: https://blackballad.co.uk/views-voices/school-to-prison-pipeline?
Examining how authoritarian "behaviour management" in schools - isolation units, calling detained pupils "detainees", mass detentions - mirrors carceral systems and creates pathways from classroom to prison, particularly for Black children. Questioning whether Ofsted's celebration of these approaches serves Black pupils or social control.
How Mums-To-Be Can Protect Their Mental Health During A Global Pandemic (2021)
Black Ballad (in partnership with NHS England’s ‘Help Us Help You’ campaign)
Available at: https://blackballad.co.uk/views-voices/how-mums-to-be-can-protect-their-mental-health-during-a-global-pandemic?
On navigating pregnancy and early motherhood during lockdown - the isolation, the fear, the simultaneous knowing and not knowing. Drawing on personal experience and interviews with new mothers, offering practical support for perinatal mental health when the world feels uncertain.
Working Mums Should Be Smashing Plates, Not Keeping Them Spinning (2020)
HuffPost UK (Black Ballad takeover)
Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/working-mum-spinning-plates-anxiety_uk_5f297dd0c5b68fbfc8884306
On refusing the exhausting performance of "balance" and the patriarchal expectation that mothers should keep all the plates spinning. Written during the pandemic about panic attacks, emotional labour, and choosing to smash the plates instead.
For My Second Pregnancy, A Doula Was Essential To My Well-Being (2020)
Black Ballad
Available at: https://blackballad.co.uk/motherhood/for-my-second-pregnancy-doula-essential-well-being?
Black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than white women. Drawing on personal experience of a difficult first birth, this piece makes the case for why doula support isn't a luxury but essential advocacy and care for Black mothers navigating a system that fails us.
Why I Intend To Home-Educate My Son (2019)
Black Ballad
Available at: https://blackballad.co.uk/views-voices/why-i-intend-to-home-educate-my-son?
On considering home education for my Black son in a system where Black children are excluded at nearly three times the rate of white children. Written as a former primary teacher who left the profession stressed, overworked, and disempowered - questioning whether I could trust schools with my child's wellbeing.
Gentrification And The Rise Of The White Yummy Mummy (2017)
Black Ballad
Available at: https://blackballad.co.uk/views-voices/gentrification-and-the-rise-of-the-white-yummy-mummy?
Looking around baby massage classes, NCT groups, and "trendy" parenting spaces in gentrifying areas, asking: where are all the Black mothers? On being the only person of colour in middle-class motherhood spaces, microaggressions about my son's "wild" hair, and how gentrification erases Black mothers from mainstream narratives of parenting.