James Noonan
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jmnoonan.bsky.social
James Noonan
@jmnoonan.bsky.social
570 followers 1K following 260 posts
associate professor at Salem State University in Salem, MA | studying leadership, learning, unlearning, equity | Boston dad interested in public education & politics | more at https://jamesnoonan.scholar.st | he/him | I support 🏳️‍⚧️ folx
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jmnoonan.bsky.social
Another one, with high exposure, from Roxbury. @universalhub.com
Boston’s night skyline in the distance, with green and pink glow
November 12, 2025 at 2:55 AM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
Faint view of the aurora from Roxbury’s Highland Park. @universalhub.com
A city skyline at night, with a faint green glow
November 12, 2025 at 2:33 AM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
Reading Lawrence Wright’s novel about Palestine and Israel (“The Human Scale”), I have to take breaks about every 15 pages. It’s brilliantly plotted and punctuated with paradoxes and history, but the weight of the story is just so heavy with sorrow.
A book cover for The Human Scale, a novel by Lawrence Wright — featuring a car on fire, the orange flames and haze coloring the cover a blinding orange
September 6, 2025 at 1:45 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
View from Highland Park in Roxbury tonight @universalhub.com
Silhouette of trees, above which lightning appears from a large gray and magenta cloud Just after sunset, dark. Green grass leading to a lit-up house, next to which are trees silhouetted against a gray sky. A bolt of lightning appears over the trees and in the direction of the house (from Highland Park, Roxbury)
August 15, 2025 at 12:39 AM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
At least we can still see the stars in Maine
A pond, still, with a tree line on the far shore. The horizon still has a thin band of light but above is dark and filled with stars
June 26, 2025 at 2:47 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
This could’ve been different if three Democrat reps weren’t, you know, dead.
Screenshot of headline reading: “Trump Administration Live Updates: House Passes Bill to Deliver President’s Domestic Agenda “The early-morning vote was 215 to 214, mostly along party lines. It was a crucial victory for what President Trump and Republicans are calling the ‘big, beautiful bill.’”
May 22, 2025 at 3:21 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
I love lilacs. And I could smell this lilac bush from two blocks away.

And this year’s lilac bloom is about 2-3 weeks earlier than usual.
A lilac bush, about 10 feet high, filled with light purple flowers
May 1, 2025 at 12:07 AM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
Hello #AERA2025! If you’re in town and registered, hike up to the Terrace Level for a presentation on the discourses constraining teacher diversity, starting in 30 minutes! @aeraedresearch.bsky.social @aera-divk.bsky.social
April 23, 2025 at 7:58 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
What kind of order even is this??

It’s not an order, more like a strongly worded disapproval written by Susan Collins
Screenshot of NY Times article, reading: “The Supreme Court on Thursday instructed the government to take steps to return a Salvadoran migrant it had wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. In an unsigned order, the court stopped short of ordering the return of the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, indicating that courts may not have the power to require the executive branch to do so.”
April 11, 2025 at 1:06 AM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
A display at the Roxbury library—poetry of resilience with words by Toni Morrison: “This is precisely the time when artists get to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
A shelf of books, facing out, interspersed with a quote attributed to Toni Morrison: “This is precisely the time when artists get to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
April 4, 2025 at 6:12 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
This is a pretty helpful fact check.
www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04...
Screenshot of fact check by Andrew Duehren: "Trump is once again criticizing the creation of the income tax in the United States in 1913, arguing that it’s a mystery why the nation ever instituted one. American policymakers embraced the income tax for two reasons: to collect more taxes from the rich and to pay for a growing federal government. Tariffs disproportionately burden low-income Americans, who spend more of their earnings on goods that tariffs make more expensive, while income taxes generally collect disproportionately from the rich."
April 2, 2025 at 8:27 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
Even in a world where so much is falling apart, there is still the first forsythia of the season. @arnoldarboretum.bsky.social
The bright yellow flowers of a forsythia A field with evergreen trees in the background and at the center a bush just beginning to show yellow flowers
March 25, 2025 at 9:18 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
For the #IdesOfTrump, a postcard in the mail. There’s few things tyrants hate more than being ridiculed. So that’s what I’m going for…
The back of a postcard addressed to the White House: Dear Donald Trump Not only are you a bad president, your golf game stinks. You are a worse president than you were a needy TV host. Your floppy ties make your jowls too prominent. You couldn’t sell a hole in the ground to a groundhog. And your boss Elon is making the country less safe, more hateful, less democratic, and more of an embarrassment in the world. Resign! ❤️ Eugene Debs
March 15, 2025 at 8:13 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
#TeslaTakedown Dedham, MA as a family @teslatakedown.com
Three people standing on a sidewalk with protest signs that read “No business for billionaire bullies”, “Stop the musk ox from stealing your money”, and “Get the musk rat out of our government: boycott Tesla”
March 15, 2025 at 6:25 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
What is with the "likely" here, @nytimes.com?? There's no doubt--at all--that Congress needs to weigh in on the dismantling of a cabinet-level department. Who benefits from this kind of equivocation?
Screenshot of text from NY Times: "Education Department: President Trump is preparing to sign an order that would instruct Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the agency, which he has previously described as 'a big con job.' Federal lawmakers would likely [word "likely" crossed out with red line] have to approve eliminating the department, setting the stage for a potential power struggle and another round of legal challenges from opponents. An administration official who demanded anonymity to speak about the private deliberations said the order could be signed as soon as Thursday."
March 6, 2025 at 4:19 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
#TeslaTakedown #Boston
A group of protesters holding signs at a Tesla Takedown protest in Boston A brass band, in a crowd of protesters, playing in front of a Tesla store
March 1, 2025 at 7:02 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
As someone who really valued your perspective on previous WaPo news and has tried to support its reporting in spite of its editorship, I too was deeply uncomfortable with this news. Which is why, albeit reluctantly, I canceled my subscription today.
Screenshot. In bold letters at the top: "We've canceled your subscription." In smaller font underneath: "You'll continue to have access until March 23, 2025. Until then, you can reactivate your subscription at any time by visiting your Subscription & Billing page in your account."
February 26, 2025 at 7:16 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
Very proud to work at a university standing up for all of its students
February 11, 2025 at 11:38 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
Every time I read about these DOGE thugs, I think about how “doge” referred for centuries to the powerful plutocrat ruler of Venice. The OED says it’s a historical term, but I’m not so sure.
Screenshot from the Oxford English Dictionary definition for “doge”: “the title given to the holder of the highest civil office of the republic of. Brice from the 7th century until the Napoleonic conquest of 1797, and to an analogous magistrate in the republic of Genoa from the 14th century till 1797. Now historical.”
February 11, 2025 at 7:45 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
This helps explain why desegregation is seen as a political threat. www.nber.org/system/files...
Screenshot reading: "A Different World: Enduring Effects of School Desegregation on Ideology and Attitudes," by Ethan Kaplan, Jorg L. Spenkuch, and Cody Tuttle NBER Working Paper No. 33365 January 2025 ABSTRACT In 1975, a federal court ordered the desegregation of public schools in Jefferson County, KY. In order to approximately equalize the share of minorities across schools, students were assigned to a busing schedule that depended on the first letter of their last name. We use the resulting quasi- random variation to estimate the long-run impact of attending an inner-city school on political participation and preferences among whites. Drawing on administrative voter registration records and an original survey, we find that being bused to an inner-city school significantly increases support for the Democratic Party and its candidates more than forty years later. Consistent with the idea that exposure to an inner-city environment causes a permanent change in ideological outlook, we also find evidence that bused individuals are much less likely to believe in a "just world" (i.e., that success is earned rather than attributable to luck) and, more tentatively, that they become more supportive of some forms of redistribution. Taken together, our findings point to a poverty-centered version of the contact hypothesis, whereby witnessing economic deprivation durably sensitizes individuals to issues of inequality and fairness.
January 29, 2025 at 1:38 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
Q: Hmm, why aren’t we getting our @bostonglobe.com?

A: It’s being tossed on top of an 8-10 foot hedge each morning.
A view looking down on an 8-10 foot tall hedge, on top of which are three newspapers
January 8, 2025 at 10:04 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
From the Hawthorne Youth and Community Center in Roxbury
A snow covered field with a path through it and a snow covered picnic table in the foreground. Lights are wrapped around the trunk of a tree.
December 21, 2024 at 2:24 AM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
I've had @matthewakraft.bsky.social's & Melissa Lyon's article on the teaching profession in my browser for months. It's astonishing in its ambition & scope, and it's devastating in its conclusions, which are intuitive for anyone who's spent time among teachers. journals.sagepub.com/eprint/XB5JE...
Screenshot from an article: "Across every single indicator we measure, our findings show that the overall well-being of the teaching profession today is at or near historically low levels. Perceptions of teacher prestige have fallen between 20% and 47% in the last decade to be at the lowest levels recorded over the last half century. Interest in the teaching profession among high school seniors and college freshman has fallen 48% since the 1990s, and 40% since 2010, reaching the lowest level in the last 50 years. The number of prospective teachers earning a teaching license each year fell by over 100,000 between 2006 and 2021, and the proportion of college graduates that go into teaching is at a 50-year low. Teachers’ job satisfaction reached the lowest level in five decades in 2022, declining by 26% between 2012 and 2022. Although recent attention has focused on how the pandemic has made teachers’ work substantially more challenging, most of these declines occurred steadily throughout the last decade suggesting they are a function of larger, structural issues. In our view, these findings should be cause for serious national concern."
December 18, 2024 at 1:13 AM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
We have a December tradition, blending my lapsed Catholicism with my wife’s lifelong atheism, where each night we light candles & read a poem, with four weekly themes: lightness & darkness, love, peace (with justice), & hope.

We could use some new poems to choose from, if you’ve got any to share.
In the foreground, a journal on a table opened to the title page with the word “Advent” at the top and a list of four themes: lightness and darkness, love, peace (with justice), and hope. In the background, a wire Advent wreath with four unlit candles.
December 3, 2024 at 11:46 PM
jmnoonan.bsky.social
This book is maybe the best climate fiction I’ve read since “Ministry for the Future”
The front cover of the novel “The Great Transition,” by Nick Fuller Googins — featuring a yurt in the foreground and snow capped mountains behind and puffy clouds filling the sky above
November 30, 2024 at 2:11 AM