Where Hannah Writes

Hispanic Heritage Month begins tomorrow. It lasts from Septemer 15th to October 15th and the Independence Days of Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua all occur during Hispanic Heritage Month. Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming were all part of Mexico prior to 1836 and 1848, and according to the Census Bureau, there are approximately 60 million Hispanic people in the United States. Before it the month begins, I want to address the question that someone may be thinking:  Why isn't there a month for white people? It's not fair that there is a month for African American and Hispanic people and no month for white people. As a child, I remember asking my parents why there isn't a "Kid's Day". I reasoned that "Kid's Day" should be a national holiday, just like Mother's Day and Father's Day. My parents explained to me that every day was "Kid'...

Abortion has been in the headlines regularly over the past few months. Some states are banning it while other states are expanding access, and everyone has an opinion, including the governor of the state of Alabama, Kay Ivey.  Ivey issued a statement  in May after signing the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that greatly limits abortions in the state of Alabama. Ivey wrote, "To the bill's many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians' deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God." Ivey was right about every life being precious.  Ivey was right about every life being a sacred gift from God.  However, when we declare that all life is a sacred gift from God but only defend certain forms of that life, I fear that we are doing a poor job of convincing anyone that we actually believe what we say.  When people hear us say that all life is precious and see us fight onl...

I love to praise God through dance, and I love the Church. I love to share this praise in church with the people of the Church, and I want them to understand more about this dance we do and why I love to do it so much. What is praise dance? Praise dance is not performance, it is ministry. Praise dance is not cute choreography paired with a churchy song, it is a prayer too deep for words. Praise dance is not entertainment, it is an outward expression of inward worship, an overflow of what is in the heart, an invitation to join in adoration of the One deserving of all exaltation. Why do people praise dance? If I had words to adequately explain what is happening in praise dance, there would be no point to praise dance. Praise dance exists because it cannot be explained. It is an expression of the unexpressable. In dancing, I can express things that I do not have words for. Dance communicates emotions that words like "gratitude" and "awe" and "love...

Lazy. Dumb. Trouble. Attitude. She must have been forced to take Spanish. She doesn't want to be here and won't do any work until the last week of the semester when she comes whining for extra credit. I've seen him in the dean's office. I think he lives there. See that look on her face? That's a look that says that she is here to make my life miserable for 55 minutes a day. Thoughts like these ran through my mind when I first met my students back in August. None of these assumptions were positive, all of them were based on external appearance and behavior observed during a 55 minute class period, and none of them were actually true. Ever since that day, my students have been chipping away at these theories, sometimes bit by bit as with a chisel, and sometimes with the mighty power of a backhoe tractor. The guys that I thought would cause trouble? They are kind, ready to help, willing to participate, and eager to learn Spanish. The girls that I as...

As I write these words, advent, a season of waiting that many Christians observe leading up to Christmas, has passed. Every year, advent is marked by eager expectation, anticipation, and preparation for Christmas, the first coming of Christ. Though advent has technically ended and will not offically be back for another 11 months, Advent is far from over. The paradox of our Advent is that, in one way, what we are wating for has already come. The Kingdom of God has come. Christ is here. God is with us. And yet, there is so much to wait for, to long for, to hope for, to pray for, to cry out for. We cry for safe water for the people of Flint, Michigan. We long for immigrant children and parents to be reunited. We cry for children dying of thirst at the border. We hope that the innocent will be proven innocent in courts and we cry for those wrongly convicted. We weep for lack of health care that leaves people to choose between debt and medical treatment. We pray that the systemic and ...

Originally published by Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center  on May 24, 2018. After pushing a resource cart around for over two years, this spring I was elated to welcome my students to my very own classroom. I no longer had to fill my backpack with papers to haul from class to class, wrangle a cart through crowded hallways or speed walk back to the office to fetch forgotten materials.  My classroom is brand new and is located at the very end of a long hallway, far from the rest of the world language department and almost everything else in the school. In fact, when the science department created a scaled model of our solar system within the building, Pluto was right outside my new classroom door.  I spent an afternoon eagerly arranging desks and hanging posters, maps, flags and student work on the walls. I filled my cabinet with supplies and made a welcome slide to project onto the screen at the beginning of class on the first day in o...

Every year, December rolls around and we start hearing Christmas songs on the radio, in stores, and in the hallways at school, and every year there are a few songs that stop me in my tracks and remind my soul that the creator of the cosmos shed his glory and honor, gave up his throne, and became an infant. Until this year, "Mary, did you know?" had been one of those songs. But after years and years of listening to dozens of versions of that song sung by dozens of artists in dozens of stores on dozens of radio stations, the question that the song repeatedly asks finally raised my eyebrows. Why do we sing a song asking if Mary knew things that scripture states that she knew? Why don't we believe that she knew what she claimed to know? As hard as I looked, I never found a verse in the Bible that said that Mary did not understand what was happening and felt confused and thought her baby boy was normal. Rather, Luke tells us that Mary marveled and treasured up moments and ...