On Jan. 1, 1896, a group calling itself the Long Beach Library Association opened the city's first library in a small building on Ocean Boulevard.

It’s the last week of 2020, and this seemingly endless year is finally coming to a close. Although this is usually the season for retrospection and reflection, it’s honestly hard to even put myself back into my January mindset. Looking at photos from the first few months of this year seem to…

Did you hear the story about the locally world-famous comedian Gabriel Iglesias showing up at a taping of a Nickelodeon show at a Long Beach middle school and surprising the students with a check for $25,000?

Earlier this week, LBUSD announced that we will continue with distance learning until at least March 1, postponing our previous re-opening date of Jan. 28. I heard the news during my 5th period class on Monday, and I shared it with my students.

Most Long Beach students won’t return to campuses until at least March 1 — nearly a year after in-person learning stopped amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

I’ve thought and written multiple times about how resilient this generation of LBUSD students is. I tell my students daily that I am proud of them, that I’m impressed by them, and that I don’t know that I could’ve been half as successful if I’d been in similar circumstances as a teenager. 

I instruct my students to avoid clichés in their writing, but here’s the truth: I woke up on the first day of Thanksgiving Break feeling grateful. My husband was reading in bed next to me, my kids were foraging breakfast for themselves in the living room, and I was layered under multiple bla…

Schools have rushed to deliver students the technology to support distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic. But the technology divide between persists, leaving low-income students without the tools necessary to succeed.

I want to compose a poem: an ode to the unexpected, a tribute to the unscripted. To the small surprises and frustrations that used to spell “normal” just last year.

The California State University system has a new Center to Close the Opportunity Gap housed at its Long Beach campus.

An investigation into Long Beach City College’s former superintendent-president found she misused her office on multiple occasions, including using staff for personal errands and breaching her fiduciary duty to the community college district that oversees LBCC, according to a court filing th…

In fall 2000, I’m a junior in high school, still a year and a half away from voting age. My mom plays KFWB — with its terse, hurried headlines and “traffic on the ones” — in the kitchen while she makes lunch. My dad sometimes tunes in to AM talk radio on the way to dropping me off at school,…

My incredibly sweet, ridiculously silly daughter is turning 5 this week, and I’m taking a personal day off of work to celebrate with her. This year’s celebration will look a little different, of course, but there will still be a lot of cake, some presents, and fond memories of the journey fr…

“Brain-Changing Strategies to Trauma-Proof Our Schools: A Heart-Centered Movement for Wiring Well-Being” isn’t exactly the type of title that will have most book lovers searching online or scurrying to the local bookstore.

As educators, even in normal years, it often seems as if every moment of our lives from September to June is spent in front of an audience. Not just an audience — an audience of teenagers, who are mostly kind and caring, but for whom even the tiniest morsels of their teachers’ private lives …

The Long Beach College Promise, the future of virtual learning and the role of police on campus were just some of the topics discussed during a Wednesday evening, Oct. 14, debate among the three candidates vying to represent Area 4 on the Long Beach Community College District board.

Two candidates vying to represent Area 2 on the Long Beach Unified School District board, Erik Miller and Tonia Reyes Uranga, faced off in a live-streamed debate Monday evening, Oct. 12, where they discussed equity, finances, the achievement gap and more.

I am not ashamed to admit that my 7-year-old son is my hero.

Voters in the Long Beach Unified School District’s Area 2 are set to choose a new board member in the Nov. 3 elections.

Every day, I ask my students to check in with me in the Zoom chat box by responding to a quick “temperature check” prompt. I ask them how they’re feeling, what they’re worried about, or to name something that they’re looking forward to doing. Sometimes the prompts are fun (I had them choose …

The first-ever California native and Mexican-American to lead the system, Joseph I. Castro will serve as the eighth chancellor for California State universities starting Jan. 4.

After construction began in 2018 on a new Main Library downtown, Long Beach Public Library Foundation board members decided to launch a capital campaign to help improve the facility.

It’s a few minutes before 11 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 10. I’m sitting in my classroom, Zooming my heart out, when it happens.

One week down for this new school year. On Sept. 1, I met 160 new teenagers and, however imperfectly, we made it through our first four days together. It’s my natural impulse to catalog the challenges and glitches, but I’m making an effort over the three-day weekend to dwell for a few moment…

Laurie Zaleski spent much of her life traveling as a marine geologist, conducting geological surveys and mapping the ocean floor.

Literally hundreds of neighborhood advocates and activists have got their start in the Long Beach Neighborhood Leadership Program since 1992, and a little thing like a pandemic wasn't going to get in the way of another class graduating in 2020.

YMCAs across the country have offered summer day camps for generations, and now the YMCA of Greater Long Beach is going to combine that approach with support for remote learning.

For the last eight years, Eighth District City Councilman Al Austin has taken over a park as students prepared to go back to school to give away free backpacks, school supplies and more.