Welcome to the Table
A note from Micah Amado
I’m writing this from my kitchen table in Milan. There’s tea cooling beside me, some leftover dishes from breakfast, and beside me a stack of books I should probably finish, and a half-scribbled lesson plan for the students I’ll see tomorrow. The table isn’t fancy, but it’s solid. It holds stories.
I was born in Brooklyn, raised in a walk-up where you could hear your neighbors’ arguments and their Sunday sauce simmering at the same time. Our apartment was small, but our bookshelves were full. My mother read to me every night—sometimes in English, sometimes not. My father taught me how to listen to the world and ask better questions.
Language has always been my compass. It led me to teaching, to literacy work, to building schools, and—eventually—to this city where the churches ring at noon and even the street signs seem to be having a conversation.
This space—At the Table with Micah—is where I’ll write about the things that matter to me:
how children learn (and how we sometimes forget to listen while they do),
what it means to grow up with more than one tongue,
why reading still feels like resistance,
and how memory, identity, and education are tangled up in ways we’re just beginning to understand.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m still learning. But I believe in sharing the process—in pulling up a chair and saying, “Here’s what I’ve been thinking about.”
If you’ve ever believed in the power of stories—whether told in the classroom, at the kitchen table, or on the stoop—I hope you’ll stick around.
Grazie for being here.
— Micah