Education Archives - Page 3 of 3

Tis The Season To Be Inclusive (December 2013 #1)

How should we celebrate a season as inclusive when capitalism and dominance promote exclhat can our schools learn from the legacy of Nelson Mandela?

Even though our family was considered “working poor”, we never went without the absolute essentials. We had food; we had shelter; we had clean clothes. Yet, as I experienced other families and societal messages, my sense of want increased – and my self-image and confidence skewed. I am a grown man now. I have a good job. I have my doctorate. I have a house. I have a lot of stuff – property. I am not that young man anymore – and yet he is still me. At time when the poverty rates in America (and in our schools) is at their highest since the mid-1960’s, I wonder how our working poor and poor students navigate in a world that has become increasingly more commercial – where status (and sadly humanness) are defined by our property rather than our person.

Oddly, when I think about status – I sometimes think about backpacks. Backpacks were not always a staple for students. It was in high school that I first realized more students now owned them than not. I was still carrying my books under my arm – or when there were too many, in a re-used plastic shopping bag. The first time I remember thinking that I could – or should – have a better quality resource was one day when I was walking home. On one not-so-unusual day I did not have enough bus fare; I started my two-mile hike home, and the bag ripped. Something about the awkwardness of the book covers digging into my forearm made them heavier – and made me a little resentful. Resentment can serve as a back door to entitlement, and I found myself asking why I did not have it as easy as other kids – or easier. As a young person – these feelings were never more visceral than in December.

It was my first year of teaching that I learned December was a time when students – and adults – frequently feel depression. This occurs not despite the fact that December is a time of many holidays – but in part due to it. On top of a significant change in daylight, December marks a time when young and old are bombarded with mass images of resource-rich, nuclear families (usually from dominant culture) happily gathered in perfect homes, around lavish meals, and engaged in civil activities. While I hope – and believe – each family can and should experience love and functionality, few if any families experience the perfect picture life together as the striven norm of these images. Even though, most of us are well aware of the exaggerated nature of these messages, how many of us explicitly work to create an environment that does not perpetuate their message – especially for those students who are experiencing their own lives so vastly differently?

As an educator, I have considered, “What are the messages and norms we reinforce – without even trying?” Specifically during this time of year,

Do we encourage or host gift swaps? If so, what structures are built in the activity so that even a student who does not have enough money for breakfast could participate without incurring additional, unnecessary cost? (i.e. You could encourage students to come after school and make gifts.)
Do you host potluck celebrations? If so, how can students who cannot bring food still participate – without shame or unnecessary identification? (i.e. You ask for volunteers to come early and help cook at the school or help decorate for their participation.)
Are you aware of and make transparent the cultural connections (or lack thereof) to any given holiday? My partner worked in a school of students who primarily were from immigrant families. Thanksgiving was not a holiday for them – but he still valued the time for them to reflect on that for which they were thankful. Each year he and I would cook a full thanksgiving dinner for his classes at which they shared out loud the gifts and blessings in their lives. Many said it was the first time they had a traditional Thanksgiving.
What are the “normed” rituals of society… and your classroom? Is Christmas normed? Is “no-holiday” normed? One year, at an all-school celebration, the Activities Director asked for student volunteers for a competition. Once on stage, he announced that the students would compete to name each of many Christmas carols playing. I stood in awe as I watched the one Jewish student (who could have come from any other number of backgrounds) as she stood there respectfully, but blankly. Upon meeting with the student government reps later, I was proud that they heard the message so easily (more easily than the Activities Director). They were ready to reclaim and redefine their own rituals to be more inclusive – and not at all exclusive.

The work to intentionally focus on equity is not easy – at least not as easy as maintaining the status quo; but, it can be exciting and rewarding. Given the opportunity, we can redefine the rituals and messages of this season to be reflective of some of the more common values of community, love and hope. Each of us, as educators has that opportunity. What can you do? What will you do?

Thanksgiving (November, 2013)

When considering our successes as educators, to whom should we be thankful?

At a meeting with a principal from one of our urban schools this past month, she mentioned that her school was selected by a local tech company to provide each graduating students a laptop. She was very excited for her mostly-students-of-color to get the resource, but also was concerned by HOW they might be presented. The principal questioned and worried the presentation of the computers might be done in a way that reinforced a “pobrecito/a” (“poor little boy/ girl”) syndrome in which well intentioned, usually dominant culture, people expect less from black, brown and poor students.

She struggled with her own emotions as a white woman who was leading the school of these children and calling out other dominant cultured people whom she easily recognized lacked the essential characteristics of humility and cultural competence while in this community. She also was challenged by the conflict between taking a stand – and just getting some important tools to her students. When I use words such as “challenge” and “struggle” and “conflict” I am describing what I consider to be very good work on her part.

She pointed out that the tech company had chosen her school because it had demonstrated great progress over the past three years, and as she saw it – when things are going well, everyone wants a part of you. She knew she would have a little time on stage when the computers were presented and she wondered how she could direct influence if not direct the tone for the meeting; her question was simple, “What should I say?”

Of course it is probably because Thanksgiving is this week, but my answer also was simple, “Say, ‘Thank you!’” Not to the tech company – we know that will happen, but to the students. I encouraged her to flip the script… rather than set a tone in which we are asking students to demonstrate extreme deference to the point of reinforcing questions of deserving, what would it look like to model for this community to demonstrate humility and gratitude for a well-deserved reward.

In the end, she decided that she would give the message that the real reward was the results of the school and that these results could not have come without the students’ great work. The computers were not only something that they earned – but something that they as academics deserved, they were merely tools for each student to further her or his work moving forward.

As Thanksgiving comes ever closer, I wonder what it would look like for each of us to flip the same script without the prompting of a local tech company. Where have any of us educators found success? At those times, how much did we attribute our success to our own – or to another adult’s effort? Well-deserved as this may be, to what extent do we as educators ever correlate or share our successes with the work that our students have done? Is this what is meant by partnership? Are we consistent in how we look to ourselves and/or our students as the cause of our failures?

I challenge each of us – this Thanksgiving, when we offer appreciation for that which is good in our lives – think about (and maybe even thank) at least one student without whom our own success (small or big) would not have been possible.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Fall Forum (November 2013 #2)

Fall Forum 2013 Continues to Develop Community and Reenergize Educators

Many associate November with harvest. The harvest is considered a time to gather and reap the benefits of our earth’s bounty. This past weekend, The Coalition of Essential Schools’ Annual Fall Forum concluded here in San Francisco – and it proved to be a harvest as more than 400 amazing educators from across our country – and beyond – gathered and shared the riches of their wisdom and experiences with each other over three days – for the benefit of students and public education across our globe.

The weekend started with a pre-conference day in which more than 100 educators visited 8 bay area schools and participated in various full day workshops. The school visits continued to be a highlight in which educators were able to realize they were not alone in their ideas and ideals for students and were able to see many of these enacted in other schools and contexts. Additionally, one of the pre-conference workshops included a student leadership forum in which students from across San Francisco met and mixed with students from across and outside of California to deepen their understanding of advocating for themselves and others. They then collaborated to develop workshops – facilitated the very next day – to Fall Forum participants in areas they would best serve to advocate for some of our least reached students. The topics included how to build trusting relationships across diverse experiences. That same evening, Lisa Villareal from the San Francisco Foundation kicked off the formal conference with an amazing and moving message of hope for our students when we re-envision our schools as their previously conceived “community school” design.

On Saturday, our day started with the impassioned witness of San Francisco Superintendent Richard Carranza and the ever-informative presentation of Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond. The one—two punch they provided became the backdrop of the entire conference and served as an example of how a conference not only can, but also should address both practice and policy in service of transforming our system – and our student experiences. The tone of their courageous stances carried throughout the weekend as students discussed observing teachers and providing constructive feedback, and as colleagues discussed the difficult work and continuous work it took to develop as allies across racial difference. The culmination of everyone’s commitment occurred on Sunday when all the participants formed equity-centered professional learning communities in various rooms and provided critical friendship to a brave colleague who volunteered a dilemma or unfinished work from a conference-related learning.

As we closed, members of this year’s forum referenced those within this newly formed community who influenced them. One brave teacher, quoting Superintendent Carranza, proudly committed a willingness to risk being fired in order to do right by his students. Another, thanked SF-CESS Coach and Comedian Dr. Micia Mosely, whose humor on Saturday night somehow allowed her to recognize and feel her “whiteness” for the first time in her life. Yet another made new meaning of her work and charge in recalling Dr. Darling-Hammond’smessage that when given an impossible task, we will sabotage the situation – and thus we must work together to make what is impossible to any one of us, possible because of all of us.

All in all, the participants of this year’s Fall Forum demonstrated and reflected the reason I have chosen to attend for the past 22 years. I left with a re-energized sense of commitment and a renewed awareness that when we gather together, we collectively can provide a bounty for our youth that is unimaginable when we work alone. The feelings – the hope of participants mirrored the powerful message of hope that Lisa Villareal started us with – together we must and we can do that which we cannot do alone.

May we all have a bountiful year in service of our youth and of democracy!

Dear School System (November 2013)

What do we hear differently when students tell us what we already know from our own data?

Last month, I was asked by a district to conduct a focus group of African American students who were experiencing challenges in their academic progress. As is true for so many school districts, this one has identified African American students as one of the sub-groups it is least effectively educating. With the students’ permission, I did a mash up with the students’ collective quotes and wrote a letter from a composite African American student for that district.

At the end of this week, we will be hosting CES’ annual Fall Forum. This year’s theme is “Making the Invisible Visible: stories and counterstories for educational equity.” The message from the focus group students is one counterstory that makes an invisible perspective quite visible.

October 2013

Dear School System,

I am your African American student.
I am your black female student.
I am your mixed student who looks and identifies as a black male.
I am the student who has attended your schools since I first attended school. And I am the student who has had experiences outside this school system, but now am in your hands.
I have attended your west side schools – and your east side schools – sometimes in the same year. While the schools are different, my experience has not been.
I am the black student who did not do so well – because I wasn’t understood in my classroom – because I have a strong voice and good vocabulary. I am the black student that might intimidate you.
I am the student who should have the same privilege as other students in class, but I don’t.

My family and my community expect a lot from me. As long as I can remember, they have told me to go to school and get my education. They said I would need it if I wanted to be somebody in life.
My Mom – she wants me to graduate. She tells me all the time to do my work – not to become a statistic.
But my family and my community know – they told me – it would not be easy.
They taught me, “You are who you are, and you aren’t gonna get treated the same as everyone else.” They told me straight up, “you probably won’t be liked.” They even told me to expect people to hit me at school – but they also told me, “if someone hits you – hit back!” They said,
“Make sure your ass graduates!”
“If you are not getting attention, sit in the front.”
“Do what you gotta do to pass.”

But it ain’t that simple.
I know you don’t like me
I knew in the kindergarten that you didn’t like me.
I knew in the fifth grade that you didn’t like me.
I knew in the eighth grade that you didn’t like me.
I know you don’t like me.
I get it. It’s ok that you don’t like me – but with all the effects of life out of school, I need someone to understand me – better. I need someone who won’t start with the negative when talking to me. Even in your black schools – where most of you and most of us are black, when all you say is negative, I hear you; you are telling me I am a lost cause.
Some of you act like you know me off the top – just because I came from a different school or because you looked at a paper about me or because you knew my brother (or someone you thought was my brother). I already know that is what you do – and I hate that. I know what I need to do; I just need acknowledgment of what I am feeling and experiencing. Can you talk to me and ask me where I am coming from before you judge me because of what is going on or what I am doing? If you cannot – the conversation is over.
I think I am treated this way because you think black people act a certain way – not all of us do.
I think you probably have past experiences – and since I am black… I gotta put in effort. Because I am who I am, I have to do more to get what I am entitled to have.
It’s not enough just to do good work. Even when I come in and am good right from the start, I don’t even get noticed. But when I am bad, I am deemed as bad because you had a bad student before who was black.

Ms. F. – Mr.. M. – Mr. O. – Ms. Y – Ms. K. – I know you don’t like me.
I see you when you are having conversation and then when you see me, you stop. I believe you have something to say – but you won’t say it. You are the same as the woman on the bus who grabs her purse when she sees me.
But you do compare me to other students who are sitting still and not doing anything and tell me that I won’t amount to anything if I don’t act the same. I hear your message – I am not going to pass. It is the same message even when I do the work or ask for help.
When I do what you ask, you say nothing – until I do something wrong.
When I ask for help – you don’t have time for me; then someone else asks for help and I see them get a lot of help and wonder, “why not me?”
When I don’t do what you ask, I get sat in the back – and then you don’t come back there. I get sat somewhere you know you won’t come.
I have to sit in the front to get noticed – and still, I see others getting all the help they want with doing so much less.

Listen, I know you don’t like me, but I need credits.
I hear you; you are trying to push all your stuff on me and trying to convert what I am thinking to what you are thinking!
I don’t have patience to sit in your classroom. So I fight – a lot, or I miss class – a lot. But I need credits.
You expect me to keep messing up. How is it that you gave me an F AND an S?
Don’t tell me to read from the book and make me teach myself. How am I supposed to learn if you are not teaching or helping me?
I learn the same way as everybody else does.
Do what you gotta do.
Teach me.

I want to pass. I am scared. I always try but the message never changes.
My family was right – I am treated different than other students.
I am publicly shamed – I am told I am lazy – then left not to be bothered with.
Still, I stay – even though I know this is not my place.
No one wants to feel like they are doing nothing, so at the minimum I can say, “I went”… and “see, you are not teaching me.”

I know we are all human.
When I think of you, I think of white people.
When I see you, I see white people. (Even though it’s not just white people. Even some black teachers act white.)
White people feel they are more entitled to stuff.
Not all white people – but white people
…think they know where I come from
…they are better and have more stuff….
Even in my own school, when white people walk in MY school – they look at me like I’m hella strange!
They don’t understand who we are and what we have been through – well some white people.
I don’t experience this with the teachers who teach me.

Can I have teachers who don’t come off as racist? Can I have a teacher who works well with all races – can you check if they really know how to work with all races?
I need black history teachers – not just in February – but throughout the year. It doesn’t matter what race they are – as long as they know what they are talking about – and won’t change it. I have been taught about MLK and Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. I know there are more people who can be role models – I just don’t know about them. I feel like I am being kept unaware.
I want to be more creative in class – not stuck. I want to work with teachers who have patience and are willing to understand me – and help me to help myself.
I need teachers who will try to get me to be successful – who will just try.

Sincerely,
Your Student

In-Appropriation (October 2013)

In a time of greater cultural consciousness, what is our responsibility to model critical awareness – even at Halloween?

When I taught high school math, every Halloween I would pretend that I called in sick and showed up as my own substitute teacher; I’d arrive as the worst caricature of a math teacher. His name was Mr. Bloomer. He wore the same outfit every year: a standard solid, button-down, short-sleeved shirt; oversized pants, belted tightly above my belly button (and above my ankles); white gym socks protecting my feet from my stiff dress shoes; a tool-filled pocket protector; and black horn-rimmed glasses adorned with a non-matching band-aid to hold them together.

Every year I came, not only dressed as Mr. Bloomer, but actually AS Mr. Bloomer – intent on staying in nerd-character the entire day (FYI: I consider “nerd” a positive term). It was always the same story – my freshmen students were so amused by the character, that by the end of the class they were acting as if I really were a substitute – and one with less than the skill needed to maintain a well-managed classroom. Inevitably, there would be that moment when Mr. Bloomer would have to lower his lens-less glasses, look sternly at the playing students and remind them, “You realize that I actually know Mr. Peters personally, don’t you?” Each year, I felt a little guilt and a little more joy as students quickly regained decorum with an obvious a-ha.

I actually never really enjoyed dressing up for Halloween until I taught. My responsibility to develop community with my students motivated me to put aside my otherwise sense of self-consciousness and to model a willingness to have fun and laugh at myself. As my own awareness has grown about my role as a white, anti-racist educator, I have come to believe that we have a larger responsibility to our students to consider continuously and critically all the invisible messages and micro-lessons we provide in even when we are trying to engage in the fun of a holiday.

One Halloween, I recall entering a colleague’s school and seeing the white principal dressed to the nines with Halloween spirit. His costume was that of a Native American Indian, complete with flowing feather headdress. Students seemed to freely engage with him, appreciating his costume and joking with him. The population of his student body was 95% Latina/o – the vast majority of Mexican descent. A Latino teacher approached me, fuming. He asked for support to identify an effective way to approach his supervisor and discuss the implications of appropriating artifacts of his and his students’ culture and traditions and equating them with a “costume,” reinforcing a historic agenda of dehumanization. He noted that during National Hispanic Heritage Month, which ended on October 15, many teachers struggled to find ways to integrate connections between their students’ heritage and their content areas. Now he was observing the school’s instructional leader, with what seemed more seamless effort, invisibly – but so visibly – communicate internalized and devaluing beliefs about the very culture and traditions that were espoused to be understood just two weeks earlier.

A year later, while meeting with a Latina district leader, she shared her plans for Halloween. She wanted to dress as a woman of color who was appropriating white culture. Curious, I inquired what her costume would look like. Her ideas, plentiful, will be left off this reflection for others to ponder (but, to tell the truth, they were brilliantly reflective). She admitted that she sought an authentic way to communicate her disapproval of a litany of similar experiences from the other side through an experiential manner that might accelerate the learning of those like the school principal.

A few weeks later, I asked her how her Halloween plans went, and she informed me she had not gone through with them. She explained that a number of her white friends had negative reactions when discussing her idea, and in the end she worried about how she might be received by strangers if she went through with her plans. I wondered then, and continue to wonder:

What life experiences influenced the white principal’s decisions and actions given his context?

What life experiences influenced the Latina district leader’s decisions and actions?

What experiences might support each of them to understand each other’s intent and impact?