New Racism....The Quiet Storm (E.Catalino)

There was a time when racism in America was so easy to detect. You can see the word "Nigger" across headlines. You see people of color hosed down. Protest and marches were shut down. Activist were blatantly speaking out about injustice, discrimination and the abuse suffered by minorities. However, we have entered a new age where racism is quiet. It's this thing that still infiltrates our institutions, organizations, and our society at large yet it seems to move as covertly as a thief in the night.

According to Eduardo Bonilla Silva's captivating book called Racism without Racist he coins the term "color blind racism". This idea of color blind racism allows for people to "otherize" and marginalize minority groups in a much softer way. He proclaims that this new ideology is a strange enigma of race in contemporary America. I truly agree with him I think color blind racism is a scary place to be in especially in 2014. It kind of makes me feel that we have taken strides backwards because people make it seem like we are living in a post racial America however, all we've really done is learn how to hide it better (a whole lot better).

In the 1960's I feel like there was a level of ownership to racism. White people very much owned their feelings towards people of color. They proclaimed it; they showed it and acted on it. Not that it was okay however; colorblind racism attempts to mask it. It allows for people's ignorance in my opinion to be excused and it also forces for consciousness in America to be heightened because now racism can't be seen so easily. So now as a person of color I feel like I have to go out of my way to make it known like "hey this still does exist". This still matters and it’s something that we still have to fight against.

Reading Racism without Racist to be honest has stressed me out. It’s been a great read so far and it’s made extremely valid points however; I am an action oriented person. When it comes to racist and racism I am vocal, committed, conscious and ultimately an advocate for institutionalized change. However, knowing that we are in an age of colorblindness I just feel like it makes things so much harder and complex to deal with.

I know that racism isn't the same as it used to be. This book didn’t open my eyes to this reality however; it gave me a new perspective especially because the first time I read this I was in college so I was just thirsty for knowledge. Now I am a young adult in a place of influence as an educator. I know racism isn’t one of those things that will be wiped away overnight. Nonetheless when we say it’s become something that’s hidden or that people don’t have to see then it’s like how do we address this problem? How do we address a problem that for many people they have the privilege of not seeing? The irony in all of this is that the people who aren't affected by it aren't the ones that are blind.

So now what? As I continue to read on I pose questions for myself and those of you who are reading this post: What does this information mean for me as an educator? What does this mean for our generation since it’s in our hands to fix or make this problem better? The difference between then and now is that we don’t have a leader at the forefront of this movement so where do we begin?


-Eliza Catalino

Connecting the Dots

So how does talking about race help us better understand schools and the dynamics we see today?

You can’t have a conversation about our schools until you tackle the American invention of intelligence and the political/economical gain of creating institutions called schools.  The conversations about our schools in our media and board meetings are usually summarized into discourse regarding test scores, low funding and behavioral incidents.

As I read the second lecture in this book, I found myself highlighting feverishly, writing “wow” all over the pages.  I felt like I was in a time warp.  Dr. Tatum was taking me through the history of our American schools, but everything she described is happening today.  Tracking, the notion of fixed intelligence, low expectations, stereotypes….have we made progress at all??    

Dr. Tatum suggests that schools weren't designed to educate everyone.  They were places to develop and empower an educated citizenry to protect our democracy.  At that time that our democracy was established, only white male landowners could vote.  It wasn't until 1920 that white women could vote, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 guaranteed that African Americans their voting rights.  A similar sentiment was shared by Camika Royal in her piece.  Coupled with their inability to vote or be seen as individuals worthy of exercising political advocacy, immigrants, people of color, women and people with exceptional needs were consistently stereotyped and viewed negatively in American society. 

 What was the justification and knowledge that reinforced  women, people of color, immigrants from certain parts of the world, and people with exceptional needs were mentally inferior and were ultimately going to destroy the American way of life in the early twentieth century?  

Two prominent psychologists, Henry Herbert Goddard and Lewis M. Terman played pivotal roles in defining what we call intelligence today.  Their ideologies were shaped by two important theories 1. the assumption that intelligence can be derived from a single number usually in the form of a test score 2. that intelligence (based on this test score) is hereditary and functions independent of major environmental differences that individuals endure

Today, (most) people believe that all students are capable of learning and achieving at high levels, yet we still see many practices that reflect the archaic theories that created our unequal education system.  One of those practices is tracking.  Students are labeled and placed into different classes and ultimately different life tracks based on their performance on tests. I appreciate the research of Howard Gardner, Jean Piaget, Jeff Howard and others who have developed ideas around multiple intelligences and redefining education as an on-going process of adaptation, not an unchanging characteristic.


How do we work within systems that use testing as a means of determining college and life readiness while promoting an inclusive and anti-racist classroom?

I have some thoughts and obviously Dr. Tatum hits this head on, but I would love your thoughts! Comment or write back to me - helen.hailemariam@teachforamerica.org

I'm looking forward to tackling this question with all of you...look for more in my next post!

Helen 

"They" Schools: On Embracing Hip-Hop Education

If someone were to ask me to sum up my relationship with hip-hop in one word, I'd probably respond with: tenuous. Growing up in a southern black household with a pious, conservative, and traditional mother my childhood CD collection was never one to contain much hip-hop. Classic albums like Lil' Kim's Hardcore or Nas' Illmatic were intentionally kept off of my radar. My mother with the best intentions kept hip-hop at a safe distance from me because she, like many black conservatives, feared the impact that hip-hop might have on her young and very impressionable black male child. And with all of the talk about drankin', smokin' and shootin' -- who could really blame her. In many ways I was indirectly taught that hip-hop had little value for me and was not the musical genre to embrace if I wanted to be successful.

Let me be very clear, much like my President, my views have evolved. Let me also be very clear: hip-hop is not without serious flaws. For all of it's misogyny, painful homophobia, and flashy embrace of capitalism- mainstream hip-hop has some serious growth to do. And already hundreds of articles and books have been written about the concerns we have about hip-hop (please feel free to visit your local Amazon bookstore). These critiques of hip-hop are numerous and valid, but that does not deprive hip-hop of value as an art form, a serious venue for social critique, or a powerful tool and resource for kids.

Chris Emdin, notably the leading scholar on hip-hop education and Columbia University faculty member, participated in a powerful TED Talk recently that really helped me frame and shape how I thought about how hip-hop can be used in the classroom. Feel free to watch the entire talk, but I think Emdin really hits his stride when he begins to break down the values of hip-hop itself as an art form and how all teachers can incorporate these values into their classroom and teaching. "When we think about hip-hop education we often think about just rap pedagogy. We don't think about emotion. We don't think about the fact that rap is but a thin slice of the culture," he speaks to the crowd. What I learned from Emdin and his book Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation is that if I'm going to embrace hip-hop education I have to do it authentically. Hip-hop at it's core is more than just rap, but a culture that embraces creativity, emotion, manipulation of technology (not just using technology), celebration, pain, and as Emdin says, "a knowledge of self". I've claimed the space of a hip-hop educator and therefore now must require of myself that all of these core elements of hip-hop are present in my classroom and in my own personal life.

For those interested in how to best incorporate the core principals of hip-hop into the classroom I'd highly suggest Emdin's book or this fantastic essay by fellow Columbia professor Lauren Leigh Kelly. I offer these words to think about as you begin this journey to become a hip-hop educator, "The effort to bring in a culture, if it's a superficial rendering of it, is problematic." Hip-Hop education is not me trying to rhyme or rap for my students because that's not authentic to me. Hip-Hop education is not playing your students' favorite song in the background while they fill in worksheets. Hip-Hop education demands you be culturally relevant at all times- and that's done by creating a culture in your classroom where ALL of the elements of hip-hop are present and active and authentic.

In my own personal journey, I've found hip-hop to be a place of healing for me. It expresses so honestly the experience of being a black man in America and for that space I'm grateful. For my kids, hip-hop is what defines how they experience the world from the music they listen to, to the language they use with each other, to the way they dress and express themselves. I'm compelled to be a hip-hop educator and I would implore you to join me on this journey.

(Addendum: If you don't know who Dead Prez is then... you should. Listen to their song "They Schools" and take the time to read the lyrics. It's a powerful critique of modern American education and highlights that the system we work in was not built for all kids. Enjoy.)



-Brandon Lewis
Twitter: @brandonspeak

Organized Activities and Leisure Activities: Are They Really Necessary? -Shelda Raymonvil

Before you read this post, be inspired by the words of this song!

 

Well, go ahead...click play! :-D

I hope you appreciated those lyrics just as much as I did! Now. Back to the topic at hand. My previous post on unequal childhoods reflect upon the difference between concerted cultivation and natural growth as it relates to a child's upbringing. As I read more into the text, Lareau further analyzes the effects of organized activities and leisure activities on a middle class child and on a poor/working class child, respectively. 

Garrett is a white 10-year-old boy who comes from a middle class family and is involved in many organized activities like soccer, basketball, band, swim, and baseball. Tyrec is a black 9-year-old boy who comes from a working/poor class family and was involved in football but only for one season. If you read the text, you can see that Garrett's life was dictated and governed by his organized activities and Tyrec's life was less structured, where had more freedom in the ways in which he spent his time.

There was a distinct difference between a typical day in Garrett's after school life versus a typical day in Tyrec's after school life. Since Garrett was enrolled in multiple organized activities, he spent his time after school in either a practice or at a game. His family's life revolved around a calendar, which had the dates and times for each of his events, practices, and games. There was no "free time" for Garrett and if he did have free time, it would be spent playing catch in his family's backyard or playing word games with his mom, dad, and brothers. 

Photo courtesy: elizabethtownyouthsoccer.com

Lareau states that the many activities in which middle-class children participate in replicate key aspects in the workplace. These children routinely meet and learn to work with adults, they learn how to prioritize activities (Garrett may sometimes have a soccer game that may clash with a band practice. He would then make the decision on which event he will attend), and they are exposed to different environments and activities through travel.

Tyrec's after school time was less structured and was very much flexible. Tyrec loved to play outside with kids around the neighborhood. He would play with children his age, children younger than he was, and he sometimes hung around teenagers. His mom would set the boundaries for his activities (what time he should be home, how far he could play, etc.) and he would choose how active or inactive he would be engaged in those activities. When Tyrec was enrolled in football, he actually wanted to quit because he missed his free time with his friends. 

Photo Courtesy: rickymastercoach.com

Lareau states that because adults spend less time monitoring children's activities in a working class family, there is less emphasis on performance and more opportunities for children to pursue their own choices. These children would find many ways to entertain themselves, which showed creativity and independence, which are important life skills not available to Garrett. Tyrec needed no adult assistance and he had no trouble filling up his schedule with things to do, however; Tyrec was not exposed to as much organized rules that Garrett was accustomed to. Lareau concluded that organized activities involved in concerted cultivation had the potential to offer more payoff in the world of institutions than the spontaneous play involved in the accomplishment of natural growth.

These reports led me to reflect and ask these questions:

1. As an educator of a school in a low-income community, how can we expose our students to organized activities within school boundaries?


2. Some parents may feel that "kids will be kids" and should naturally learn the ways of the world through their own experiences. Some parents may not even have the funds to support organized activities. With these factors in mind, how might we empower or influence parents to incorporate the ways of concerted cultivation and organized activities throughout their lifestyles?


3. I myself was raised by natural growth but experienced organized activities throughout high school and college. Do you think that this can be an alternative to those families who cannot afford organized activities for their children?

Please leave your thoughts and comments below!!! 

-Shelda Raymonvil

A Call for Specificity

Each essay in Everyday Antiracism strives to give educators easy actions to use in their classrooms to combat racial inequality. Many of these essays push you to not only develop your classroom, but also develop yourself as a person in a world where we are daily bombarded with racists messages. I will be discussing my thoughts on a few spefcific essays in my next few posts.

A Call for Specificity

Equal opportunity for ALL children should be our goal in education, and is definitely mine. This goal can feel too big to know exactly how to go about achieving it. In comes Mica Pollock and her essay “Talking Precisely about Equal Opportunity” to help us address this problem. She argues to actually achieve this goal that we need to speak with much greater specificity on the matter, and luckily she offers three suggestions to guide us.

Suggestion #1:

Pollock begins by proposing a very simple question: Is my action leading my students CLOSER or FARTHER from educational opportunity? I plan to ask myself this question when planning units, lessons, and even activities in my classroom. This questions is great post lesson, as well. Teachers can examine if their delivery is moving students towards or away from educational opportunity. Particular interactions with students, such as delivering rewards and consequences for behavior or asking students questions about their lives can be examined using this simple test. This question should be used as a check at all times for teachers in making sure that our actions are moving our students to more equal opportunities.

Less educational opportunity ßà more educational opportunity

(Pollock’s spectrum)

Suggestion #2:

Because our students vary greatly from each other on multiple levels, Pollock calls teachers to identify exactly which students need which opportunities. It is our charge to figure out, for our schools and ourselves, the needs of all students on every level, in every group. This can be hard because we want to avoid stereotyping, which is not what is being advocated. It is being said that the particular needs facing my female, Spanish speaking students need to be addressed, just as those of my male, black students need addressing. It should also be noted that to most effectively identify the needs of our students and put them into any kind of group, we do need to know our students as individuals inside and outside of school first.

Individual students ß à subgroups ß à larger groups ßà all students

(Pollock’s spectrum)

Suggestion #3:

Pollock lastly pushes educators to talk about precise causes of racial, gender, and income inequities in order to actually create successful solutions. It is important to look at education policy, administrative actions, and specific interactions between groups inside and outside of schools. It is equally important to look at how OUR actions might be leading to certain inequalities. For example: Are we holding all students to the same expectations? Are we addressing all students’ interests? I would further challenge us to avoid blaming certain groups of students, their families, or their cultures for the disparities because doing so often ignores the actual causes of the problem.  

Pollock reminds us that, “When we talk imprecisely about this goal, we pursue it imprecisely as well”.

So now that she has provided us with some tools, we have no excuse to be imprecise. Let’s start moving the conversation away from generality and towards specificity!

For more on Mica Pollock: http://eds.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/mpollock.shtml

The Compartmentalization of Oppression

In my last post about bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom, I wrote about the need for teachers and students to be considered whole human beings. We live our lives as a summation of all of our experiences, and the groups that we self-select or are selected for us do not tell the entire story of us as people. hooks writes of her struggle in academic settings to assert herself as an African-American feminist writer/English professor/advocate for critical consciousness; she was repeatedly denied admission to a workshop led by Paulo Freire (author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed) for fear that she would "disrupt the discussion of more important issues by raising feminist critiques". This prioritization of certain issues over others is omnipresent in our society today-- the general understanding is that people can focus on only one human rights injustice. I think back to classes offered at my predominantly white University: "Women in Politics", "Literature of Women of Color", "Race and Ethnic Relations", and I realize how this makes things simpler and more comfortable for us. Especially at the college level, students are seeking out more specific courses of study and maybe this just makes sense to those making decisions. Let's absolutely offer some "diverse" options for students, but ensure that the material covered in these classes is confined to 300 and 400 level classes that must be sought-out, even dug-for.


So what's wrong with that? Let's remember the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s as the Black struggle, today as the Gay struggle. Feminist struggle? Ongoing. But it's way better now! It's just simpler for the dominant group to compartmentalize the oppression and study it in fragmented bits. But when you stand in front of the oppressed every day, asking them to value themselves as whole people, what does it mean to compartmentalize a history? Who does simplicity help?

The answer is, of course, the dominant group: White folks. White people come to understand racism as a historical norm when we are taught over and over that other groups had to struggle and we didn't. The underlying truth is that they were struggling against the White, hetero, patriarchal norm, but we prefer to know only a few emotional stories of underdog victory and the positive outcomes that succeeded. That's just how it's always been. In that statement lies the crux of hooks' argument in her persuasive essay "A Revolution of Values": when White folks continue to educate the way they were educated, things will continue to be the way they've always been. Which is simple...for us. When we break oppression into units, semester-long courses, 45-minute discussions, we lose the power we have as educators to present the true flaws of our world to our students. If education is truly a practice of freedom, we should have a class called "Literature" where Toni Morrison is read and valued and critiqued alongside Ernest Hemingway because they are authors, and they are very different human beings who shared their ideas with the world. So let's compare their realities and see where the discussion takes us.

 What this "Literature" class shouldn't be is a place where Toni is heralded as a great African-American female author and Ernest a great author, period. And while we're at it, the discussion should never end with everyone walking away feeling united and comfortable; when discussing the different realities faced by these people and the characters they brought to life on their pages, students should feel uncomfortable. When we teach mostly-White and mostly-Black and multicultural classes about various vantage points and experiences and pain and victory, we allow a younger generation to know they're not just a long-removed remnant of "I Have a Dream".

Our students may connect passionately to one part of their own identity, but it's not ours to choose for them. hooks' freedom is to know enough about the world to choose what you care about and passionately pursue it. It kind of takes my breath away to think that the change-makers are 12 years old and seeking validation right now; I pray that we present our world and history to them, and they struggle with it, and that struggle becomes what they passionately pursue.

(PS- this is a picture of my students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas-- historic site of integration. We had a lot of discussions about whether schools afterward about whether schools are truly integrated today, many of which ended with disagreements and more questions than answers. It was one of my favorite days as an educator.)

How can you de-compartmentalize teaching about oppression? I need some more think time about how I will do so in my math classroom, but I'm excited to start thinking.

--Noel Price

Beginnings

So I'm about a fifth of the way into The Warmth of Other Suns, which doesn't bode well for the likelihood that I am going to finish this book this summer.

That said, I think I am starting into the meat of the book. As I said before, TWOOS follows three different individuals who Wilkerson has chosen as very representative of the Great Migration and the aspirations, frustrations, and hopes of many other migrants. Those are Ida Mae Gladney in Mississippi, George Swanson Starling in Florida, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster in Lousiana.

In the most recent section I read, titled Beginnings, Wilkerson discusses the experiences that pushed Gladney, Starling, and Pershing to seek out "other suns" in the North. Wilkerson makes a point to note that these characters do not know one another though, in many ways, themes are consistent throughout their respective experiences.

Wilkerson has made a point of using the term "caste system" to describe the Jim Crow South. We often consider caste systems, in their rigidity and allegiance to seemingly-arbitrary rules, with societies in South Asia and perhaps also in South Africa. Her decision to regard the Jim Crow South as a caste system seems to more accurately depict the state of affairs in the South at this time.

I'm thinking most prominently about Pershing's experiences. Robert Pershing was raised by his mother, a teacher, and his father, a principal, in his hometown of Monroe, Louisiana. The youngest of three siblings, Pershing's family held great expectations for him and, unwilling to give him any leeway in school, applied school rules most ferociously to their youngest son.

Wilkerson describes the conditions of the schoolhouse that Pershing attended and the challenges such an education posed to this community. The schoolhouse was egregiously underfunded and most of the students were taught out of the same room, requiring teachers to perform a variety of maneuvers. Almost-too-predictably, Wilkerson explains how a white school was built near the colored school -- funded by the tax dollars of all citizens in Ouachita Parish, the colored citizens included -- and yet none of the colored students were allowed to matriculate. The most tragic component of this was how unsurprising it was to hear that colored students would be prohibited from attending this school.

The section I read today picked up in 1935 and Robert Pershing is traveling to St. Louis to visit his oldest brother, Madison. Pershing, dressed in his finest tweed suit, retells his experience boarding this bus and heading north to St. Louis:

"[Pershing] scanned the aisle to find a place for himself. His eye caught the wooden shingle with the metal prongs on the bottom, the shingle that said COLORED on one side and WHITE on the other. It was set into holes at the top of a seat back toward the latter half of the bus. He didn't like seeing it, but he knew to expect it. He took a seat behind the wooden shingle and looked out the window at the view.
Those white and colored shingles were as much as part of the southern landscape as cotton growing in the field. Each state and city had a different requirement or custom to signal how the races were to be divided. In North Carolina, white and colored passengers could not occupy 'contiguous seats on the same bench.' Virginia prohibited the two races from sitting side by side on the same bench unless all other seats were filled. Several states required that the placard saying WHITE or COLORED be 'in plain letters, not less than two inches high.' In Houston, the race to which the seat belonged was posted on the back of the seat. In Georgia, the penalty for willfully riding in the wrong seat was a fine of a thousand dollars or six months in prison. Colored passengers were assigned to the front of the railcar on the train but to the rear of other conveyances to, in the words of the mayor of Birmingham, do "away with the disagreeable odors that would necessarily follow the breezes.'" (Emphasis added)

These are but two examples that Wilkerson offers of the various ways in which society was severely fragmented between "coloreds" and whites. As Ta-Nehisi Coates (easily my favorite columnist of the past two years) said something similar to arguing that white supremacy keeps whites from every dropping to the level of blacks in society -- a caste system in everything but name. Apologies to The Horde (read: readers) for not having the exact quotation. My WiFi is giving me troubles.

There is more in this section that details Pershing's matriculation to Morehouse. At Morehouse, Pershing begins to court the daughter of the President of Atlanta University, Rufus Early Clement. In retelling Pershing's courtship, Wilkerson also details the fight that brewed between President Clement and WEB Du Bois -- a confrontation that ultimately ended with Du Bois' ousting from Atlanta University. Wilkerson wrote,

"Clement would be at odds with Du Bois almost from the start, perhaps threatened by the long shadow of his celebrity or put off by the elder man's impertinent disregard for Clement, who was thirty years younger than Du Bois. But it was just as likely a contest between the accommodating pragmatism of the souther-born Clement and the impatient radicalism of the northern-bred Du Bois. The two men were the very embodiment of the North-South divide among black intellectuals." (Emphasis added)

This tension is documented in Ellison's Invisible Man as well as in the arguments between Booker T. Washington and WEB Du Bois and with countless other black thinkers from that era until today.

I want to pivot back to the idea of a "caste system," because I think it informs our understanding of Jim Crow laws and discrimination as we move into today's discourse. Anti-racist discourse isn't pre-occupied with white people, white bodies, as much as it is with the privileges granted to "whiteness" -- ergo the phrasing of "white privilege."

For people like Pershing, they existed well within the geographic boundaries of the United States. They were a part of American society. They, indeed, did carry documentation that regarded them as citizens -- lest we forget that they also were called to serve through taxes or in war, as citizens must. Yet, their existence was always circumscribed and bounded by the parameters of race, of their caste. These boundaries were readily accessible in the South, where COLORED and WHITE were written on signs.

The caste system prevailed in the North as well, though, and has continued through more elegant and sinister forms of racism -- housing policy being, as Ta-Nehisi Coates would regard it, the most potent of the 20th Century.

Perhaps we would all benefit from formatting our understanding of race in America to be more in line with Wilkerson's nomenclature. Black -- or blackness, rather -- positioned as the "untouchable" class and white people, therefore, sheltered from ever dipping into that caste by way of their ability to access "whiteness."

"Lifting the Veil" - statue at Tuskegee
University. This statue inspired a statue of
"The Founder" in Ellison's Invisible Man.

PS - I think that Brandon will likely write more about Ta-Nehisi Coates on this blog in this cycle of posts. I have been following Coates as a writer for a couple years now and have always been impressed with his work. I think The Good, Racist, People was the first time I read something of his and zealously sent the URL to friends. That said, I think that everyone should read his piece in The Atlantic titled, The Case for Reparations. It is probably the best journalism I have read in recent memory and also will help contextualize much of where I foresee these posts on The Warmth of Other Suns headed.

- Logan

Remembering that We Teach Individuals

Last week I found myself on the subway to Brooklyn at 7:03 AM, nodding my head vehemently. I was reading the first couple of chapters of bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom and I felt like she was calling me out. I wasn't offended; she writes about not only the struggle between oppressed students and their educators, but also the struggle that educators feel within themselves. That need to meet the standards set by states and societies, but also feeling the need to acknowledge and celebrate and energize the individual passions our students have within them. We know this, we feel this-- I disappoint myself consistently by wanting to be culturally responsive, and wanting to build that critical consciousness within our students, but instead I make them learn the acronym GEMDAS to ensure that they remember the order of operations and always do multiplication before subtraction in a numerical expression. hooks refers to the rote memorization/banking system of education that not only kills most of learning's joy, but also allows for multiple systems of domination (racism, sexism) to persist. When students know only facts, they do not learn to ask, "But why?" of their realities or, "But why not?" of their dreams. When the norm is celebrated, or at least accepted gladly, questions about it are insurgent. We as teachers fear that we may lose control if insurgence prevails in our classrooms-- yet without allowing our students to ask those hard questions and look critically at the systems of domination they are oppressed by, they remain oppressed. It's exactly what we're fighting against.

So far in my reading, hooks hasn't given me a life plan to change my classroom, allow me to equally share the control of the classroom, push my students to be critical thinkers everyday while also delivering rigorous content, and eventually facilitate their being free. Bummer. What she offers is more like some first steps. In the order of operations for promoting critical consciousness in the classroom, the first step seems obvious...

Acknowledge every student as an individual. 

This is where my nodding became vigorous. I reflected on how often I create groups and sub-groups in my mind about my students: informed by data, behavior, experience, and even archetypes and biases. These groups, though informal and mostly contained in my brain, directly oppose my commitment to critically conscious pedagogy. When I don't acknowledge all of my kids as individuals, with their own enigmatic and unique struggles, joys, interests, and needs, I lose the pieces of their identities that make any pedagogy "culturally relevant". hooks' point goes even further, though, noting how harmful it is when teachers "refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks". To refuse to acknowledge ourselves as whole humans, with similarly unique experiences and dreams and critiques of society, is to limit our impact. We're individuals that teach individuals, and classrooms are microcosms where we show our students what life can/should be. When we group them, re-group them, and shut ourselves off, we lose the whole point of empowerment and social justice that we seek. Or at least, I do. In the order of operations for promoting freedom in the classroom, acknowledging kids as individuals, and ourselves as the same, is the first step-- always.

"Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process."

I'm down for empowerment, too.

--Noel Price

"With all deliberate speed..."

"We need to remember that the fight for school desegregation was not simply a symbolic fight for the acknowledgement of the humanity and equality of all children.  Fundamentally it was a struggle for equal access to publicly funded educational resources.  Clear that struggle continues."

I just wrapped up the introduction and first chapter of "Can we talk about race? And other conversations in an Era of School Resegregation". Dr. Tatum's swift but very informative analysis of the number of court cases that played a significant role in shaping the current educational landscape left me feeling very ignorant yet empowered to learn more.  We have all learned about Brown v. The Board of Education, but could we all cite the negative impact of Milken v. Bradley and the Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell?  Both cases illustrated the use of housing and busing policies to resegregate our communities and diminish the hopes of equal access and integration that Brown v. Board of Education attempted to actualize. In more recent news, we have seen race-conscious admissions policies being revisited at higher education institutions, however, public discourse about race-conscious policies in K-12 education  is virtually non-existent.  Ironically, any time K-12 education is discussed in the news, we disaggregate data by race and focus on what's wrong with our students and their schools.  

"Leadership in the twenty-first century requires the ability to interact effectively with people from backgrounds different from one's own - an ability that requires real-life experience."

One of the many consequences of living of racially segregated communities is the lack of exposure to and engagement with people who share different racial backgrounds.  Those real-life experiences would help the next generation of leaders dispel myths and debunk stereotypes of individuals from all racial backgrounds.  Dr. Tatum discusses the ABC approach (affirming identity, building community, cultivating leadership) as an attempt to empower leadership among our students.  If students' identities were affirmed, classrooms and schools built a community of support based on shared values and cultivated leadership at all levels, we would be taking steps to foster pro-inclusive schools and classrooms amidst the segregation that still exists. I appreciate her charge to all of us who are in the business of educating students to continue to examine and re-examine our own identities as individuals and as educators.  

Girly-Boy: On Rethinking Gender in the Classroom

This post was inspired both by the text that's consumed me for the past three weeks and by a former student of mine. For the sake of privacy, I'll refer to her throughout this post as Melody.

Melody was the tallest girl in the sixth grade this year. She was loud. She had a major in your face personality and she consistently rebelled against traditional gender norms. This past spring, Melody decided to try out for and join the 6th grade boys football team. Her strength and tenacity alone made her a qualified candidate for the team, but it was her gender that gave most people including her peers pause. For the past three months I'd leave my school parking lot and see Melody running and dominating the field with the other boys. I'd always watch and say hi to show her my support. But where I failed Melody was in the school walls. When other students would walk down the hall and scream and Melody, "you act like a boy" or "she's probably gay" or "she's weird. Girls don't play football", I failed her. It was in those very public and private moments that I was left without a language to address her peers or even to affirm melody herself.

And then I started this book. Redefining Realness is one woman's story to womanhood. Janet Mock is a trans-woman, writer, activist, social critic, and die-hard Beyonce fan. In reading her book I began to make connections between her story and mine; between her story and Melody's. Janet's path to womanhood was unconventional. To be born trans means that you do not identify with the sex you were assigned at birth. To be born trans means that you will no doubt have to spend a lifetime explaining to people who want you to fit inside the gender binary box, that the box is not made for you. I walked away from the book with my own personal growth in thinking about sexuality, relationships, and masculinity. But for my students I was also challenged to think about the moments when girls like Melody act outside of what is expected of them what I can do to affirm my students in those moments.

Here are two things I'm planning on doing this year for my students as a result of reading and processing this text:

1. My classroom is will be a safe space for all students from the very first day. I know a lot of us think our classrooms our safe and we never actually take the time to tell the students what we are doing and why. Put up a sign declaring your room as a space for all students regardless of.... (you fill in the blank)

2. Talk openly and honestly about gender with your students. This doesn't have to be a whole lesson or a big production. If you're teaching a math lesson, use an example of a girl or a boy doing something not traditionally expected of that gender. It's simple and the kids will probably think more about the example than the math problem long after class is over.

All of our students are waiting for us to affirm the human beings that they are. They deserve that.

Janet Mock grounds her text in another of my favorite texts, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston. A quote she references that resonated with me as well was the following:

"He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place."

I challenge you as I have challenged myself to provide "self-crushing" love for your students so that they are empowered live fully and honestly.

-Brandon Lewis
Twitter: @brandonspeak

Unequal Childhoods: Concerted Cultivation vs. Natural Growth -Shelda Raymonvil

A decade has past since the first edition of Unequal Childhoods was published and so comes a second edition, an updated version which expands on the progression of those 12 families that were studied before. The update of those families comes later on in the text so for now, I will analyze what Lareau defines to be concerted cultivation and natural growth.

Lareau does an in depth analysis of the lives of several families from the middle class, the working class, and the poor. She associates concerted cultivation with the middle class families and natural growth with the working class and poor families. The process of concerted cultivation entails parents "developing" their children through organized activities, such as soccer, dance, choir, etc. These middle-class children develop a sense of entitlement where they learn to question adults and address them as equals. In the process of natural growth, there is a clear boundary between adults and children, and parents tell their children what to do instead of persuading them with reasoning.

In this study, Lareau found that middle-class children were trained to seek outcomes that work in their favor when interacting with institutional personnel. For example, a child would speak up to a doctor so his concerns can be addressed or a child would speak up to her coach to accommodate her individualized learning style. These middle-class children learned how to make the rules work in their favor, either through imitation or direct training, reinforced by their parents. These parents frequently use reasoning and negotiation with their children and authority figures outside the home responded positively to these interactions.

In contrast, the working class and poor children had a sense of constraint with interactions in institutional settings. They accepted the actions of authority figures and were unable to make the rules work in their favor. The parents of these children would applaud their child if they "beat up" some kid at school, even if it meant a consequence of suspension, and the parents may even vent their frustrations with institutions with their children and teach them about "powerlessness". 

What we see here is that middle-class children who were raised according to concerted cultivation would have a sense of entitlement and knew how to work the system in their favor and the working class and poor children were constrained in natural growth and failed to use the system to work in their favor.

As I was reading these scenarios and definitions, I couldn't help but reflect on my own upbringing as a child of a working class family. As I recall, there was a clear boundary between the child and adult and I knew never to question any person of authority. Back then, my parents taught me that it was disrespectful to question adults. I vividly recall my punishments for politely questioning adults. Because many of my students come from the working class and poor, they may have the same mentality of natural growth.

What does this mean for us as change agents? To lead our students towards a growth mindset and develop a sense of entitlement and not a sense of constraint. As change agents, we can provide parents of the poor and working class the information they need to get their children involved in organized activities so their children can have the opportunity to "develop" themselves. We can also model the process of concerted cultivation in the classroom by developing their vocabulary through reasoning and reading. 

It is important to state that Lareau found that the educators teaching in schools of the middle, working, and poor classes all agreed that organized activities, development in vocabulary, and responsive and positive parental participation in schooling were important in the development of the child. It is also important to state that there was a clash between the concerted cultivation being taught in schools and the natural growth process being reinforced in the homes of the working and poor class; whereas, the process of concerted cultivation at the homes of the middle class and in the school proved to be rewarding. 

As I continue to read through the text, I look forward to reviewing the patterns that Lareau uses to help us "unpack the mechanisms through which social class conveys an advantage in daily life". Leave your questions, comments, and thoughts regarding this post below. I look forward to reading your responses! 

Shelda Raymonvil

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***Please listen to the lyrics of this song by the Black Eyed Peas and reflect on the change that you can make in your classroom and beyond.***

“What You Test is What You Get”

Gallagher puts a new spin on the old saying “what you give is what you get” in his book Readicide. He declares that “what you test is what you get,” meaning that the kind of knowledge that we test our students on is the kind of knowledge that our students will possess. This phrase gives light to one of the many discriminatory policies in our country, the No Child Left Behind Act, which has been shaping our education system’s culture since 2002. This policy among many others, such as housing, healthcare, and unemployment disproportionately hurt low income and minority students. No Child Left Behind advances the idea of high stakes, standardized testing as an effective means of assessing and improving students’ education, while economically punishing schools that do not meet the policy’s standards. However, these standardized tests assess lower levels of knowledge, as opposed to critical and creative thinking skills that are actually necessary for our students’ lives long term. Since schools face immense pressure to perform well on tests, then curriculum is created around preparing students for the tests. We are getting students with lower thinking skills because that is what we are teaching them with our curriculum and tests. Schools with low income and minority students generally perform lower than more affluent schools already for many reasons. They are under funded and students face additional obstacles outside of the classroom. Due to their already lack of funding and low performance, the pressure to “teach to the test” is much greater for these low income schools. It is our minority and low-income students who are most negatively impacted by this shallow thinking, test prep curriculum.

Gallagher demonstrates the ineffectiveness of policies focusing on standardized tests and the curriculum that forms from these policies.  Bonus: he also offers teachers solutions through research and his own personal experience as a teacher in low-income communities.  Because we all know that we talk all day about how ineffective something is, but until you have tangible actionable solutions for those challenges, I frankly don’t have time for you.

Gallagher begins with some interesting research to show the shortcomings of the culture that No Child Left Behind policies create:

·      The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that secondary students are reading significantly below expected levels (pg. 2).

·      Half of the students tested on the ACT College Readiness Benchmark for Reading were ready for college-level reading, and the 2005 scores were the lowest in the decade (pg. 3).

·      By fourth grade, African American students in thirteen states are already three years of learning behind grade level. By eighth grade, reading achievement for African American students remains two or more years behind grade level in thirty-six states. The numbers for Latino students aren’t much better (pg. 14 accompanied by a chart).

·      (In Texas) While students showed a 20 percent increase on state tests, there was a sharp decrease in their college readiness…students in Texas have not improved on the SAT since the early 1990s (pg. 20).

·      Since 2002 when the No Child Left Behind Act went into place (increasing the pressure to perform well on standardized testing), eighth grade reading scores for all students has remained the same AND the achievement gap between poor and non poor students has remained the same (pg. 21-22).

·      Both dropouts and high school graduates are demonstrating significantly worse reading skills than they did ten years ago (pg. 115).

This is just a portion of the research that he cites to show that policies calling for greater standardized testing focus not only do fail to work, but negatively affects students. Gallagher does offer some hope in light of these policies and their damaging effects. He proposes strategies for teachers to change the culture in their own classroom to one that teaches critical, creative thinking skills that are valuable to students lives short and long term. He shows that these strategies actually improve test scores, as well.  I will only focus on two of his classroom strategies that I feel are very applicable to low income communities; although, they are all extremely beneficial to teachers of all curriculum and I encourage you to check them out in more detail in his book.

Widen the knowledge base:

Why it is important-

Students from low-income communities have fewer first hand experiences to build their knowledge base, such as opportunities to travel. Additionally, they have less access to books, news, and Internet to provide them with a second hand knowledge base. Background knowledge is an essential piece of reading comprehension. If students do not know the historical context of a passage, then it does not matter whether or not they can read the words, they will not be able to comprehend the meaning.

Strategies offered by Gallagher-

·      We can give out students that background knowledge by giving them more reading. “Student who have the broadest reading experiences score the highest on standardized tests” and the opposite is true, as well.

·      Teach novels and use shorter reading passages to enrich the concepts being learned in the novels.

·      Increase sustained silent reading, so that students learn to enjoy reading and then will read more outside of school; therefore, increasing their background knowledge.

·      Advocate for your school to have a variety of high interest, multi-topic books on campus.

Teach the Value of the Material:

Why it is important-

Gallagher asserts, “when students read books solely through the lens of test preparation, they miss out on the opportunity to read books through the lens of life preparation”. Life preparation is needed by many of our students in the here and now. Due to discriminatory policies and obstacles specific to low income communities, these students encounter issues that hinder their success in school. For example, students may not have enough to eat at home, they may care for siblings, they may live in unsafe neighborhoods, and they may work to help support their family. In the minds of many students, the knowledge they are obtaining in schools is unrelated to their actual life. If we want students to engage and work, then we must show them that the material they learn in school is in fact applicable to their life now and later on or all of their stresses outside of school will seem in much greater need of their energy and attention.

Strategies offered by Gallagher:

·      Preview a portion of the material or book that shows how it is important to the students’ life.

·      Use articles to show how a concept they are about to learn relates to an issue that affects the student and their community.

·      Have students brainstorm ways they have seen a specific topic/concept in their own lives.

My challenge to all educators is to create tests and curriculum that teach critical, creative thinking skills that prepare our students for all aspects of their life, not just the day of the standardized test. My challenge to everyone is to hold schools to the standard of life prep not test prep. Strengthen this by contacting your administrators, school board members, and political representatives and demand that our country’s policies are just and fair for everyone despite their background. 

For more about Kelly Gallagher and his books go to http://kellygallagher.org/.