Jose Vilson's Blog, page 16

On ELA, Math, and School, Because We Gotta Talk School

Where did people get the idea that schooling was neutral anyways?

On my newsletter, I succinctly suggest that schooling was never neutral. In recent times, I wrote about English Language Arts and all that comes with the term "literacy." I wrote about Math because I do this. What's the idea behind this writing? Simple. We can't talk about schooling without dissecting the ways we operate in it. Our policies and practices are written in thinly veiled language that suggests impartiality.

Why lie?

We keep using words like "achievement gap," "equity," and "growth mindset" to put the onus on the people on the ground level doing the most work (students, teachers, parents) and not on the system upon which the schools sits. At some point, if the results of the game never change, we have to critically analyze the game. We can talk about the players, the referees, the coaches, and the managers. But after all that's done, we may want to ask how the game gets played, what we're using to play it, and whether we need to play a new game entirely.

Also, this was my way of saying I've been busy writing. I hope you'll join me wherever you can:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BbaFpoGD602/

Also on Medium, Facebook, and Twitter.

Thanks for following my work. We got this. continue reading

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Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Peculiar, Particular, Educational Intellectual

In the last six years, few have pushed America to reconsider history the way that Ta-Nehisi Coates has. Yes, the thrust of his visions come from a specific lens of his black-male-from-Baltimore-ness, but this lens has offered many a new language by which to address the past decade and the harrowing present. The denouement of President Barack Obama's term, the ascension of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the new wave of public intellectualizing has given Coates an affirmed and awkward space to stand. Only three years ago did he point to Melissa Harris-Perry as America's foremost intellectual, much to the chagrin of countless (white) thinkers used to dead versions of who they diluted and aspired to. In many of my circles these days, the question "OMG, did you read what he wrote?" both for intellectual provocation and critical reading became commonplace. Criticisms are aplenty, but he's given some of the more memorable interviews specifically because he doesn't know what to do with the newfound power he's accumulated besides write and speak on that which he writes.

In the education space, his writing has been positioned with the likes of his heroes James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. Between The World and Me gets placed on book lists with Go Tell It On The Mountain and The Bluest Eye with regularity. He's already headlined some of the biggest education conferences in the nation, and gets to use words like "white supremacy" in front of people who could otherwise have the rest of us fired. While the education zeitgeist has been pushed into conversation about educational equity [NB: action remains to be seen], it's important to note that the education space is usually disinclined to moving towards rising tides. However, the aforementioned movements along with many others have forced educators to face deeper conversations about their own complicity in our country's systemic oppression.

And who better than a person who's a MacArthur "genius," a New York Times best-seller, a person who's conversed and debated Obama on a number of occasions in The White House? And what if that same person happens to have been spurned multiple times by the same educational system we so often laud?

We Were Eight Years In Power as a title made a few of us snicker when we first heard it, too. My fellow educators voted for Obama to denounce the No Child Left Behind approach to educating students. Ramping up standardized tests, privatizing schools, and shutting down schools en masse has been an unequivocal disaster for many of our most vulnerable students. After we took notice of Obama's move towards doubling down on this formula, many of us built movements to defend public education, opt out of standardized tests, and protest public co-locations at every turn. Even when the former president finally leaned away from overtesting and education reformers finally got the idea that degrading teachers was an onerous path to recruitment and retention, the damage still felt done.

As a book, however, Coates' meta reader speaks directly to the sardonicism. He couches each of his chapters in an essay that speaks to the context of when he wrote it, its logical and technical flaws, and the trajectory that lead him to the man he is today.

Eight Years In Power is most effective not as a read (or, for many of us, a re-read), but as a reminder of the time from whence we came. To understand Obama's eight years is to understand Bill Cosby's - not Cliff Huxtable's - rendition of respectability in the early aughts. To understand the disposition of white people's rage towards Obama is to get the reverence we have for Malcolm X's oratory because of his flaws. To understand the debate over Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act debates is to understand reparations and any social programs that might even allude to it. To read this book is to ground an audience of well-meaning white people (and not so well-meaning) into reasons why our most vulnerable students don't come in happy to hear the stories we're telling them.

To understand that someone who's eschewed systems in his youth in the quest for his own intellectual enlightenment can have a knee-deep concentration on these systems, prodding and poking at America's sores is to know the work of Coates.

As Coates dropped Jay-Z quotes on his Twitter timeline recently (Jay reciprocates, of course), I couldn't help but look back at Mr. Carter's discography and hit upon the most apt CD to compare this to: The Hits Collection Volume One. If you only starting reading Coates since "Fear of a Black President," he's got essays to catch you up on. If you started at around his prominent treatise "The Case for Reparations," he's got pieces for that, too. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if he was listening to "Young, Gifted, and Black" and "My President Is Black (remix)" while conjuring up these ideas.

I don't normally like the way K-12 educators seek to extract expertise from non-educators in place of the folks doing the work right in our schools, but Coates is an obvious exception. The few educators of color in his audiences usually take comfort that he makes no apologies for what he's about to say.

Our system failed him; this is a remuneration.

photo c/o continue reading

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Skipping The Classes I Don’t Need

Whenever folks hear code words like " ... regardless of zip code ..." they act upon it in multiple ways. Some want to create educational equity, and surely, there are plenty of groups that profess to want this. Some advocate for equity by hanging on to mythos of the one schoolhouse, segregated, destitute, and gritty all the same. Some simply yell to the rafters, but never hang with the commoners unless there's a photo-op and a hefty check at the end of a speech. Some say it, but follow the phrase with so many buts that you never get a sense of where the duplicity ends.

And some take that to mean that every single class in every single school in every single district in the country should operate exactly the same. Uniformity is the guarantee that margins of error don't interfere either positively or negatively to the learning experiences of children. This also goes hand-in-hand with adults looking at those "under" them as less than capable of making responsible decisions. The more regimented a program, the more comfort the regimenter feels about the environment they've created around them.

After stripping any level of autonomy and self-direction, the slide into fascism gets lubricated with test scores and cloudy results, sans the decimation of students' own confidence and safety.

Our society has been so swindled by the term "status quo" that we let a new status quo of institutional failure replace the one they spoke of a decade and a half ago. Our society has become complacent with high test scores with low self-esteem because we believe the achievement of dreams is synonymous with the ability to correctly assume what strangers think. We've conflated the perception of educational attainment with the irresolute promises of education reform.

It's not just a charter school issue, either. Too many of our citizens tried to vote away neoliberal cheerleaders only to see them betrayed in the form of "partnerships" and adages like "we have so much to learn from them." We have entire industry dedicated to "making our jobs easier" by culling the best - by their standards - teacher moves, the best - by their standards - resources, and the best - by their standards - assessments and influencing large sets of schools to have every adult do all of the things at a cost. Usually, it's financial, but also it's cultural as well.

We can standardize without standardization, but it's even deeper than that. We can fight fascism within our schools by having higher and better expectations of the systems that profess to have high expectations for schools they serve.

I don't buy the idea that standardization helps to eliminate bad teachers or bad teaching, either. Right now, until we have a common and agreed upon framework for good teaching, and we have a deeper appreciation for the profession, we'll keep using the same methods - like standardization - to root out anyone outside the proverbial "middle." Which means we need to crack the bell curve so everyone can win in their own way.

If the lesson our current set of overlords suggests that we must strengthen borders and suppress opposition by any means, then please let me skip that class. If the class is focused on telling me my students aren't worth an education that treats them like human beings, then please let me call out sick. If the person in front of us seeks to develop me professionally by enacting the same sort of pedagogy we promise we don't want in our classrooms, then excuse me so I can take the longest bathroom break ever. Send me the notes. Take off a few points. Write in my teacher evaluation that I'm ineffective in my professional responsibilities.

But I'm opting out of all of this. I fought to get in my classroom and to stay in my classroom. What makes you think I won't be fighting for my class and my classroom?

photo c/o continue reading

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Two Days Down, Forever To Go

I burst out laughing.

I never thought I'd say that within the first two days of school. But I did. Not only did I laugh, but I smiled often.

It was a random thing one of my students said. I couldn't hold it back. I didn't want to. He kinda stood there awkwardly, not knowing whether to laugh along or wait for me to flip into serious mode. I did neither. I just told him "That was funny" and kept talking while my cooperating teacher looked on. I sat at my desk shortly thereafter, wondering if expressing myself was the right thing to do only 10 periods into the school year.

Hell yeah.

This week felt like I got a 3/5ths do-over from last year and a 2/5ths fresh start. Three eighth grade classes, most of whom I've seen last year. Two seventh grade, many of whom have siblings who attended my classes before. I look around at these young faces, hoping for a new experience but doubtful about the school's changed. We have assemblies, but most of them whisper that they'd rather stay in my class than go downstairs. They're already knocking on my door during my lunch, staying a few minutes longer after the bell.

They look to me like an oasis. My people keep telling me they're lucky to have me. I'm trying to live up to all of these eyes.

Smiling hasn't been part of my repertoire. In the last 14 years, I've had a reputation for the serious face. In my first few years, it became a hallmark of my pedagogy. After a few years, it turned into part of my being. It unnerves most people, but the kids get used to it. But I also noticed how the lack of smiles as an external decision creeped into some of my inner workings. There were points last year where I seriously reconsidered whether any of this work was worth it, and these obstacles pulled me further from my purpose. At times, the teacher in that classroom felt like a sail holding then usually giving way to the gusts of wind in its direction.

I'm smiling to recover the boom of the ship before the boat tosses me ashore.

You got me? continue reading

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Some Of Us Gotta Fight For Ours

For weeks, I've been getting ready for the first day of school. Staplers, looseleaf, folders, erasers, rulers, Lysol wipes, and the eight pegs I used to fix some broken cabinets show up on my summer receipts. I emptied truckloads of garbage left over from a seemingly vacated classroom in the span of 48 hours. I thought of students who just graduated, and dozens of others who barely know me. This past Friday, these hands, the ones I'm using to currently write this, also move furniture to an aesthetic that hopefully makes children feel safe and welcome without a word from me. I left at 3:30 in the afternoon while the security guards jiggle their keys in anticipation of closing the school building.

All so when it's officially time for teachers to start on Tuesday, I can organize my lessons, assessments, and rituals. A head start clears my head.

On this Labor Day, I still wince at the idea that all of our labors are equal. They're not. Our pedagogies, our lessons, our delivery, our expertise, our style of dress all become fodder for our termination while a few miles out of our glorified squalor, teachers worry about their next home, the level of chlorine in their pools, and whether the next building on campus will be erected in three years or five years time. We might have similar tenets to our work: an objective, a warm-up activity, an adult standing in front of a number (greater than 10) children, and any set of behaviors that our students exhibit.

Yet, nuances emerge along race, class, gender, and ability, and with significant reliability. Oh, and level of cooperation with corporations. That's not another blog post. That's this one.

We as educators have a unifying call to action, namely to impart knowledge on a younger generation. Even in that, we start to see crevices open up. Who teaches in a school building, a prison corner, or a campus with sprawling grass fields? Who teaches a classroom outfitted with the latest materials versus a classroom with cracked walls and rats for classmates? How many students occupy the class? What does the teacher look like? What does their curriculum allow? Who gets pegged for someone ready to move away from the classroom and how long ago was that assumption made? What explicit and implicit values does the community hold? What does agency look like for the students in those classes?

What does their school tell them about themselves?

Because, while announcements about my doings hit everyone's inboxes, I go through serious bouts of insecurity. My lessons. My ratings. My fashion and the ways I convey my professionalism. My love for students, even when a few don't love me back. My rage and fury at adult decisions. My family. My friends, the ones that could have been, and never were. My gloomy disposition walking into the century-old building. My need to pulverize  mediocrity in my works.

My ability to ask harder questions of myself than anyone else could.

Our work might have similar titles, but it's not all the same. As we construct new visions for our classrooms, schools, and communities, we ought to start from the places that breed trauma so easily. We ought to see how many people are compelled to double down on narratives around testing and rote pedagogy for the sake of job safety and scholarly fascism. We ought to subvert any narrative that says working in our most marginalized communities means working in lesser communities.

I can start from my very first day of school. For the 14th time in a row.

And really, on my first day, I'll already have the hundreds of dollars in supplies I bought for my students tucked under my desk, two tabbed planners, and a heart re-energized from a much-needed summer. When asked, I'll say "I can complain, but I refuse to." I'll give my whole heart and mind to those who either walk through my door, and those who choose to converse with me about this constant, beautiful profession.

I still believe that we will win. I just hope that, should folks see us in the same place at the same time as them, they shouldn't think we took the same route. Respect ours. continue reading

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Rebecca Solnit and How Pockets of Hope Have Saved America

In my recent post on Medium, I decided to take a crack at the largesse we call "curriculum" and why textbooks have never been sufficient:

While I’ve appreciated the effort to collect resources (see#CharlottesvilleSyllabus from graduate students at the university), I’ve become wary of collecting resources for the sake of collection. Without a pedagogy that centers critical thinking, examination, inclusivity, and agency, history will repeat itself. (Xian Barrett does a great job laying out some of the tenets for good teaching here.) It’s not enough to just put a list and ask folks to just deliver in the era of Common Core State Standards and scripted lessons. It’s even more critical to insist on pedagogy, environment, and all of their manifestations. A curriculum is only as good as the accompanying approaches and the conscientiousness of the adults in charge of its intent.

At the end, I also posit that this textbook mess often leaves it up to the protestors, scholars, and other agents to clean up the mess as best they can. People who work under this umbrella know that the fruits of their labor will probably not be harvested in their lifetimes. America had a million chances to get this moment right, including but not exclusive to: 1776, 1863, 1937, 1945, 1964, 2001, 2009, and 2012. In those moments, however, "many sides" ideologies prevailed. continue reading

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And That’s When I Got A Phone Call From Secretary DeVos

I kid you not.

I was in the middle of a meeting with some other folks when a random D.C. number called my cell. I usually don't pick up, but it seemed serious. I picked up and the first words I heard on the other side were "This is the U.S. Department of Education and ..."

Oh. Heeeeeeeeccckkkk. No.

It was a spam call (sorry). But it happened after The Progressive (as well as Alternet) published my piece on Secretary Betsy Devos' privatization agenda. Observe:

DeVos’s mythological interpretation of what the founders wanted is worth noting as well. Certainly they had a lot to say about the importance of education and public schools. Thomas Jefferson also asserted that governments shouldn’t be allowed to manage schools. But there’s a difference between working with thirteen states generally struggling to stay afloat and a fifty-state country that’s one of the most powerful in the world. That’s why amendments exist. But DeVos skipped that part of civics. Just as importantly, states' rights as the founders intended it allowed white plantation owners to keep enslaved peoples as property, whether they went to free land or not. How does one support freedom of choice by pointing at policies that literally kept entire peoples in captivity?

Make no mistake: this is no benign blueprint for public schools.

Let me know what you think! continue reading

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The Relationship Between Humility and Teacher Leadership [Medium]

July is the perfect month for teacher conferences, and I’ve had the fortune of going to a couple. Every year, I get curious about the relationship between how teachers talk about what they do and what they actually do. On Medium, I explored these issues:

“Part of that is the way that teachers are built. If we’re doing the work, then we see ourselves as learners along with the students. Expertise is often foreign in that framework because we’re neither confident nor settled in that One Truth. We’re using and giving away tools so that the next generation might do better than us. There’s also an underlying imposter syndrome that happens when we get thrown in spaces with folks with more visibility than us (media) and more political power (policymakers, administrators) and we’re asked to give the totality of a given subject when we’re not prepped for such an event.

At the same time, when there’s a narrative gap, too many folks will gladly fill it for any number of reasons. Plus, if we don’t love up on ourselves, who’s gonna love us?”

Read and share my latest, please. I’d love to hear what you think.

 

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A Note About Identity and The Light That Guides Us

Recently, I wrote on and how my blackness shapes the way I view the world. Observe:

The idea of joy and love as expressed by marginalized cultures gets lost in America. It also stands to reason that many of us who are labeled first- or second-generation Latinx often carry a racial or cultural schema that differs from America, so it’s odd trying to explain someone’s racial understanding to someone who holds steadfast to theirs. For example, the stereotype is that Dominicans hate Black people, but that ignores the plethora of Black Dominicans who’ve offered pockets of resistance all over the island. To some, it also diminishes blackness to an imperial concept where we can only imagine this experience in the context of the United States and not in the dozens of other countries where, yes, we exist.

I didn’t understand the amazing reaction to the piece at first because I don’t often get a chance to uncover these elements of what makes me. I also feel like I dove (not tiptoed) into a discussion around ideas of antiblackness and immigration that are still too sensitive in our culture.

At the same time, if I don’t put it out there, who will? continue reading

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On Global Teacher Prize Winner Maggie MacDonnell and What Humility Looks Like

We met at a fancy hotel on Central Park South, a place that most native New Yorkers scurry past before they get priced out of the sidewalk. Whenever I meet teachers that gain acclaim on a macro-level, I always ask two questions: how are they affected by their newfound fame and do they still have the touch? The first is obvious. In American society, teachers who get large titles like “National Teacher of the Year,” “President of [insert large city here],” or, in this case, “Global Teacher Prize,” skyrocket to echelons where they meet heads of state, billionaire magnates, and hedge fund managers who can sneeze donations. They get peppered with gifts and four-to-five figure speaking gigs and, on occasion, get recognized for just being nice. It’s more than an honor; it’s the equivalent of getting a diamond-encrusted coat.

They might be the same “them,” but everyone else sees diamonds. They must be royalty. Everyone else says so now, but not before the coat. So it goes with the Global Teacher Prize winner Maggie MacDonnell, winner of the 2017 Global Teacher Prize.

I wouldn’t call this an interview, though. Interviews are often one-directional, so I insisted on talking through it. It’s also important to note that I met her the day after I finished classes. I still hadn’t unplugged from the person I was in the classroom. People might believe that one of the most notorious / renowned teachers in the largest city in America would shrug at the idea of meeting educators from smaller towns with fancy titles, but such derision would mean I have nothing to learn from a fellow educator. Teachers are always trying to pick up wisdom, no matter how long we’ve been in the game. continue reading

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