Jose Vilson's Blog, page 20

A Quick Note About This 40 Under 40 List Thing

You’re right: I don’t look under 40. I’m an old soul and I’ve stopped trying to correct folks en masse. Audrey and Chris decided to congratulate me for still being under 40. I have enough mileage in teaching years that I might disqualify myself.

But alas, I’m here.

And with that, I’d like to thank the Hispanic Coalition of New York for putting me on their list and for nominating me for their Rising Star of the Year Award. I’m used to just doing the work and vexing people in the process, so getting this type of recognition is cool. It’s more important because, as a classroom teacher, I recognize that I’m not just representing myself. As with anything I do outside of the classroom, I’m representing my students, current and present, and the educators who’ve come before and still walk this path.

With that said, I’m proud of the folks who’ve been nominated with me. As I looked through the roster, I was happy to see so many folks who do the work of serving others. I’m a glutton for public service. If that’s a thing.

If you’d like to vote for me, here are three ways to do such a thing:

1) Vote for me using this link to their website. (https://www.hcnewyork.com/2016-star-o...) It’s at the bottom of the page.

2) For Facebook users, like my picture in their post here.

3) For Twitter users, copy and paste this tweet ->

“.@HispCoalitionNY #2016RisingStarOfTheYear #JoseLuis”

But please know, Margarita, William, and other members of the list are deserving of their recognition as well. Those of us who do the work know that we’ll be doing so in silence, when others aren’t watching. We might postpone the social gatherings and the networking opportunities because the people work is so necessary. Those papers won’t grade themselves. Those relationships won’t build themselves. Those houses won’t paint themselves. Those restorative policies won’t write themselves.

So please do vote. But also, recognize the power of the work itself. It’ll mean that much more.

photo c/o

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Let Students Pronounce Themselves (On Pronouns and Identity) [Guest Post]

Editor’s Note: Normally, I don’t post things during a break, but I’d like everyone to read this from Kurt Ostrow. Also, this is totally appropriate even right now and any time, not just the first day of school. Enjoy!

In my work as a public high school English teacher, I try to think of ways to center students on the margin.

This summer, as I celebrated the organizing that secured trans rights in Massachusetts and read the visionary platform of the Movement for Black Lives, I thought about my own responsibility as an educator: How can I continue to support trans students and students of color in my classroom?

To do this work well requires serious time and energy—both of which public school teachers desperately lack. Transforming schools into liberated and liberating spaces is hard enough without the pressures of high-stakes testing, punitive evaluations, and a ballot question to lift the cap on charter schools.

But we must, of course, keep doing the work. We must constantly reimagine what we teach and how we teach it. We must make our schools places that welcome and center, rather than simply tolerate or accommodate, trans students and students of color.*

Here’s one move I made at the start of this school year: letting students pronoun/ce themselves on the first day.

continue reading

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Hope of a Black – Latino Educator (Evolution)

Come here. Please take a seat with me and let’s talk about evolution.

Your morning routine hasn’t changed in years. You roll swiftly out of bed, but your eyes have barely opened yet. You’re thinking about your students before you’re done brushing your teeth. You’re out the door before the grocery stores around the block open. The hustle to the bus then the train get your blood pumping and your feet throbbing. You swipe your MetroCard a few seconds before the train gets there. Your headphones currently blare Chance The Rapper because you need something between hard rap and gospel music. You play FreeCell all the way up to the second to last stop on the A train.

You see students in this neighborhood. Perk up, you.

You get your coffee. A dollar’s never been so valuable. You climb the set of stairs, ignoring the security that doesn’t like you for whatever reason. You’re cordial with adults as you move your card into the “in” slot. You jog up the next set of stairs into your classroom. You sniff around to make sure everything’s in place. You turn on the lights and the AC. You take a deep breath. You’re back in your element.

You have two grades and five classes to teach, each with their own set of needs. You got this.

Lesson plan 1: We will convert numbers in scientific notation to standard form. Eighth graders may or may not fully get it. We will make them care somehow someway.

Lesson plan 2: We will add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. Seventh graders may or may not already know how to do this. We will be sure they do.

Seventh grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, lunch. You eat sometime between a bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll time and a turkey and swiss on a roll time. You choose the latter.

Prep period, professional learning community time. You’re typing up and taking attendance in a word processor. You’re multi-tasking because if you don’t, you’ll nod off. Your ears are still ringing from that last eighth grade class. You’ve tuned out in intervals. You bring yourself back in time to catch the important stuff.

Seventh grade, eighth grade. End of the day.

You insist that students salute you in the morning and the afternoon. They mostly seem to like you, but you’re not as connected with them as you could be yet. It’s still early. You wiggle your fingers and crack your neck. You close your documents, read your e-mails, clean your students’ desks, and close the classroom door.

You’re back to yourself. Shake it off. You have to go home.

You’re reading the news on social media. More people shot without cause. More people on the street either by protest, eviction, or homelessness. More family members and friends suffering internally. More of your mentees, all of color, suffering in their respective institutions. More people cheering you on, congratulating you on your works. More personal questions about whether any of it matters to your life’s purpose.

More people pretending to disagree with you, but siphoning your works for inspiration anyways. More people not asking you how you’re doing personally, but needing you and you and only you and more you. That’s the way the work works.

You’ve eaten dinner, given your toddler a shower, and had the “how was your day?” conversation with your life partner. You’re at your computer again, about to engage in the process of putting together another essay you hope resonates to someone, anyone out there. It’s clearly working in some ways, but in some ways, you wish you could do more.

You see the only key is hope because, without it, none of the work matters to you. Not parenting. Not classroom teaching. Not Twitter / Facebook or any number of spaces you’re involved in. Not activism. Not living. Blogging has been a life source for more than 10 years and, with well over 1,000 posts, you’ve documented the life of a young Black / Latino teacher.

Now you have the opportunity to build this feeling for dozens, nay, hundreds of people doing work with you. You also have two book proposals waiting for your completion. You also have a toddler who’s telling you how pre-kindergarten went for him daily. You have all this going for you, and enough energy to show for it.

You’re a fan of rituals and routines. And you also need evolution. Perhaps even revolution.

It’s time.

The post Hope of a Black – Latino Educator (Evolution) appeared first on The Jose Vilson.

Fear of a Black Educator, Part 2

[Here’s part 1 of this series.]

You’ve now watched the umpteenth version of a person receiving unwarranted capital punishment for their pigmentation. These videos autoplay on your TV screen and your social media timelines. You’re inundated with rage in the form of speeches and blogs. You’ve read up on the latest resource offered by Teaching for Change, Teaching Tolerance, and Facing History, even as America refuses to do any of these three. You’re faced with the perilous task of negotiating the mandates of your districts with your mandates as a human being whose life experiences resonate with the victim in the videos you’ve watched repeatedly.

It’s midway through the year, but you feel like every shooting is another beginning for you.

You work at a private school. Teachers are already leaning on your door, hoping to get a reaction from you because they can sympathize, but not empathize. You’re done explaining and brush them off with “I got work to do. I suggest you do the same.” The kids are looking at you as the pledge of allegiance goes off in the announcements. You put your hand on your heart. You have too many eyeballs big and small on you. Some are genuinely curious, but the adults standing right outside hope you don’t become the outrageous runaway you have every right to be.

No, wait. You work at a charter school. You’re constantly asked to follow company line. Your school’s founder hasn’t said a word about the outrage out there, but has just the right amount of messianic presence in and out of their schools to demand compliance from everyone involved. You get into teacher meetings and suggest the faculty address these issues with open ears. Instead, you’re told to come up with a plan by yourself because every school is mandated to stay in lock step according to the pre-designed curricula. Your school has some faculty of color, but, by any measure, still falls in lockstep with what the plethora of visitors have invested in.

No, wait. You’re at a public school with majority students of color. Your scores aren’t high enough according to a bunch of papers you tossed out weeks ago. You’ve done everything you can to straddle the line between compliance and defiance. Your bulletin boards have the proper assignments and rubrics to deflect critique, and your heroes from yesteryear look at you through posters you’ve printed. You’re evaluated by a framework that only abstractly addresses cultural competence, and your students are already programmed to respond to loud stimuli as a means of attention.

You’ve only taught half your students by lunchtime. You shed a few tears. You shake them off. Fifth period is coming.

At any given moment in and out of work, your expertise is only valued to a point. You’re asked to control kids who look like you, but don’t get too good at it because you’ll look like you have more power than the person in charge does. You’re asked to tell kids they shouldn’t feel anger and hurt over racist incidents that happened to them in plain sight. Instead, you’re asked to put them in an auditorium and tell them they misremembered it all, and every agent of the state works in their best interest. You’re asked to stick to the script, sometimes figuratively because the test scores are low and your staff needs work, or literally because your district lead thought it best to buy a curriculum-in-a-box from a company that obviously didn’t consult many current teachers. Your school’s feet are always a few steps away from getting a management company to come in and hand you a reassignment slip. You inherit the current education lingo because it’s the mark of your craft, but you can’t use the new language to tell your higher-ups how their policies continue to hurt children in your classes or else you don’t get to be the chosen one anymore.

You looked into dozens of children’s eyes today and told them that they’re allowed to dream because one of your heroes said so. This hero met a similar fate to the victims in the videos you’ve been watching.

By the time the day is through, the crust on your hands doesn’t allow you to move your fingers much. You’re OK with that because you’re shell-shocked because of the trauma. You’re asked to keep your composure because our state holds its teachers to higher public standards than people with exponentially more money and power. You barely picked up your phone when a notification reads “Another black person was lynched today by the people sworn to protect and serve you.” You’re an educator, but the world around you is giving you an education, too.

You swore off watching these videos after the last time. You watch this one, though. You look at your school, your neighborhood, and your country. You are not in that video yet. You are not in that paper yet. You are not in that hashtag yet. You exhaust yourself at night by grading papers, lesson planning, and reading again. You wake up after six hours of sleep.

You’re awake and you’re woke. The system knows this well. Now keep rising for the pledge. Whatever that means.

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Fear Of A Black Educator, Part 1

Last night, in a fit of angst, I sent off a series of tweets:

It’s hard telling kids to pledge allegiance to a flag when its representatives barely represent us. #TerenceCrutcher

— Jose Vilson (@TheJLV) September 20, 2016

Without hesitation, someone decided to reply with “Why not move to a country where there isn’t white oppressors then?” It was the usual fare for folks who tweet with a social justice framework. The anonymous trolls range anywhere from 16 year olds getting their kicks from beating down “social justice warriors” to older folks touting flags, dogs, and egg avatars. I’m not fazed. 

But this one made me do a double take. Because, in many ways, the current education reform movement treats longstanding educators, especially of color, as disposable. Indeed, educators of color seemingly have a choice to teach wherever they wish. They can teach at a private school with a plethora of resources, only a tint of racial diversity, and a truly safe space for kids to learn. This space won’t get shut down from test scores or incompetent adults. They can teach at a charter school and work longer hours, expertise need not apply. They may get their supplies paid for, but if they come off-script, they get their boundaries quickly redrawn for them.

Or they can teach at a public school. They might want to teach at a well-resourced and well-renowned school, but chances are, they’ll be told they’d be better off teaching at a low-income school with mostly students of color.

I’ve spoken to dozens of educators of color across the country. It’s no surprise that choice for educators is more perilous for those of us with marginalized phenotype and skin color. As I’ve documented here on numerous occasions, teaching in a school is more complicated than looking at students and delivering their content. After a year, they’re attached to the idea of teaching. After a couple of years, they’re attached to the feeling of seeing their success in the form of graduations and moving-up ceremonies. After five years, they’re attached to them coming back and thanking them for putting them on the path towards their own definition of success.

After six years, they’re attached to the school itself, and all that comes with.

But lately, the disruption we’ve allowed to take over our school has made it permissible to shuffle schools from under us, especially in public schooling. When educators invest their time and energies in a school, the various disruptive processes we have across the country can break the souls and careers of the very educators we know are willing to stay in the worst conditions and fight the good fight. For every caricature I’ve seen of a bad veteran teacher, I’ve met plenty others who, through no fault of their own, were swindled of this opportunity to emotionally invest in their school.

The descendants of the people who literally built this country on their backs are constantly asked to be displaced for the betterment of the nation, but our lot continues to be inequitable.

With all this talk about diversifying the profession, the political will isn’t truly there. We have a coalition of well-meaning folks who earnestly recruit more people of color into teaching. Unfortunately, there’s a large disconnect between the policy side of the conversation and the intangible experiences that this specific set of educators goes through. Our country refuses to take care of the major needs our schools have. Pointing the finger at any one entity makes it easy to hammer down on it, but it doesn’t get at the roots of the issue.

Even if the school is rooted in the community and has a majority of students of color in the school, the institution still doesn’t feel like it’s theirs. That’s the sort of framework that would make any educator, black or otherwise, want to divest forever.

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The Little Light Of Mine (On EdCampBrooklyn and Movement Building)

Yesterday, I had the chance to go to EdCampBrooklyn, the first EdCamp in the borough of Robinson, Wallace, and Carter (among others). When the founder, Juli-Anne Benjamin, asked me to come through, I only asked when, not if. The trek from Harlem to Brooklyn was two trains, about an hour and a half on a Saturday morning. But the conversations and the energy were more than worth it. Educators across the country, especially those of us who attend these conferences on our “free” time understand that unconferencing isn’t an exercise in gaining more followers or creating a profile for ourselves, but to create synergy around pedagogy and practice. This specific EdCamp was important for me to attend because I knew that the educators who attended this conference were focused intently on working with the most marginalized students in our system, the ones that won’t show up on the brochures and city halls. Doing this on a Saturday gives us only Sunday to re-gather ourselves and implement the energy from this event back into our classroom.

You’re right: this work is difficult.

continue reading

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Love and Hate, Sorta (It’s Only Been Two Days)

“Vilson, tu si ere malo!”

It was the most random comment. For whatever reason, middle school students crack me up. Perhaps a large part of their being necessitates testing limits within the first few days of getting to know a teacher. Perhaps they insist that the first two days don’t mean much, so giving anything more than the usual rules speech or index card distribution is doing too much. Perhaps my easier demeanor relative to prior years opened up my students up to get a different vibe from me than prior students.

But I’ve never heard more students make a love / hate determination on the first two days of school than with this year.

I have three seventh grade classes, two eighth grade classes, all with different personalities individually and collectively. The students are still adjusting to the adults, and I’m throwing them off-balance with my self-effacing comments and high expectations (“not just eighth grade, but the first year of high school”). continue reading

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Race, The Little Rock Nine, and Our Obligation as Educators [Video]

On this blog, I mentioned how inspired I was by my visit to Little Rock, AR. Specifically, I mentioned how I changed the core of my talk at the Clinton School of Public Service to reflect my experience at Central High School, the site of one of our most storied desegregation fights. The visit marks a year where I’ve found myself in a plethora of arguments over the state of public education for (and with) children of color. As I sat in the auditorium, overwhelmed with emotion, I kept reflecting on my own career, wondering how much I either contributed to my students’ education or ran complicit to their subjugation. That continues to be a hard pill to swallow, but no bigger than the one America must swallow in the system of education that continues to underserve children of color.

To that end, my talk reflected much of my thinking there:

The text for the speech is there, and I deviated somewhat from script. continue reading

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The First Parent-Teacher Conference of One

I’m not supposed to be nervous about the first day.

A couple of weeks ago, I told six hundred or so adults in Oak Park, IL that the first day doesn’t matter. I said it was the second day and beyond that ultimately determine a teacher’s effectiveness. But this first day is different. It’s not just my 12th First Day of class as a teacher. It’s my first as a parent. Alejandro’s going to Pre-kindergarten, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve been sipping teas and scrolling through inordinate amounts of inspirational posters, distracting myself from feeling every knot I have tied in my stomach.

Those of you who read my book know that I hurled my first First Day of school in pre-k, and I still can’t live down the imagery. I had so many high hopes for coolness. I still hold high hopes today that I’ll be one of the cool kids. Until then, I’d love for Alejandro to have a much better head start. continue reading

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Major Key: What It Means To Have A Leader-ful, Not Leaderless, Movement

I haven’t mentioned much about the presidential debates because a) I’m a socialist and b) the most affable person in the race said he’d step aside if he lost to the Democratic nominee. Even though everyone in the race was / is problematic, a requirement for running the world’s largest empire, it’s weird having such low favorability ratings for the two leading candidates in a presidential election. Compounded with that is the phenomenal work that I continue to see on the ground, the vast movements sweeping the nation to make people move forward, and the hyperlocal, earnest work that so many folks undertake as classroom educators and public intellectuals. While they seem disconnected, activism is one of the most important mechanisms for people’s survival and the betterment of this republic.

All of this reminds me of the famous Malcolm X quote:

“I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda,” I had written to these friends. “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”

In context, I understood this as part of his transformation from the one-man ideology that subsumed Malcolm X’s devotion to Elijah Muhammad to the universal understanding of Islam after his trip to Mecca. Ironically, it’s been used as a touchstone, to suggest that we can literally put anyone in a certain position and, as long as they’re saying all the right things, no one has any more work to do. Worse still is those who think the ways and means aren’t as important as the end. continue reading

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