Jose Vilson's Blog, page 40

Not All My Teacherfolk Are My Kinfolk

Tiffanie Drayton’s open letter to the Staten Island teachers who wore NYPD t-shirts on the first day of school ought to be printed and passed around in every staff meeting:

To your Black and Latino students, many of whom must have serious conversations with their parents about safeguarding their person from those charged to serve and protect them — the NYPD — your actions are deeply hurtful. Any remaining innocence they brought with them to the classroom that enabled them to readily accept you, a White person, as a loving, caring, respecting authority figure has been undermined. The relationships students and teachers struggle to build across racial divides can only be maintained when both parties respect one another; their history and most importantly their struggle. It is quite a delicate process that requires objectivity, fairness, empathy and most importantly, sensitivity. Traits and characteristics that the you, the “educators” obviously lack based on your outrageous choice to wear those shirts, despite being warned against it by your own union.

This set of teachers only underlined the oft-held perception, mostly from people of color, that anyone who works in an authoritative position cannot be fully trusted. By wearing those shirts, the teachers immediately made a connection for the students and parents between two agents of the state who have historically underserved people of color. Even with those of us who are thankful for the services both the police and schools provide for the public, many of us have historically had a distrust of them, which has also allowed for others to take advantage of that mistrust. The same can be said for our fire departments, hospitals, postal workers, or any entity created by our government.

Institutionalism racism is by design, and often, we are the embodiment of the institution.

Here’s the thing, too: I have yet to hear a solid argument for why the teachers would wear a Support NYPD t-shirt on the first day. For one, the New York Police Department has a whole holds a special place in New York, cemented every September 11th and every seventh inning stretch at a Yankees or Mets game. When in Rome, we salute the police, so supporting the NYPD comes as regularly as the pledge of allegiance in our schools. Even though teachers and police start off at similar base pay, police prestige is still high. Plus, most of the conversations I see in the media isolate individual bad actors within the police department and don’t condemn the cops as a whole.

But maybe that don’t convince the Staten Island teachers who took it upon themselves to wear the shirts. They have cousins who serve on the force, and neighbors who have lost their lives in the line of duty, fighting for the safety of their community. At least that’s the argument. [Full disclosure: I do, too, but that's the equivalent of mentioning a friend of color to dissuade people from calling them a racist.] Maybe you just don’t like UFT President Michael Mulgrew and the UFT’s direction, so this felt like a way to spite him. Maybe you don’t like Al Sharpton, because, believe it or not, a lot of us don’t like him.

Maybe you actually thought Eric Garner should have been killed for resisting arrest because resisting arresting is an obvious violation of his right to live.

All of this falls apart when you hear both Mulgrew and Sharpton say they’re not only not trying to take down the NYPD, they’re hoping for justice for Eric Garner and anyone who’s ever been victimized by the “few bad actors.” So is the argument for wearing these t-shirts that they don’t want to get rid of the “few bad actors” who use the badge and the gun as a means of terrorizing youth of color? Is the argument that, just like teachers who say racist things to our kids or under-educate our children because they probably won’t make it far, the police should be given clemency because they’re “serving the people?”

It seems like it. To wit, this quote from one of the supporters says a lot:

“What happened [to Garner] was a terrible tragedy, and it’s not our place to be deciding who’s guilty and who’s not guilty. I don’t see it as a political message. I just see it as we want our children to respect policemen, to respect firemen, to respect teachers, to respect everybody.”

It’s an argument I’ve heard echoed a few times. So, instead of demanding a full investigation, instead of educating themselves on abundance of young men and women of color who are disproportionately affected the imperfect workings of the law, instead of developing support systems for the children and parents in their community who may have held resentment towards the police after the incident happened in their own neighborhoods and others like Ferguson, MO, instead of asking the police to do a better job of policing their own (something that we as teachers need to take on more as well), they wear T-shirts in support of NYPD.

Because everyone ought to be respected equally. It just so happens that policemen, firemen, and teachers should get respected more equally than others.

Well, OK. Policing, like teaching, is a political act. Instead of creating a teachable moment about how we as a city respond to tragedy, this set of Staten Island teachers wants to show that, yes, everything is alright and we have no reason to reflect or get better at serving the public. I do mean we this time.

Not all my teacherfolk are my kinfolk.

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On Honest and Civil Conversation (Simmer Down Now)

The first audience reaction to my speech at the Network for Public Education came from a older, burly white man with big hands and a soft voice. Not that any of this scares me much since I’m from the hood, but context matters.

“Jose, I’m glad you’re here and I appreciate what you had to say today, but, when you referred to Tea Party people as subhuman …”

Whoa, what?

“No, that’s not what I said,” as I furled my eyebrows. “I said that Tea Partiers look at many of us [read: people of color, women, people who identify as LGBT ...] as subhuman, and that’s the thing …”

“OK, I get you. I just wanted to make sure because you need to be careful not to insult others. Once we start insulting people, then that becomes a problem …”

I tried to wrap up the conversation and say “Thank you” before getting smiles and hugs from the people of color in the audience, many of whom have had to deal firsthand with activists within the same supposed umbrella disavowing social justice in favor of alliance along single-issue lines like student privacy and Common Core State Standards. Before my comments on the panel, I thought it obvious that a group committed to social justice would include discussions on race, class, and gender, which would force those who sought allies within said group to have a better grounding on these issues, and their accompanying -isms.

My bad.

So when Peter Cunningham dropped this post on his new education website, I laughed, not because I disagreed with him. I don’t know much about him except that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan congratulated him on having a new website. Because vitriol seems to do well when talking education politics, and triggering language is the modus operandi of current edu-dialogue outside of the faux-halcyon digi-hallways of ed-tech. Education is constantly in crisis because, without crisis, people who aren’t currently parents of school-aged children, teachers, and students can’t possibly have an opinion on it.

Really, no matter what side you look at things from in education reform, there’s a model for “honest dialogue” and a hundred other folks willing to carbon copy their whole style with their own flavor to it. We play to crowds, portend allegiance, retweet and rewrite the same messages, and hero-worship with no critical thought. We protect folks who want to jump in mouth first before even trying to build a relationship, allowing snark and sarcasm to get in the way of having any substantive conversation.

And all of this is OK because, well, we agree on something, whatever that one thing is, and that’s what matters, right?

I learned from these and so many other experiences that, as a person of color, unity and solidarity are trifling if not done well. As a teacher, and often the only educator on any given panel (and the only person of color and the only …), it’s wholly dishonest to say the solution to education policy is solely conversation. Rarely do people talk pedagogy and content (#1 and #2 respectively). These rooms filled to the ceiling in education researchers, journalists, policy wonks, and other interested folk who just happen to have friends who have friends know exactly what’s good for those of us in classrooms every day. Then again, those of us in classrooms with voices rarely talk about what happens in our classrooms, feeling like we need to battle against a metaphorical league of shadows, a fight systemically designed for us to lose individually.

None of this will move the speeding train that is Peter Cunningham’s new voice blog.

I do know that, despite the back and forth bickering I often filter out, I have class tomorrow. Every year, I hope I’m a better teacher than I was a worse teacher, and approaching 100% great is my goal. I looked at my data report and didn’t care much about it until I saw my students’ individual scores. Then I got happy. Then I got pissed. Then I gasped. Then I got back to making my classroom the neatest I could without a treasure trove of borders and decals in my closet.

All of this informs my writing, too. Then again, I demand much more nuance in my telling of events than almost every education blog out there. The problem for Cunningham and for everyone else talking education reform is whether effective listening is a part of their repertoire. If not, then there’s no point in me reading.

Besides, the web site looks off. Even with my 15-inch screen, I still have to scroll to the right to see the full picture. Then I notice nothing’s there.

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Changing The Narrative, Right From My Classroom

Tomorrow, New York City teachers go for their first day back from vacation. With no kids and two weeks to clean out their caches (well, some of us), we’ll hopefully come back refreshed and ready to take on the relentless energies of the burgeoning young minds in front of us.

Or whatever it is we choose to believe.

This year, I’ve never been as excited to hop in and do great work with my students. With three classes (a full math program in middle school), I’ll have plenty of opportunity to refine my teaching skills, get students ready for high school, and create and sharpen these amateur mathematicians. I came in a week early to get my classroom in order, scrub down desks, and organize the mounds of boxes that some of us moved from upstairs to this classroom, bopping along to Jay Z and Onyx in the interim.

Which should make everyone wonder how the hell I’m going to change the narrative right from my classroom.

That’s the thing: I haven’t figured it out, either. What I do know is that I will continue to rebuke the nonsense that comes across my plate as a teacher, starting from the data reports due to us this week (teachers, check your DOE inboxes) to the mad rush to cover everything under the sun before their big exams and everything in between. I’ll resist professional development folk trying to push their product or influence me into doing something unless they’ve done it themselves. I’ll keep my energy high throughout the year, even when students that look like mine. I’ll even continue to resist colleagues spreading negativity and nonsense around me, not because I’m better, but because we can all do better.

If I seek to change the narrative, I have to strive to be that narrative.

Because, really, I, like many other teachers, didn’t have a “summer off.” We had a summer to be ourselves, sans personal titles and last names. For me, I had a wonderful time across the country talking about my book, but, having met hundreds of teachers, I got a sense that many teachers have aspirations like mine in terms of their kids. Many of us want them to do well, many of us want to get better at our craft, many of us have a deep disdain for teacher bashing, and many of us want a fresh lens on how we approach our work in education.

While many of my colleagues have already started across the country, I start my new journey tomorrow. Time to be Mr. Vilson. Let’s do this.

photo c/o

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Meeting My Once and Future Classroom

This was my actual classroom eight years ago, which is the same I have now.

Meet my once and future classroom.

It once had a exposed wooden door, working lights, nine unmarked boxes, beige lockers, and a second year teacher scared for his career. I know this because I was him eight years ago. Throughout the year, the desks rumbled and shuffled about the class, sometimes in groups, in pairs, or in single row and file while students and their teacher prepared for tests of all kinds. The teacher whispered, yelled, almost laughed, and taught through seasons of administrative temperament more intemperate than the seasons. His entire existence rested upon the piles of work on his desk, which also served as perfect coverage for the times he had to emote. He made it through that year, stronger for the fact that he didn’t send his resignation papers in the June of that academic year.

That classroom, like the teacher, started gathering more students, more chairs, and more responsibilities. It served as headquarters for after-school and summer programs on a regular basis. It served as an ELA and social studies room, even though math books anchored the leftover texts. The custodians had painted the lockers blue, and the influx of human traffic scuffed and scratched the lockers, revealing some dull-brown streaks. A room that once only had student desks and a huge meeting desk turned book holder accumulated bookshelves of different use, and to make up for that, the lights closest to the white board dimmed, pushing all the attention to the bookshelves.

Walking into it yesterday, I noticed the waxed floor, the newer desks already set in groups, and all the stuff I moved from my upstairs office to my new classroom piked up on top of the monster table in the back. The bookshelves had blocked the sun from piercing my eyes, so maybe I should be grateful. As I started to dust off shelves, removing books that served as clutter to my mission for the upcoming school year, I smiled at the idea that I’d have one more chance to get better at this thing I call my calling, my career, and my professional life.

I also noticed, close to the whiteboard, an uncovered hole in the wall. The second year teacher had reprimanded a student for accidentally kicking a hole in the wall, throwing her out of the year’s Christmas pizza party as punishment for it. Over the years, teachers had deftly put bookshelves and chart paper over it, but never seemed to address that hole. I peeked at the whole and noticed someone had tried to patch the drywall up, filling it with plaster and coloring it the same green as the wall.

The hole looks better, but it’s still there, and that’s OK. Just making it to the point where I noticed the hole satisfies the second year teacher in me.

Jose

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Am I Wrong For Thinking We Could Be Something For Real?

This afternoon, I happened upon a situation that most New Yorkers don’t. I found myself walking into the ocean with maybe 50 people over a half-mile stretch of beach to my left and my right. The more I walked into the ocean, the less people I saw around me. I didn’t even notice that, after a few more feet of walking in, I had no one next to me, just me and the razor-sharp horizon in front of me. The once boisterous conversations around me became nothing but a din as the water crashed against my chest.

I don’t usually get moments like this, contrary to popular belief about teachers’ summer vacations, yet I couldn’t help but notice the metaphor laid out by nature in front of me. With this consternation around Ferguson, and the resulting calls for reverberation and leadership from folks who are always asking us to rethink our education advocacy, I wonder whether our calls for teachers to speak up is truly in vain.

How do you fight back against what seems like an insurmountable ocean of inaction? How do you keep swimming with the salty waters constantly thwarting your plans, pushing back against the progress you seek?

Why ask anyone to speak up at all when the people who can take the leadership on speaking up are the people asking for folks to speak up? Sadly, all of us can fall into the trap of asking leaders (supposed or otherwise) to take leadership on items that they probably won’t, like the incidents in Ferguson. I’m starting to see that new and responsive leadership is ultimately necessary, a leadership that’s reflective of what we seek.

I wonder if I’m wrong to ask people with huge followings, with lots of books to sell, and with influence in their communities to do anything, much less do more than what they may or may not do already. Instead, those of us who do say, “Enough is enough” might have to speak louder and work better towards moving our communities towards understanding this multi-faceted justice.

In a utopian setting, we wouldn’t have to ask. People who call themselves progressive leaders wouldn’t have to be called out by us, and people calling for empathy wouldn’t bat an eye before speaking out about any civil rights issue, because that’s what real empathy looks like. Yet, this isn’t utopia. Thus, we swim on.

I’m well aware that it only takes a few people to make a movement really flourish, but every so often, it would be nice if we didn’t have to give any one person the green light to do what’s right and lead. We have enough folks willing and able to do what’s necessary for social justice. Thus, from this purview, leading looks like a simple choice.

Am I wrong for thinking that we could be something for real?

Jose

photo c/o

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Our School and How I Just Want To Hear What Happened

Our School by Sam Chaltain

This is a quick blog recommending that you read Our School by Sam Chaltain. I’m in the throes of reading three edu-books in a row while promoting mine. What Chaltain provides in buckets is a first-hand account of what’s happening in two different, but clearly interesting schools in Washington, DC.

 

In case you’re wondering, this isn’t a book review.

For most of my educational career, I’ve mostly read books that already come with a slant, some more bent than others. There’s a sense that it doesn’t matter what actually happened and, instead, that the author’s point of view already overlays any partially telling of the events. That’s well and good because … this is what we do now. But, for a while, I’ve often wanted to know what things were happening in other schools besides what the numbers and figures tell us. I wanted to get a feel for how two different schools are handling the changing landscape of one of education reform’s playgrounds.

This book has elements for that. It took a while to pick up the action, but after reading it, I felt empathy towards many of the situations in the book, and I’d recommend folks read for those moments. I read so many opinions on education that, at times, it’s just nice getting a few pages of what’s actually happening in these schools.

This book takes us through the struggles of a public school with a passionate leader trying to grapple with the mandates of DCPS leadership and a school staff that seems at once passionate yet inflexible. The second school is a brand new bilingual charter school (Mundo Verde) that wants to democratize all their decisions with staff and as much promise as any expeditionary school can muster, but soon ran into a need for organization, space, and strength. We get some in-depth conversations with teachers and parents as well, another interesting aspect that had me setting aside my own beliefs just to give a listen for other folks’ reasons for doing what they do.

Sam, thanks for just talking things out here, and leaving your own opinions on how schools should run until the very end.

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On Due Process, Or What You Call Tenure

For the purposes of this essay, I’m using the term “due process” in lieu of tenure because people like Whoopi Goldberg (and millions of others) confuse “tenure” for “job for life.” If that’s what we call “tenure,” then “due process” is more exact. More and more, what it means for K-12 educators and college professors is coming to a confluence.

As far as my contract is concerned, it’s not like, after my third year, I got a job for life. Due process just gives me a better chance at talking back.

Teachers earn (please know this) due process after three years of working and building up a portfolio of pieces that we’ve gathered showing that we have the right to object to our dismissal for frivolous reasons. This carries tons of implications, especially in places where school funding waxes and wanes depending on who the principal, superintendent, mayor, or governor were / are. It means teachers can’t get fired for frivolous reasons, many of which include being pregnant, speaking out of turn, dress code, or different racial make-up than the students they serve, or because the principal just doesn’t like you.

Within reason.

This part especially matters because the reason needs to be clearly stated and reviewers need to do their part, too, if there is a “bad” teacher in our midst. I do agree that we have toxic individuals working in our schools, but rather than blame it on unqualified administrators (which seems to be the crux of almost every argument pro-due process), I’d like to focus on the ones you call “good.” We still haven’t quite pinpointed what “good” and “bad” teachers are, and I know more than a handful of administrators who, even after looking at frameworks and articles collected out of Harvard and Stanford, still can’t actually tell me what a “good” teacher is. So, if good teachers deserve due process and bad ones don’t, then what’s your definition? “You know what I mean” isn’t a good answer in deciding this person’s livelihood, either.

Also, teachers have few incentives professionally to stay in the classroom. People who say “Well, if you don’t want to teach, then leave” as a response to this rarely want to talk about teaching conditions, and why teaching attrition has been horrible. This gets compounded in high-need schools where the hardest working teachers in any building might spend hundreds of dollars and upwards on providing a nurturing environment for their students, something other professions barely do. Many school districts aren’t in the position (and in the business) to re-do their education budgets and get smart about the way they operate.

Due process for educators at least gives teachers who want to stay a stake in the school system they serve. They’ve proven in their work that they can work well as teachers, as curriculum developers, as part of an education community and now deserve to think critically about their work with reasonable impunity. There are hundreds of instances where this is applicable. We all know of principals who form school committees around a specific idea, for example, and tell teachers to be as honest as possible in their findings in said committee. What happens when the teachers in that committee make a conclusion in that committee that the principal doesn’t like?

This situation happens far too often, yet, due process at least assures that, should a principal feel like firing the teacher for having an opposing view (again, happens very frequently), an independent arbitrator can come in and make a conclusion about what actually happened after all the facts have been presented.

We can argue up and down about different cases, and argue over different measures for teacher evaluation (a step in the right direction overall), but the last 12 years of Bloombergian rule have only shown me the bright side of due process. With so many managerial shifts happening above teachers, and students (and their parents) moving up and out of school systems, teachers tend to be the only stability that schools have. That’s important to any community, but especially in communities where instability reigns.

Schools close and open under different names with little to show for it. School chiefs come and go in what seems like rapid succession when sustainability gets thrown around like a bunch of other words that end in “-tion” (thinking: differentiation, etc.). Fads churn out almost as quickly as new teachers do, and so many drop about as quickly, without any sense of whether they worked or not. Due process seems to be the only way for educators to say, “If you can stick with us doing well for three years under this mess, you’ll get a little more voice.”

Obviously, this system, even with a revamped teacher evaluation, well-trained evaluators, and local unions playing ombudsmen, won’t be perfect. Teachers, like students, are variables, and American education is far from standardizing best practices and belief systems on education. Yet, I fear we’ll strip the imperfect in favor of … nothing. We consistently compare teaching to other professions, yet our governments have done next to nothing to make our profession anything comparable or commensurate to anything else, save a few commercials on ESPN.

Without due process, an administrator might look at this and say, “I don’t like what he wrote. He needs to look for another line of work.” Then we wonder why the most thoughtful folks in our field won’t speak to their own profession.

Jose

p.s. – See? I didn’t even have to bash anyone to make my point. Boo-yah.

photo c/o

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Adults, Please Get Out The Way [How Students Do It]

This morning, I imagined Marvin Gaye would have a few things to say about what’s going on today:

Today was supposed to be Michael Brown’s fourth day in college, getting acclimated with the ins and outs of college life, surely different than the humdrum K-12 bells. Sadly, he never got his chance at college and career readiness as the Ferguson police’s hands still smell of blood and tear gas. We never got the chance to see Michael Brown past the few pictures that the media has offered and the sharp image of him mother mourning. The names of young women and men who also had their potential stolen from them read like one of my student rosters at school.

Then it hit me. The activism around Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Renisha McBride, and, more recently, Michael Brown, ripe with young folk doing amazing speaking and organizing, should serve as a reminder to adults a) how much we as adults often look down upon younger generations and b) how much potential the next generations have to move people forward.

In spite of the tragedy and strife of concluding that these public institutions aren’t made for youth of color in mind, our nation’s youth move in ways that adults can’t, so let them. Instead of telling adults, “Here’s what we used to do in the 60′s, so in order to be activists, here’s what you need to do,” we should be saying, “How can we help in your activism?”

Anytime we put ego and nostalgia over selflessness and progress, we lose.

Many of our favorite activists were high-school to college-age when they came into their advocacy young. The ones who were chased by dogs, thrown into trucks, and beaten without provocation were in high school and college, taking days off to work in communities and do the groundwork of the leaders. I see similar energy in spaces right now. Some adults are helping to facilitate these actions. Some adults are taking credit and / or snitching to elders for the sake of looking loyal.

Stop. Adults, if you’re not helping, get out of the way. The “kids” are alright.

Jose

photo c/o

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Who Taught Educators To Hate Themselves? (About Lists and Authenticity)

The following is a debate I’ve had with a few folk, so here is an uninterrupted fleshing out of these thoughts.

Michael Petrilli put out another list of edu-influentials this year. This list, unlike the last time I wrote about this, didn’t need any particular prodding from me regarding diversity and inclusion of women who discuss education policy. This list, unlike the last time, kept Sabrina, Audrey, and me, and added Xian Barrett, too. I generally feel ambivalent about lists, awards, or any special recognition unless I know there was a concentrated effort by a group of folks to put me on. For that, I must be thankful.

At first, I felt as strongly as Audrey Watters does about lists. For the most part, I do agree with her assertions:

We can debate, as philosophers have for ages, the meaning of these terms – “intelligence,” “influence.” But more importantly, we should ask: why do these characteristics matter? To whom do they matter? And once there’s a practice in place that has defined these terms and has designed measurement tools to assess them and a scale to rank them, we should ask what purposes these designations serve. I don’t mean what sorts of perks do you get with your Klout score or your IQ; I mean for us to consider how might these ranking systems reinscribe hierarchy and inequality, all the while purporting to offer an “objective” tool that reflects ability.

Sorta like “science,” but not.

But then something hit me: there’s a lot of connected educators and edu-activists saying they don’t care about lists, awards, and recognition but taking them anyways. Before I became fully acquainted with the intricacies of social media and the worlds of ed-tech and edu-activism, lots of folks received plaudits, gifts, and followers just for existing, willing to include corporate sponsorship in their message as long as their “numbers” flew. Now that there’s a wider range of folk getting in the door (and yes, I do mean me), there’s a problem?

I’m suspicious.I’m suspicious when, out of 100 educator types that Secretary Arne Duncan follows, only two have the courage to say, “Hell no.” (Audrey and John Spencer, if you must know.) I’m suspicious when we say we don’t care about lists, but won’t ask the creators of the lists to take our names down because we want our numbers to go up authentically, whatever that means. I’m suspicious when we’re OK with everyone from celebrities, education professors, and other expert-types speak for us, but the minute an educator comes in that slot, it becomes an issue in our community. Some of the critique I see from educators about actual teachers seems counter-intuitive to building up a profession already favored by the general public.

In other words, who taught educators to hate themselves, specifically each other?

Sabrina Stevens also reminds us that, in spite of what others think, lists and awards do matter because they often lead to other opportunities, other ventures, and more recognition from within communities and from the outside communities, too. This leads to having more influence, getting to speak to others, having your ideas spread, and, yes, more opportunities. Human nature, for better or worse, often has us believing in numbers even when a part of us considers them irrelevant.

Is this a game of “don’t hate the player, hate the game?” It’s more like “Hate the game, and change it so everyone has a better chance to win.

Or don’t play at all.”As for me, I’m suspicious when we act like crabs in a barrel and never question the actual barrel. I’ll keep doing what I do in promoting the great works I see all around me. I also have an obligation to promote the great works of folks who also don’t get on the same lists others do, and I’ll keep opening doors that were once only held open for folks with 20K followers and above. It’s weird that people profess to hate the game yet embrace the benefits bestowed upon them from it. Reminds me of another type of privilege …

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When Can We Talk About Race? (Michael + Trayvon + Renisha + …)

This is often the way education conversations go:

Higher-Up: Hey, so what do people want to talk about?

Teacher 1: Can we talk about teacher evaluation?

Higher-Up: Sure, what’s on your mind?

Teacher 1: Well, here it goes. [long diatribe about how great / terrible Danielson is]

Higher-Up: Well, OK. Anyone else?

Teacher 2 (of color): Can we talk about race now?

Higher-Up: Sounds complicated. We need a more appropriate forum for th …

Teacher 2: But this is urgent. We’re having serious issues going on and so many of our kids are of …

Higher-Up: OK, OK, OK. We’ll get to it in a more appropriate forum. Anyone else?

Teacher 3: Let’s talk about Common Core.

Higher-Up: What about it?

Teacher 3: My thinking is [even longer diatribe about Gates' involvement and how great / terrible standards are for kids]

Higher-Up: I hear you. That’s relevant. Anyone else?

Teacher 2: Can we talk about race now? (with a little more emphasis)

Higher-Up: I still don’t think we’re ready. We’re really dealing with this issue and I’d rather we be better informed and nuanced about race before dealing with it.

Teacher 2: But half the people here don’t actually know what the CCSS is, the layers, and why they’re either for or against any of it and …

Higher-Up: SO everyone should have an opinion on the CCSS, so I allowed it.

Teacher 2: UGH!

(skip to the last teacher on the list …)

Higher-Up: Anyone else?

Teacher 100: I want to talk about the deleterious effects of poverty …

Teacher 2: OK, so are we going to talk about race here?

Higher-Up: Now, I said we needed the right forum …

Teacher 2, agitated: NOOOO! YOU WAIT FOR THE RIGHT FORUM! ALL Y’ALL HERE TALKIN’ BOUT ALL YOUR SINGLE LITTLE ISSUE BUT DON’T WANT TO FACE UP TO THE REALITY THAT OUR KIDS LOOK A LOT DIFFERENT THAN OUR STAFF, THEY DON’T WANT YOUR STINKING MIDDLE CLASS / UPPER CLASS VALUES, AND WANT TO KNOW WHY PEOPLE OF COLOR JUST LIKE THE ONES THEY SEE IN THE MIRROR ARE GETTING SHOT WITH NO CAUSE BY THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT THEM!

Higher-Up: Now, now, let’s stay professi …

Teacher 2: YOU CAN STICK YOUR PROFESSIONALISM UP YOUR …

And scene …

So, not that this has happened before, but I wonder, too frequently, why people always want to wait, wait, wait on discussing issues of race, even ones as point-blank (pardon the pun) as this Michael Brown tragedy. Whether on or offline, people always want to find the “right forum” for this conversation. I get that, with some discussions, we need to have certain protocol so people feel comfortable opening up about their experiences and, in many cases, unpacking their privilege. But then it always feels like people put off certain conversations until people forget them.

All the while, I must openly question how folks can go so hard when it comes to Common Core State Standards and all the reforms that come with it, and not dedicate a few minutes of their time to learn about, if not ask those who know something about, some of the tragedies affecting our kids, both locally and nationally. I refuse to stand in solidarity with those who won’t do so with me.

Because the death of children of color at the hands of our executive branch takes more precedence than any set of standards.

I won’t wait.

Jose

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