Jose Vilson's Blog, page 42

Just My Imagination Running Away With Me (A Post-CCSS World)

The Temptations

I‘ve seen this article in my e-mails and feeds no less than ten times this morning. Much of this is old news for me since, if you’ve put all the pieces together for the last four years, it’s fairly obvious just how invested Bill Gates has been in getting Common Core State Standards moved across different desks. It’s also obvious how many folks, from union leaders to business leaders, have put their hat in at least some part of the CCSS ring. The publishers, as I expected, are having a field decade with the CCSS because, they don’t necessarily need to care whether people get it. Districts will unconsciously still pay up for outside expertise.

Yet, the push-and-pullback against the CCSS has been palpable. Opponents on the left and right have joined forces on a small set of issues related to CCSS, specifically the overemphasis on testing and student data privacy, things that pre-date CCSS, but that have been conjoined with CCSS implementation agreements. State after state keep dropping from CCSS allegiance. Regardless of “who” you root for in the CCSS debate, it seems that there needs to be a conversation about what happens if CCSS collapses.

What will you fill the CCSS “gap” with if it goes away?

This question has the feel of “Well, what’s your religion?” There’s a whole set of educators who’ve been following the Dewey-Meier model for some time already have an idea of where things might go. Others who lean on the E.D. Hirsch / Core Knowledge works may still fall back on a CCSS-like structure because that framework depends on a knowledge base from which learning arises. There are so many frameworks to choose from that it begs the question as to why these two are the only camps that have actually proffered theirs.

In other words, we can’t just say no to everything.

From a math lens, as much as I dislike the way CCSS came about, I also don’t want children of color (!) to only learn multiplication tables in the 10th grade. In literacy, we need a balance of fiction and non-fiction texts, but they can’t all be from the “normal” canon, meaning we need more diverse books, not just from one dominant perspective.

As my readers know, I have legitimate concerns about the Common Core. But, in the midst of protests and pullbacks, I’m already seeing a scenario where states that pull back are simply replicating CCSS and giving it another name. This leads me to believe that the discussion isn’t in the “what,” but the “how.” Again.

I imagine that more folks will find their edu-beliefs rooted somewhere because, otherwise, the people squarely in the CCSS camp win. If folks can’t work towards a better set of standards and curricula than the CCSS, then they’ve lost. I imagine that we can do better than no, but it might be just my imagination, running away with me.

Jose

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What Complicity Looks Like (Why I Support #YesAllWomen)

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that my boys and I wanted to have fun at an Irish pub, jamming to every rhyme and curse Shawn Carter could muster for three verses. It’s already 11pm and we got a few drinks flowing in our system, flirting with a few women of different skin tones, cracking jokes with the a bunch of random guys from the local university. The service was a little slow to get us our drinks, and messed up our drinks more than once, and

All of a sudden, we’ve got DMX’s “Ruff Ryders Anthem” blaring out of the speakers. My boys and I do our usual bop, slurring the chorus when we turn around and see the rest of the bar singing along, too. The first verse drops and I’m just staring at everyone about to say “Niggas wanna try, niggas wanna lie! Then niggas wonder why, niggas wanna die!” A few of them relent after seeing my stare, but a few others keep jamming because one of my boys is riling them up.

I look at him like, “What are you doing?! This is MAD racist!” He’s like, “Well, it’s in the song, so there is that.”

Does it make it OK?

So fine. The DJ moves on to House of Pain’s “Jump Around.” One of my boys gets to flirting with a group of women near the bar’s exit. They’re talking it up. Laughs exchange. Everyone’s jumping. My friend gets bumped by a group of muscle-headed frat boys who were jumping and staring directly at him talking to his new acquaintance. My friend takes exception, but my friends and I notice that the situation might escalate, so we pull him away. We all leave together, so we didn’t think there’d be problems.

“EVERYONE, COME OUT HERE!” I feel a bump from behind. It’s one of the frat boys from inside, wanting to start something. He’s like, “You don’t think I’ll beat your brains out? I’ll Rodney King this whole shit right here!” His boys crack up as the rest of the bar had come out to see the sparks fly. “You got your niggas and I got my niggas, too!” A few shoves get exchanged but before we started swinging, the cops came through. The frat boys stayed. Our group left.

After reading this incident, your initial instinct might be to sympathize with me because, whether you know me or not, calling a Black person, unprovoked, the n-word is problematic at best, racist at worst. After a few times reading this, though, the pushback usually comes in the form of questions, private messages, and other perspectives that blunt an initial reaction:

What if the provoker saw me and my friends yelling along with DMX with the n-word, so he thought it was OK? Why even use it, Jose?
You know the “Jump Around” song gets people riled up. The boys were just being boys and maybe it was a misunderstanding.
You probably aren’t a regular to that bar whereas those guys were. Why go to a bar where the owners and bartenders don’t know you like that?

This all sounds forgiving of the folks who otherwise provoked the situation.

I’m not sharing this simply because a combination of these things have happened in my life. I’m also sharing this because, as much as we are all complicit in some form to racial dynamics, it doesn’t deny either use of the n-word, especially the second time when the other guy didn’t even have to say the n-word to try and treat us like one. The truth could be hiding in plain sight, but we need everything to fit into a neat box, the way Donald Sterling’s does, or the University of California Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger.

For what, I’m not sure.

My experiences have made me see my own privilege in terms of dealing with sexism in educational institutions, and why we need to consciously work against trying to excuse it. It’s really easy to tell a woman that she needs to take personal responsibility, because personal responsibility only belongs to those least advantaged by a given relationship. It’s easy to disagree with a woman, then yell / type sexist nonsense at her because you feel there will be no repercussions.

It’s much harder to set rules about how the marginalized in a situation should behave instead of the (intentionally or otherwise) marginalizer should. That’s why, let’s say the same guy who tried to beat my brains in apologized the next morning or not, it’s not as simple as forgiving him. It’s about understanding the power dynamic that, should things have escalated, the odds were against me.

The dynamics of race and gender only get complicated when you’re on the marginalized end of both, as so many of my friends can tell you. When I’ve been called to task on issues of gender, I readily admit I make mistakes, try to learn from them, and apologize when appropriate. It’s a much better response than saying, “My heart’s in the right place! I’m popular so you have to believe me!” or “You’re wrong! I don’t have a sexist bone in my body!” Whereas, just understanding that, as a man, I consciously or unconsciously contribute to patriarchy (and associated oppression) and I have to be aware of my biases thus.

Also, note bene, even without having called the frat boy “white” or “racist,” people would double down on defending him against the latter label. As if I put the race card in the deck.

Jose

p.s. – Racism and sexism aren’t exactly the same in the way it plays out in our country, but there’s a lot of similarities, intertwined far too often …

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Michelle Obama and Why Teachers Need To Embrace Critique

US First Lady Michelle Obama

Every time someone says something, anything, about teachers, without fail, a naysayer always nags how it’s a conspiracy against teachers as a whole. For instance, a recent commercial about the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum started with a father asking his boy, “You like your teachers this year?” to which the boy replied, “Sure.” Some took that as a coordinated effort by Major League Baseball, Governor Andrew Cuomo, and all their plutocrat friends to diminish the teaching profession.

Really? Isn’t this rather typical banter between parents and their middle school children?

It gets worse when issues of race and class get involved. Take, for instance, this bit by First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama, in a commencement address at Dillard University:

So my mother volunteered at my school — helping out every day in the front office, making sure our teachers were doing their jobs, holding their feet to the fire if she thought they were falling short. I’d walk by the office and there she’d be. (Laughter.) I’d leave class to go to the bathroom, there she’d be again, roaming the halls, looking in the classrooms. And of course, as a kid, I have to say, that was a bit mortifying, having your mother at school all the time.

But looking back, I have no doubt that my classmates and I got a better education because she was looking over those teachers’ shoulders. (Applause.) You see, my mom was not a teacher or a principal or a school board member. But when it came to education, she had that hunger. So she believed that our education was very much her business.

Some folks were outraged by the comments, as if she meant that she would want hundreds of parents swarming the schools, checking to see if their kids were learning something instead of trusting the experts, experts now being the teachers. Actually, the speech reveals something deeper than that, an issue that I not only highlight in my book (see: “Negotiating My Own Skin” and “What Happened”), but that Mia McKenzie deftly does in today’s piece “The White Teachers I Wish I Never Had.” She writes:

The thing is, Ms. McMahon should have known better. She didn’t because white teachers then, and most now, aren’t required to have any analysis of systems of white supremacy or anti-Blackness, and their own complicity in both, before they enter classrooms to teach Black children, some of whom will be introduced to those realities by the behavior of these white teachers. Having done little or none of the necessary work required to examine their complicity, what gives these teachers the right to teach our children? How have they earned the privilege of being such an influential figure in a Black child’s life? Why do we grant them access to the minds of our vulnerable youth, who will already have to face so much racism in the world? I’m 38 and I’m still regularly traumatized by my interactions with blatantly racist, and ‘well-meaning’ but still racist white people. The same is true for all of the Black adults I know. So, how can our children possibly be ok? They can’t be. They’re not.

Truth be told, plenty of people of color are frustrated with our education system, regardless of whether we call it charter, public, or private. Often, the very “well-meaning” teachers who stand in front of our children are also agents for the system, and sometimes work as a cog in said system.

In other words, do teachers come into teaching as a passion, a love, a paying forward or as a job, a step in a ladder towards something “greater?”

This also applies to administrators, superintendents, and others up the chain of command. Do they see themselves as perpetuating a system of inequity and covert oppression or as change agents? Does the system swallow their optimism and hope whole or are there leftovers for the next fight?

It’s OK to double down on how great a teacher you are, how you care about the kids, and how you tear up whenever you watch a teacher movie because that teacher is so like you. It’s quite another to take a hard look in the mirror, or better yet, ask the kids whether you’ve served them well. In most cases, kids are your most important mirror because they’re free enough from our niceties to tell us whether they’re learning.

We need to learn how to embrace critique, especially when it concerns our most marginalized students. We do ourselves no favors by insisting on disregarding racism within our schools, in our conferences, and in our institutions.

We can simultaneously acknowledge that, even though the tenor is a bit better, teachers generally get a bad rap, with their unions, summers off, and irregular schedules. Which should make anyone wonder why a male-dominated government would concern itself with coming after a woman-dominated profession. (Actually, don’t.)

As often as I hear teacher-bashing stories, I hear stories of disgruntled (and rightly so!) parents who wish their child’s teacher wouldn’t stand behind a Paul Tough book or a Sir Ken Robinson lecture whenever the parent questions whether the child is learning. I hear of teachers who always complain about parent involvement, but don’t make themselves available when it comes to conversations about pedagogy. I hear of teachers who, especially in predominantly white institutions, throw kids to the back of the classroom and continually ostracize them in both grades and person. I hear of teachers calling kids trash and less than nothing.

But if you’re not willing to even have the race conversation, then maybe your feet ought to feel a little hotter …

Jose

photo c/o

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Sunglasses and Advil, Last Edit Was Mad Real

I’m surprised a few of you haven’t put out on APB or Missing Persons Report for me since I haven’t blogged on any site for the last two weeks.

Instead, I’ve focused exclusively on my new book, This Is Not A Test. The endorsements, pre-orders, and events have rolled in steadily, with very few hitches. It’s gone so smoothly in fact, I’m fully anticipating a disaster coming in the next few weeks. I want to make this look easy, because to a certain extent it was.

Then I remember I just spent the better part of this weekend (13 hours to be exact) poring over every word, phrase, fact, and space to make sure the book is perfect. Every two weeks, I’m asked to go deeper, harder, more precise about the experiences I’ve had in the last three decades. So, whenever you do get the book, please know: I put everything into this one.

If you haven’t already, please do order the book. Get it here.

Thank you for blowing into my sails. I’m almost past the lighthouse now.

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My Review of The First Review of My Book This Is Not A Test

Let me say, for the record, that I haven’t been excited yet. Not with the endorsements, the hundreds of folk who’ve pre-ordered it, the publisher’s ridiculously good execution with the basics (and then some), meeting Arundhati Roy through my publisher, the exclusive book party and eminent book clubs, or getting my first set of review copies for the five people I already had in mind to receive them anyways. Much of it stems from a childhood humility, one that assumes that I honestly don’t deserve the blessings I receive, so when I do, I don’t know how to react. The second stems from an understanding that I’m far from done with whatever it is that’s going on with me right now. I can’t describe it, but it’s all working well for some reason.

That’s the lens I used with Audrey Watters of Hack Education’s review of my book This Is Not A Test, a humbling tribute to a friend and a great writer, at least in her eyes. I’m still working on owning some of the latter.

She said:

“What then do we make of coming-of-age stories, particularly those that crack open experiences – or expectations of experiences – with schooling? Perhaps our task as readers and critics can be to see how certain stories might reclaim or decolonize these older genres, how they highlight the power dynamics and the cultural values we don’t often recognize or confront, and how they prompt us to consider not just whose stories get told but how these stories get told.”

True. And yet:

There is no fixed or singular identity here either. There are border crossings and hyphenations. Dominican, but not. Haitian, but not. Black Latino. Father. Poet. One of the fiercest writers I know. One of the most tender. Back-and-forth between Spanish and English. Rakim name-dropped alongside Ravitch. Some references cited and explained – Paolo Freire, for example – but the hip hop lyrics aren’t; it’s up to the reader to decode, not to Vilson to translate.

During this book, I had a hard time finding the balance between explaining too much and letting others figure it out. The thing with books is, I want to leave enough for people to go decode. Someone will have to make a Pinterest or eduClipper board for all the little nuggets and hidden gems I leave in there. Then again, I found myself giving a tight version of the history of the Common Core, most of which I could have asked you to go read from Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error. I didn’t. Some things, it seems, I WOULD have to explain to you so you don’t have to stop and Wikipedia it on the fly.

Alas.

The rest of the review reads like someone who’s rediscovering me as a person, which was the hope. Very few people had eyes on this, and the 20 or so people who read it before it got published won’t recognize this version either.Every time I re-read, I dug in my heels just a little deeper, into administrator roles, into our school system, into liberals and conservatives who think education is the civil rights issue of our time but won’t address actual racial issues, into my person. And with each critique, I set forth even more areas to critique myself, and Audrey seemed to catch that so deftly.

Then again, that’s how persons evolve, too. We are but bodies of water, shifting by the moon above us, the winds against us, and the ground below us. Thus, I’ve had a hard time being excited about anything I’ve written, am writing, or will write because things seem to shift so quickly for me. But it’s great to know that, at some point and time, and possibly forever, this review stood as testament that someone actually knew what I wanted them to feel.

That person just happens to be my friend Audrey. Thank you.

Jose

p.s. – She also Storify-ied our interview from today. I almost said I’m the Ta-Nehisi Coates of race in K-12 education. Almost.

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Your Kids Don’t Actually Feel Like They Belong In School

Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights Act Signing

Today, a friend forwarded me a report from the Pew Research Center that focused on the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. An excerpt:

But as historic as it was, a half century later many Americans — particularly blacks — still believe that the country has a ways to go in overcoming racial disparities.

A CBS News poll conducted in late March found that while 59% of Americans — including 60% of whites and 55% of blacks — considered race relations in the U.S. to be generally good, about half (52%) thought there was real hope of ending discrimination altogether while 46% said there would always be a lot of prejudice and discrimination. About six-in-ten blacks (61%) held the view that discrimination will always exist compared to 44% of whites.

In other words: people of color have a much different view of race relations in this country. Again.

The implications for this get even more complicated when we look at the accompanying statistics about public schools. When asked whether Blacks were treated less fairly than whites in local public schools, only 15% of whites, 35% of Latinos / Hispanics, and 51% of Blacks believe this. In other words, for every white person who believes this, 2 Latinos and 3 Black people are absolutely shaking their heads at the 85% of white folks who don’t.

Which makes the idea of speaking about institutional racism that much more important.

Unfortunately, many teachers in the classroom don’t “see” race when they see kids, and / or don’t see themselves as agents to an institution that makes many children of color feel like they don’t actually belong to them. They’re “colorblind” because they either don’t want to deal with it, don’t know how, or implicitly have a blind eye to their privilege. Or all of those.

That’s the thing about privilege: people like me often have to point them out in order to make others more reflective.

In the 21st century, we can no longer blame any one region of the country or political “side” for racism. One of the most left-leaning states in the nation, New York, also leads the nation in segregated schools, a function of the rise of charter schools and not-so-secret redlining. This may have shocked a lot of folks, but there’s a critical mass of us who’ve waited far too long to say I told you so.

We’re the ones in the other table you refuse to sit at. It’s cool. We got stories, too.

Jose

picture c/o

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I Need You Here (Global Math Presentation)

I’m going to drop a blog sometime on Wednesday, but in the meantime, I have an online presentation tomorrow for the Global Math Department, and I’m using this one to namedrop and blow spots. I’ll be on fire. If you’re interested, please do RSVP to this presentation. I might even raffle off one of my books because, well, this is what we do now.

RSVP NOW!

Thanks in advance. See y’all tomorrow.

Jose

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Racism Without Racists: The School Re-segregation Edition

Thurgood Marshall

Today, ProPublica released a special report on their website dedicated to the re-segregation of America’s public schools. With the 60th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision on May 17th approaching, ProPublica has focused this special section on Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where three separate and equally devastating stories will be told as case studies to highlight the effects of “letting” dreams of integration die on their own.

Unfortunately, progress never just dies on its own, and in this case, it’s not completely unintentional.

In fact, I also believe we’ve made the race problem in our public schools far too distant from us to truly to see it as a local as well as a national problem. For instance, if you took a guess as to which states had the highest rates of segregation in the country, you might assume it would be somewhere in the Southeast. The stigma about the Southeast works for both liberals and conservatives alike, who can point to our country’s history with slavery and eventual secessions during the US Civil War and say, “Well, that’s just the way it is over there.”

The problem is: it’s not just there. New York, Illinois, and Michigan that round out the top 3 states with the highest rate of school segregation (defined in this study as “the number of black students in schools where 90 percent or more of the student population are minorities”), all three blue states as per the 2012 election.

Therefore, it’s safe to assume that this isn’t just a “liberal” or “conservative” problem, but an “all public schools” problem. The Supreme Court, ruling in favor of Oliver Brown, et. al., said, in part:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system…

These days, people say things like “Well, not every child appreciates a good education” or “We should privatize the entire public school system, separate from the jurisdiction of government.” Yet, as we’ve seen in history, even the whiff of equity scares folks in power. School closures, redlining, and the advent of public schools forced the US government’s hand on promoting integration.

One only needs to read Linda Darling-Hammond’s The Flat World and Education to see how integration decreases the achievement gap AND the opportunity gap. Even if you’re not inclined to do so, please note: integration makes it so that all schools would have to be funded appropriately because all types of kids are in that building. Because kids of color are already seen as inferior, especially by people of color who’ve ingested the “white is better” doctrine, they tend to get a certain type of education that wouldn’t be acceptable in more affluent and whiter neighborhoods. Studies after rigorous studies endorse this.

But if you’re still not convinced, that’s OK. Just know that our current segregated system moonwalks us back to a point where “separate and unequal” wasn’t just de facto, but de jure. All of our students deserve better.

Jose

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Without Some Affirmative Action, Bros Won’t Look At You

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Book Con. Miami Device. Vox Media. FiveThirtyEight.

<span class=”drop_cap”>I</span> see any argument against affirmative action as invalid. Time and again, I see clear examples of situations where there was a rather conscious decision to exclude because of “fit,” which is just doublespeak for “whatever’s normal and profitable to us.” Which is often to the detriment and ostracization of an “other.”

Thus, I have something else to add to the plethora of things I’ve already said:

Affirmative action is my best friend. Actually, it’s every person of color’s best friend. And, mostly, it’s white women’s best friend. We ought to embrace affirmative action with both arms wide open and say “Thank you!” For, without affirmative action, we leave the decision of selection to those who would relegate we of different experiences and perhaps more negative perceptions of the fairyland they call united.

While one might say, “What do panels and media staff have to do with anything?”, to which I respond, “With all the qualified and vested individuals out there, many of whom have passed the respectability politics test from some institute of higher learning, would you think that the panels and staff put to the fore still look like this or would they be more representative of the wealth of knowledge out there?”

The nice part of you wants to believe that the selectors will come to their own egalitarian way of approaching diversity and pick folks outside of their country club or beer garden. They don’t. It’s the same people speaking the same language inculcating each other on their rightness, flabbergasted when the rest of the world looks at their selection with rolled eyes and loud sighs. Once the reactions flow in, a promise to “improve” always comes out, and a few people of color get a “privilege-to-be-here-so-take-it” pass, even if they may not get a chance to speak up and out.

As an after-thought. Not a “before-thought” the way legacies do at Ivy Leagues or “thought” the way bros with beard implants get. An after-thought.

That’s why, when Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in the recent affirmative action case, I nodded like my head was about to fall off:

“In my colleagues’ view, examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination. [...] This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society.”

Affirmative action isn’t a handout. It’s the idea that everyone who isn’t a “bro” should have a part to play. We can’t just wish racism away. If institutions continually perpetuate racism, then the institution has a hand to play in dismantling racism. Otherwise, expertise, like those linked above, looks bleached, devoid of the gradients this world allows us.

Jose

photo c/o

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Retroactively Paying It Forward (On The City – UFT Contract)

Michael Mulgrew, Carmen Farina, and Bill de Blasio

In case it hasn’t already flooded your airwaves already, the De Blasio administration and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) reached a tentative agreement to finally get teachers their just due. While I haven’t pored over the details of the contract, I’m certainly happy with any salary increase at this point. After four years without contract, the cost of living has jumped higher and higher without matching recompense for some of the most essential members of any flourishing society.

Of course, lots of people doubted whether the union would get retroactive pay or any contract at all this year after the mess Mayor Bloomberg left, but in fact, two rational sides worked out something they believed would advance the teaching profession.

The reason why so many of us feel comfortable with diverting the conversation around teacher contracts is to “unions” is because teachers themselves aren’t supposed to seek money for themselves. They’re supposed to keep their mouth shut, stay underpaid, and let others negotiate for them so they can pretend to not care about how much money they make.

Yet, it’s certainly appropriate for teachers to demand good pay. If anything, paying teachers means teachers can pay that energy forward.

I can’t pretend I know everything that this contract means, but I can tell you that, with the mounting debt of making a home in NYC, it’s good to know you have a union that’s willing to negotiate for your right to teach and make that home.

After 12 years of Bloomberg’s teacher-bashing, this is the big payback.

Jose

photo c/o Wall Street Journal

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