Jose Vilson's Blog, page 8

On This Insurrection, and The Next

I wasn’t supposed to ever forget the day because it was my son’s ninth birthday. In the middle of a pandemic, we still thought it best to keep this tradition. On the news, anchors kept reiterating that the day’s proceedings wouldn’t normally get this much attention if not for the president’s consistent obfuscation about the proceedings. One by one, he and his cronies started speaking on a podium in DC in a small picture-in-picture set-up on the bottom right corner with no audio, but the events of the day weren’t supposed to get much coverage other than a demonstration and a confirmation.

Then, the insurrection struck. Just then, the America so many of us knew came into HD view. Rogue recusants made their way with ease up the Capitol steps. The crowd thought to have dissipated after Election Day had intended on discrediting the process by any means necessary. The idea that the United States of America had ostensibly descended into a “third-world banana republic” – whatever that means – seemed to flummox many of the anchors and correspondents witnessing the red caps slide through Capitol Rotunda. The “blue lives matter” chants were not to be found as they trampled and passed by Capitol police while flashing badges of their own. As the velvet ropes widened, it became more evident that many of the police in charge of maintaining security would watch along with us, unabated and unconcerned about drawing guns the way they had at the Black Lives Matter protestors all summer.

My son, nine years old and a hundred years wise, wasn’t surprised. While no person of color belongs to a tight-knit monolith, our experiences in this country allow us to see things in this country that it doesn’t see in itself. We know to tell the truth to our youth long before they’re supposedly ready for it, lest the truth reveals itself before we get to. This is one of those moments when “I told you so” doesn’t hit the mark. Even saying things like “Black people constantly have to save white people from themselves” puts so many of us, again, on the defense, as if we didn’t see how the Trump administration wouldn’t scale back norms in the name of white comfort.

Our country will insist on teachers telling the fable of America in all its exceptionalism and destiny. It’s bad enough that the last few decades of education reform have relegated social studies to a second-class elective. We also have a myriad of textbooks downplaying slavery, course maps that never trace to Native American genocide, and singalongs that herald Columbus as a hero. In the last four years, we’ve heard America should be a “marketplace of ideas,” never reckoning with the idea that white supremacy and fascism are awful ideas that inevitably get offered in such a market.

Our kids learn that choice here, too, is deeply connected to a matrix of elements, much of which is out of their direct influence.

It’s not enough to have an anti-fascist (antifa?) teacher much like one teacher of color isn’t enough to erase a student’s internalized racism. Teachers are certainly important in this calculus. As agents of the state, teachers have a prescribed set of standards and content we’re asked to impart on children, stated or otherwise. Students in this country spend a significant time of their childhood in front of teachers, all great opportunities to ensure these students have the tools by which to negotiate the world. But the “one teacher” dynamic oft espoused in movies elides the fact that so many of the “truth-telling” teachers get summarily marginalized, ostracized, and fired from their schools, especially if they’re of color.

Even as we speak, a large segment of Congress is working to subdue notions of impeachment, the most effective governance tool to remedy the Inciter-In-Chief’s incendiary comments and actions. Part of what this does is absolve America from having to remedy the centuries of oppression, suppression, and dereliction of its duties to espouse the very beliefs they hold on paper. Holding onto this idea of America as a world leader in democracy obviously negates its own attempts at inference in countries across the world, but, just as importantly, it keeps its own citizens from suggesting that America isn’t living up to promises it made to its own people. If anything, everything Trump has done up to this point suggests his advocates have made anything he does part and parcel of what America does.

Fine. But this also means those of us who’ve been racially marginalized and oppressed by the same set of ideals can be rightly unsurprised by all of this. Rather than call for the dissolution of America since it can’t seem to get beyond its own racist, xenophobic, colonial past in truth and reconciliation. Nevermind what we tell children about America. What do adults tell themselves about America? What does “normal” mean for us? Are our definitions of “normal” the same?

When we teach, what does “hope” mean? Because there’s a vast majority of teachers who walk into the classroom defining hope as a linear function of historical progress and a smaller set of us who understand these “setbacks” as part of America’s core. Trump attacks America by appealing to outwardly delegitimizing the rights and humanity of people America has also deemed second and third class. Some of us go into teaching because and not despite that fact. We weren’t overreacting back then and aren’t overreacting now.

Surely, I wouldn’t wish for America to have a repeat of what we saw on Wednesday, but if those most responsible for correcting course let this moment pass for fear or for political aspiration, we’ll never see the peace we purport to seek. Many of us read between the lines when a country founded by white male landowners was able to trample on millions of other human beings in such linear fashion. As Timothy Snyder says in this excellent piece, “this is not because the present repeats the past, but because the past enlightens the present.” The past hasn’t passed.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, my son’s birthday went on as planned. Trump wasn’t about to take this day from us, too.

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The Lives That Chose Us (2020 Year-In-Review)

In mid-September, I was knee-deep in a few readings, one for each class I had taken this fall. The readings ranged from dead white men (think Durkheim, Marx, et. al.) to the history of education, all so compelling that, for a time, I could isolate the words on the page from the specter of death, fascism, and impending doom. A global pandemic laid waste to bodies and souls by the thousands around the world. By that time, we crossed 200,000 persons dead. The United States government, specifically the Trump administration, preferred doing nothing to mitigate these passings while the figurehead teed up white golf balls and white blow horns over and again. Governments across the country doubled down on inequity, leaving the responsibility of basic survival to food banks, philanthropy, and hopeful appearances on daytime news programs. Businesses closed, some temporarily, some forever, all while citizens kept their masks off in disbelief that science – and not social media conspiracy theorists – might get us through this.

Schools opened and closed, too. Fighting ensued in either direction because we didn’t clearly map the plan out. And, for the first time in 15 years, the reopening of schools didn’t include me as a staff member anymore. So I read.

There were a few running themes in my studies thus far, most pervasive among them is that the choices we think we’re making are controlled before we make them. In other words, this is the life that chose us. In 2020 alone, I had evidence all around me suggesting as much. I couldn’t have chosen the tragedies and sorrow happening all around me: the ten sirens on average blaring outside my apartment building, the colleagues and peers who passed away for simply breathing their workplace air, the students who stayed on our virtual classrooms while their parents, cousins, and friends perished, the callous abnormality around us.

Yes, all is not lost. But nothing is won until we recognize what it took to win.

This year helped me shed renditions of me that no longer served my purpose. I created homemade videos and Instagram Lives for my students and other community members to learn math from me. EduColor as an organization reorganized to better match and respond to the demands of our moment, where only a few months prior we were told we couldn’t be better. I set harder social boundaries this year, which allowed me to be more open to developing deeper friendships and mentor others. I also took on more speaking, more writing, and more web design work than I have in years. I’m on the national board of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. I got to tell Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro how much I appreciated them in Brooklyn face-to-face before we stopped taking face-to-face for granted.

Now, instead of teaching students in the Heights, I’m reading and writing research with my students in mind.

Wendy fought valiantly against cancer and only lost time. Rameer and I never got to meet, but he was a solid brother in the Blackest way possible. Kobe’s career spanned my fandom and my students’ too. John organized so we could attempt to defeat a more visceral racism via ballot. Chadwick made dignity and pride in us a core tenet of his work. Erika was my first kiss. Jas captured every room she walked into. Bill’s voice is a celebration, a mourning, or a romance every time you hear it. Daniel rhymed with superior ease and only told us he passed two months after he did. Vicente serves shots of tequila and made some of the best burritos I’d ever tasted.

COVID didn’t take all of them, but this life did. I wouldn’t have chosen for the world to lose them.

This life asked me to appreciate what I’ve been given because, in a minute, this life and all its accouterments could be stripped from me. I’m from the hood. This is not new. My family is alive. I get to study, to write, and to push our narrative during times I had no access to back when I was a full-time classroom teacher. I still pay rent, buy groceries, and, make breakfast (almost) every morning. I still find ways to believe in people and tell them as much over video, text, and e-mail. I’m still hoping that we’ll all see each other face-to-face and that we’d learn every lesson possible from an era that seeks to sledgehammer every wall we call “society.”

But I’m studying at Columbia University with 15 years of experiencing teaching in a hood reminiscent of the neighborhood I grew up in. My child attends the very schools I wish to see fully funded. I march closer to the greatness that people saw for me with my ancestors new and elder in tow. I’m not the Secretary of Education many of you said I’d be, but I’m in a position to love and lead as I haven’t been in years.

If there were ever a choice, then the life I live now is closer to it. Hope.

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Where Did Education Fail Us?

In my final reflection for the semester of my doctoral studies (don’t ask me how it’s going), I considered what it meant to get an education. Over and again in this space, I’ve considered how there’s a big difference between schooling and education. Schooling is a set of processes characterized by the desire to show students a given set of ideas and materials. Education is the learning that this process is supposed to produce. But, as is the axiom, just because someone is teaching doesn’t mean another person is learning and, what’s more, just because someone is learning doesn’t mean they’re in a place where schooling is happening.

But it also begs the more onerous question: where did education fail us?

As human beings, we’re naturally curious. From birth, we soak in a plethora of sensory information about ourselves, other people, and our surroundings. For many of us, schooling serves as a deterrent to that rendition of education because we’re introduced to what society means by education: a set of explicit and implied knowledges this society wishes to impart through multiple methods to its youngest children. But, if education starts as a process of discovery and curiosity and constricts to an ever-narrowing list of items so the student can participate on multiple levels of society, then what did this schooling do to get this country – and the world – like this?

Specifically, where did education fail us?

Anti-intellectualism may not be enough to fully describe the breadth of our world’s problems. In this country, the line of thinking asks us to believe in systems – public, private, charter, whatever – that ultimately calcify the inequity our country professes to want to eradicate. Too many people take these processes for granted and, rather than fight for better, they push for an individualist narrative, relieving themselves and society from addressing the problem more directly. Schooling serves as a scale for capital, too, where inequity must persist to justify the impulses of parents who wish their child don’t just have better than them, but better than the others as well. Our society couldn’t possibly provide a great education to every child because then some couldn’t bear justifying thousands of dollars for the perceived difference.

So, while I believe in public schools, I also see how society and its actors sow distrust. How can the policymakers and politicians with the pedigrees, titles, and degrees from universities that society lauds also be the very folks who take no responsibility for the inhumane perils we’re witnessing at this moment? How can those same pedigreed people use the knowledge they’ve acquired to destroy whole humans economically, spiritually, and literally?

Which education will give children the idea that we can do better collectively and individually? Which education will help people interrogate the very schooling that either helps or hinders their understanding of this shared humanity? How will adults deliver compassion to students who watched with horror as the country they pledge allegiance to refuses to help their immediate families, friends, neighbors, teachers, grocers, doctors, and other people they loved? How can people with enormous and abnormal riches ever create an equitable society with a general populace who’ve been taught that level of math as truly unquantifiable in their real contexts?

How much schooling does one need to finally receive an education?

We have over 13,000 school districts in the US alone with varying levels of decentralized decisions from curriculum and teacher evaluation to hiring and examination. We have any number of adults who went into the profession either seeking to create change by any means, maintain a job, or everywhere in between. Sociologists would either tell this country that we’re preparing children for the workforce in more ways than one or training them for compliance to society’s norms. We may have a relatively common set of standards, but we still don’t agree on what students should know about the world around them.

And we’re doing this in a country where our understandings of schooling are filtered through the neoliberal, technocratic “No Child Left Behind,” a set of policies that pushed the narrative of higher expectations through more testing and more data. Now, almost two decades after its passage, it’s hard to say if the scaling up of academic achievement led to making a better world from all that schooling.

Either way, we’re getting an education from it. This may not be the narrative you want to hear, but it’s one of the narratives that hopefully inspires us to do better via rage, particularly for those who died for us to learn these lessons.

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A New Narrative About The Secretary of Education, Too [Medium]

For EduColor’s Medium blog, I wrote a bit more about the Secretary of Education using some inspiration from Vanessa Siddle Walker’s The Lost Education of Horace Tate, a must read:

“I’ve witnessed how the narrative of public schooling and education writ large has forced parents to run towards alternatives, even when those alternatives are often used for exploitative and racist means. Some people would have never cared for the collective well-being of public schools without the breadth of reforms put in place by No Child Left Behind/Race To The Top, leaving Black and brown kids with no options while other parents send their children to the one public school in their district that they’ve funneled their tax dollars toward. I’ve witnessed how many folks on “both” sides of the education reform camp have gone out of their way to subvert racial justice even when they ostensibly say that Black lives matter. I’ve made note of when even the most well-intentioned of us who want to bridge the divide inevitably get perceived as mascots even by those who appear supportive.

Years ago, I feared the debate would make religions out of complicated human beings to the detriment of our poorest and ignored students and communities. There are no “both sides” to this situation. There are many.”

To read more, please do follow through and click here. Share and share alike.

Thank you!

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Where Will You Get Your Educators of Color From Now? [Medium]

In my latest post for Medium, I explore the connections between the current pandemic, the racial uprising, and NYC’s efforts to recruit and retain educators of color:

“… it’s the same educators who saw the litany of issues that encumbered their work in NYC schools that ought to serve as our schools’ best ambassadors. But the lack of real vision and leadership, the silencing of those who could provide that leadership, the systemic attitudes towards folks who even attempt to elevate social justice, the sheer number of deaths happening around friends and families, the reverberations of the voices they hear in their own communities about this pandemic, and the colleagues who fear being called racist over actually addressing and redressing racism in their own professional spaces makes for a concoction that might make this profession too much to bear.

It’s visible aggression.

For more, read the latest on EduColor’s new and improved Medium publication!

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Jose Interviews Mr. Vilson, Part 5: Now, It’s Every Classroom

Jose: So!

Mr. Vilson: So.

J: So …

MV: Awkward, isn’t it?

J: Right. So … what would you like to tell everyone about this moment?

MV: Well, I’ve officially resigned from the NYC Department of Education. It wasn’t an easy choice, but it was the choice presented. I applied for study leave and they rejected it, so it was only a matter of time. It’s fine. This felt inevitable given that I got a full scholarship to “King’s College …”

J: Another Hamilton reference.

MV: I do that.

J: But why here? Why now?

MV: Contrary to what people might think, it wasn’t due to COVID. I would have loved to step into a fight like this. Let me remind you that we’ve taught during several emergencies. There wasn’t a fight I wasn’t willing to break up, a stairwell I wasn’t willing to clear out, a student I wasn’t willing to go visit. We taught through a transit strike, sleeping over a cousin’s house. During a fire drill, we were a couple of inches away from getting run over by an SUV because the driver thought his job was more important than students’ lives.

J: Yeah, I remember that … yikes.

MV: We went to school during that “professional development” week in March when we already knew how dangerous the virus was. We did all three days and were told we weren’t enraged enough about the virus. [snickers] It wasn’t even on some hero nonsense, but it was out of a sense of duty and understanding that students would be better off for me going in at the moment. I couldn’t not go in if so many of my colleagues were going in.

J: Thank God.

MV: Truly. That spiritual work you’ve been doing is working on us. Shouts to my administrators, too.

J: Is that our first time giving props to a principal we worked for on this blog?

MV: I … think so?

J: How’s that feel?

MV: Well, that brings me to my next point, which is that I would have – could have – taught forever. The problem is never the students. I’ve had plenty of headaches and heartaches, but I knew that the students represented the best wishes and dreams of the parents who sent them to me and I finally got administrators who matched my energy …

J: And the one who stayed practically saved our job …

MV: Totally unexpected, but he knows we care about kids as much as he does. So the principal we got just last school year is dope. The two assistant principals are dope. The staff is great and they’ll take care of our kids as always …

J: But it was too late because we already decided the summer of 2019 what we needed to do. We fought too hard for everything. The longer you stayed, the pettier things felt on multiple levels. The things that happened to Luz at her school were enough. You went from getting scolded over a bulletin board to getting scolded because they didn’t think the students were engaged enough …

MV: Please. The professional in me started hearing rumors. I saw the target on my back, which is always the price for advocating the way we do. The previous administrators were telling us that a National Board Certified teacher didn’t know how to plan engaging lessons. But we pressed on because Charlotte Danielson couldn’t teach better than me, and neither could …

J: Aiyyo.

MV: Professional, I know.

Remember how they tried to stain our teacher evaluations off of erroneous measures, then you had to fight it all the way to the city level against DOE Central? They had the weakest case and you still lost off a technicality in the law? Then the law was struck down so it’s like I got an individual L for the collective W. Before this year, we felt like hamsters spinning in the typical wheels. We didn’t need the recognition, awards, promotions, or the opportunities some denied us, but …

J: We did everything we could, not just for our kids, but for Inwood, Washington Heights, New York City, this country rife with white supremacy, the world. Your advocacy was too dangerous so you rarely aligned to the rubric of what a “teacher of the year” does.

MV: Fair. How about the year one of the long-term subs cheered when Trump came into office and the students held a rebellion against him? They were crying in front of him and he more or less shrugged as his classroom crumbled? Or how Trump’s election was used as a way to inform our kids that they need to “get their acts together?” Kids of immigrants terrified within our school’s walls!

Or when a data manager compared changes in testing protocol to Hurricane Katrina? We’re gonna have to tell these stories in longer form later because that really took a toll …

J: May the fires from the bridges we burn light the way, they say. We’ve been in fight mode for more than a decade with little time off. After a while, even the strongest pugilist has to re-evaluate their stances …

MV: Isn’t it hilarious that we railed against the chancellor until we got one that endorsed anti-racist practices and at least acknowledged my contributions to the profession?

J: … Also, the work continues at this moment. You never fell back on your spurs.

MV: That’s not even in question. Critical supporters have always been super-important. The equity-minded teacher we embodied helped create the era we’re in now. Our attention to the profession of teaching, to anti-racist pedagogy, to teacher voice and agency – and student voice and agency – created models that any number of folks still follow. That can never be taken from us, either. We handed the gifts down to hundreds of teachers without need for recompense.

J: You learned from your elders well.

MV: True indeed.

J: We espoused the idealist we said we’d be since Day 1. They told us we would leave before our first year was over. Remember that? [smirk] So what are we doing now?

MV: Well, I’m not going anywhere, really. I’m gonna miss the kids terribly. I still do now. They’re annoyingly great. While we’ve been staying home, we’ve now had time to go from thinking about just our students to every student in every classroom.

J: The ways in which that connects to your work in sociology …

MV: You couldn’t just say “How …” instead?

J: Fine. But you’re right. My advocacy for us extends because the world needs to hear from educators about the direction of this country. So many other professionals get to have an opinion about policies and practices happening right now, and the confluence of everything happening right now centers our work as educators, especially of color.

That’s the EduColor work. That’s the WeBuildEdu work. That’s the home, life, everything work. That’s our work – virtually – at TC as a full-time student, too. I’m always humbled by the positive reaffirmation from people in our circle. Just because we resigned doesn’t mean we’re resigned.

MV: Yessir! And we’re not running or in the running for anything as far as we can tell, despite people’s fears [both laugh]. I’m excited about our present and future work.

J: Me, too, man. I appreciate you. We did good.

MV: Great, even.

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God’s Plan (A Requiem for Wendy Menard)

On November 29, 2016, we had a Single Session workshop for the entire Math for America community entitled “A Continuing Conversation: Race, Equity, and STEM Education.” A few weeks prior, you witnessed the country that once felt so full of promise reject its stated values in favor of a man and an administration that outwardly espouses white supremacy and all of its branches. The rest of us had been so accustomed to your unassuming and pensive presence in the spaces you led. But on that night, you took the opportunity to speak up and loudly about the urgency of our conversation and why we were gathered. We could no longer settle for passive voices in the city and in the country you grew to love to grow disappointed in. An auditorium full of the most decorated educators in New York City was a captive audience while you held the tensions of being a white Jewish woman elevating her more racially marginalized counterparts while holding your white counterparts accountable to stepping up in the here and now. You hated crying in front of everyone but needed to use the stage to light a fire under as many (white) people’s pants as possible, perhaps including your own.

I was so glad to play second fiddle this time. You rarely go into situations without a plan. None of this was part of the plan.

The summer prior, we spent time at Twitter Math Camp where I both keynoted and hosted a workshop with you. What people may not understand about our collaboration is that we couldn’t be further apart when it came to preparation. For my keynote, I didn’t know what I was going to say until the night before, and even then I had no idea if I wanted to take more or less time. For our workshop, you wrote out the proposal, tapped my shoulder multiple times from proposal acceptance until an hour before the workshop started to make sure every part was in place. I liked the spontaneity of our interactions. You believed in structure and security. We did this dance the first time we worked together, you assuring that everyone had a clear sense of the task, me helping to make meaning of our teachable moments.

We could have thrown the idea of co-moderation away. But we didn’t. In some ways, we didn’t get to choose. This “Racially Relevant Pedagogy” workshop awaited us. We may not have started it, but we made it ours.

We met at Cafe Frederick to plan for the coming semester of professional learning. You brought a notebook. I brought my Evernote. We had a set of activities to draw from and you were willing to lean into that. But you believed in me when I said “Let’s do something completely different.” We never looked at the activities again. We set out for the semester: four courses where we would go from the individual to the structural through reading, interacting, and interrogating. The first workshop went alright by your standards, but we ran out of time. The activities bled into the second one. We built community with the participants quickly.

Then the election happened. We didn’t plan that. On November 22nd, we – the facilitators and the participants – spent the first half of the workshop mourning with our room, sharing tears, raging at some of the educators out there, and eventually thanking each other for creating a space unlike any other at MfA. We planted seeds together, transforming the room into a space where we could re-imagine what professionalism in education had to look like.

You may have thought that I didn’t need to work with you. But you’re part of the reason I kept going when it felt like the world would pull me asunder. Our times at MfA with our squad gave me every confidence that I needed to keep doing the work while so many forces would negate my very person. Our after-session chats allowed us a moment of respite from the nonsense happening in our schools. I’d watch your face light up when you found a new way to teach your students some math. Your favorite party trick was waiting quietly when the bill came before telling everyone how much they owed and how much money they got back from whatever money they put in. I had my head shake ready. You always asked me what I had going on next and then you’d follow up by either being there or following the event on Twitter.

I miss you, Wendy. You were/are my friend.

Your quiet leadership in our workshops gave other white folks the courage to step into the conversation with whole hearts. You gave people windows into your learning and how many ways you wanted to grow in that learning. You loved your family and spoke of them every time we talked because they were the source of your spirituality. Your faith showed in your work, mostly when no one was looking. You especially loved the children and the people they were becoming in front of you.

You ended up in one of Math for America’s ads. You felt iffy about actually appearing in it, but you loved that everyone could see how happy you were in your learning.

And I know you did this through plenty of personal and professional pain. You truly battled breast cancer with every fiber of your being. You tried several treatments and hated the pity party because you were very much still alive. There was always a quilt, a book, a blog, a class, a tweet, a curio that kept you going until the next day. You seemed genuinely interested in how people were doing, though you also made no bones when you genuinely felt disinterest in something or someone, too. (These were the funny moments, too.)

In our final conversation, you told me what you had planned out for the remainder of the year, the benchmarks you had hoped to set before passing on. You planned out even these last few moments you had with this Earth. A bunch of us got to tell you how much we loved and appreciated you before this last treatment stopped working. You may have passed away from this Earth, but you’re not going anywhere. Your participation in any number of events made the event itself that much more pleasant.

You poured into so many of us, and so many of our wins are also yours.

Between you and me, if you didn’t participate in some of the things you did, I wouldn’t have done them. Not the Twitter Math Camp workshop. Not both semesters of the Racially Relevant workshops we facilitated. Not the White Fragility book club you proposed. Because every time I said “Do we have to?” you’d remind me “Well, if we don’t, who will?” At times, you regretted saying “yes” so often, but it always felt like a part of you knew that “yes” for you meant “yes” to the rest of us to do our part, to make this world better for our colleagues, our families, our kids, and everyone else who stood to benefit from a world that might love them back.

You would have won if you were given more time. But it’s selfish for us to want more of you while you were in so much pain. I’ll choose to remember you for the smiles, the laughter, the squad, and yes, the moments you stood up in your own way.

When co-teaching goes well, you’re always going into the relationship hoping you learn something from your co-teacher. That I did. G-d has Their own plan for us all. Glad They allowed me to co-teach with you.

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Learning Relationships In The New Normal [Sponsored]

This post is sponsored by WE Teachers, made possible by Walgreens. All opinions are my own. In the provided link, they have free resources on everything from trauma-informed education to bullying and mental well-being.

The last conversation I had with students before the official end of the school year was between me and a few of my seventh graders. We talked about summer plans over Cardi B and Juice Wrld. We shared a snack together. The boys jockeyed for position as “best” virtual game player. The girls talked about the ways they’d miss school and their least favorite teacher. I didn’t participate in that one. As I ended the phone call, I winced at having to hang up. What does it mean to have an unofficial, face-to-face, end-of-school back in March then have an official, virtual end-of-school hangout in June?

One thing’s for sure: that episode wouldn’t have been possible without the relationships I had already established from September to March.

In different circles, I proposed that schools shouldn’t start classes with some of the usual routines we’ve seen and heard. Schools should take a good inventory of the people and things we’ve lost, the ways our relationship to school changed, and what’s drastically changed since our last set of interactions. As the majority of school districts opt to start school virtually, schools have to shift their relationships from the technocratic headquarters for academic learning of the recent past to the child-centered hubs for well-rounded growth for the present and future.

A trauma-informed school has been important to children’s nurturing prior to this moment. A trauma-informed school isn’t just important, but necessary now.

Student relationships are the crux of any classroom pre-, during, and post-pandemic. The interactions must go beyond salutations and axioms. We have a responsibility to get to deeply know children. We need to know how children move within a space, how they react to us and how we react to them and each other, and how they exit spaces as well. We should get a sense of their implicit and explicit expectations of themselves, of us, of their surroundings. Even when we don’t teach them anything and they didn’t learn anything, they still get an education on what education is supposed to mean from us.

We don’t teach subjects. We teach students. Hopefully, we’re also teaching students those subjects, but what they learn is inevitably up to us.

Without those relationships (and how I responded), I wouldn’t have been able to adjust so nimbly to the changes happening in our daily news reports. My students and I heard sirens ten times a day, sometimes more. We had family members, neighbors, and acquaintances pass away with increasing regularity. Even before COVID, though, my students knew poverty, racism, and inequity in their schooling for years. Granting grace and flexibility with my students while holding them accountable for the learning they must do was already part of my rapport with students.

Part of that is knowing that our students have experienced serious levels of trauma at a young age and it’s up to us as adults to navigate that trauma to better inform our practice.

In preparation for the new school year, I would necessarily ask the hardest questions of myself from last year and see what I’ve learned. For example, coming into the school year, I might ask myself if it’s useful to still have whole class sessions. In previous years, I would build relationships through the multiple questions I’d ask students with varying degrees of emphasis and assessment. It could go from simple (“How’s your day been?”) to difficult (“How did you approach getting the answer to this question here?”) and anywhere in between, but I’m listening twice. In the first listen, I’m getting a sense of their process. In the second listen, I’m getting a sense of their person. Two students could have the same or similar process for how they approach school and still communicate that in vastly different ways because of their person. My job would then be to listen for both, process, and understand that just because they’re different doesn’t make it worse.

Unlike in previous years when they’re coming into an environment we’ve initially created (our physical classrooms), we’re entering their homes and spaces for work. Sometimes, they set the rules for the environment. Sometimes they don’t. My job as an educator would necessarily be to respond to this new dynamic by shifting my practice. I might change my pedagogy from whole-class instruction to small-group and appointment-based instruction, so every student felt seen and heard.

To recreate the energy I have in my own classroom, I set up a whiteboard and a video camera as if the students were sitting in front of me. I thought about creating a video daily, but that didn’t help me understand where students were succeeding or needing help with virtual learning. Some students were able to watch the video once and build off it instantly. For others, they saw the video and still wanted me to sit with them for about half an hour just to make sure they got it. Others still had created their own schedule on their own time for when they would complete the work. In all those cases, I credit the relationships I had with them for getting us through the tumult.

In the coming school year, the challenge now is taking on a new set of students and building with them from far away. Our best preparation is to take those lessons from the transition and weave it into our new school year. This conversation is as much about a transfer of power as it is about pedagogy and curriculum. Students inevitably veer into their own schedules depending on what the school scheduling looks like (hybrid, etc.) Our jobs as educators is to keep those connections going so, regardless of whether we’re face-to-face or in virtual space, we still stay connected and building towards something greater.

That’s our best preparation and usually allows us some grace for when we don’t get it right. That’s another lesson we needed pre-pandemic as well.

Please check out the resources on topics including mental well-being and a pandemic-informed community here.

The WE Teacher Award 

Recognition of Teachers that go above and beyond; the WE Teachers Award is a $500 Walgreens gift card, to use in your classroom to support your learning / class needs. Apply yourself or nominate a colleague you think deserves it!  There are 1000 WE Teacher Awards to be granted this academic year.

You can learn more and start the application or nomination process, here.

The post Learning Relationships In The New Normal [Sponsored] appeared first on The Jose Vilson.

Learning Relationships In The New Normal

This post is sponsored by WE Teachers, made possible by Walgreens. All opinions are my own.

The last conversation I had with students before the official end of the school year was between me and a few of my seventh graders. We talked about summer plans over Cardi B and Juice Wrld. We shared a snack together. The boys jockeyed for position as “best” virtual game player. The girls talked about the ways they’d miss school and their least favorite teacher. I didn’t participate in that one. As I ended the phone call, I winced at having to hang up. What does it mean to have an unofficial, face-to-face, end-of-school back in March then have an official, virtual end-of-school hangout in June?

One thing’s for sure: that episode wouldn’t have been possible without the relationships I had already established from September to March.

In different circles, I proposed that schools shouldn’t start classes with some of the usual routines we’ve seen and heard. Schools should take a good inventory of the people and things we’ve lost, the ways our relationship to school changed, and what’s drastically changed since our last set of interactions. As the majority of school districts opt to start school virtually, schools have to shift their relationships from the technocratic headquarters for academic learning of the recent past to the child-centered hubs for well-rounded growth for the present and future.

A trauma-informed school has been important to children’s nurturing prior to this moment. A trauma-informed school isn’t just important, but necessary now.

Student relationships are the crux of any classroom pre-, during, and post-pandemic. The interactions must go beyond salutations and axioms. We have a responsibility to get to deeply know children. We need to know how children move within a space, how they react to us and how we react to them and each other, and how they exit spaces as well. We should get a sense of their implicit and explicit expectations of themselves, of us, of their surroundings. Even when we don’t teach them anything and they didn’t learn anything, they still get an education on what education is supposed to mean from us.

We don’t teach subjects. We teach students. Hopefully, we’re also teaching students those subjects, but what they learn is inevitably up to us.

Without those relationships (and how I responded), I wouldn’t have been able to adjust so nimbly to the changes happening in our daily news reports. My students and I heard sirens ten times a day, sometimes more. We had family members, neighbors, and acquaintances pass away with increasing regularity. Even before COVID, though, my students knew poverty, racism, and inequity in their schooling for years. Granting grace and flexibility with my students while holding them accountable for the learning they must do was already part of my rapport with students.

Part of that is knowing that our students have experienced serious levels of trauma at a young age and it’s up to us as adults to navigate that trauma to better inform our practice.

In preparation for the new school year, I would necessarily ask the hardest questions of myself from last year and see what I’ve learned. For example, coming into the school year, I might ask myself if it’s useful to still have whole class sessions. In previous years, I would build relationships through the multiple questions I’d ask students with varying degrees of emphasis and assessment. It could go from simple (“How’s your day been?”) to difficult (“How did you approach getting the answer to this question here?”) and anywhere in between, but I’m listening twice. In the first listen, I’m getting a sense of their process. In the second listen, I’m getting a sense of their person. Two students could have the same or similar process for how they approach school and still communicate that in vastly different ways because of their person. My job would then be to listen for both, process, and understand that just because they’re different doesn’t make it worse.

Unlike in previous years when they’re coming into an environment we’ve initially created (our physical classrooms), we’re entering their homes and spaces for work. Sometimes, they set the rules for the environment. Sometimes they don’t. My job as an educator would necessarily be to respond to this new dynamic by shifting my practice. I might change my pedagogy from whole-class instruction to small-group and appointment-based instruction, so every student felt seen and heard.

To recreate the energy I have in my own classroom, I set up a whiteboard and a video camera as if the students were sitting in front of me. I thought about creating a video daily, but that didn’t help me understand where students were succeeding or needing help with virtual learning. Some students were able to watch the video once and build off it instantly. For others, they saw the video and still wanted me to sit with them for about half an hour just to make sure they got it. Others still had created their own schedule on their own time for when they would complete the work. In all those cases, I credit the relationships I had with them for getting us through the tumult.

In the coming school year, the challenge now is taking on a new set of students and building with them from far away. Our best preparation is to take those lessons from the transition and weave it into our new school year. This conversation is as much about a transfer of power as it is about pedagogy and curriculum. Students inevitably veer into their own schedules depending on what the school scheduling looks like (hybrid, etc.) Our jobs as educators is to keep those connections going so, regardless of whether we’re face-to-face or in virtual space, we still stay connected and building towards something greater.

That’s our best preparation and usually allows us some grace for when we don’t get it right. That’s another lesson we needed pre-pandemic as well.

Please check out the resources on topics including mental well-being and a pandemic-informed community here.

The post Learning Relationships In The New Normal appeared first on The Jose Vilson.

It Depends On Who You Listen To (Yes, About School Reopening)

It was my first time in months riding the bus with my son since school shut down. Normally, when I’ve run an errand during the pandemic, I’ll do it on my own, mask on, huffing and puffing to make it back inside. On this errand, my son and I saw a crosstown bus sitting there, so we hopped in the back. Pre-COVID, we rode the bus home from his after-school program, so we were excited to have this sliver of normalcy.

As soon as we got to the next stop, we got a quick education on what happens outside our bubble.

Every stop told a new story. At the first stop, an elderly woman hops on, grumbling underneath her mask about having to wear one and surveying the rest of the passengers to make sure they had one, too. At the second, a man meekly walks in to the front while onlookers wondered why those without canes had to get in the back. At the fifth, a mother with two teenaged children hopped on. The daughter had on her pink plastic covering, the rest of her family members came in uncovered and sneering at the rest of us.

The bus driver yells through his loudspeaker: “NO MASK, NO SERVICE! I WILL STOP THIS BUS IF I SEE ONE PASSENGER WITH NO MASK!” The elderly woman frowns at the mother and the teenage boy. The girl looks at her family: “I told you so.” The masks come on, but not without a few eye rolls.

A few stops later, a quartet of older girls hops on, some with masks, one without a mask. They try to hide behind the numerous adults who’ve boarded but the bus driver takes a long pause before closing the doors. “I DON’T CARE WHO YOU ARE. NO MASK, NO RIDE! I AM NOT PUTTING MY LIFE IN DANGER DUE TO YOUR NOT WANTING TO WEAR A MASK!” Some yell back with a few four-letter exclamations, but we ride along after a few minutes. My son wakes up a bit from his nap. One of the girls who tried to use her t-shirt as a mask hopped off and walked off the bus without much a scene.

The other passengers had their own debates about the mask:

“I’m asthmatic and this mask is too f*ing close to my nose for me to get good air.”
“One minute, they’re telling us we don’t have to wear masks, the next we do, so which is it?”
“Why can we eat outside, but we have to wear a mask to get into a bus?”
“I’m young so I don’t even have to worry about this. I’ll just wash my hands and that’s it.”
“I tried the mask you have on right now and I smoked a blunt through it. All the smoke came out of it and that’s how I know masks don’t really work. That lets you know right there.”

In a few more stops, the arguments would die down, but the things I heard still resonated with me. Even those of us who understood why we needed to wear masks on the bus must point towards our government representatives and hold them responsible for the misinformation, bickering, lies, and obfuscation we witnessed since March that still has ramifications a few months later.

Also, I don’t want to hear what “the people” want because, if the citizens of Harlem, the Lower East Side, and other hoods like mine are any indication, the “people” want to know when they can stop wearing masks so they can get on with their survival. Their family, friends, and neighbors are dying left, right, upstairs, and downstairs. Sirens continue to blare randomly while fireworks keep them up at night. While they rather not die, they can’t trust that any number of government officials won’t send them to slaughter, regardless of what side of the political aisle they sit on. Conspiracy theories for people of color often become conspiracy facts, especially during nationwide protests.

When epidemiologists say we need to socially distance, wear masks, and wash our hands, that rings true for them. “The people” ain’t listening to science if they’ve been given little reason to trust the city, the state, or the country. But “the people” is too ambiguous a term, no matter what side of the politics you land on. “The people” may want schools open because that’s what “the people” wanted back in March. But it depends on who and how many you’re listening to.

None of this makes the school reopening discussion easier. I believe the epidemiologists who’ve said time and again that New York is about as safe as it’s going to get when it comes to this virus. I believe them when they said they’ve thought long and hard about the recommendations they’ve made for school reopening. I’m also listening when they say that schools in New York City can open with the right precautions.

As a parent and an educator, that’s where I must draw the line.

Over and again, we’ve had politicians who’ve wanted to label themselves “The Education Official,” but wanted the title without securing our school’s most basic needs. Now we’re supposed to trust that they’ve bolstered the essential conditions we’ve wanted to be remedied since pre-COVID. We’re supposed to wait for each principal to have a plan for their own schools when they, too, feel overwhelmed and under-supported. We’re supposed to “report” children who don’t wear their masks or don’t follow the CDC guidance, but this may exacerbate the school-to-confinement pipeline we pledged to destroy only a few months ago.

The coronavirus doesn’t care about our politics and how they respond to people. That’s why we must.

Granted, the most popular decision isn’t always the easiest one. When it comes to school reopening and life, the questions we think we’re answering might elicit more questions than answers. Grace, flexibility, and empathy are so critical to moving forward with any level of responsiveness to anyone we serve. Yet, there’s that part of me that literally saw how adults could barely handle a 10-minute bus ride with a mask on in a neighborhood where about 1 in 10 people have tested positive for COVID-19.

If you’re still listening to the president, the governor, and the mayor, they’re still telling you we’re ready to open schools. If you’re listening to people with access to their own healthcare and high-quality hospital care, they might feel ready or they might create their pandemic pods/shadow schools. If you’re listening to people who routinely got ignored before the pandemic, you’d get more humble about how information gets to them.

Too much of school reopening depends on who you listen to and what you heard them say. If representatives led with empathy for the victims, righteousness in our policy, responsiveness in resources, and humility/transparency when they got it wrong, they’d wear a mask for the pandemic and not simply to save face.

The post It Depends On Who You Listen To (Yes, About School Reopening) appeared first on The Jose Vilson.