Author: Julia E. Torres

“Miss–can I talk to you?”

I hear this often.  So often, in fact, that I have become very used to being on call–and the calls are fairly constant.  I rarely (almost never) ask why a student might want to talk to me, because it doesn’t really matter.  They all know that I’ll make time to hear them out, because it is important to me and saying so is a message I repeat, regularly.  If a student needs me to be their person, I will go to whatever lengths necessary to make myself available.  That’s a fact.

As teachers, we are naturally hard-wired with the compassion superpower, so I know that offering a kid a listening ear is not something anyone will find particularly unique.

But, this week, a student of mine had his head down on his desk.  He has his head down on his desk, every. single. day.  Some days, many days in fact, he falls asleep…

I have run out of ways to approach him or try to get him engaged in learning, and believe me, I have tried them all.

Every single day I ask him to pick his head up.

Every single week I have to fill out a behavior tracker explaining interventions I’ve tried and evaluate whether they have worked.

I do this faithfully.  Neither the interventions, nor the tracking form are doing anything.

He tells me he’s that way in every class, so I wonder, are any of his other teachers feeling as confused, frustrated, powerless as I am?

When a student habitually has their head down, I think it’s normal to ask yourself, “What can I do?”  “What haven’t I done?” “Why doesn’t this kid think my class is engaging?” “Does this kid just not like me?”

What we fail to do–what I needed a heart opening experience to remember–is consider the fact that a head down sometimes, just sometimes, isn’t as much about me as it is about them and their need for human connection.

It may be a hard truth to hear, but I’ve had conversations with so many children, and they definitely know how to recognize–from personal experience–when a person’s actions don’t match their words.  Thus is a self-preservation/protection strategy for many.  One thing growing up in an urban educational setting teaches kids is how to be shrewd observers of human behavior.  Nobody is fooling anybody on this scene.

It is crucial, especially in schools like mine, that folks resist the temptation to forge deep connections exclusively with students who most closely resemble our styles of communication or personality type, those with whom it is easy to form a bond.  I’ve found most humans naturally lean in to love.  If, in a given situation, a person doesn’t, they typically have their reasons.  It isn’t always that anyone is to blame, but there is constant subconscious and non-verbal communication about the value we place on a child’s feelings, on them as individuals, and how much (or how little) we value our relationships with them.  It’s important to be conscious of these things.

Over the years, my classroom management style has gone through various stages. There was a time when I had a huge stack of office referrals, and relied on those to do my disciplining for me.  Years later, I have learned that the two disciplinary strategies teachers in my setting rely most heavily upon (kicking kids out of class and/or writing them up for “non-compliance”) are the two WORST and LAST things one should ever do with a child who has been systematically and routinely sent messages that their feelings and lived experiences do…not…matter.

When it comes to discipline matrices, I usually live by the credo that more or better discipline isn’t the answer, better teaching is.  I still, firmly believe that.

But, that’s an easy statement to make for someone who: teaches a class that routinely has only the “honors kids”, doesn’t have a first period class or the accompanying battle over excessive tardies, has over a decade of teaching experience, comes from the same cultural and ethnic background as many of my students, speaks their language, and for all of these reasons, plus several more, generally doesn’t deal with “behavior issues”.

Even saying this, every once in a while, I do have a conflict or power struggle with a student that needs to be addressed.  After this long, I have been through many scenarios, some of them pretty awful, and I have a pretty hefty bag of tricks.  Whenever these fail, we go outside for a hallway conversation. The folks left behind in the room do talk, so I do my best to handle minor issues in the classroom quickly, and quietly, so as to shield the person with whom I’m talking from the gossip or assumptions that they are in trouble. Nine times out of ten, that works for me–for us.

But this week, I ran out of tricks.

This week, it seemed clear that the hallway pep talk was the only solution.

I realized that my habitually sleepy student was not going to ask to talk to me.  I was going to have to reach out to him.

What went down was what I call, “a true heart opening experience”.  I’ll skip some of the particulars, but things took a turn when I asked him if he wanted to be in the class because all the signs showed me he was miserable.  Part of this is due to counseling placing a vast number of students in AP classes to help boost the SPF (school performance framework) score–whether they want to be there or not.

He replied with, “I don’t know, Miss.  You can do what you want.”  I inferred this was him somehow receiving a message that he would be removed from the class if his behavior didn’t change.  I have seen this before.  Students will behave in a way that is deliberately against classroom norms–or just disengage due to lack of belief in themselves, then become distant or combative when challenged about their behavior which will precipitate situations where teachers remove them from the class, confirming their belief that the teacher  really doesn’t want them in class any longer.  The root cause of all this is that too many students–especially those with disciplinary records, or ways of communicating that are not socially normalized–do not believe their teachers value their presence in class in the first place.

I did not engage when he tried to place me in this role.  Instead, I said, “I don’t know what your experiences have been with other teachers, but this really isn’t about what I want…this is about what YOU want.  I am not in this gig to make kids miserable.  I’m just here to help you achieve your dreams.  What are they?”

He talked about removing, repairing, and replacing his first transmission (It can take 6 hours!!)–and a smile started to emerge.  He spoke about how he used to run in the mornings before school, and that he wants to get back to that.  We talked about his habit of sleeping in class, in a non-accusatory way, and eventually, we got down to the real reason why his sleep cycle has been disturbed lately.  As it turns out, two of his uncles and a grandfather died last year–one of them was murdered.  His best friend committed suicide in sixth grade–and he never talked about it–or received any type of counseling.  It still haunts him today.

In return, I reassured him that I believed in him, that I wasn’t giving up on him, and that I would help him find a way to finish the year strong, but also that I couldn’t do it FOR him.  I told him about some of the twists and turns of my life path.  He reassured me that he does think I’m a good teacher, and that I haven’t failed him (as I insisted I would be doing if I let him sleep through class every day).  In this exchange, we each sent a little boost in the direction of one another’s sails.  Ironically, or perhaps it was one of those crazy synchronicities that happens so often in my life, this all took place after my most liked tweet ever:

I am not an expert in diagnosis or treatment of any condition.  I won’t lie–these days I am absolutely exhausted, in every way imaginable, and at all points in the day.  But, I know how important love is, and that it heals a lot of ills.  I know that I love kids.  I knew that in this event, lining up my actions with my beliefs meant taking the time to listen, offer a hug and some words of advice, empathy, encouragement, and then commit to taking things one day at a time.  I have been called to consider, in these final few weeks of school, whether I am showing up as the same teacher for each one of my students, and ultimately whether that is important.

Perhaps, more than anything else, it means the most for me to be the teacher each child deserves and who has committed to see them through to the finish line. Being that teacher may mean being different things for different people at different moments, and maybe that’s okay.  I am also pondering whether I’m taking the time in each of my daily interactions (which are so many) to get on a wavelength of communication that might be different from mine–and what it truly means to show up as we say we do, even when the well of compassion feels like it has run dry.

When Snapchat first came out, I had an account.  Generally, when deciding whether to put myself out there on social media, I look for an app that gives me a level of connection, without the threat of exposing myself too much to any of the more negative aspects of social media I have encountered.  Snapchat seemed cool at first, then I heard stories about privacy invasion, I couldn’t figure out all the tools for manipulating photos and videos (or why anyone would want to), and I didn’t understand how to chat with people when the messages seemed to just disappear.  Add to that the fact that it had filters that lightened people’s skin tones to make them more “beautiful”, and I was out [even though other apps do this too].  The whole love affair lasted about 3 months, ended abruptly, and I moved on and never looked back–until today.

This Spring, AP Lang students are reading The Poet X and Electric Arches, while working on a dope ethnography project that encompasses rhetorical analysis, argument, and synthesis reading and writing.  If you know me at all, you know that these are the books I have been waiting for my whole life, and not just because they have girls that look similar to me on the cover.  With both texts, from the very first page, I knew that they were books my students and I needed to experience in the classroom.

There are so many reasons why, and I will dedicate an entire blog post to it when we finish the unit.  For now, here’s an overview:

• Rhetorical analysis – Reading and writing informational pieces about identity (cultural, social, gender, community)
• Argument – Writing poetry and essays about identity, oppression, language, power, and resistance
• Synthesis – Multi-genre projects and student created podcasts/videos about the evolution of their identities

More on that soon…

I’ve noticed that when adults decide to adopt a social media platform, it’s not long before the kids abandon it for somewhere else–where they can feel free and unwatched.

My view of the social media evolutionary timeline so far:

Myspace —>Facebook—>Instagram—>Snapchat—>Twitter

As such, though I’ve dabbled in them all, I go where I feel most comfortable and can best rationalize the time spent scrolling as productive.  These days it’s Twitter, because Facebook and Instagram became toxic for me for reasons I won’t go into here. But I digress.  Usually, when students ask me to add them on Snapchat, my answer has historically been, “No, baby.  I don’t Snap.”  I respect their need to have their space.  My daughter, like every other teenager I know, uses Snapchat all day every day.  I don’t have a need to get on there and “befriend” her so I can get into her business.  That is not how I parent.  As an educator, it has been interesting to see this new generation of digital natives use the various platforms for a variety of purposes.  I do believe that if you work with teenagers, you have to at least know HOW to be in their space and in their world, even if you don’t choose to go there on a regular basis.

Enter the Book Snaps annotation experience.

The lesson for students was to make some Book Snaps of The Poet X.

The lesson for ME was in vulnerability, and sharing power.

The students taught me how to use Snapchat today….and it was soooo uncomfortable.  I am not exaggerating in any way when I say that at several points today, I felt helpless.

Since most of my readers are educators, let me break this down for you in a relatable way.

Step one: Download the App

I downloaded the app and installed it, but then couldn’t get it to sync with my Bitmoji account.  I encountered a weird anti-robot verification screen that kept asking me to identify things like stop lights and cars in photos.  One of my students noticed my distress and said, “Miss–are you a robot?”  I said, “No”.  He said, “Then you shouldn’t have any problem.”

This snarky comment is exactly the type of thing I  know I have said to students many times when they are fumbling around with some tech 2.0 tool or trying to circumvent the school’s very arbitrary Internet firewalls.  It’s not helpful.

Script we tell students: “This app/website/tech tool is so easy to use.  Anybody can do it.”

My lesson: Sometimes navigating technology isn’t as smooth as it seems, and individual experiences with the same technology can and do vary.  Have patience, and persistence.  Don’t be a smart ass when somebody is struggling.

Step two: Learn how to use the App

I literally had to be taught the most basic parts of Snapchat, things like taking a picture, making stickers [which I found out they do of us ALL the time without us knowing.  It’s okay, they do it to each other too], and adding/changing the colors of text.  I learned that there is a character limit to what you can type in a text box, and that if you use too many images, it looks like you just found out how to use stickers–which makes you look desperate and uncool.

I can tell you what went down, but it’s a crazy and wonderful thing to admit what I FELT while all this was happening.  I felt bad that I had to keep asking for help with various features.  I felt like I was the opposite of smart, because some parts of navigating the app weren’t intuitive (at least not to me).  I felt embarrassed that I didn’t know even one quarter the amount of what they do about how to use this app.  Shouts to Imaan, Sammy D, Cristal, and Irving for helping their teach out, being loving and patient with me, and taking me under their wings.

Script we tell students: “I already told you the instructions, you just need to follow them.”

My Lesson: Have patience when people ask questions, need to be shown the same thing multiple times, or take a little while to master a skill or understanding.  Sometimes instructions aren’t enough, and some people learn best by being shown, or given an example.  Be understanding when people act like they want to give up, or get discouraged by seeing people around them mastering skills really quickly.

Step three: Mastering Snapchat

The activity incorporated several Lang Arts skills and content pieces:

• Students had to read and annotate a poem and incorporate academic language in their annotations.
• Students had to call on their familiarity with style features, like diction, imagery, detail, language (figurative language), and syntax.
• Students had to recall the characters, themes, symbols, motifs, setting, and plot from the text.
• Students had to make connections between the text and images/emojis/bitmojis/GIFs that would communicate their reactions and experiences.

and…

• Students had to know how to use Snapchat, Padlet, and Schoology–proficiently.

With surprisingly little fuss, students made the Booksnaps, uploaded them to the Padlet that was in Schoology, and were ready to play Kahoot to practice vocab (our culminating activity) in less than an hour.  A few people throughout the day came to me asking for validation that their work was good.  This is normal.  It was refreshing to say, “We’re all learning together here and I’m sure whatever you’re doing is better than the mess I’m making over here.”

But…not so normal for me.  I’m pretty independent, have worked hard to develop mastery in my content, and I’m not usually one for seeking approval or validation from folks.

So, this activity was a little confidence shake up for me!  A few kids who aren’t on Snapchat were also struggling a bit. Even so, as digital natives, they grasped it pretty quickly, and when I saw how THEIR Book Snaps looked, I felt like MINE was pretty basic…I still feel like it is.

Script we tell students: “Be confident!  That’s really all you need to get you through.” “To get an A, you need to be doing above grade-level work, consistently.”

My Lesson: Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, until somebody shows you.  Then you have to deal with all the feelings of self-doubt that show up when comparing your work to others, and it takes a bravery to push through.  Students naturally compare their work to that of their peers, and that of mentor texts we place in front of them.  It’s tough to feel like your best just isn’t as good as THE best.  It’s not easy to accept that usually, excellence and mastery in anything comes with practice–which just takes time.  If someone comes to me wanting validation for their best work, they deserve to be reassured that their best is exactly what I’m hoping for, and to be reminded that the road to mastery is often long, hard, full of potholes, and rarely straight uphill.

Also, check out this Twitter Moment for a more serious meditation on the importance of flipping the script from time to time and occupying that space where one sees and feels how much our students can really teach US (if we let them).

So often, folks talk about “pulling up a chair at the table”, or letting marginalized folks, “have a seat at the table.”

I have decided I am done with this.

First of all, I know nothing in this life is free.  Nobody “lets” me have anything without some sort of agreement or agenda.  It has become pretty evident that even IF I, a Black woman, “get” a seat at the table, it’s going to come with all kinds of conditions:

1. My name tag needs to be a name folks are familiar with and don’t have to work to learn to pronounce correctly.  My identity needs to be clearly delineated.  I can’t be intersectional or cosmopolitan because that’s weird, and threatening.
2. My voice can’t be loud, because that will be mistaken for anger, and if it actually is righteous and justifiable  anger on behalf of my students, people ain’t trying to hear that.  Tears will be perceived as weakness.
3. My ideas can’t be too radical, or too revolutionary, because if they are, I’ll be met with a host of reasons why the “moderate” or “majority” will be put off by said ideas and that will impede progress.
4. My speech needs to sound as neutral as possible, so as not to reflect an upbringing anywhere other than middle America, or attendance at schools anywhere other than suburbia.  If I do slip into speech folks don’t recognize, my ideas will be dismissed.  I will be silenced, talked over, othered, ignored.
5. I need to let whomever wants to co-opt my intellectual capital and/or ideas, re-word them (sometimes directly after I’ve said them) then present them as their own, without making a fuss, because, “We’re all on the same team–fighting for the kids.”
6. I can’t bring up “uncomfortable” topics, or advocate for the fair and equal educational experience of the students I represent, because those in power will never go for any proposed actions that target one or two specific groups. This would be seen as favoritism, and what we do for one, we must do for all–unless that one is the group that has historically held power–they can have any and everything.

I do not accept these conditions.

This week I was at #SXSWEdu and had the opportunity to hear from and work with some phenomenal educators representing groups I am honored and blessed to affiliate with.

José Vilson, the founder of #Educolor is not playing with folks.  He is ready to make change and I am 100% behind the changes he proposes:

1. Mandatory school trips (as we call them out West, “field trips”) – My students typically get 1 or 2 field trips per year.  My children (that I gave birth to), going to school in suburbia, get roughly 3 per semester.  Part of raising citizens to be participatory is helping them see and explore the world around them.  It is oppressive to keep students in schools engineered by prison architects doing practice test after practice test so they can prove their ability to pass tests created by those who do not know them or have any awareness of the richness of their cultures, their languages, their neighborhoods, their upbringings.  Set my children free.
2. Mandatory recess, or advisory program – Mandatory play.  They do this in Sweden. It works really well for them.  Their children are happy.  Part of being a child should include being happy, right?  Many children in urban schools–read Black and brown children–get NO recess.  You read that correctly, recess has been taken away.  Think about that for a minute. I have an advisory period that I teach, but it was dropped on us one year in this way:  We were told quite literally, “You have one less hour to prep.  Your pay has been reduced because we no longer have the grant money.  You now have advisory.  You will teach one more class for less pay.”  Understandably, people were a bit shaken and this made them less, not more excited to mentor students in advisory.  Though it should come naturally to want to mentor and help students, for some, it doesn’t.  Humans are incentive driven animals, so reducing pay and adding a section does not sit well with most people.  With time, the formula gets messy, looks like a free-for-all, and admin gets upset.  We are still–three years later–working through this.
3. Review of teacher evaluation systems – I really can’t with how much this is needed, other than say that teacher evaluation systems are like every other evaluation system I’ve ever encountered; extremely subjective and as such, suspect.  In my environment, students tell the truth, so I think student perception surveys should carry the most weight.  But, I know of other environments where teachers of color teach mostly white children who take the opportunity of an anonymous survey to light UP their teachers of color, questioning their credibility as experts in their field, etc.  To quote one of my close friends who has dealt with this, “They understand power, privilege, and what it means to organize, perfectly.”  So, evaluation systems definitely need review, and I don’t have all the answers there, but José might…
4. Educators as ambassadors – Need I say more?  How many educators have had the experience of being present in a room where your future and fate are being decided without your input by people who are not on the front lines, in front of students every day?
5. Culturally Responsive (or Sustaining) and Anti-Racist Pedagogy Training – This is crucial.  The work IS happening.
6. Better Professional Development – How many districts create positions for people to develop PD and then mandate teachers take the PD to justify these folks having their positions?  No shade to the people with good intentions just trying to develop teachers and give back, but how many districts have folks who are actually looking into research based PD and adult education?  How many educators have experienced watching someone read from a Powerpoint (for six to eight hours), then being told to fill out a graphic organizer/note-catcher/exit ticket?  How many folks have had the experience of PD mirroring everything we have expressly been told NOT to do with students?  Why is the bar so low for folks getting paid so much more than your average teacher in the classroom?  Why aren’t classroom teachers asked more often (and paid) to give PD? Why, if these folks are such experts, have they not been retained in the classroom when there is such a desperate and obvious teacher shortage?  I will stop there, but clearly– I have questions.
7. Sample testing – This could be a book.  In fact, it is: This is Not a Test (shameless plug for my homie).  We have to remember how much fun we used to be allowed to have in school, and how much less we have now, because it has become all about proving we are learning what we are told has importance, which is oppressive, and the antithesis of what ACTUAL curiosity and love of learning looks like.
8. Teachers get to own their own work – How amazing would it be if folks actually got recognized for the work they do every day, for the investment they make in our society’s children and future?  José asked, “How many of you have attended a conference and then not been recognized for your efforts to develop yourself?” *cough* Believe it or not, lesson plans do get harvested and repurposed without any kind of credit or remuneration given to teachers.  Believe it or not, every single day teachers are cajoled, persuaded, or mandated to give their intellectual capital away “for the greater good”.  If someone wants credit, or (God forbid) money, in return, that person is often deemed selfish and blacklisted with the quickness.

Um, in case you didn’t catch that, José Vilson for NYC Chancellor.  That is all.

I also had the privilege of sitting down with Micia Mosely from Black Teacher Project. Lissen.  If you don’t know Micia, please fix that.  She is so inspiring, so passionate, so unapologetically in favor of Black teachers, which is rare, and I appreciate it. It didn’t take us long to discover that we are both fans of Stephen Chang from the National Equity Project who is the homie for real and I love him.

We met and talked a bit about what these proposed steps look like in action:

What Can You Do To Sustain Your Black Teachers?
1. Don’t tokenize your Black staff
2. Be aware of the invisible tax on teachers of color, and if you unknowingly encourage it
3. Create culturally responsive professional development
4. District Self Care Workshops
5. Do your own racial justice work (reflection and action)
6. Listen, understand and support your Black Teachers especially when they are challenged
7. Use your power and position to shift mindsets and practices of non-Black educators
8. Lift up the expertise of Black Teachers in professional development and encourage them to present at conferences
9. Unpack the implicit bias in hiring and promotional practices
10. Clear a path forward in navigating the system (clarity, testing, support- financial and otherwise)
11. Talk about race and racism with and about adults (event if there are no Black people present)

She assured me she is committed to coming to Denver for a workshop which I cannot wait for.  Check out more from the Black teacher sustainability session at #SXSWedu in this blog post from the Imaginarium.  There is a video!!

We look forward to her Black teachers sustainability workshop.  The need is great–trust me.

So how does all of this circle back to building a new table?

To begin, I am no longer willing to settle for a seat at a table that was not made for me, one where I have felt for so long that I have to push and shove and contort myself in order to belong.

Instead, I choose to work with those who are restructuring our world to make a new table for those of us who have always been here, but as mere “guests” or “hosted” on the fringes.

At our new table:

1. There are people who know how to pronounce my name because they’ve heard it before and/or they know how to ask me what I would like to be called.
2. My loud voice gets met with a bunch of “Amen”s, “Testify” “YAS, hermana”s, and “I know that’s right” because we know what call and response is about, and we know how important it is to support one another rather than compete.
3. My radical and revolutionary ideas are seen as an homage to the ancestors who have a radical and revolutionary tradition, and as such, my ideas are honored, pondered, considered, and amplified–with respect for the tradition which they uphold.
4. My speech should include whatever dialects, languages, and cultures I call my own.  Spanglish is not only permitted, but encouraged.  My Portunhol is cool because whomever does not understand me takes the opportunity to ask and learn so that they can expand.  Difference or unfamiliarity with communication and expression is not a threat, but instead is respected and appreciated for what it is–a chance to learn and grow.
5. My community gives credit where credit is due, because although we are all parts of the same whole, we realize the body can’t move without the legs.  A leg cannot walk without the foot, and the foot doesn’t function without the toes.  It is an act of humility, honor, deference, and respect, to name the people who have inspired you.  Citationality matters.
6. I can advocate for whomever I feel needs advocating for, because empowering those whom the world would overlook is a cultural tradition, norm, and expectation.

At our table, if you are not fighting for anyone’s life to be better, if you are not expanding your own consciousness by taking risks, being brave, advancing the cause of those society would overlook, what are you doing?

We are building a new table.  It is my honor and privilege to link arms with other folks doing the work.

Who’s with me?

Me, w/ The JLV and Rafranz Davis, It is true. We are blessed.  #Educolor is Familia.

Last week, I was invited to Anastasis academy to workshop one of my favorite topics in education, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy.  I’ll have to admit that at first, I was a bit hesitant to go, because of biases I hold about private schools and the types of families who place their kids there.  Even so, when my colleague, who also happens to be a phenomenal educator, and Twitter friend Michelle Baldwin invited me to their conference #Sigma18 to speak and be heard, I took the opportunity–and I’m so glad that I did.  The experience transformed me and had me wrestling with a lot of my own biases which is important work to do. I was reminded that we get nowhere on either side of a divide, by clinging to assumptions or stereotypes we may hold about the “other”.   I have zero regrets about life handing me this reminder.  I needed it.

First of all, the truffle mac and cheese for lunch on day one…need I say more?  I’m pretty easy to please.  Feed me well, make me laugh a little bit.  I’m happy.  The #5Sigma18 planning committee knew this.  I commend them for it.

After lunch, we had the opportunity to learn from Barbara Bray who is just everything good.  Her smile, passion for learning, and knowledge are contagious.  By day two of the conference, I knew we would have to work together at some point, because we are most definitely kindred spirits.  She is just the type with whom one can sit and talk about anything, and nothing, for hours.  She has had the richest life as the daughter of court sketch artist Rosalie Ritz and as a resident of Oakland, CA, the game of fighting for equity in education is nothing new to her.  I believe in learning from our elders, and she is a person who in just a short time, taught me so much.  If you don’t know about Barbara, please fix that.  We can all learn something from her brilliance.

I gave my first workshop on day one to a group of people who were not familiar with the works of Bell Hooks, Paulo Freire, Django Paris, or Linda Christensen.  It was really refreshing and fun for me to talk about and read passages from books I consider to be cornerstones of my professional practice.  These works have also been, and continue to be the keys to ongoing development of my consciousness as one who educates for liberation and the dismantling of oppressive systems. Watching people get excited about works that mean so much to me was a joy I didn’t expect, but will never forget.  The thinking below is just a tiny portion of all the good dialogue that went on during workshop one.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What can I say about day two? The first thing that comes to mind is that it began with a donut wall.  That’s right, a wall of donuts–that you could eat from.  Creativity, imagination, sustainability.  Three words that for me characterized day two.

After giving my Ignite Denver 28 speech, I got to hear from Nicholas Provenzano.  He kept me laughing for almost a solid hour.  The whole time, all I could think was, if he’s that funny in class, I don’t know why anyone would ever want to have another teacher.  He impressed me with his conversation about “Makerspaces” and kids doing interpretive dances to show mastery of Language Arts concepts.  He also impressed the audience with the reminder of how important “failure” is along the road to learning.  In a nutshell, I felt inspired to help my students remember why anybody learns–for the sake of curiosity–and to always find ways to bring it back to that.

After the morning, I did another CSP workshop, and then participated in a panel about the evolution of empathy.  But, the true highlight for me was learning about Paul Clifton’s work with his ELA students on The Voice of Montbello podcast.  These kids are in middle school, folks….He brought two 7th graders with him to the conference and they were fantastic!

I don’t know about you, but middle school was hard enough. I definitely would not have had the confidence to write scripts for a podcast and deliver them, let alone interview Denver’s Chief of Police about topics like deportation and DACA–in my second language.  Mr. Clifton is doing incredible, culturally sustaining, and affirming work AND amplifying student voices.  His classroom is a “Makerspace” where students develop language skills in English by creating something for the real world that produces actual social change and boosts awareness through students using their voices to speak truth to power.  Let me be very clear: this is what ALL 21st Century education should look like.

Check the video here

Whenever I go into another educational ecosystem that is not my own, I try to navigate that space between speaking my truth and listening and learning to that of those who’ve invited me to come co-create, learn, and explore.  My experience at Anastasis left me rich with ideas to take back to my school, and had me feeling so buoyed up with hope that the courageous and progressive educational moves they are making will catch fire in other places.

At the same time, I felt very sad that due to the way our system is structured, in our state, there are still only pockets of greatness serving specific communities.  As a whole, our school systems remain static, and unmoving in our policies and practices when it comes to the imaginative thinking it will take to produce widespread change.  It might be hard to believe, but McGlone Academy, where Mr. Clifton teaches, and my school are 2 minutes away from one another–yet just as I had no idea about the great work he and his students are doing, he also had no idea about me, or my work.

Isn’t that strange? 

To take it one step further, parents and students at Anastasis do not have real first-hand knowledge of what is going on in Montbello, across town. 

I had no first-hand knowledge of what was happening at Anastasis until I was invited there to be a part of the conference.

How can we consistently provide equitable high-quality education for students that is culturally relevant, academically challenging, and applicable to real-world scenarios if we don’t even know what is going on from one end of the city to the other?

How can we expect our students to take on the responsibility of repairing the mess we’ve made, and creating a better world, if they go to school in silos with people who look, think, and act just like them, oblivious to the kids on the other side of town who are getting a mis-education?

In order to really produce widespread systemic change, charter and private schools in white-dominated neighborhoods are going to have to invite people of color into their spaces as Michelle invited me into hers–and help us to feel at home once we get there–which they did.  Doing this will make some people very uncomfortable.  During my panels and workshops I did bring up conversations about privilege and white supremacy, and some people did get uncomfortable.  But, I ask how serious are you about change if you only want it when it’s easy and feels comfortable for you?  Overall, the folks at Anastasis showed me they were willing to get into the weeds with me by not censoring or policing me, my workshop content, or interactions with their staff.  Most people responded favorable to the call to expand thinking/ consciousness.

Still, there were some who were not ready for the shift in thinking.  In order for us to see widespread change, we may not need everybody to wake up at the same time, but we need more people from these communities to go to the schools that are stigmatized and marginalized, or written off as lost causes, to seek healing through forming relationships, listening, and learning about the good work going on within those walls.  Seeing some of the disfunction–the lack of resources, to name one, will make them uncomfortable–as it should.  Nobody should be comfortable with or accept some of the things I’ve seen going on in urban education.

Our school system is racially and economically segregated more severely now than ever before.  This will not change by ignoring or remaining oblivious to the problem.  We will never be strong if we remain divided and isolated in our cultural, ethnic, and thought silos.  Nothing is stopping folks from traveling to the other side of town to listen, ask questions, seek solutions.

The alternative, if we can’t learn to make the divide between our parallel worlds more porous, is that lots of people of color who are now saying, “Thank you for your service–we got it from here,” will start doing more than just talking.