Category: #Educolor

“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.

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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.

Wow.  What a night.  I was privileged to be given a mic to speak this evening at Ignite Denver 28 about my favorite topic–education.  If you missed it, I’m sure it will be posted later, but here is the full text for those who might like to read it as well.

Problem: Too many kids are disengaged/not enjoying school.  We know we love them, and we want them to be happy, be curious, enjoy learning, so how can we reimagine the current system to reflect these values?

Slide 1 – If there is one thing most people can agree upon, it’s that your first day of school is emotional. We leave home for school excited, curious, sometimes scared, but ready to take on the world.

Slide 2 – Elementary school teachers are some of the bravest souls out there.  They love, nurture, clean up bodily fluids–they are superheroes.

Slide 3 – We learn so many things in these early years–everything from basic rules of social interaction (the playground can be a ruthless place) to how to show (and feel) appreciation.  I am always so in awe of the cards, presents, and consistent displays of affection that my friends who are elementary school teachers receive.

Slide 4 – Because I’m a high school teacher, and somehow, in the years between elementary school and graduation, things gradually shift.  The endless cycle of testing begins in 4th grade.  By 7th grade, dynamics of gender, race, and socioeconomic status come into play–students begin to learn that everyone in this society is not equal.   

Slide 5 – By 9th grade, a social hierarchy forms. Students have already decided whether they can play (and win) the school game and whether they even want to.  It takes some digging to discover this, but in some school systems, as many as 2/3rds of an incoming Freshman class do not make it to graduation.  So what are we doing about this?  How can we show our students that we DO love and value them?  How do we fix this to keep from losing them?

Cause: Information is more available now than ever.  Teachers are not the gatekeepers of knowledge–yet we still behave as though we have (or should have) all the answers.

Slide 6 – In my day (the 80s and 90s), there were basically two ways of getting information – adults, or books. I got information because I was curious, for school, and because I loved to read (as the daughter of a librarian and avid book collector).  I spent hours combing through the World Book Encyclopedia (for fun) and going to the library, because these were the entertainment options–watch one of about 24 channels on TV (with commercials) if you had cable, play outside, listen to music, talk to someone on the phone, or read a book. That’s pretty much it.

Slide 7 – When I was growing up, the “social” part of social media was calling your friends on the party line.  The “media” part was looking at a magazine. There was no internet. There was no Netflix. There was no phone with fancy apps or games on which to spend hours, or eventually days.

Slide 8 – Let that sink in for a little bit.  We don’t spend our free time the way we used to, so it follows that we also do not learn the way we used to.  My students access information at the touch of a button (or swipe).  In less than a second, they can know basic information about pretty much anything they want.

Slide 9 – Kids think that high school is going to be like High School Musical.  In a lot of places, like Berkley, and maybe Boulder, parents, school administrators, and community members work hard to make sure their child has an idyllic high school experience that approximates and is perhaps even better than this one.

Slide 10 – But in other places, school looks nothing like the ideal depicted in movies.  Students fill their time trying to prove themselves by passing endless standardized tests with the bar for achievement always held just slightly out of reach.  In Chicago, The Bronx–Montbello, expectation is at opposition with reality.  Overtesting, disenfranchisement, the rise of charter schools, and institutional racism create situations where too many of our students internalize the message that school is not for them. Or worse yet, that it is something being done to them.  Something over which they have no choice, and no control.

Solution: When teachers become students and students become teachers, everyone gets free. Empowered students know the classroom is a space for exploration–for stoking the fires of curiosity.  The teacher should not be the “sage on the stage”, or even worse, “judge, jury, and executioner”.

Slide 11 – This was my classroom a few years ago.  I spent a lot of time trying to recreate the educational environment that I had because it was all I knew–it felt familiar, comfortable, safe.  When our school got rid of “individuals” (as the desks are called that separate individuals from one another), I’m not proud to admit it, but I actually cried.  If felt like my autonomy, my sense of control, my safety was being tampered with.  I felt adrift without that sense of control that comes from having students sit neatly in rows, following directions, and only asking questions in a controlled fashion.

Slide 12 – However, now my classroom looks a lot more like this.  Changing the physical space in my classroom forced me to give up power dynamics that emphasized me having control.  It allowed for much more creativity and flexibility with lessons and collaborations.  It set me, and all of us, free.

Slide 13 –  Daniel Pink says in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us motivation increases when people feel a sense of autonomy, can see mastery as attainable, and understand the authentic purpose for their learning.  So what does that look like in my classroom?

Slide 14 – These are my actual students.  We did a poetry reading workshop entirely driven by them. They chose their groups, read 16 poems, identified a category which they would compete for, went through rounds of elimination with deep discussion at the end of which one poem was determined the “winning” poem.  They pushed each other’s thinking, provided evidence to back up their assertions, and HAD FUN DOING IT.  What was I doing, meanwhile?  Well, I provided the anthology, picked the poems (from the concurrent enrollment syllabus), listened to, added thought provoking questions, re-directed the conversations (when needed) and LIVE TWEETED the entire event for which the students received instantaneous and real-time feedback on their comments from an audience of actual people.  I also designed a skill-building activity that had them pulling quotes and evaluating the impact of literary devices on the overall message.

Slide 15 – That might seem controversial.  “She was on Twitter during class?” “What?” I can hear it now.  “Where was the direct instruction?” “I’m not sure that’s legal.” “I could get fired for doing that.” To these thoughts you might be having, I will say that my practice of education is the practice of liberation.  My practice of education is to liberate us ALL.  I was not the center of the learning that was going on during this lesson.  I have no desire to be the “sage on the stage” and my students certainly do not want me to be “judge, jury, and executioner.”

Conclusion: Educating to liberate means I don’t have to create situations or an environment where people are dependent on me for knowledge.  Rather, we co-create in an endlessly reciprocal chain of exploration, reimagining and reinventing our world–together.

Education liberates.  

The truly liberated know how to share power.  

Sharing power is an act of love.

Slide 16 – Educating to liberate means my students are in control of their learning.  They are responsible for execution and outcomes.  They know I am there to support them, but I am just one of many resources they can use on their path to gaining skills and knowledge that will actually be useful to them in life.

Slide 17 – My job is to be of service to my students.  They do not exist merely to prove to me, or anyone else, on a test, that they are worthy of money spent on them, or that they have learned to regurgitate information in a way deemed “proficient” by a school board or department of education. My single mission is to use my spark to ignite their fire.

Slide 18 – These are my students, and graduates of my school, DCIS at Montbello. Despite the fact that the system was designed for them to fail, they have gone on to excel in life, and in their post-secondary educations. Our students are not objects. They are people, and they are deserving of every effort we can make to reimagine this system so that it reflects the desire for knowledge, exploration, shared power, and reciprocal liberation.  Teachers too are not machines. We are civil servants, but we are also professionals, people, deserving of the respect, and freedom to reimagine our system in new ways so that we can best serve our students–so that we can all get free.

Slide 19 – Education liberates.  The truly liberated know how to share power.  Sharing power is an act of love.

Slide 20 – Love is a verb.  Education is liberation. I educate for liberation, that is my act of love.

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“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.  Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”– James Baldwin

This week students are reading The Things They Carried, and working on definition essays about love, or war.  It’s fitting, because right now, it feels as though our society is definitely on a precipice suspended between the two.  Due to the daily trauma of never knowing what violent event will occur next, or where, or which group will be targeted, both children, and adults are carrying a lot.

Working in education, I know I have to do something, but what?  Do I declare war against those who create policies altering school environments so dramatically that neither my students, nor I recognize what it means to have fun getting an education?  Or, do I work to help others transform our practice room by room, teacher by teacher through the slow spreading of radical, and revolutionary love in the classroom?

Monday, our school was given a gift.  NY Times Bestselling author Nic Stone came to Montbello.  For us, this was nothing short of miraculous.  She signed books for students, read the first chapter of Dear Martin aloud, answered questions, gave hugs, and words of advice, and was generally a beacon of love and support for our children.  I continue to feel so immensely grateful for her visit, because seeing the looks on my children’s faces, and the life she breathed into them as readers is like nothing I’ve ever personally experienced.

As just one example, one of my students had a mother, a grandmother, and a girlfriend die last year.  This particular student lit up in her presence in a way I have never seen in all three years we have known each other.  After the visit, when I asked the student if they wanted another book from my library, they said, “Definitely, but let me finish Dear Martin first.”

This is the power of reading living writers.

We live in a book desert, so we do not have access to bookstores.  Our public libraries exist, but none in schools, and our hard-working immigrant community is much more focused on generating income to pay for college, and upward socio-economic mobility, than they are on purchasing books for in-home libraries.

For all of these reasons, Nic’s visit was a game-changer.  As I looked out over the sea of students–many of whom had not read Dear Martin because of lack of reading time or established habits–I sensed their responsiveness to her presence and her reading in such a powerful way.  Nic is one of those people who embodies that unique combination of passion, talent, and drive that really is transforming our world.  The students, and our entire community, felt this.

After the assembly, Nic said that our students had her feeling like #BookBeyoncé, which they did (I can testify to it because I was there).

What she doesn’t know is that she made them feel special, too.  Most of my students do not have firmly established reading identities,

yet…

• knowing she cared enough to come visit
• hearing her read aloud from her engaging, and culturally relevant book
• having the experience of meeting her
• talking with her
• receiving a signed copy of the book with a personalized message

WILL change that.

The thing about working with students in communities like mine is that students are not quick to trust strangers.  They do not really know what to do with someone who shows them love without an ulterior motive.  But, they can tell when someone actually loves them.  Nic loves kids.  They feel it.  They know it.

This is miraculous, because from their perspective, accepting love from adults you don’t know when you are so used to feeling suspicion toward, or rejection from them–is a battle.

Nic came to our school because of our mutual association with #ProjectLitBookClub and my dear friend and colleague Jarred Amato. I will forever be grateful to the Project LIT Community for the book love and support we share on a daily basis.  They are a consistent force for good in my life and that of my students.

Project LIT truly is changing the world–making it possible for authors and teachers and students to come together to share a love of reading that will open doors for children in underserved communities.  We use our love of socially conscious and culturally relevant books to ask the big questions of society, and empower our youth to be proactive about producing change.  Students initiate projects that bring literacy from the schools into their communities–and so much more.  Reading the Project LIT books this year has given them the confidence to see themselves as experts.  It has validated and affirmed their lives, identities, and experiences.

Four years ago, the district closed our library and our librarian quit.  Blame it on the bureaucracy, as people do, and as dystopian as it sounds; there are no longer any libraries or librarians in any school in Far Northeast Denver.  The physical library spaces (with books students cannot check out – thrown haphazardly on shelves) remain.  The expectation that students demonstrate literacy scores on standardized tests equal to their counterparts in suburban schools persists.

It is a grim situation.  And, it is precisely for this reason that author visits, grants for classroom libraries along with generous classroom donors, and programs like Project LIT are so important.  I am one who believes that a life without books is a hollow life indeed.  It is true. I am biased, but love is a battle–love is a war.  I believe in fighting for what, or who you love.  I love my students, so I will do whatever it takes to win this battle with and for them.  I also believe that “books save lives”, so I will go to any length for my students to have opportunities for high quality education, forming reading identities, and participation in life that they deserve.

This week was also Valentine’s Day, and another senseless incident of violence took place on the very day when we have traditionally celebrated our love for one another.  In a Valentine’s Day PD session, we talked about radical love in the classroom and what it means in our white-dominated educational landscape if students of color do not feel loved by their teachers.

What can we do to change that, especially if cultural differences in “love languages” are the reason our students do not feel loved?  What is our responsibility to them to make sure they DO feel love at school?  How does this translate into an individual’s sense of alienation or rejection by a teacher, class, school, or the system as a whole?

I would be remiss if I ended this post without recognizing the 18 victims of yet another mass shooting in a school in our country, most of them young people with brilliant futures ahead of them.  This did not have to happen.

We will never heal if we can’t examine the relationship our country has with violence and it’s rampant disregard for humanity.  It is my belief that this is a direct consequence of living in a society where we treat one another as objects and live segregated lives; culturally, geographically, psychologically.

These are not values that belong to my community.  Here I will say something radical:  My children believe themselves to be safer in the “ghetto” than they would be in the “white world”, and they might just be right.  Despite what you see on TV, people in communities of color — though we may have our issues stemming from the deliberate destabilization of individuals, families, local businesses, and our educational systems — do not prey on one another with surprise attacks involving AR-15s.  We are for the most part united because of our cultural traditions, because of our shared experience of being othered, and because we’ve realized that for means of survival, if nothing else, we have to belong to each other.

“Love is a battle.  Love is a war;  Love is a growing up.”  We must, as a country, grow up and raise our collective consciousness to the point where we are no longer able to see one another as objects, separate from ourselves, if we truly want to stop the cycle of violence.

Love is also a verb.  It’s not just what you think, feel, or say.  It is not the expression of now-becoming-defunct “Thoughts and prayers”.  It’s what you do.  If we truly want change, we have to show that with our actions.  The future is now.  We cannot afford to wait for “someday”. Change has to begin today.