You may have been hearing on the news about Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, sitting or kneeling during the national anthem at football games in which the San Francisco 49ers are playing. I want to talk about this as I think it is relevant to our work here at school—I want to make three points.

Kaepernick has been sitting or kneeling during the national anthem during this pre-game season as a form of protest against police brutality of African Americans. According to his press conferences, his intention is to raise awareness and dialogue about police brutality in the name of the United States; he intends to donate the first $1 million he earns this year to organizations working toward de-escalation practices among the police. He recently announced that he will donate all of the proceeds from the sales of his jerseys.

So, point number one: As a white woman, living with all of the privileges that the light complexion carries with it in the US, I realize that I have always felt somewhat emotional when the national anthem is played or sung at sporting events—it connects me with something larger to which I feel I belong. But as a white person seeking to be in partnership with people across difference, I empathize with Kaepernick’s point that there are clear patterns by race in who “belongs” in the US, who is taken care of by the government, and who is accepted for who they are. These patterns are not acceptable to Colin Kaepernick as a Black person, nor are they acceptable to me as a white person.

There are many people angry about Kaepernick’s actions. I am reminded of a famous quote from Dr. King about white people’s concern for order and harmony amidst tension in the civil rights movements. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” Protest is never going to be appealing and comfortable—the nature of protest is to disrupt and create dissonance. As a white woman, even if I don’t have the opportunity to sit or stand during the national anthem (not being a person who attends sporting events), what does it look like for me to actively participate in the pursuit of justice? In my case, it means ever-increasing consciousness and transparent naming of my whiteness to hopefully eliminate its oppressive effect on others, and courage to engage in conversations about whiteness, oppression, and biases, particularly with other white people. What does it look like for you?

Okay, point number two: I have been struck by Kaepernick’s communication with the press. He has held two lengthy discussions with the press in the past week in which he has laid out his arguments and evidence about police brutality the name of the US government. He clearly understands the implications of his actions and potential consequences. This what we want all of our students to be able to do! I want students to be capable of standing up for something in their communities or their lives, and in the face of questioning, doubting, or challenging, or simply to persuade, line up a series of arguments and evidence. I want them to be able to draw from historical events and perspectives, as Dr. King’s words were helpful to me in this situation, and how Colin Kaepernick is drawing on a history of athletes using their platform to protest. I want them to be able to speak passionately, straightforwardly, and confidently about their position.

I believe that our work in asking students to articulate positions and seek or state evidence that backs up their positions, our work in engaging student voice and dialogue in the classroom, our work to develop strong reading skills, our work in building students’ skills around critical analysis is all in service of being able to do what Colin Kaepernick is doing. For different students, the task may be a job interview or it may be a stand they take with a city or it may be a proposal they put together for their boss or it may be an op-ed article that they write for the newspaper or it may be an essay they write for a college class. In all of these tasks, they need strong literacy skills, critical analysis skills, and the confidence to face adversity.

Amidst the din of reactions to Kaepernick’s protest, here’s to his academic training and the educators that guided him to be persuasive in stating his positions. I want us to imagine each of our students defending their positions before a press conference with knowledge, code-switching communication skill, and confidence in their positions and in themselves—that’s what we’re striving for. As President Obama said about Kaepernick’s actions, “I’d rather have young people who are engaged in the argument and trying to think through how they can be part of our democratic process than people who are just sitting on the sidelines not paying attention at all.”

And point number three: Our students are aware of Kaepernick’s protest and many other athletes who are similarly protesting. I am talking about this today because we need to be practiced and open in engaging in dialogue with our students about how they perceive and feel about this. We may have sports teams that choose to protest by taking the knee for the national anthem. We may have students with a variety of opinions and perspectives, all of which are acceptable and welcome. The Common Core State Standards, balanced literacy, math talks—all of our curricula are intended to prepare students for this kind of dialogue and debate.

Please don’t shy away from it—embrace the complexity of being an educator in a diverse democracy. If you need help in any way thinking about how to talk with students and engage them in dialogue, please come talk to me—there’s nothing I’d rather talk about this week.

Hello colleagues. There are so many things happening in the world that relate to our work here at school. The Olympics, the presidential race, ongoing popular culture phenomena… but I want to share something with you from the 1800’s that I think is as relevant to our work as anything happening in current events.

Please indulge me for a moment of history. In 1865, General William T. Sherman of the Union army, having successfully marched south through to Savannah, Georgia, met with 20 Black ministers—half of whom were slaves and half of whom were freedmen. He asked them, “What do you want for your own people following the war?” Their answer was unequivocal—they wanted land. “’The way we can best take care of ourselves,’ Rev. Frazier began his answer to the crucial third question, ‘is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor … and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare … We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own.’ And when asked next where the freed slaves ‘would rather live — whether scattered among the whites or in colonies by themselves,’ without missing a beat, Brother Frazier (as the transcript calls him) replied that ‘I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over … ”

Four days after this meeting, on Jan. 16, 1865, and with the approval of President Abraham Lincoln, General Sherman issued Field Order 15, consisting of three parts. First, the order seized the land on the sea islands and 30 miles inland from Charleston, South Carolina down to Florida—a total of 400,000 acres of land—and allocated it to former slaves. Second, the order indicated that the Black people taking ownership of this land would govern themselves. Third, it indicated that each family would have a parcel of land of up to 40 acres (the mule came later.)

So what happened? By June of that year, 40,000 freedmen had settled on 400,000 acres of Sherman land and had begun the process of electing Black leaders to govern their newly forming communities.

After Lincoln was assassinated, in the fall of 1865, his successor, Andrew Johnson, a sympathizer with the South, reversed Field Order 15 restoring the land to white plantation owners.

I want to say that it blows my mind to consider how the subsequent 150 years might have played out if Andrew Johnson had not reversed this Field Order. Even by today’s standards, Field Order 15 was a radical and revolutionary response to the years of bondage, violence, and oppression that African Americans had withstood—it was the earliest attempt at reparations in the form of land redistribution. Given what we know about the systemic barriers to African Americans accumulating wealth across generations through property ownership, if Field Order 15 had been allowed to stand, the vast gaps in socio-economic status between African Americans and other races in the US might have been significantly different today. We may well not be facing the racialized achievement gap that we face today if Field Order 15 had been allowed to stand.

Why are we talking about this? Being reminded of this chapter in American history has affected my heart. The communication between General Sherman and the 20 Black ministers is a very powerful example of authentic partnership across difference to transform lives. It has made me ask myself two things: to what extent are we truly listening to what our community is asking of us? (as General Sherman did with those 20 Black ministers—who were extremely clear about what their communities needed.) AND What is the revolutionary and radical step that we are undertaking this year that could have a transformative effect on future generations?

As I reflect on the state of the US at this moment—from the murders of Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile to the Department of Justice’s indictment of the San Francisco Police Department for racism to the current rhetoric in the presidential election—these questions are particularly poignant for me. The ILT [and other leadership teams] has been working on our instructional vision and our year-long goals. Our SSC, ELAC, AAPAC, and PTA have begun discussing plans for the year. I want to be clear that I’m going into each of these spaces with these two questions situated deeply in my heart—how is what we’re talking about (in any of these meetings) responsive to what we’ve heard from our community, and particularly our students? AND How is what’s being proposed or discussed in this meeting a radical or revolutionary step that will impact future generations?

I encourage you to join me in holding these questions in your heart. In your classrooms, how are you regularly and intentionally listening to students and their families? Not in a defensive way—defensiveness on the part of General Sherman would never have resulted in Field Order 15—but in such a way that trusts that they hold some expertise in knowing what they need. And what are you doing differently this year that might have a lasting impact on the young people before you? Are you planning to hold individual conferences with students regularly throughout the year to give specific feedback about their learning and communicate your love for them? Are you planning to greet each student at the door by name with a handshake, a hug, or a high five? Are you crafting a unit plan that allows each student to connect her oral family history to broader American history?

I am honored to work with a community of educators who are willing to take up these questions. The turbulent times are asking this of us.

 

There is so much going on in the news. As we begin our work this week, I want to talk about how important it is that we take the time to consider and then embrace the myriad racial perspectives about various recent events.

Why is this important? As educators for social justice, considering perspectives other than our own is a habit and practice that we use moment by moment. When we stand in a classroom of young faces, it’s essential that we are thinking about what our young people might have seen and experienced over the weekend or in their lives outside of school. Their perspectives about learning, race, school, values, and their own power in the world stem from their experiences—and those perspectives in turn inform how they interact with school, with curriculum, with each other, and with us. Taking the time to investigate those varying perspectives gives us windows into what our students are thinking and experiencing, which expands our own cultural competence, gives us a pathway to deeper relationships, and allows us to make curricula more relevant.

So here are just a few things about which there may be myriad perspectives in our classrooms:

1. Lunar New Year: Some of our students have just begun a 15-day observance of the Chinese New Year as they welcome the Year of the Monkey. It is extremely significant for many Chinese cultures—relatives often travel from afar to be together, there are a variety of foods associated with this celebration, and there are many associated customs. Some of our students will receive red envelopes, will help with cleaning their houses, and will intentionally not do things that portend negative patterns for the coming year. Do you know which of our students celebrate this holiday? How do they celebrate? What does this celebration mean in their families and to them?

2. The Sacramento Kings: Last week, the Sacramento Kings (an NBA team) pulled t-shirts that were set to be given away to all ticket-holders depicting a monkey in celebration of the Year of the Monkey. African American players on that team felt that it was disrespectful and inappropriate to give away t-shirts depicting a monkey on the first night of Black History Month. How do students in our classrooms view the decision made by the Kings? For those who knew about this, do they understand why this happened?

3. Beyoncé’s New Video and Half-Time Show: Beyoncé released a video and song on Saturday in advance of the Super Bowl half-time show that contains strong lyrics and imagery about police brutality, racism, Hurricane Katrina, and black, female power. There are many rich cultural references in the song that our students may or may not understand—and you may or may not understand. In the spirit of learning about the perspectives some of our young people may hold, I encourage you to listen to the song and look up the references that you don’t know. Have our students heard the song? What sense do they make of the lyrics relative to their own lives and to their families’ lives and experiences?

4. Cam Newton and Peyton Manning: Some of our students are devoted football fans. For those who followed the lead-up to the Super Bowl, the media drew some sharp contrasts between Cam Newton, the black quarterback for the Carolina Panthers, and Peyton Manning, the white quarterback for the Denver Broncos. Before the game, Cam Newton came under attack for being too flashy, too proud, and too wild—-accusations that many agree were rooted in racism and fear. After the game, when Cam Newton was short in his answers to reporters and then abruptly left the press conference, he was further attacked by media and former NFL players for being a sore loser. The contrasting continues—with various media outlets comparing Newton’s acceptance of the loss of the Super Bowl with Peyton Manning’s loss several years ago to the New Orleans Saints, in which he left the field in frustration without acknowledging the opposing quarterback, as is customary. Many commentators in the media supported Manning’s walk-off from the field while they are criticizing Newton’s much less dramatic response to losing. Do students see racism at play here? What have they learned in their own families about competition and comportment related to winning and losing?

How might we investigate our students’ perspectives on these events? What about a class discussion in which we practice making claims and backing them up with evidence? What about having lunch with a student and asking her or him about any one (or more) of these events? What about a quick-write at the beginning of class to get a sense of what students are holding in their minds and their hearts?

Even though we see young people each day here at school without their families—each of them comes from a family that has hopes, fears, traditions, biases, and the accumulated effects of oppression (imposed or experienced.) Our students learn to view the world and its events through the lens that their families gave to them, tinted by their current realities and what we teach them here at school. Here’s to recognizing and embracing the multiple perspectives that exist in our classrooms—so we may validate our students’ identities as well as deepen and expand our own identities as we work toward equity and justice.

Related Data

– Houser, C. (2016, February 2). Sacramento Kings Pull ‘Year of the Monkey’ Shirts From Seats. New York Times. Retrieved February 8, 2016, from www.nytimes.com

– King, S. (2016, February 8). King: The racial double standard between Cam Newton and Peyton Manning is on full display after Super Bowl 50. Daily News. Retrieved February 8, 2016, from www.nydailynews.com

– http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/watch-beyonces-surprise-new-video-formation-20160206

– Singleton, G. (2015). Courageous Conversations about Race (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

There is so much going on in the news of interest right now, but I have been thinking and reading a lot about the announcement of the Academy Award nominees that happened last week. In all of the nominations for the top categories—best director, best picture, and all four acting categories, only one nominee is a person of color—the rest are white.

I believe that the whiteness of the Academy Award nominees reflects that our society continues to default to recognizing the brilliance of white actors, directors, and other movie folks to the exclusion of brilliant actors, directors, and movie people of color. There were, by many accounts of Hollywood critics, a number of black and brown actors and directors who had outstanding performances in 2015. It seems that there are many reasons for people of color being overlooked for the awards—-the racial composition of the voting members of the Academy and their racial consciousness, the network of power in Hollywood, which is dominated by white people, the subject matter of “black” films being allegedly difficult for many to watch, to name a few reasons floating around. In other parts of the entertainment world, there is somewhat more diversity—at the Grammys, at the Emmys, on American Idol, and in competitive sports such as the Superbowl, recent tennis championships, and the NBA championships, we see black and white award winners. Award winners that are Latino, Asian, Native American, among other racial groups, are scarce.

What does this have to do with us as educators? Our country just honored and celebrated the life of Dr. King who famously called for a time in which “…(his) four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I am worried that our young people of color, here in our school and across the country, in this particular awards process, witness only whiteness at the pinnacle of the entertainment world and receive a clear message—even if you are brilliant, talented, and accomplished, the top awards are not accessible to you unless you are white. It is a familiar, frustrating, and insidious narrative that has persisted throughout our country’s history in regards to race.

I want us to stand in resistance to that narrative. I want us to change the narrative within our sphere of influence. I want our school to be a place where we regularly highlight and celebrate excellence in all shades of skin color. I want students to see other students, community members, parents, educators, and celebrities who share their cultural and/or racial background being celebrated and honored publicly. This shows up in who is on our honor roll, who is in our honors and AP classes, the composition of our student government, who are our students of the week. We want students to see people who look like they do receiving top awards and see clear and supported paths for how to achieve those honors themselves. There is more need than ever for the presence, in real humans, in curriculum, in posters on the walls of brilliant and successful people of color so that our young people have role models and inspiration. I want our students to know that their hard work, their brilliance, their passion will be recognized and honored when they achieve great things.

Big events like the Academy Awards open opportunities for us to be in dialogue with our students about this issue of racial patterns of recognition. We want our students, of all racial backgrounds, to notice patterns of achievement by race in the wider society and question them. It is through such ongoing discussions that we help them make sense of what is happening, feel supported in taking a stance of challenging and questioning, and develop a sense of their own power to interrupt the patterns.

Here’s yet another reminder how important our work is. Thank you for doing it with me. I want to leave you with a quote from Dr. King as you begin your week: “With patient and firm determination we will press on until every valley of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope, until every mountain of pride and irrationality is made low by the levelling process of humility and compassion; until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a smooth plane of equality of opportunity; and until the crooked places of prejudice are transformed by the straightening process of bright-eyed wisdom.”

Related Data

– “There were 305 films eligible this year. If hiring reflected the U.S. population, Oscar voters would have weighed 150-plus films directed by women, 45 directed by blacks, 50 by Hispanics, and dozens of movies by directors who are Asian-American, LGBT or members of other minorities. Of course, the actual tallies were a fraction of those numbers.” Gray, Tim. “Academy Nominates All White Actors for Second Year in Row.” Variety 14 Jan. 2016. Print.

– All of the 20 acting nominees were white actors.

– One of the five best director nominees was a Mexican director.

Hello Colleagues. I want to open today by talking about the video and related news about the death of Laquan McDonald in Chicago. I want to talk about this for a variety of reasons. I imagine that many of you have heard about this fatal incident or watched the video yourselves. I also imagine that some of our students have watched the video.

So, here are the basic facts: In 2014, an African-American, 17-year-old boy, Laquan McDonald, was fatally shot 16 times by a white police officer after being followed by police cars for allegedly breaking into cars. When a judge determined this month that the video of the shooting must be released to the public, the state’s attorney general indicted the officer with first-degree murder. The video was released to the public last Tuesday. There were many protests in Chicago throughout the Thanksgiving break.

First, while many people enjoyed a restful and joyful holiday with family and friends, many others experienced joy torn from their hearts upon watching the very brutal video—and that loss of joy may have permeated their breaks. As the journalist, Ta-Nehisi Coates, regularly points out—there is not an uptick of violence going on by police toward young people of color—there is an uptick in our ability to record and publish these incidents using video. For some, and possibly more predominantly for our colleagues of color and our African American colleagues, the fear, sadness, outrage, and desperation can be unshakable. The peril to the physical safety of black people exposed in these videos that continue to come at us from around the country is undeniable. For those among us who are black, who are related to young black people, who know and deeply love black people, that peril is terrifying to the core and that terror can subsume the joy and peace that we hope for during holidays.

Today at our staff meeting, we are going to hold space for the range of experiences, reactions, and emotions to the scenes from Chicago. Our school is a place where we seek to recognize and celebrate the wholeness and complexity of each human—this goes for adults as well as for students. The dialogue across our differences about incidents like the one that happened in Chicago is essential, both to create space for the myriad emotions and reactions and to more deeply understand each other’s experiences and perspectives.

Given that most people socialize, worship, and get their hair done with their racial groups, most people aren’t engaged in dialogue about issues of race with people of different races. But this is what we need to be doing here at ______________ (name of school)! If we hope someday to be the change agents that support and facilitate young people to talk about issues of race without charge in order to build a culture of empathy and understanding to mitigate the potential for xenophobia and subsequent violence, we need to be able to do it ourselves.

My own sadness during the Thanksgiving break about the experiences of black Americans, and especially those who are young and live in cities, much like some of our own students, made me feel weary about writing this equity frame. It feels like these incidents of terror that black people suffer are commonplace—to return to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ point that I mentioned earlier. What more is there to say? My inspiration amidst a growing desperation lies in my belief that we can be the change we wish to see in the world, as Gandhi instructed us. We can be a place where we have enough space and love to hold the reactions and experiences, however big or small, of our adults, families, and students to horrifying events that involve race. We can be a place where we as adults are regularly engaged in conversations about our different or similar experiences of the world given our racial identities. We can be a place where someday, we don’t wait for race to come up in our classrooms—we bring it up regularly so that our students experience dialogue about race as commonplace and without charge.

I say this both to be transparent about my own vision for who we can be as a school and to charge us with leading the work of having courageous conversations about race. This charge is for the ILT to think about how we can do this, but also to every individual person. When you take a moment to think and reflect, what was your reaction to the murder of Laquan McDonald, whether you thought about it during the break or you just learned about it now? What would it take for you to be able to engage in dialogue about your reaction with others on staff, especially across the difference of race? What fear do you hold about such conversations? I want our school to be a place where the adults have the courage, confidence, and curiosity to lean into these conversations.

If we don’t create this space, and we politely ask each other, “How was your Thanksgiving?” to which we respond superficially, we are reproducing the oppressive dominant culture of institutions like ours as dehumanizing. We are a school that prizes the humanity of our adults, parents, and students—it takes our ongoing attention to make sure our school is a place that truly lives that commitment.

Relevant Data

– In 2014, an African-American, 17-year-old boy, Laquan McDonald, was fatally shot 16 times by a white police officer after being followed by police cars for allegedly breaking into cars. When a judge determined this month that the video of the shooting must be released to the public, the state’s attorney general indicted the officer with first-degree murder. The video was released to the public last Tuesday. (Sweeney, Annie, and Jason Meisner. “A Moment-by-moment Account of What the Laquan McDonald Video Shows.” Chicago Tribune 25 Nov. 2015, News sec. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.)

– Perspectives from Ta-Nahisi Coates (Goodman, Amy. “Ta-Nehisi Coates on Police Brutality: “The Violence Is Not New, It’s the Cameras That Are New”” Truthout | Fearless, Independent News and Opinion. 27 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.)

 

 

 

You have probably heard about the incident that transpired in South Carolina last week. A high school sophomore (an African American girl) was using her phone during an Algebra 1 class. The teacher (a white man) asked the student to put away her phone and the student refused or didn’t comply. Sometime thereafter, the teacher called for an administrator (an African American man), who asked the student to leave the classroom. When she didn’t comply with that request, the administrator called the school resource officer (a white man) who tipped her chair, threw her to the ground, and dragged her to the front of the classroom before handcuffing her and arresting her for disrupting class.

In response, the school resource officer has been fired and the superintendent has articulated the need to learn from this incident so that nothing similar happens again. The Justice Department has initiated an investigation.

The video of this incident inspires, in me at least, questions that are relevant to our work here. There has been a lot of coverage about the SRO, his actions, and the concept of police presence in schools, but I want to focus on the students and the teacher for a moment. I want to say here that there are some complex dynamics of race and school in this situation and we don’t know all of the facts—we only saw a 15-second video that shows us nothing of what happened before. I offer these thoughts to help us all make sense of what has been exposed in the media and learn from it.

If we focus on the student, we might ask ourselves these questions:

Why did the 16-year-old sophomore not put away her phone? What was underneath that response? We know now that there were some circumstances happening in the girl’s life that may have affected this interaction—she was recently placed in foster care. Did anyone of the three adults in this situation know about those circumstances? This same dynamic between the teacher and student plays out, albeit often less egregiously, in classrooms across the US every day. How can we balance the need for efficient conducting of classroom activities with the patient, curious, empathetic responses to students that help us understand how they’re set up for learning each day? And what else might be underneath a pattern of teachers seeing African American students as “defiant?” Could it be fear, on one side or both? Could it be black students’ resistance to the assimilative culture of schools? Could it be a student seizing a moment of feeling powerful in a life of scant feelings of power? I assert that students don’t usually “defy” or not follow instructions because they think it’s fun—there are reasons underneath. It’s important that we are a school and a community that take great interest in and concern for those reasons.

If we focus on the teacher and the administrator, we ask ourselves these questions:

Why did the teacher choose to handle the situation as he did? Did he use any other strategies? Did he go kneel down next to her and quietly inquire about what was going on with her? Did he get students started on a learning activity and then go talk with the student individually? Did he employ humor, love, and asset-affirmation when asking the student to put away her phone?

To what extent were the teacher and the administrator outraged at the student’s defiance? To what extent did either of them feel afraid of losing face and power when the student refused to follow their directions? Is it possible that fear and outrage, individually or together, closed off their cognitive acuity to think about responding to the student from a place of love, respect, empathy, and curiosity?

The teacher set off a series of escalating events. In a moment of exasperation, fear, or outrage, the teacher reached for the power that he could access. In this case, and in many situations in our district and sometimes in our school, the teacher reached for power by asking for another adult to come take charge or by sending the student out of the classroom. When the administrator arrived in the classroom at Spring Valley High School, he too may have experienced the fear of humiliation in front of the classroom of students when the student in question refused to leave the room or outrage that the student refused to follow instructions. He also reached for the power he could easily access—the school resource officer. The school resource officer reached for his power—-force.

What kind of professional development and school culture will help all of us experience moments like this not as threatening, as sometimes happens, but as opportunities to take a curious and calm look into our toolboxes of strategies rather than choosing escalation or power struggle? What will it take for us to know all of our students personally so that interactions, even when difficult, are undergirded by trust?

When we focus on the other students:

It is striking in this video to see students in the classroom calmly watching the violent incident unfold. What was going on for them? To what extent have the adults created a sense of community at Spring Valley High School such that students might have stepped in to help in the interaction between the teacher and student, between the student and administrator, or between the student and the SRO? It makes me think about the school culture we have here. How would our students react if they witnessed this incident? How would we want them to react? How would we, as the adults, want to react when other students step in to help de-escalate a situation? I plan to engage in a conversation with our students about this issue to think together about the community we’re trying to create. I invite everyone into those conversations with students.

And then there was Niya, the other girl who was arrested in this situation because she was upset, shouting, and cursing at the SRO during this incident—she was doing what she could in that moment to step in and try to stop the incident. According to interviews with her, she didn’t actually know the girl who had her cell phone out—but she was compelled to stand up for the girl because of her convictions about fair treatment, regardless of existing relationships. This also speaks to the cultivation of community to build the expectation that students take care of each other.

————————————————————————————————————————-

I raise this with us because these issues are relevant here. I want us to be thinking about the root causes of defiance, about our reactions when students are defiant and what’s underneath our reactions, and how we’re building community, every day, between ourselves and our students and between and among students.

We are a community that has the strength to ask, engage, and answer these kinds of questions. I am proud to work here with you because we value hard questions. Please let me know if any of these questions piqued your curiosity or interest and you want to talk further. It would make my day.

Related Data

– “Witnesses to Monday’s incident said that in an Algebra 1 class, the girl, a sophomore, was on her phone, and the teacher told her to put it away. The teacher summoned an administrator, who brought in the deputy. The adults repeatedly asked the student to get up and leave the class, but she refused. When the altercation occurred, students stood up, confused about what was happening, but the deputy told them, “Sit down, or you all will be next,” said one student, Charles Scarborough, 16. Adding to the surprise and confusion, several students said the girl was usually quiet and not a troublemaker. The deputy also detained a second student, Niya Kenny, 18, who told a local television station that her only offense was objecting to his treatment of the other girl.” Fausset, R., Pérez-Peña, R., & Blinder, A. (2015, October 27). Race and Discipline in Spotlight After South Carolina Officer Drags Student. New York Times.

– “The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, along with the F.B.I. and the United States attorney for South Carolina, said Tuesday that it would look into the incident.” Fausset, R., Pérez-Peña, R., & Blinder, A. (2015, October 27). Race and Discipline in Spotlight After South Carolina Officer Drags Student. New York Times.

– “A South Carolina sheriff’s deputy has been fired after videos were posted online Monday showing him violently throwing a high school student from her desk in a classroom.” Cleary, T. (2015, October 28). Heavy.com – Breaking News, Sports, Entertainment, TV, Tech, Gaming & Health. Retrieved October 29, 2015, from http://heavy.com/tag/5-fast-facts/

– “The Spring Valley High teenager who was violently taken down by a sheriff’s deputy in a class in Columbia, S.C., Monday is under foster care, but according to most recent reports is not an orphan.” DeBerry, J. (2015, October 29). Spring Valley High student’s attorney corrects report that she’s an orphan: Jarvis DeBerry. The Times-Picayune, Greater New Orleans.

I don’t know if you are following the news about the many people fleeing toward Europe from the war-torn lands of Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, and Iraq—it is the largest mass migration since World War II. It has been tragic, primarily in the often-fatal experiences of the refugees but also in the xenophobia and NIMBY reaction that it has brought out in many of the European citizens.

Instead of talking about this today using a narrative format, I want to read you a poem. One of our essential tasks as educators for equity is to constantly seek understanding of the cultures of our students and families. Windows into kids’ cultures can sometimes help us understand their successes and challenges at school—the windows can illuminate opportunities to connect with our students, even across the differences of racial and cultural backgrounds. This poem that I’m going to read to you is written by a Somali poet, Warsan Shire, herself an immigrant to the United Kingdom from Africa. Her experience is from the other side of the planet, but I wonder if it gives us insight into the culture of migration. So many of our students, and in fact, almost all of us or our ancestors, have migrated from one part of the world to here, by force, by desperation, or by volition.

Many of us watch the news about this crisis and think, “What can I do?” One thing we can do is to be truly curious and compassionate with our students and families who have endured journeys to arrive here—curious about what they left behind and about the journeys themselves.

I offer this poem to you as you think about who your students are, what they’ve experienced in their short lives, and how you will seek their trust and love by devoting the time to getting to know them, as the young, beautiful, complex humans that they are. Let this also remind us that they came here for hope and safety. We offer them both here at school—through predictable and organized school environment, and through careful, relentless, and loving instruction. May our presence in their lives, in some way, make their arduous journeys worthwhile—may they experience safety, community, belonging, and learning.

HOME by Warsan Shire

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbours running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it’s not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages

no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

means something more than journey.

no one crawls under fences

no one wants to be beaten

pitied

no one chooses refugee camps

or strip searches where your

body is left aching

or prison,

because prison is safer

than a city of fire

and one prison guard

in the night

is better than a truckload

of men who look like your father

no one could take it

no one could stomach it

no one skin would be tough enough

the

go home blacks

refugees

dirty immigrants

asylum seekers

sucking our country dry

niggers with their hands out

they smell strange

savage

messed up their country and now they want

to mess ours up

how do the words

the dirty looks

roll off your backs

maybe because the blow is softer

than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender

than fourteen men between

your legs

or the insults are easier

to swallow

than rubble

than bone

than your child body

in pieces.

i want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun

and no one would leave home

unless home chased you to the shore

unless home told you

to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans

drown

save

be hungry

beg

forget pride

your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i’ve become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here.

As we welcome students back from their summers away from school, I think it’s important to consider how our students may have experienced the summer differently. There were nine Black people murdered in a church in Charleston; there were several more shootings of Black men at the hands of White police officers; a young Black woman committed suicide in a Texas jail after being pulled over for switching lanes without a signal; and a young White woman was murdered in San Francisco by an undocumented Latino man which prompted San Francisco to reconsider it’s “sanctuary city” status.

Charles Blow, an African American columnist for the New York Times Op-Ed page, once said in an interview that Black men in the US spend an inordinate amount of emotional and physical energy holding themselves just-so, so as not to inadvertently trigger the deep-seated fear of Black men that seems to pervade our national subconscious. As we have seen over the course of history, the stakes can be very high for Black men who are perceived to be threatening or dangerous—we kill them, send them out of our classrooms and schools, put them in prison, look away when, as young men, they need guidance rather than punishment. There have also been many, many accounts narrating the physical and emotional toll that living in the US as an undocumented person can take—with a perpetual and omnipresent fear and wariness of suspicion and ultimately deportation.

One can argue that when a group of people experience unjust violence and threat over time, there is a collective sense of fear, caution, and outrage that become internalized. This summer, violent events have played out on the national stage. Whether or not our students watch or read the news outlets, we may assume that they and/or their families experienced some or all of the effects of that violence on the souls of their communities.

To what extent are our Latino students coming to school this year holding some fear about being deported or fear that people they love and depend upon will be deported? To what extent might they hold fear that people will associate them with Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez? To what extent might they hold fear about being perceived as sexual predators, as Donald Trump infamously alleged? To what extent are our African American students coming into our classrooms holding in their souls the fear and outrage that have been compounded by the shootings in Charleston, the death of Sandra Bland, and the other acts of violence from this summer?

I believe these circumstances affect how our students are showing up this fall after a summer away from school. Their willingness to take risks in the classroom may be affected. Their engagement in building relationships with new adults may be affected. Their experience of authority and rules in your classrooms and in our school may be affected. Their experience of the relevance of our curriculum may be affected.

As educators committed to equity and justice, we know that our students may need different kinds and levels of support in order to reach the same outcomes of strong achievement and positive school experience. We may need to hold more acute awareness of the larger context of the recent events in our country as we interact with students who may have internalized those events. So, for example, in your classroom, when an African-American student does or says something that you think calls for correction or reprimand, how do you not escalate the situation beyond its original size? This interaction in the classroom has the potential to resemble now infamous interactions between police officers and African American drivers that have had tragic results for the drivers. What might be happening when you ask a Latino student this week why she doesn’t have her homework? When you ask about who lives with her (as you try to understand the circumstances related to her getting her homework done,) how might your questions about her home life trigger fears that you are trying to find out information that you could communicate to ICE? In both examples, our students’ fear and caution may not be conscious, but rather the internalized, subconscious fear and wariness resulting from repeated acts of violence over time on their communities.

So, as we get started into our second week of school, I want us to hold carefully in our minds this awareness. This awareness doesn’t mean that we don’t hold our African American and Latino students to high expectations in classroom learning or in behavior. It means that we think about ways to accomplish our goals of engaging students in classroom learning, in creating an environment of risk-taking, in creating a predictable and structured learning environment that honor what our students have experienced this summer and over time—as individuals and as members of communities.

As always, I don’t expect that we do this alone. We build relational trust so that we can support each other to realize what it means to be educators for equity. Here’s to being a community of educators that remain committed to educating our young people in the face of the abhorrent racism that the summer of 2015 delivered to us.

Related Data

– “A white gunman opened fire Wednesday night at a historic black church in downtown Charleston, S.C., killing nine people before fleeing and setting off an overnight manhunt, the police said. At a news conference with Charleston’s mayor early Thursday, the police chief, Greg Mullen, called the shooting a hate crime.” Horowitz, J. (2015, June 17). Nine Killed in Shooting at Black Church in Charleston. New York Times. Retrieved August 23, 2015, from www.nyt.com

– “The head of the Texas state police department faced fierce grilling by lawmakers here Thursday over the confrontational behavior of a trooper in the arrest of Sandra Bland, who was found hanged in her Waller County jail cell this month, three days after she was taken into custody after a routine traffic stop.” Montgomery, D. (2015, July 30). Texas Trooper’s Behavior Called ‘Catalyst’ in Sandra Bland’s Death. New York Times. Retrieved August 23, 2015, from www.nyt.com

– “The case of a Mexican laborer with a lengthy criminal record who was charged on Tuesday in the fatal shooting of an American woman on a pier in San Francisco has exposed a gulf of mistrust and failed communication between the federal authorities and the police in California over immigration enforcement. The man, most recently known as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, 56, pleaded not guilty in Superior Court in San Francisco in the murder of Kathryn Steinle, 32, who was strolling last Wednesday with her father and a friend on Pier 14 near the Ferry Building when she was struck in what the police described as a random shooting. Mr. Lopez-Sanchez, whose criminal record includes seven felony convictions, had been deported from the United States five times, raising questions about why he was in the United States. Questions were also raised late Tuesday about the gun used in the killing. A law enforcement official confirmed local media reports that the serial number showed the gun belonged to a federal agent. The official declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly… A San Francisco ordinance, passed in 2013, broadly restricts the police from cooperating with immigration agents. City officials say the so-called sanctuary law has helped law enforcement by enhancing trust between the police and residents who are immigrants without documents.” Preston, J. (2015, July 7). San Francisco Murder Case Exposes Lapses in Immigration Enforcement. New York Times.

– Charles Blow on Real Time with Bill Maher: (2012). Real Time with Bill Maher [Television series episode]. In Real Time with Bill Maher. Los Angeles: HBO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzBASk0q-uc

– “In a 2008 study done by the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, 31% of Latino adolescents in North Carolina showed signs of sub-clinical or clinical anxiety and 18% showed signs of depression. The study did not distinguish between those who are here legally and those who are undocumented, but the demographics of those surveyed reflect that 93% of the children were not U.S. citizens.” Bonifacio, K. (2013, January 5). Undocumented Youth Struggle With Anxiety, Depression. Retrieved August 23, 2015.

 

Good afternoon, dear colleagues. Here we are at the end of another school year. As we’re thinking more and more about how and why inequity plays out in our school (and so many other schools), I wanted to point out a few things about the phenomenon of summer vacation and how we might think about our last week with our beloved students.

If ever asked about summer vacation and why it exists, I might have said that it had something to do with the farm calendar without really knowing if that was true. I also might recall my own happy memories of summer—taking a break from school in a suburban environment where summer days were filled with raspberries, swimming, and lots of time with my grandparents. It turns out that this story about why we have summer vacations each year isn’t true and my memories as a white person growing up in the upper-middle class are not reflective of many other people’s memories or realities.

Here’s what happened. According to several recent articles, including one from PBS Newshour, in the 19^th century, there were two calendars—those used by rural districts in which students were on break during the spring and fall for planting and harvest, and those used by urban districts, where schools were open more or less year-round and school wasn’t mandatory—kids came when they could. In the days before air-conditioning, school buildings were very hot. Many wealthy families took vacations from the summer heat. When reformers in the late 19^th century decided that it was best to have a standard school calendar, they landed on the calendar that we still use today. You can hopefully see from this story that this decision was influenced by circumstances that are largely no longer relevant (i.e. lack of air conditioning in urban areas with hot summer temperatures) and by the interests of our moneyed classes (i.e. the desire to take substantial family vacations to avoid the heat.)

What we know now is that summer vacation isn’t actually helpful for the overall achievement and well-being of most children, especially our children from low-income homes. Most of our students will lose about two months of grade-level equivalency in math—our students from low-income homes will also lose about 3 months of grade-level equivalency in literacy, while middle income and upper-income students actually make slight gains. Most kids, especially those who are at high risks for obesity, will gain weight more rapidly during out-of-school months. Fifty-seven percent of kids of parents who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher participate in organized summer activities—12% of kids of parents without a high school diploma participate in organized summer activities. All this to say that this phenomenon of summer vacation plays out well if you live in a middle or upper middle class home where literacy is a regular part of life and your parent, who may or may not work outside of the home, has planned a summer schedule of organized activities. This is not true for many of our students. Remember that here at our school ___% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch—a family of four in San Francisco that lives on less than $36,000 per year.

So what happens? For our students living in poverty, which in San Francisco, disproportionately includes our African American and Latino students, there may be hungry days, days while mom(s) and/or dad(s) are working all day, days with a lot of television, time at our Boys’ and Girls’ clubs or other drop-in programs, scant support for navigating social and/or physical conflicts. I raise all of this to provide some context for behaviors you might witness this week as our students prepare to leave us for the summer. We do a great job here of providing a very predictable, loving, safe, highly structured environment where kids mostly focus on learning and socializing or playing with peers. The unknown of the summer or memories of difficulties or boredom or hunger from last summer can impact how some students feel about the last week of school.

Part of our work as educators for equity is to interrupt ways in which oppression plays out in our systems. This is an example of a very old system that largely benefits those with economic privilege in our country. While interrupting this system is going to take more than our awareness of it here at our school, holding an awareness about it can help us interact meaningfully and helpfully and with great care and love with our students this week.

Here are some things that I want you to think about this week and offer up to families as much as you can:

• Embrace your students with your loving hearts—leave them for the summer with memories of you as someone who deeply cares about them, their learning, and their families. Build in some time this week to check in with students individually to remind them of your love and care for them as unique and special humans.
• Remind families—all of them—that there are 65 sites that will be offering daily snacks and lunch throughout the summer for free to anyone 18 and under. We have the map of free meal sites posted outside of the main office. Tell them to pick up some extra snacks in case they feel hungry in the afternoon or evening!
• Many of our city partners offer free summer programs or activities that families can still sign up for. Our mayor, Ed Lee, just announced that the city will devote $1.8 million to fund summer programs so that all children on wait lists will have access. In conversations with kids or families, suggest that there are a variety of ways to find summer programs. They can call 2-1-1 and talk to someone who can provide options for summer activities in a variety of languages. They can stop by the public library where there are brochures about summer activities. They can use a computer to check out sfkids.org to see many options.

I know you have a busy week of activities, assessments, and closing procedures. Please find time among those responsibilities to be present with our students, to remind them of your love, and to hold in your heart the complexity of each of their situations. Here’s to our ongoing work together to make our school and our society a place where our beloved children truly have equal and abundant opportunity!

Related Data

• To qualify for free/reduced lunch in San Francisco, a family of four lives on less than $36,000 per year. (SF Gate, September 30, 2013)
• “Most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains (Cooper, 1996).” (The National Summer Learning Association)
• “Children lose more than academic knowledge over the summer. Most children—particularly children at high risk of obesity—gain weight more rapidly when they are out of school during summer break (Von Hippel et al, 2007)” (The National Summer Learning Association)
• 2% percent of students ages 6-20 who were enrolled in grades 1-12 who’s parents hold a bachelor’s degree or higher were enrolled in organized summer activities. 12.1% of students who’s parents don’t hold a high school diploma were enrolled in those programs. (National Center for Education Statistics, May 1999)
• In the 19^th century, there were two calendars—those used by rural districts in which students were on break during the spring and fall for planting and harvest, and those used by urban districts, where schools were open more or less year-round and school wasn’t mandatory—kids came when they could. In the days before air-conditioning, school buildings were very hot. Many wealthy families took vacations from the summer heat. When reformers in the late 19^th century decided that it was best to have a standard school calendar, they landed on the calendar that we still use today. (“Agrarian Roots? Think Again. Debunking the myth of summer vacation’s origins,” Saskia de Melker and Sam Weber, PBS Newshour, September 7, 2014
• Mayor Ed Lee announced on Thursday, May 21 that the city will spend $1.8 million to eliminate the wait lists for summer programs. (www.sfmayor.org)

 

I don’t know if you have been following the story about the young men in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma. Two videos surfaced the weekend before last in which two white men were gleefully leading a bus full of formal-clad college students in a song that said that their fraternity would never accept a black person, using racist language. The University of Oklahoma swiftly closed down the fraternity house and expelled the two students who were seen in the video leading the song.

I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about this situation, about what made that song fun for those students, about how the university responded, about the racism that is built into traditions, especially in exclusive bodies, and about what could and should happen next. I want to talk specifically here about how the university responded because I think it is relevant to our work here at our school.

The university president took swift action—he expelled the two leaders of the song. That step may look to those watching around the nation like the right and only thing to do—to give the boys the most significant punishment that the university can levy. For many people, seeing white men receive a serious consequence for their racist behavior is a welcome change from centuries of white-on-black aggression being ignored, if not celebrated. It may have been the right thing to do.

But I am left with a question about what that action does for those young men and the rest of the people who were singing along on the bus. Given that 85% of the US Supreme Court justices since 1910, 76% of all US senators, and 85% of Fortune 500 executives were fraternity men, we can assume that these expelled young men as well as the others on the bus are the people most likely in our society to hold positions of power. Once expelled, they are out of the university’s reach. What if the university had decided to engage the two men (and all of the young men and women who were on the bus) in weekly seminars in which they are in dialogue with each other and African American students and university employees about their song, their traditions, and what kind of people they are hoping to become in the world? In one article that I read, an African American professor from a historically Black college in the south suggested that the young men sing their song to and engage in discussion with the African American cook who worked at the fraternity house, serving meals for the last decade to fraternity members. What if the university had seen the students’ actions as opportunity to authentically teach them about humanity, about racism, about the legacy of slavery? Would it mean that at least one cohort of white fraternity men go out into the world as more racially conscious and educated, more tolerant, more self-aware citizens? Would that have been a more responsible, albeit trickier, consequence?

We have a habit in our country of trying to banish badness. We incarcerate people at the highest rate of any country in the world. We throw people away. In schools, where young people are learning how to be thoughtful and skilled people, what if our approach to students’ hurtful behavior is nearly always one of opportunity to educate, especially with students whose words hurt others? In the context of racism, this is difficult. Most of us have no idea how to talk about race and racism. When we respond to children with punishment but no teaching we reinforce the message that “we don’t talk about race” in our community, which makes it something shameful and secret and leaves students of color alone to deal with racism and white students completely unequipped to be allies.

We face this dilemma often at school. When considering consequences to a child’s hurtful actions, we ask ourselves the questions, What will teachers think of this consequence? What will parents think? How will students perceive what happens to this (offending) student? What’s the right thing for the student? What’s the right thing for the student considering the other students’ needs for safety? How much bandwidth do we have to authentically teach this student related to her or his offense? It’s very difficult to balance the answers to these questions. We don’t want to be perceived as too permissive or too draconian. We don’t want anyone to perceive that a consequence any less than the most severe one means that we don’t care about racism. I know it may sound like I’m advocating for white students to be let off the hook.  The irony of this, given the high suspension and expulsion rate for black and brown kids, is not lost on me.  I want to be clear that I think all students should receive an opportunity to learn and grow when they’ve made a mistake.  In the Bay Area, we have come to realize the power of restorative justice. How was justice restored, or not, at the University of Oklahoma? How do we hold ourselves, as educators, accountable to seeing restorative justice not as a band-aid solution for certain kids, but as a tool for developing socially conscious children and youth from all racial backgrounds? I’m challenging myself and all of us not to be satisfied that white students were held accountable for their racist actions, but rather to always think objectively about which consequences will create the trifecta of learning, accountability and reparations — regardless of race.

I want to make the argument that we err as much as we possibly can on the side of seeing hurtful language as an opportunity to teach. As the wise professor that I referenced above points out, in college, kids are just learning how to think independently. They arrive there parroting what they have heard from their family, their teachers, and their peers. At our level, it’s even more true—kids are repeating things that they have heard others around them say. It’s our job to figure out the right, age-appropriate way to help them see the true consequences of their words or actions, to understand as best they can the historical context, and to help them identify respectful ways to communicate with others. It’s no small feat—this is one of the reasons that we spend so much effort building relational trust across difference, so that we can lean on each other especially around charged or complex tasks.

It’s an honor to work with educators who are committed to developing and using the skills and capacity and will to work toward social justice one day and one student at a time.

Related Data and Sources

– Fraternity men make up 85 percent of U.S. Supreme Court justices since 1910, 63 percent of all U.S. presidential cabinet members since 1900, and, historically, 76 percent of U.S. Senators, 85 percent of Fortune 500 executives, and 71 percent of the men in “Who’s Who in America.. “18 US Presidents Were in Fraternities,” Maria Konnikova, The Atlantic, February 21, 2014

– “Rather than marching and shouting, what if President Boren invited the young men on that bus who sang their hateful song to sit and watch the video with the black staff members of the SAE house who fixed their meals and cleaned their rooms? Just played it over and again or even ask them to sing the song live. What if after their live performance President Boren finally allowed Walter, the man who cooked their meals for the last 15 years to ask the young men one simple question: “is this what you really think of me?” See most racists, like homophobes hold to their views in isolation” and “When they enter our classrooms, many of them have never formed an independent thought of their own. The tapes that play in their heads that inevitably shape their interactions are created by parents, teacher, churches, and yes, our culture. Their lives are a culmination of enrichment courses, parental demands and angst, and standardized tests designed to get them into the college. They are so programmed when they hit our doors that it takes almost 4 years for them to really start figuring out what kind of ice cream they really like.” www.patheos.com, Maria Dixon Hall, March 10, 2015 “A Teachable Moment-How OU Failed Transformation 101”

– “The US has the world’s highest incarceration rate.” Tyjen Tsai and Paola Scommegna, Population Reference Bureau