Related Data

– James Robertson is a factory worker who lives in Detroit who walks 20 miles round trip each day to get to and from his job. He takes buses but bus routes do not cover all of the territory he must traverse in order to go from his home to his job each day. Each day he begins his commute at 8am for his 2pm-10pm shift. He arrives home at 4am. He has perfect attendance at his job. (Reuters, Serena Maria Daniels, “Detroit Man Who Walks 21 Miles Surprised with Car”)

– People from all over the world donated over $310,000 to help James buy a car through a website called GoFundMe.com. (Reuters, Serena Maria Daniels, “Detroit Man Who Walks 21 Miles Surprised with Car”)

Sample Equity Frame:

You may have heard this story that has been circulating during the past couple of weeks about a man in Detroit who works in a factory in a nearby town. He walks more than 20 miles each day in his daily commute because bus routes don’t cover all of the territory he must traverse in order to arrive at work and return home each day. He leaves his home at 8am for his 2pm – 10pm shift and returns home at 4am. He has had perfect attendance at his job. I bring this up because, as always, there are important messages for us as educators in most current events.

Someone who saw Mr. Robertson walking to work each day and subsequently befriended him tipped off the Detroit Free Press about his daily commute. The story spread on social and mainstream media. A local college student took a particular interest in this story and set up a campaign on GoFundMe.com to raise money to buy Mr. Robertson a car. Over $310,000 came in to support the car purchase.

What’s happening here? I think this is a situation in which people are compelled by a specific person with a real story who happens to have tremendous grit and a strong work ethic—characteristics valued deeply in dominant culture. They are struck by the extremity of Mr. Robertson’s situation. Knowing Mr. Robertson’s story opens people’s hearts and compels them toward generosity. Generosity is a wonderful thing—I want to be clear that I’m not knocking anyone for contributing to this campaign or taking an interest in James Robertson.

But the conditions that lead to James Robertson walking over 20 miles each day to and from his job are systemic—they are a combination of infrastructure/transportation issues that most impact lower income citizens, low wages and the difficulties in saving for the working poor, and the relative scarcity of jobs that necessitates Mr. Robertson working far from his home. What if all of the people who donated to buy Mr. Robertson a car took a great interest in those systemic issues that affect millions of low income Americans? What if they used their socio-economic privilege to pressure a congressperson or attend a community hearing about transportation? An act of generosity toward one person can afford the person with privilege making the donation a “savior” feeling—if you donated to that campaign, you helped save Mr. Robertson from his daily arduous trek. The problem is that “saving” people implies both desperation and/or imminent death on the part of the “saved” and glorious paternalism on the part of the “savior.” Do heroic acts of generosity assuage the privileged class’s guilt about our privilege such that we don’t turn our guilt into responsibility to act politically and socially to fix the systems that affect individual low-income people?

Herein lies the connection to our work. At our school, we believe deeply in building personalized relationships with our students. Within those relationships, we sometimes go deep into helping a student pass a class or participate in a field trip or (name a way that teachers at your school support students, depending on the age level.) Please don’t think that I’m saying not to do that—we must do those things! We believe in equity—that kids are going to need different levels of support to achieve the same outcomes. But going the extra mile to help a student with whom we have a deep relationship can indeed give you that “savior” feeling—that feeling of, “That student wouldn’t have passed my class if I hadn’t had her stay after school all of those days to read the text and retake the tests.”

I want to say that we are not here to “save” anyone. We do not make assumptions about our students’ lives that would require them to be “saved.” We are, however, change agents—we want to be in the habit of asking questions about systems that affect our students’ lives—not just the few with whom we have deep relationships but ALL of our students. When we have students from low-income backgrounds consistently struggling to pass our classes, we ask questions like, “How relevant is what I’m teaching to my students’ lives? How much feedback am I giving students so that they know clearly what they need to change in order to succeed in my class? Do my students feel smart in my class?” When we notice patterns about who participates in our school camping trip, we surely go the extra mile to get kids to participate, but we also ask questions about the systems, like “What kinds of experiences would we need to provide students in the years leading up to the camping trip if we want families to be comfortable and eager?” or “How might a network of relationships among families across differences affect parents’ willingness to let their students participate in a camping trip?” I want us to be a school where individual kids’ stories and experiences compel us to love and help them, but also to ask deeper questions about systems and structures that affect them.

Here’s to being a community to take up that hard work.