equity frames

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

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.

Related Data:

• Seventeen people were killed in Paris on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week in three separate but allegedly related terrorist attacks. (“Victims of the Terrorist Attacks in Paris” New York Times, January 11, 2015)
• 26 places of (Muslim) worship around France were attacked by firebombs, gunshots or pig heads, with a mosque in Le Mans hit with four grenades since the terrorist attacks last week. (www.news.yahoo.com)
• Amnesty International estimates that 2000 Nigerians were killed in and near the town of Baga in northern Nigeria last week. The attack was claimed by Boko Haram, an extremist Islamic group in Nigeria. (The Guardian, “Why Did the World Ignore the Boko Haram’s Baga Attacks?”, January 12, 2015)
• As of January 9^th, the American Freedom Defense Initiative purchased 50 ad spaces on the sides of MUNI buses and at bus shelters. This campaign compares Islam to Nazism. (SFGate, “Anti-Islam Ads Back on SF MUNI Buses—This Time Featuring Hitler”, by Evan Sernoffsky, January 13, 2015)

Possible Frame:

There has been a lot going on in the last few days around the world that, as usual, has something to do with us here at _____________ (school name.) It’s not always obvious how global events connect to our work, so I want to give you my humble take on what we can learn from the events that have unfolded in Paris, in Nigeria, and here in San Francisco.

So, here’s a quick summary. Seventeen people were killed last week in Paris at Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper known for printing provocative and sometimes hateful cartoons about various groups, including Muslims, and at a kosher grocery store. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the acts of terror. Three of the alleged terrorists were killed themselves in the interaction with police. One is at large.

Also last weekend, approximately 2000 Nigerians were slain in Baga, Nigeria by Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist organization. Most victims were women, children, and elderly people—those that couldn’t run fast enough to escape the violence.

Over a million French and other nationals marched in Paris in solidarity with those killed in France and in support of free speech. Many government officials from around the world attended and lead the march. There have been many anti-Muslim actions in France since the terrorist attacks and the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, is about to distribute three million of its newspapers (larger than it’s normal 60,000 print run) with a new cartoon of Muhammad on the cover. Hate is flying all around amidst most people defending free speech and condemning the attacks.

Many of you have also seen the anti-Muslim ads on the sides of many MUNI buses in San Francisco. There is a whole story about how that happened which I’ll save for another day, but the fact is that many of our students see the imagery and have read the words. For those of you who haven’t seen these ads, there have been comparisons of Muslims to savages, assertions that fear of Muslims is because of the reality of Muslims, etc.

Here are two things about all of this. First— it’s disturbing, in light of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, that the global community and media are deeply upset about the deaths in Paris, as they should be, and seemingly less so about the many more deaths in Nigeria, as they should also be—both at the hands of Islamic extremists. A life is a life is a life—all of the lives lost in the last week to religious extremism are tragic. When we talk about these incidents with our students we must remember that and remind them of that. What happens if we aren’t careful about this? This is one of the many ways that Black children and children of other races subconsciously internalize that people with dark skin are inferior or their lives are less valuable than people with lighter skin. We can actively work against that insidious pattern!

The second thing is about free speech and hateful speech—these are sometimes confusing legally and ethically. We have a constitution that protects free speech. People and commercial enterprises can say, print, promote all sorts of beliefs that espouse hatred and intolerance—that’s not against the law. Charlie Hebdo prints cartoons that sometimes spew hatred or mockery at Muslims and other groups. The American Freedom Defense Initiative buys ad space on MUNI buses to promote intolerance and stereotyping of Muslims. Bill Maher made some comments about Muslims that one could argue perpetuate stereotypes. Hateful words and images fly around – the laws only protect people and prevent such speech in very specific situations.

In schools, however, we have a distinct role and responsibility related to hateful speech. We have the responsibility to protect those targeted by hateful speech and the responsibility to raise the consciousness of those saying hateful things. At our school, like many schools, we draw a boundary when kids say, “That’s so gay!” call each other racist slurs, or otherwise use aspects of identity to insult or assault other students. We say, “We don’t say that here.” Sometimes we give consequences. I want to remind us that what’s even more important than the “We don’t say that here” response is our authentic conversation with a student or with a class that has heard a hateful comment. This is one of our many roles in positive social change. We create the space, over and over and over again to find out what a student meant when they used hateful words, and after truly listening, we offer up other perspectives or we illuminate the consequences of hateful words or we help a student understand the stereotyping nature of their words. Without the conversations, kids learn that we don’t say certain things here at school, but they may say those things out of earshot or on the bus on the way home. Reversing the internalized bias that comes from living in this world only happens through regular dialogue.

So here’s a plug for when you hear a student call a another student wearing a head-scarf a terrorist, take a breath, stop what you’re doing, and take it up. We sometimes don’t take it up because we’re not sure what to say, because we’re ambivalent ourselves about the recent tragedies, because we might say the wrong thing that a student will then tell her or his parents. We work hard on building relational trust so that we can ask each other for help with situations like this. You might say, in the moment, “We don’t say things like that here” and then seek out a colleague to think through with you how to engage in meaningful dialogue with the student or class later that day or the next day. It’s okay to think and talk about it with colleagues and then bring it back up.

What might the conversation sound like? You might say, “The thing about calling a Muslim student a terrorist is that you’re using a stereotype. A stereotype is an over-simplified description of a whole group of people based on the actions or desires or behaviors of a small group within the larger group. The vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Calling all Muslims terrorists doesn’t give them the freedom and dignity to be the whole humans that most of them are. It’s like when we talk about girls and boys. Not every girl likes pink—assuming that every girl likes pink takes away some of a girl’s freedom to like whatever color she truly likes. Let’s think about the other stereotypes we’ve talked about this year…”

What matters is that our kids are in meaningful and thoughtful dialogue with you and each other about these issues…otherwise the insidious stereotypes flourish. Here’s to our ongoing opportunity to move the world toward more peace, more love, more equity.

Related Data

• The average American who buys Christmas gifts spent $718 this year. (statista.com)
• White household wealth in the US is 13 times greater than for Blacks. Ten times more than for Hispanics. (www. Globalresearch.org; Christmas in America: Growing Poverty, Unemployment and Homelessness in the World’s Richest Country, Stephen Lendman, December 25, 2014)
• Fifty-nine per cent of students in SFUSD qualify for free or reduced lunch. (www.sfusd.edu)
• 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)

Possible Frame

It’s so nice to see everyone after our two-week break. I hope you got to rest amidst the other holiday activities. Our students need you at your most rejuvenated and refreshed.

I wanted to talk for a minute before we get back into our work about how some of our students might be coming back to school after the break. I think that there’s a national story about what happens for people during the winter holidays. This story includes warmth, abundance, harmony, generosity, and gratitude—usually related to the celebration of Christmas. We are not crazy for conceiving of this story—anytime we turn on the television, we are presented with it: a lovely family, cozy in their home with a fireplace, a Christmas tree with many gifts underneath, a table full of food, people shopping, wrapping, cooking, eating, and relaxing. The average American family, after all, spent about $720 on Christmas gifts. It’s important to note here that while the majority of our students celebrate Christmas in one way or another, there are many students who do not—they have other or different cultural and religious celebrations now or at other times in the year.

The story is not entirely fictional; holidays do play out this way for some of our families or for some families in San Francisco. But let’s remember that 59% of students in our city qualify for free or reduced lunch—meaning that their families of four subsist on less than $36,000 a year. It may not be the case that a family in this situation had a Christmas tree with abundance underneath or a holiday table with abundant food or leisure time to relax. MANY of our students will not have experienced this story of Christmas. As someone who spends time in the cafeteria, I can tell you that we have many students who want two or three lunches because lunch is going to be their most significant meal of the day. That doesn’t change when kids are on vacation. While some of our students were full from Christmas dinner, many more of our students were hungry on Christmas night.

Here at school, while we are trying to give our kids the skill and knowledge they need to be successful in achieving their dreams and thereby somehow reducing the gaping divide between the rich and everyone else in our country, we must counter the popular narrative about Christmas that can leave kids feeling ashamed of not having lived the storybook Christmas. What happens when we ask our students, “what did you get for Christmas?” or “what did you do over the winter break?” Some of our students can answer these questions as we might hope, “I got a new board game” or “I got a new art set.” They might say, “I went ice skating” or “My family went to the snow.” But what happens when other kids who didn’t receive gifts or received a gift or a meal from a charity hear those answers? What we most definitely don’t want them to believe is that they didn’t receive gifts or have interesting experiences because they don’t deserve them. Every single one of our students matters equally and deserves love equally. That is the counter-narrative to the Christmas underbelly of consumerism and socioeconomic stratification. Shame and anger can emerge from feeling undeserving or inferior—we don’t want our students to feel shameful for many reasons, one of which is because it doesn’t set them up for learning.

On the other hand, since many of our students did in fact celebrate Christmas, and since many of our families may have stretched financially (and possibly very stressfully) in order to provide a storybook Christmas, and since this is for many families a very significant cultural and religious tradition, it’s important that there is space for kids to share about those experiences. School is a place for them to bring the wholeness of themselves and their experiences. Herein lies our artful and thoughtful handling of the post-winter holidays week.

Let’s be careful in how we engage our students in talking about their breaks. How about questions like, “Who is a person you love that you saw during the break? Why do you love this person?” or “When was a time when you felt happy during the break? When was a time when you felt sad?” (adjust questions to grade level of students) Sometimes it can be challenging to think of questions about breaks that don’t reinforce class divisions—please help each other with this! Seek out a colleague to bounce a question or an idea—this is why we are always working to build relational trust, so that we can ask and contribute help to each other particularly around issues of equity. I’m happy to help anyone think about these questions myself.

This is part of our work—to always be building our consciousness about how the world impacts our students in ways that it may not impact us personally. We become more conscious and then we are careful and thoughtful and strategic about our actions in the classroom and with our students. Here’s a celebration for engaging in this work with me—it’s not always easy or comfortable, but it’s our work as educators committed to building a more equitable and just world.

Related Data

• In the 162,000 cases that U.S. attorneys have prosecuted between 2009 and 2010, grand juries did not find probable cause in only 11 cases. (Bureau of Justice Statistics) Note: The evidence from Michael Brown’s death was brought by a state prosecutor before a grand jury, so the comparison is not perfect, but the fact remains that it is extremely rare for grand juries not to return indictments.
• Whites make up 29% of the residents of Ferguson, MO. Five of the six city council members are white and six of the seven school board members are white. The mayor is also white. (“Ferguson’s lack of diversity goes way beyond its cops,” Zachary Roth, MSNBC, August 14, 2014)
• Young African-Americans are 4.5 times more likely to be killed by police than other people of other races and ages. (“The fourteen teens killed by police since Michael Brown’s death,” Nina Strochlic, The Daily Beast, November 25, 2014)

Sample Frame

It’s nice to see everyone after a brief rest with our families—I hope you were able to get in some relaxation amidst the eating, shopping, and family time.

Amidst the gratitude that I felt during Thanksgiving, my heart has been heavy since the decision of the grand jury in Missouri came down about whether or not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. This heaviness that I feel is familiar now—recalling only recent history with Tamir Rice, Trayvonn Martin, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, and so many other black males killed by police in the last few years. As with most things that happen in our country, there is an equity perspective to this that I think is important for our work.

Here are some things that I understand to be true about this situation, based on my conversations with some lawyer friends, the trusty New York Times, and various other commentators. Every time someone is arrested, either a judge or a grand jury needs to determine that there is probable cause to believe that the person may be guilty in order to formally bring charges and indict the person. When a district attorney brings charges to a grand jury, they normally try to convince the grand jury to agree with those charges by making a convincing case with the available evidence. It is extremely rare that a grand jury does not return an indictment. In the 162,000 cases that federal attorneys have prosecuted between 2009 and 2010, grand juries did not find probable cause in only 11 cases. In this case, Bob McCulloch, the St. Louis county prosecuting attorney, didn’t even bring charges to the grand jury. He presented evidence and let the grand jury decide if they thought that charges should be filed and which charges. Let’s remember that grand jurors are regular people like you and me. Maybe it’s akin to putting a non-educator into a classroom and saying, “Teach some common core standards—you decide what standard to teach.”

The laws and legal system have been and continue to be tools that our society uses to achieve certain ends. Ideally, the outcome is justice, but we know that the outcome is often not justice when a black male is involved. In this case, there are middle-aged white men who are in control of the tool that is the law. Jay Nixon, the white governor of Missouri could have forced Bob McCulloch to recuse himself given his complicated history with race and police shootings. Bob McCulloch is a white man who has never indicted a police officer in his 23-year career as the St. Louis prosecuting attorney. Older, white men, in control of the essential decisions, effectively silenced the legal discourse in this criminal case. There will be no trial. There will be no cross-examination of Darren Wilson. There will be no chance for Dorian Johnson’s testimony to be heard and cross-examined. I’m worried that this is yet another situation of white people using the legal system to silence black people, to preserve power and privilege, and to silence a larger discussion about race, policing, and the law.

The silencing of the legal proceedings and the subsequent announcement sparked protests across the country—some of which turned into riots. Much of the media coverage focused on the rioters. Speaking to this issue of silencing, Charles Blow, a New York Times columnist, quoted Dr. King last week and went on to comment, “The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ‘A riot is the language of the unheard.’ King, a great champion of nonviolence, wasn’t advocating rioting, but rather honoring hearing. Even long-suffering people will not suffer forever. Patience expires. The heart can be broken only so many times before peace is broken. And the absence of peace doesn’t predicate the presence of violence. It does, however, demand the troubling of the comfortable. When the voice goes unheard, sometimes it must be raised. Sometimes when calls for justice go unmet, feet must meet pavement. Sometimes when you are unseen, you can no longer remain seated. Sometimes you must stand and make a stand.” While no one, including us, condones the few violent reactions last week in Missouri and Oakland amidst all of the peaceful protests, we must hold the protests and riots in the context of African Americans being silenced through the legal system and the very long and painful legacy of that oppression.

When President Obama spoke last week about this issue, I discerned in his voice, demeanor, and comments a heavy and weary heart. Among some of my black colleagues and friends, there is a very sad resignation that this is yet another example in such a long history of these examples. President Obama said that we should tackle this problem block-by-block, step-by-step. What does that mean that we should be doing?

When our students become adults, they can be in positions of power to ensure that all voices are heard. They can control the legal and political tools in place that currently and historically have served to silence a people. We are in the business of preparing our students for that future. That preparation is going to have to look different than ours did…

• by making sure they are conscious of the history and current reality of oppression and social justice, not just in February for Black History Month or September and October for Latino Heritage Month, but as part of our curriculum and instruction every day,
• by teaching them effectively so that they have the foundational skills they need to be the leaders of their communities—as teachers, politicians, lawyers, judges, police officers, whoever they want to be, and
• by inspiring them to be active in the political process so that they use their vote as one expression of their voice and ensuring that they understand actions they can take between elections to hold their officials accountable.

Right now, here are some immediate steps we can take:

• We must be clear and transparent with our students about what is happening and how it connects to a pattern in our history. We cannot shy away from this conversation with students. Bring it up! Don’t wait for them to bring it up. Help them understand what has happened. If you don’t feel equipped to do this, please ask for help. This week, be willing to help another teacher during your prep period, if possible.
• LISTEN to them. Create space for their reactions and feelings, however radical, complacent, ignorant, militant, whatever.
• Look at every one of our students as a person with the potential to be a revolutionary change-agent and act accordingly.

Make space for this work, please. But remember that we are also responsible for teaching the standards each day that prepare our students for their futures—we have to do both. What we do in school with our students matters every single day. As with most of our society’s issues, we are the place

Related Data

• One in three people in the U.S. know someone who has been shot. (Goss, Kristin, “Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control,” Princeton University Press, 2006. p. 2)
• On average, 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day and 140 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room. (The Brady Campaign to Report Gun Violence)
• Every day on average, 51 people kill themselves with a firearm, and 45 people are shot or killed in an accident with a gun. (The Brady Campaign to Report Gun Violence)
• An average of eight children and teens under the age of 20 are killed by guns every day. (The Brady Campaign to Report Gun Violence)
• In March of 2014, 318 people in California had died from the flu—an airborne virus. (The Sacramento Bee, March 7, 2014)
• The number of Ebola cases so far this year: 9,936. How many people have been killed by Ebola: 4,877 (World Health Organization)
• There are three countries with widespread transmission of Ebola: Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. Mali and Senegal had travel-related cases but Senegal has been declared Ebola-free. Nigeria, Spain, and the US have had travel-related and locally transmitted cases. In the US, there have been four cases and one death. (CDC, October 26, 2014)

Sample Frame:

I want to talk about the American response to the Ebola virus outbreak for a minute as we begin our work today. I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last few weeks. There is much complexity to this situation—I’ve been struggling to figure out the most important thread to highlight among race, health, class, and fear. At the same time, compared to the number of Americans who have died from gun violence in the last year, the Ebola epidemic, worldwide, hardly warrants a mention, so I am simultaneously ambivalent about talking about it.

I was sad to read an article about a school in New Jersey where parents put a lot of pressure on a school to quarantine at home two students from Rwanda. Bowing to (or cowering from) the pressure, the Rwandan family is indeed keeping their children at home for 21 days.

Rwanda (in East Africa) is 2600 miles away from the nearest Ebola case in West Africa. I fear that what’s happening here is that parents from the dominant culture in the US (white, middle class, English-speaking) are conflating all of the African tribes, cultures, and countries as dangerous and threatening–xenophobia. Rwanda is as far away from Liberia as Tegucigalpa, Honduras is from San Francisco and is as culturally different. This is a classic situation of “othering”—of not seeing the humanity in a group of people because we don’t see them as equally worthy of distinction, attention, and consideration. In this case, the people in Africa have dark skin—that’s what they have in common. Because most Africans have dark skin, we should be afraid of them, no matter where in the vast continent of Africa they come from? This is preposterous and dehumanizing in the name of panic and fear. I also fear that the association of dark skin with Ebola further exacerbates the persistent and insidious association of blackness with inferiority in our country—a phenomenon that still persists however overtly or subtly in our national discourse.

This is something that happens sometimes in the context of dominant culture. Those who belong to the dominant culture can perceive dehumanizing sameness in others. There is that very derogatory and classic question, “They all look the same, don’t they?” that we sometimes hear people in a dominant culture say about another group. We use the word Latino or Asian to indicate a child’s or parent’s or colleague’s race. To what degree do we also seek to understand their unique cultural background? There are, after all, 28 different cultures and nationalities within the US Census Bureau’s definition of the word “Latino.” Similarly, there are 49 countries and countless cultures represented in the word Asian.

This is a good time for us to remember too that disease spreads in places of high poverty and low education. Africa has not always been a place of extreme poverty and weak education. Sophisticated societies flourished in African prior to colonization, slavery, and the subsequent globalization. Current systems of privilege and oppression rest on that history—while we are not the people to who caused the oppression during the centuries of colonization and slavery, we are indeed responsible for doing what we can to counteract current manifestations of dehumanizing oppression.

One of our equity strategies is that we seek to know our students deeply and personally. We want to know exactly how our students identify culturally because we know that culture is part of being a human. Our students develop the trust in us required for them to learn from us when we truly see each of them as unique, special, and worthy of questions about their backgrounds beyond what we can observe about them racially. We also want to know about the unique cultures of our students because awareness of students’ cultures can help us tailor our instruction to best meet their learning needs. Please take the time today to learn something about one of our student’s backgrounds that will help you understand and honor the complexity of who they are.

Let’s be careful, each of us, not to get caught up in a national frenzy of fear and panic that leads to dangerous and dehumanizing practices, even subtle ones here in San Francisco. We have been here before as a nation—several times now—let’s use what we know about history and justice not to repeat our mistakes of the past. Here’s to a week of relishing the cultural complexity and beauty that our students bring to us every day.

Related Data:

• The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3000. (New York Times, Friday, October 3, 2014)
• Fifty-nine per cent of students in SFUSD qualify for free or reduced lunch. (www.sfusd.edu)
• 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)
• Starting salary for a teacher in SFUSD is $47,000; starting pay rate for a paraprofessional is $17.05 per hour. (www.sfusd.edu)

Sample Frame:

As we begin our work this week, I want to talk for a minute about the housing situation that we’re facing in San Francisco right now because it affects our students, our families, and most likely, many people who work here with us.

Here are some staggering numbers. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco right now is $3000. Fifty-nine percent of students in SFUSD qualify for free or reduced lunch. At our school ____ % of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. To qualify for free lunch in San Francisco, a family of four subsists on less than $36,000 per year—that is $3000 per month. Let’s think about that amount of money for a moment in a city where an average cup of coffee is over $2. The starting salary for a paraprofessional in San Francisco Unified is $17.05 per hour and the starting salary for a teacher is $47,000, respectively yielding $2387 and $3916 per month before taxes.

We already have first-hand experience with what this means for our students and for our colleagues. Many of you have been graciously and empathically trying to manage the increasingly uncomfortable living conditions yourselves and for our students, from working with parents who’s children have long BART or car rides because they’re traveling from distant suburbs to finding services to help with laundry for families who are co-habitating with several other families in a small space. (customize this paragraph with examples from your own school.)

It’s worth noting that the children of middle and upper middle class homes often have their own sleeping spaces—they have quiet places to do homework—they often get sufficient sleep because their journeys to school in the morning are short. Our children who travel from afar, or share a couch at night with three other people, or attempt to do homework on BART, come to us less nourished by food and sleep, and often with the shame (apparent or not) of not being prepared for school, in the ways that we traditionally describe readiness—well-rested, well-fed, clean, homework completed, and with a backpack of appropriate school supplies. This is too important for me not to state the obvious—children who experience the stress of uncomfortable housing and economic scarcity must overcome that stress to be fully-available learners. This is a layer of effort that our students living in more economically stable situations do not face.

It’s important to acknowledge that gentrification doesn’t affect our students proportionally. In San Francisco, where socio-economic status and race often align, our African American, Latino, and Southeast Asian communities are disproportionately affected by the rising housing costs. For many of our students, this creates a feeling of being ostracized in their own neighborhoods where their families may have lived for generations.

Here’s just a reminder to us all, myself included, that being an educator committed to equity means, in this case, that we hold in our consciousness the realities of our colleagues’ and students’ housing situations that might affect their performance and experience of school. This does not mean that we lower our expectations of the greatness, in any given moment, that we expect of these humans. But it does mean that we hold awareness in the front of our minds so that we are open to creative and supportive ways of helping them reach their greatness. “You don’t have your homework today? I bet you were doing something really important. Let’s find you a partner who can help you get caught up for what we’re doing in class today and you’ll need to stay after school today to make sure it’s done.” (Might be a spot to ask for other examples of what it means to hold awareness and creative ideas rather than judgment and anger.)

There are several ballot initiatives this fall that will seek to address the housing crisis in San Francisco. Without endorsing anything specific, here’s to hoping that enough of our fellow voters in San Francisco share our concerns about fair access to affordable housing to ease, however slightly, this aspect of inequity.

This is a great opportunity for me to acknowledge this dedicated staff. As stated above, a teacher’s average salary isn’t going to cover the median rent in this city. I know many of you commute from other cities and that for others, surviving the rising rent costs in SF is a constant struggle and something that you worry about. This means that some of you often come to work tired from a long commute or preoccupied about your own housing situation. In the same vain that I ask you to be thoughtful about our students’ experiences outside of school, I am thoughtful about yours. I appreciate you for the effort and energy you bring to our young people everyday. Please take care of yourselves and let me know if there are ways that I can best support you. [Possibly insert an offer of appreciation like there’s coffee and donuts for you tomorrow as a small token of appreciation for all that you do.] We’re all in this together.

Related Data

• Adrian Peterson, a Pro Bowl running back for the Minnesota Vikings, has been accused of child abuse for stuffing the leaves of a branch into his 4-year-old son’s mouth and then hitting him with a switch (the leafless branch) across the backs of his bare legs leaving open wounds.
• Children who experience physical punishment are 59 percent more likely to have alcohol dependence, 41 percent more likely to have depression and 24 percent more likely to have panic disorder, compared with those who received no physical punishments. (Huffington Post, Spanking Children & Mental Health: Punishment Linked To Disorders Later In Life)
• 94% of parents of three and four-year-olds claim to have spanked their children in the past year. (childtrendsdatabank.org, as quoted in the NYT, 9-17-2014, Charles Blow)
• 77% percent of men and 65% of women between the ages of 18 and 65 agree that sometimes what a child needs is a “good hard spanking.” (childtrendsdatabank.org, as quoted in the NYT, 9-17-2014, Charles Blow)
• Spanking increases children’s long-term aggression towards peers and others. (NYT, George W. Holden, 8-14-2011)
• Studies attribute the use of corporal punishment to critical factors, like the parents’ upbringing, stress levels, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status and region of the country. These have shown that parents most adamantly committed to the practice of spanking tend to be from the South. They have less education and less wealth, and they experience more stress. (NYT, George W. Holden, 8-14-2011)

Sample Frame

Maybe some of you watch football, or at least have been following the controversies arising around violence off the field. I want to comment on this because I think it’s directly connected to powerful work that we’re doing here.

The latest controversy about violence off the field involves Adrian Peterson. He’s a Pro Bowl running back for the Minnesota Vikings. He was accused recently of child abuse for disciplining his four-year-old son with a switch (a leafless tree branch.) He is currently suspended from play while his team waits to see what happens legally before they decide on longer term employment consequences, if any.

While many would agree that the beating that Peterson gave his son was over the line, this situation has brought up a national dialogue about corporal punishment in general. There is well-documented evidence that it’s happening widely across racial lines. Ninety-four percent of parents of three and four-year-olds claim to have spanked their children in the past year. Seventy-seven percent of men and 65% of women between the ages of 18 and 65 agree that sometimes what a child needs is a “good hard spanking.”

There is much evidence that the effects of corporal punishment are negative for the child. The number of problem behaviors in adolescence is related to the amount of spanking a child receives. Spanking increases children’s long-term aggression towards peers and others. Children who experienced physical punishment were 59 percent more likely to have alcohol dependence, 41 percent more likely to have depression and 24 percent more likely to have panic disorder, compared with those who received no physical punishments.

On top of this quantitative data, we know that violence begets violence. Children learn what they live. If they experience violence at home when an adult is angry, we see that same kind of behavior at school. I would presume that many people sitting in this room were hit or spanked as kids. I presume that some of us may have hit children ourselves. We are evolving as a people. Just as our pedagogy is evolving as we learn more and more about how traditional pedagogy doesn’t work for all kids, so is our approach to discipline that yields improvement rather than shame. Many of us didn’t sit in car seats as children—we have evolved as a people as statistics have revealed the danger for children unrestrained in cars.

There is a temptation to conclude that this is a problem in the Black community since the person on the hot-seat at this moment is an African American football player. Several commentators have warned us in the last week to be careful about this conclusion. Given the statistics that I just quoted, this is a national problem—let us not create, as Jamelle Bouie of Slate urges, a Black pathology around corporal punishment. Yes it’s alive and well in the Black community and it’s alive and well in other racial communities in our midst. There are, however, significant socio-economic and geographic patterns—the higher the education level of the parents, the lower the chances that the parents will physically punish their children; more corporal punishment happens in the South than anywhere else. When we see patterns that emerge based on socio-economic status, we also must consider that violence is often the result of internalized oppression over generations.

Given how prevalent corporal punishment is in our society and how deeply ingrained it is, and given how much researchers know about its negative effects on children, how will this pattern change? It starts to change with us. We have communicated very clear expectations for our students and implemented Restorative Practices because we believe in the redemptive power of dialogue, empathy, and the chance to restore justice rather than the old model of punishment, which yields more shame and anger than anything else. A child who has been punished as the primary form of discipline—whether it’s a loss of recess, in-house suspension, writing lines, or cleaning the cafeteria, let alone getting hit—does not often re-engage in learning feeling restored, resolved, and ready, in the short term or in the long term. We have seen much evidence that the restorative approach works. (Insert an example of a situation at the school in which Restorative Practices yielded justice and redemption.) At school, we want our students to see the process and the results of Restorative Practices—hopefully from when they are in kindergarten through when they graduate as seniors.

Schools are often where social change begins and sustains. What if the current generation of young people experiences the power of restorative justice and makes restorative discipline choices when they become parents themselves? What if members of this generation take the helm of the criminal justice system and move it from the horribly punitive and ineffective system it is now to one of learning, dialogue, restoration, redemption, and support? That would mean that so many of our young men of color coming from backgrounds in poverty might not be destined for endless years in prison—it could mean that there were reasonable, fair, redemptive ways for them to take responsibility, make restitution, acquire the education and support and medical attention necessary for responsible living, and re-enter society.

As with so many aspects of our society, the prospect of the better future begins with us. Here’s to our passionate and dedicated work with Restorative Practices.

Related Data

• Rashawn Williams, a 14-year-old freshman at Sacred Heart, was stabbed to death on Tuesday, September 2^nd at 26^th and Folsom Streets. He was formerly a student at Buena Vista Horace Mann from kindergarten through eighth grade.
• Homicide is the second leading cause of death among teenagers nation-wide. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• There were 2,545 Black male teenagers killed via homicide in 2010, more than all other racial groups combined. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• There have been 14 homicides in San Francisco since January, a 36% decrease from the 22 homicides recorded at the mid-point last year. (Vivian Ho, SFGate, July 6, 2014)

Sample Frame

I know that you are aware of the tragic situation that happened last week in the Mission when Rashawn Williams, a 14-year-old freshman at Sacred Heart, was stabbed to death by a peer. This awful incident has been weighing heavily on my heart, as an educator, as a parent, as a human. There are three things that I want to talk about related to Rashawn’s life and death that relate to our work here.

First, Rashawn was an accomplished student—responsible, sharp, curious. There were social dynamics in which he was involved that ultimately killed him. Rashawn died, allegedly, because of ongoing threats, beef, taunting, sometimes via social media and sometimes in person. The principal and teachers at Buena Vista Horace Mann knew Rashawn very well and loved him dearly—he had been at BVHM for nine years! His family and his teachers and principal were aware of the troubling dynamics and took the steps they could to interrupt them—even very significant ones. This should serve as a reminder to us as educators—that our awareness of our students’ lives outside of their grades and academic achievement is also paramount. This reminds me of a story that I read recently about a fourth grade teacher who asked her students every Friday to write down two people that they want to sit with the following week and two students they didn’t want to sit next to. She didn’t do this because she really felt the need to seat students in their most desired configurations. She did it to gather data every week about who is regularly getting requested, who never gets requested, who used to get requested and now doesn’t. For that teacher, it was a crafty way of observing social dynamics between students so that she knew where to provide more support, more love, more skill-building, more scaffolding. The more we know about our students’ experiences, by asking them directly, by building trust, by listening to them authentically, the better the chances that we can interrupt what could be a fatal conflict between kids.

Second, I want to comment on the way that Rashawn’s and Michael Brown’s deaths were portrayed in the media. To note, it is significant that the media have repeatedly highlighted Rashawn’s and Michael’s academic success in reporting their deaths. Given the media’s frequent portrayal of young Black men as intimidating or threatening or nefarious, noting these young men’s promise and potential is both accurate and refreshing. Rashawn’s 4.0 GPA in middle school was repeated throughout the reporting on this awful incident. A fact that was repeated about Michael Brown was that he was about to start college. To take a different perspective on this reporting, what if those young men of color were not 4.0 or college-bound students? Would that make their deaths less tragic? What are we to infer through the media’s highlighting of their academic success? I fear that the implicit message is that young men of color who are not on a successful academic path are less valuable, less important, their lives are worth less than young men of color who are academically promising or white young men.

Every single one of our babies (or young people) is valuable. Every single one has brilliance. Every single one has promise. It’s our job to help them find their brilliance and to pursue development of that brilliance. It’s our job to unlock the power that young people have, and instill in them the hope and faith to survive and the skills to make a difference. (Insert an example of a student who is struggling academically but has a different kind of brilliance—how can that talent leverage other kinds of achievement?)

Finally, it’s imperative that we acknowledge that Rashawn’s alleged murderer was a peer—someone 14 or 15 years old. It’s important that we recognize that violence in the black/brown/poor community is not inherent, but rather a product of centuries of institutional and internalized oppression, and current hardships. Let us be wary against the construction of a narrative that young people from certain neighborhoods, from certain racial backgrounds, from certain ethnic groups, of certain genders, are inherently bad. Their choices can be bad, but they are not bad human beings. Let us acknowledge for a moment our responsibility to forgive and love children who make unbelievably bad choices.

Along with many others, I am mourning the loss of Rashawn Williams, and am still mourning the death of Michael Brown. Here, at (our school), let’s maximize the lives of the young people we have in front of us, let’s listen to them, let’s notice them for the complexity of who they are, let us love them.

Facts:

• Mo’ne Davis is a 13-year-old girl from Philadelphia who is the star pitcher for the Taney Dragons Little League team from Philadelphia.
• Taney is the first Philadelphia team ever to reach the World Series.
• Mo’ne appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week (4.9% of covers from 2000 – 2011 featured women, 2.5% featured a woman as the primary image, 1.5% featured a woman of color) –-Mother Jones, Katie Rose Quandt, August 19, 2014
• 3% of players in Major League Baseball identify as African-American. –New York Times, Jeré Longman, August 21. 2014

Sample Frame:

I can’t let this week go by without commenting on the phenomenon of Mo’ne Davis and what she and her amazing story mean for us as educators. You have probably heard by now about Mo’ne—she is the star pitcher for the Taney Dragons from Philadelphia who made it most of the way through the Little League World Series before losing to a team from Las Vegas in the semi-finals.

She is African-American. Both race and gender play out in school achievement, and are pertinent to this story. Only 8.3 percent of Major League Baseball players are Black and 0 are female. Somewhere in this 13-year-old girl’s past was an adult who, despite there being no existing role model, encouraged and supported her passion for baseball. I can imagine that many adults might have discouraged her, citing that girls don’t play baseball and Black girls head for basketball, track and field, or more recently, tennis. But in this case, the adult or adults who encouraged Mo’ne’s persistence and perseverance were not constrained by what IS—they allowed themselves to imagine with her what COULD be. What currently IS can often play out as low expectations for young people—the fact that the Black student gradation rate is 42% can affect our beliefs about our African-American students’ college potential. I can imagine that there may have been some people in Barack Obama’s past who said that he couldn’t be president of the United States because we had never had a Black president and our country wasn’t ready.

This is our job—every single one of our students has a spark of something that they love or they are interested in. Our job is to listen carefully in the course of educating them to what those interests and passions are and then to really believe in our students to pursue those passions. This could mean helping a student find a book related to her passion or keeping your eye out for articles in the paper about the student’s interest or just simply remembering what the passion is and asking him about it repeatedly. This also means that we help students figure out what skills they need to pursue their passions and then we help them develop those skills. We check ourselves if we notice that we truly don’t believe in a child’s dreams and communicate as much to the student. We check ourselves if we notice patterns in who we are encouraging to strive in particular directions. We check ourselves to dream with the student beyond what IS and allow ourselves to imagine what COULD be for this child.