TFA25 Reflection

"Maybe you'll find some of the Koolaid inspirational!" is what one of my colleagues said when I told her that I was headed to DC for Teach for America's 25th Year Anniversary Summit (funded by the Walton family). 

Let's just say that I went with low expectations for the conference, and high expectations for seeing my best friend who lives in the city, and thankfully I was pleasantly surprised. 

In my first session "What is the Role of a White Educator in this movement" I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Jeff Duncan-Andrade, a hesitant alum much like myself and for similar reasons: TFA doesn't talk about race enough. TFA isn't acknowledging the system of white supremacy that exists in our country which systematically disempowers and disenfranchises people of color. And most importantly, he expressed that, as white educators, we have the power to insert ourselves in this movement, but power is not the same as permission.  

Power is not permission. Ask permission to work in the community where you teach. Talk to the elders. 

Then, we heard from Elena Villanueva Beard, the CEO of TFA. Dr. Duncan-Andrade was a tough act to follow, but she made a compelling call to action. "Friends, I've taken this thing as far as I can -- not it's up to you. You need to step up. You need to take the lead." 

What does that mean for me right now? 

It means that in a staff meeting on trauma, I interrupted to talk about how our test-taking policies and pressures contribute to and exacerbate children's trauma. 

It means that I sent out this article on Black History to my staff. 

It means that I asked the Dean of Students if he thought it would be appropriate for me to come to an event for fathers and sons, expressing my solidarity while naming my whiteness. 

It means I prioritized this blog over some of my other work because thinking about my place in this movement is the only way I will get better. 

So ya, I think I drank some of the Koolaid, and it tasted like social justice. 

MLK Reflection

On the Friday before MLK weekend my team agreed that we had gotten so caught up in the push of academics that were neglecting many other socio-emotional needs, so we decided that even though it is stereotypical and not enough we were going to read a book about MLK and have a discussion.

When you make the choice to talk about a black leader only during Black History Month or on MLK Day you are communicating to children that there are two kinds of American History: the "regular" kind (white) and the "other" kind (black). If you are not also celebrating Hispanic History or Asian American History, then you are also silencing those historical narratives. I'm not saying that to discourage you. I'm just trying to raise your awareness.

Also, how can you talk about the Civil Rights Movement if children are only just beginning to understand abstract concepts and have not yet developed a historical timeline? This is an approximation of what I said to my babies. My words are italicized, their words and questions are not for clarity:

A long long time ago people lived here who now we call Native Americans. You might hear them called Indians but that is not the right name for this group of people. They lived here for hundreds of years, which is a very long time. Then, some people from Europe who looked like I do and who we might call "white" decided to look for new land and they came here, but they didn't want to share the land. So instead they killed most of the Native Americans. Some of these Europeans were very bad. They also went to Africa and took people from that continent to be slaves in America. [Here a student interjected about slavery. I stopped, let him share what he knew, and acknowledged that he was right. I asked who was teaching him about this and he named his grandmother and father.] So most Africans who came to America were taken from their families and homes and forced to work by bad white people. 

Why were the white people being so mean?

Well, not all white people are bad, but the ones I am talking about were very mean. They didn't want to work or share any of the things they had. Many Africans in slavery escaped and fought but it was a terrible time for our country. Remember when we talked about Harriet Tubman? She helped slaves escape. And Henry Box Brown, remember his story? We only told you about a couple of brave Black people who escaped and helped others, but there were hundreds. Finally, a great war called The Civil War started because some white people believed that slavery was wrong and white other people wanted to keep it. Unfortunately, when the war was over and slaves were freed not much actually changed for Black people in America. Lots of white people thought that Black people were less intelligent or less beautiful because of their skin color so they made lots of terrible rules so that they wouldn't have to share with the Black people. Can you imagine not being allowed to drink from the water fountain just because of the way you look? Or not being able to shop at your favorite toy store because of how you look? The Civil Rights Movement is so important because Black and white people came together and fought to change some of these terrible rules. You have probably heard of some of these leaders -- Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks were both important. 

And Malcolm X!

Yes, and Malcolm X. Actually, there were so many black people fighting for equal and fair treatment that we could never name all of them right now. There were thousands. And even though some good white people helped, many many more did not. They didn't want things to change.

Why didn't the bad white people want to share their stuff?

Great question -- that's really hard to answer. Probably they were scared or they weren't educated about different kinds of people. Regardless, it was terrible. We celebrate Martin Luther King and other Black leaders because they were brave. So many people disagreed with Martin Luther King that he was shot and killed, assassinated, for fighting for black people to have fair treatment in our country. I'm going to read you this book about the Civil Rights Movement because it shows how things were and how they changed. But this is a fight that isn't over even now -- sometimes people are treated unfairly because of how they look. Martin Luther King died to show us that that is never ok. And then I read the book This is The Dream.

The aftermath can also be scary and difficult. Children synthesize and summarize over many days. It could be weeks before someone comes out and says something about how white people are bad. Be ready for their processing. Encourage them to keep bringing it up by addressing their comments in a calm way. Rather than shut down what they say by telling them they are wrong, seek to understand where they are getting their information. Allowing children to ask difficult conversations and giving them space to process is your job. If they ask a difficult question or they don't have the answer, tell them the truth. Most importantly, recognize that we are all working together to come to a more complete understanding of racism in our country. Your students have important ideas to add to the conversation.

Skin color conversations, family outreach

Last week a parent sent me a long text explaining that her son was teased by a child in another class for appearing white. She is also light skinned and offered that she has experienced similar teasing her whole life. We immediately scheduled a meeting.

In the meeting she explained that she has told her son to ignore other children when they speak to him like that, and she obviously was trying to encourage positive self-esteem at home, but she needed tools. She looked at me fairly blankly when I talked about some of my in-class strategies.

When I asked if she wanted some books she looked like I offered her money. I felt so appreciative that I had left some of my better books on skin color close-at-hand. I grabbed four and she immediately packed them into his backpack.

I hope I never see those books again.

Looking at the bigger picture makes me nervous for my students and other students like him because if this parent who is educated and engaged needs resources, what about all of the parents who aren't even thinking about it? What about the parents of the child who called my student "white" and meant it as an insult? How can I, as a white educator, support families in a meaningful, organic way?

Half of My Students are Failing First Grade

The deadline for grades and academic data is this Tuesday in preparation for Parent-Teacher Conferences after the Thanksgiving break. I'm close enough to finishing all of my spreadsheets to have a pretty good sense of who will officially be on our "watch list" for staying back and doing first grade again next year. And it's half of my class.

I woke up this morning with my brain buzzing and it took me few hours to figure out why I was on the verge of an anxiety attack: my babies are failing and I have no one to blame but myself. I was their Kindergarten teacher, and I thought I was sending them to first grade prepared for more challenging material. If half of them are failing, then I must be failing as a teacher. 

Each family of a "failing" child will receive a letter, which I would categorize as threatening, explaining that they are currently on track to repeat the grade. I will write these letters myself, write goals for each child to guide their families toward helpful intervention at home, and deliver each in a face-to-face meeting. I'm at the point where I feel like such a failure that I cannot imagine teaching another year ever again in my life. 

But there is a caveat. Almost all of my students are on free or reduced lunch. They have wonderful families who work long hours and experience all of the stress of poverty. My students often put themselves to bed. In most cases, I teach the moms, grandmothers, brothers -- anyone who is not at work at night -- how to do the homework so that they can help my student at home because they don't understand the work themselves. Honestly, I remember a similar tension in my own family when my grandmother didn't understand how my second grade math was supposed to be done. Instead she just taught me the way she remembered and then I failed a quiz. We keep reinventing the wheel in education, ahem, Common Core, so things change completely every ten years or so. And families are totally stressed out trying to learn the way that I teach so that they can help with homework. 

I am not saying that I have low expectations for my students. In fact, sometimes I feel like I push them too hard. What I am saying is that not one person in my building is talking about the role that poverty plays in academic achievement. Not one person is willing to acknowledge how much our students lost over the summer. No one wants to hear that the children who are failing are challenged every day by their circumstances because their circumstances are out of our control. All of the unspoken factors that affect our students stay invisible, and teachers are left to bear the guilt, the failure. 

Surprise! Seattle Schools are Crap

When I think of Seattle the first things that come to mind are: wet, Microsoft, progressive. Imagine then, my surprise (horror) this weekend when I had brunch with a fifth grade teacher who told me some very not-progressive anecdotes.

Some of her complaints were your run-of-the-mill urban education roadblocks:

• Large class sizes 
• No professional development
• A lack of community among teachers 
• No supplies
• No technology (Anyone else see the irony?) 
• No support for homeless students and their families

But then a couple of the stories struck me as downright shocking. First, she told me that there was no contingency plan for students who are homeless. Unlike NYC, where "homeless" usually means living in a shelter when you are talking about a student, Seattle's more temperate climate means that families actually set up tents and make their homes in temporary dwellings. I haven't done the research but it sounds like there are fewer programs to support families. Or maybe more families in need. So she says, "Take out your pencil and a pair of scissors!" and half of her class just stares at her. You either spend your own money on the supplies or you don't assign projects that involve cutting.

It gets better (or worse, depending on your sense of humor). Her next-door colleague is teaching in a room that was previously used for special education intervention groups. That means that the room was not outfitted with desks and is quite small. After he was hired this new teacher went to the principal and asked for the desks and chairs he needed. Apparently, teaching in Seattle is like clubbing in NYC: you have to be on The List to get furniture. Unfortunately, this man did not make the cut. So he had to write a grant. For chairs. 

And then the kicker. My new teacher friend came from a low-income school in Madison, WI where every child was given intensive small group and individual attention to ensure that they received plenty of academic enrichment. When she arrived in Seattle with only her car and an entire classroom library squashed in the backseat of said car, she planned to continue this sort of individualized instruction. Teachers call this "guided reading." But get this: her students were so used to sitting in rows and never being asked to interact one-on-one with their teacher that they actually refused. It took her two months to convince them that spending time with her was worth their while. When she went to ask her colleagues for advice they were appalled, "WHY are you wasting your time with groups!?" 

When I looked up recent news articles I found this one which includes an anecdote about a parent donating $70K to a school so that a teacher could stay in their position.... 

So, why is no one talking about Seattle? 

Micro-aggressions on Picture Day

Today was a special day in Room 314. Mothers frantically snuck into our room during breakfast with only one thing on their mind: PLEASE PUT LIP BALM ON MY BABY BEFORE THIS PICTURE. Normally our children aren't allowed to have lip gloss with them at school because it's a distracting status symbol among 6 year olds. On Picture Day, though, everything is different.

So, we collectively primped. Even I ran to the Teachers' Office for a quick swipe of chap stick. As we headed downstairs everyone was filled with visible pride, as if taking your first grade picture officially makes you a first grader.

We lined up by height, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the photographers were efficient and friendly. Picture day has probably not changed a lot since you were 6, although these days you are given a barcode which is scanned for payment, scanned again to choose your background, and then scanned again as you actually take the pictures.

The woman in charge was middle-aged, wearing far too large a diamond to be a school photographer, and had a freckled tan that hinted at lots of summer sun plus maybe a little extra in a tanning bed. She appeared to be white. She came to hand out barcodes. About halfway through calling out student names, she said loudly, and to no one in particular, "Where do mothers come up with these names?" 

One of my little girls happened to hear her. And crestfallen doesn't even begin to cover the look on her face. All of the work I did on the beauty of your own unique name was completely undone in a moment. And then, I did the most despicable thing I could have possibly done: I gritted my teeth and smiled.

Afterwards, I ran up behind my sweet girl and reassured her that she has a beautiful name. I watched her shoulders noticeably relax. She let out a nervous laugh that was almost a sign of relief. But what did I teach her? That sometimes people are ignorant and you must grin and bear it.

What could I have said to that woman to make her understand her comment as racist without making her feel attacked. Or should I have attacked her? I'm left wondering, how is this kind of micro-aggression still happening in 2015? What should I have done?

UPDATE as of 10/29/15:

A few days later, I had a conversation with someone in our administration about what happened on picture day. She assured me that if I was willing to write it up, she would pass it along to our point person from the photography company. So, I wrote an email. And she forwarded it. But, I'm still left feeling like it wasn't enough.

Book Review: All the Colors of the Earth

All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka reinforces the idea that people are many shades of brown, using natural imagery to reinforce positive skin perceptions.

"For love comes in cinnamon, walnut, and wheat..."

The prose is poetic and bouncy, full of many positive representations of children and families. Because this book short and the images are engaging, it would make an excellent beginning of the year book when you introduce skin color pencils. On the other hand, it's a great book to have on hand in case students make comments about someone being "black" or "white" in order to offer them other skin descriptors. Many of the words used for skin are excellent opportunities for expanding vocabulary and the entire book is set in many shade of brown.