Good Stuff on the Rethinking Schools Website

     "Spend an hour on the Rethinking Schools Website".....I can do that now, I have an hour before I need to make dinner.  As I peruse the site I am immediately struck by the "Planning to Change the World Plan book"  This plan book actually has pages to tell you historical events or important happenings each day and each month.  There are shareable quotes on each page and monthly themes and connections.  As I looked it over, I though there's a way to get some of these tough conversations started with our students.  As I continue through the site I find some great magazine articles and read a few.  I try the search bar and type in urban schools and am bombarded with articles.  My husband appears, "hey, are we having dinner? It's almost 7pm?"  Out for pizza it is and I decide to come back to it later.  I had left it open on my chromebook so I was able to come back to it however, now I am unable to access the site.  I keep getting a message that my user name and email don't exist....so I've contacted them by phone and email but haven't heard back yet.

     One of the several magazine articles I read (while I still had access) that really made think was "What Do You Mean When You Say Urban?  Speaking honestly about race and students" by Dyan Watson.  Urban means having to do with the city so urban students are students who live and attend school in the city, right?  He discusses his city of Portland, Oregon.  In that city he compares two schools, Lincoln, located in downtown Portland and another school, Jefferson, across the river in North Portland.  Immediately I thought of Normandy and Francis Howell and how those thirty miles were a world away.  At the school in Lincoln the makeup of the students was 75% white, 4.5% black, 8.6% Latino with 10.5% receiving free or reduced lunch and no Title 1 services are provided.  In stark contrast, Jefferson is 59% black, 8% Asian or Pacific Islander, and 17% Latino with 70% eligible for free or reduced lunch and does have Title 1 services.  As he discusses peoples' perception of Urban it's quite interesting that the word has become a "code for race" and it really means poor black and Latino children to many.  In a discussion of Urban Education, a teacher, Ruth remarks "To me, Urban students come from an environment where they can't see the value of education.  They can't see why it matters, because everyone that they know, everything that they do, has nothing to do with having an education".  Which is exactly the problem that Finn explains in showing that the each "class" just keeps producing more of the same and for the working and middle class it will never be enough to get them ahead.  Isn't it our job as educators to show them what else exists and that their futures are as bright as anyone else's.  I think Delpit would say this is exactly why we need to teach the codes of power to those without privilege.  In teaching the codes Delpit explains "They must be encouraged to understand the value of the code they already possess as well as to understand the power realities in this country".  (p. 40)
     After finishing the article, I did some research on the schools since then.  It is interesting to note "Starting in fall 2011, Jefferson High was transformed into Jefferson High School Middle College For Advanced Studies, a magnet school with a model that provided students with extra resources and the option to take college courses." which tells me much like Normandy, it never got better it just changed.  

     Another piece that I really enjoyed while I had access to the site was "Unfolding Hope in a Chicago School" by Gregory Michie.  The connection began right away in his disappointment about the Trump election.  His statement "And I feared his frightening campaign promises would soon land brutally on people's lives- including the lives of my students".  In the months preceding the election we had watched a couple CNN student news reports and discussed it a bit, but I was the Librarian this year so the interactions were limited.  On the morning after the election I got ready for school and had my plans prepared and ready.  My first period class was seventh and eighth graders, who I welcomed cheerfully at the door like every morning, but the students were sad and dejected.  I hadn't even gotten attendance entered when the questions and hostile comments began.  "Can he really send everyone back, even if they don't want to go?"  "What's going to happen to my mom, she stays home all day, are they going to find her?"  "What about my brother, he was born in the D.R.?"  The questions endless....my answers....uncertainty.  The words his students used to describe their feelings "Angry, Worried, Afraid, Disappointed" all the same feelings my students were sharing.  He goes on to explain that his students are not "naive" or "jaded" when it comes to injustice and hypocrisies because they are exposed to them and live with them in daily life.  So that day, my plans went out the window and instead I let the conversations and questions the students needed to have take up our 55 minutes together.
     Tears rolled down my cheeks as I read the section of Michie's article when he discusses the death of one of his seventh grade students.  The tears continue as he relates a second grade classroom who decides to do something about the boy's death.  The second graders made cards that carried a message of "Don't Lose Hope" and they presented them to the seventh grade students.  Michie explains it is just what his students needed.  And they did move on and more learning was done once they were able to have some closure to the horrific experience they all endured.  My emotions went to anger in reading the words asked to Michie, and I'm sure asked in the deaths of many other young, black men "Was he in a gang?"  As if it validated the death of his student.  "Asking if they were gang members seems little more than a pretext for concluding that their deaths were justified, or at least undeserving of sympathy. It’s the same line of thinking, in reverse, that prompts journalists to alert readers that a murdered teen was an “honor student”—as if a kid who failed a class or had a C average is somehow expendable." How sad the way our society can value or devalue a life. At the end of the article he mentions that in these violent cities there are also kids playing youth sports, religious celebrations, family and community gatherings and many innocent, beautiful lives who deserve as much as the next. Don't let the negative define the city or it's people. His challenge in the end "Day by day, piece by piece, unfold hope. Together". So as Finn requests "People can become conscious of injustice and inequity, and through disciplined, focused, and strategic action, they can bring about change". It's that keyword "together" that will bring about change. Delpit would totally agree "But both sides do need to be able to listen, and I contend that it is those with thee most power, those in the majority, who must take the greater responsibility for initiating the process". Allan Johnson would also be a proponent for this "if people in privileged groups don't include themselves in the solution, the default is to leave it to blacks and women and Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, lesbians, gay men, and lower and working classes to do it on there own. But these groups can't do it on there own, because they don't have the power to change entrenched systems of privilege by themselves". It's s vicious cycle as this leads us back to those in power often don't want to loose it or are just oblivious to it and their privilege.