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1.  Restorative Justice

2. Empathy

3. Loving Engagement

4. Diversity

5. Globalism

6. Queer Affirming

7. Trans Affirming

8. Collective Value

9. Intergenerational

10. Black Families

11. Black Villages

12. Unapologetically Black

13. Black Women

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Our original thirteen principles came from the Global Black Lives Matter Network. At this time, we want to remain connected to a broader message and the history of the first week of action, which centered on these thirteen principles. We have rewritten the description of many as we recognize that language is always evolving. We aim to capture putting these ideals into practice on a national and local level using language that is accessible, inclusive, and currently relevant.

The Black Lives Matter Movement is guided by the following principles. We seek to expand student understanding of these principles through the week of action.

1. Restorative Justice
As we forge our path, we intentionally cultivate and sustain an environment that is rooted in compassion and empathy, where we can make mistakes, grow, and express the fullness of our humanity.

2. Empathy
We cultivate empathy by seeking understanding and engaging comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.

Our interactions are guided by a commitment to embody justice, peace, and liberation. 3. Loving Engagement

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4. Diversity
We recognize, accept, and celebrate the unique qualities that make us different and the shared perspectives, circumstances, and commonalities that connect us.

5. Globalism
We recognize that we're part of the global Black family in a common struggle toward liberation. We stay attuned to the different ways we are impacted including our privilege as Black folx who exist in different parts of the world alongside our other contexts. ​

6. Queer Affirming
We reclaim the word queer as an act of defiance and in solidarity with those who have paved the way for us to live openly. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of cis-heteropatriarchal assumptions. We foster a network in which all people can be genuine and express their authentic, embodied selves.
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7. Trans Affirming
We are self-reflexive and consistently do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege. We hold space for our siblings who are agender, intersex, transgender, and gender expansive to participate and lead. We uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be targeted and subjected to violence. We work outside of the binary to achieve full liberation.

8. Collective Value
We are guided by the fact that all Black lives, regardless of sex assigned at birth, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, economic status, ability, disability, education, location, age, immigration status, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, matter. None of us are free until we are all free.
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9. Intergenerational
We cultivate a communal network free from ageism and adultism because of our belief in the leadership and learning potential of all people, regardless of age. We recognize and celebrate the intergenerational relationships that have always been and must continue to be when working for justice.

10. Black Families
We make our spaces family-friendly and enable caregivers to fully participate with their children. We oppose the practice that demands double duty, where one is expected to parent in private but engage in public work. We recognize that family includes our chosen families.

11. Black Villages
We disrupt the narrow Western prescribed nuclear family structure expectation. We support each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially "our" children. We believe that radical care belongs in the public sphere.

12. Unapologetically Black
We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a necessary prerequisite for wanting the same for others.​ We proudly embrace our Blackness.
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13. Black Women
​We build a space that affirms Black women by centering their experiences. We recognize the many ways patriarchy shows up so consistently work to maintain a space free from sexism and misogyny, actively disrupting patriarchal culture.

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National coalition organizing for racial justice in education.

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It is a WORLD WIDE struggle towards liberation for Black Families. Black families are finely attuned to the choices the world makes and the different ways this impacts them.

What choices are we making as educators in our classroom that impact our students of color both positively and negatively?

How can we make sure our choices are liberating our students of color, particularly our black students?

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If you are new to Padlets please watch this. (This is a free account and you can use these in your classroom too!)

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Introduction to Padlet: Posting different things

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How can we add queer POC voices to our English curriculum?

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There is nothing to apoligize for Ego Id Chi Self Your personal idenity is just as valid as any other human personal identity. You do not need their forgiveness, validation, or suggestioms for improvement. You deserve love for just the way you are.

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Here is a link to my slide deck for the learning about BLM week. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12t0kZlWQwRC3GQLBjk8XF8scmP7GFHuUzVDPRUulABM/edit?usp=sharing

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Here is a link to my slide deck for the learning about BLM week. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12t0kZlWQwRC3GQLBjk8XF8scmP7GFHuUzVDPRUulABM/edit?usp=sharing

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When I taught in NK, the kids would express dislike for Providence because of stereotypes about the places where Black people live. They called it a ghetto, chaotic, devoid of spark. Last year I started every BLM principles lesson with this video with my Special Ed Students during advisory. We used this video often during our analytical discussion during the Week of Learning BLM. One student said it should be our class song. I was pleased.

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Living queerly means living joyfully in divergence and decolonization.

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I am not ashamed of who I am besides what people think of me or the prejudice that they carry about me and my people.

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None of us are free until we’re all free.

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How can I bring my own queerness authentically into my classroom and create space for students to learn and explore the myriad of ways to be queer?

How do I embrace the idea of "queer and here so deal with it" in a way that empowers my students to be empathetic learners and feel pride in who they are?

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The Forgotten Women who helped win the space race.

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The Forgotten Women who helped win the space race.

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As America stood on the brink of a Second World War, the push for aeronautical advancement grew ever greater, spurring an insatiable demand for mathematicians. Women were the solution. Ushered into the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1935 to shoulder the burden of number crunching, they acted as human computers, freeing the engineers of hand calculations in the decades before the digital age. Sharp and successful, the female population at Langley skyrocketed.

Many of these "computers" are finally getting their due, but conspicuously missing from this story of female achievement are the efforts contributed by courageous, African-American women. Called the West Computers, after the area to which they were relegated, they helped blaze a trail for mathematicians and engineers of all races and genders to follow.

"These women were both ordinary and they were extraordinary," says Margot Lee Shetterly. Her new book Hidden Figures shines light on the inner details of these women's lives and accomplishments. The book's film adaptation, starring Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson, is now open in theaters.

"We've had astronauts, we've had engineers- John Glenn, Gene Kranz, Chris Kraft," she says. "Those guys have all told their stories." Now it's the women's turn.

Hidden Figures | Official Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX

Growing up in Hampton, Virginia, in the 1970s, Shetterly lived just miles away from Langley. Built in 1917, this research complex was the headquarters for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) which was intended to turn the floundering flying gadgets of the day into war machines. The agency was dissolved in 1958, to be replaced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the space race gained speed.

The West Computers were at the heart of the center's advancements. They worked through equations that described every function of the plane, running the numbers often with no sense of the greater mission of the project. They contributed to the ever-changing design of a menagerie of wartime flying machines, making them faster, safer, more aerodynamic. Eventually their stellar work allowed some to leave the computing pool for specific projects- Christine Darden worked to advance supersonic flight, Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectories for the Mercury and Apollo missions. NASA dissolved the remaining few human computers in the 1970s as the technological advances made their roles obsolete.

The first black computers didn't set foot at Langley until the 1940s. Though the pressing needs of war were great, racial discrimination remained strong and few jobs existed for African-Americans, regardless of gender. That was until 1941 when A. Philip Randolph, pioneering civil rights activist, proposed a march on Washington, D.C., to draw attention to the continued injustices of racial discrimination. With the threat of 100,000 people swarming to the Capitol, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, preventing racial discrimination in hiring for federal and war-related work. This order also cleared the way for the black computers, slide rule in hand, to make their way into NACA history.

Exactly how many women computers worked at NACA (and later NASA) over the years is still unknown. One 1992 study estimated the total topped several hundred but other estimates, including Shetterly's own intuition, says that number is in the thousands.

As a child, Shetterly knew these brilliant mathematicians as her girl scout troop leaders, Sunday school teachers, next-door neighbors and as parents of schoolmates. Her father worked at Langley as well, starting in 1964 as an engineering intern and becoming a well-respected climate scientist. "They were just part of a vibrant community of people, and everybody had their jobs," she says. "And those were their jobs. Working at NASA Langley."

Surrounded by the West Computers and other academics, it took decades for Shetterly to realize the magnitude of the women's work. "It wasn't until my husband, who was not from Hampton, was listening to my dad talk about some of these women and the things that they have done that I realized," she says. "That way is not necessarily the norm"

The spark of curiosity ignited, Shetterly began researching these women. Unlike the male engineers, few of these women were acknowledged in academic publications or for their work on various projects. Even more problematic was that the careers of the West Computers were often more fleeting than those of the white men. Social customs of the era dictated that as soon as marriage or children arrived, these women would retire to become full-time homemakers, Shetterly explains. Many only remained at Langley for a few years.

But the more Shetterly dug, the more computers she discovered. "My investigation became more like an obsession," she writes in the book. "I would walk any trail if it meant finding a trace of one of the computers at its end."

She scoured telephone directories, local newspapers, employee newsletters and the NASA archives to add to her growing list of names. She also chased down stray memos, obituaries, wedding announcements and more for any hint at the richness of these women's lives. "It was a lot of connecting the dots," she says.

"I get emails all the time from people whose grandmothers or mothers worked there," she says. "Just today I got an email from a woman asking if I was still searching for computers. [She] had worked at Langley from July 1951 through August 1957."

Langley was not just a laboratory of science and engineering; "in many ways, it was a racial relations laboratory, a gender relations laboratory," Shetterly says. The researchers came from across America. Many came from parts of the country sympathetic to the nascent Civil Rights Movement, says Shetterly, and backed the progressive ideals of expanded freedoms for black citizens and women.

But life at Langley wasn't just the churn of greased gears. Not only were the women rarely provided the same opportunities and titles as their male counterparts, but the West Computers lived with constant reminders that they were second-class citizens. In the book, Shetterly highlights one particular incident involving an offensive sign in the dining room bearing the designation: Colored Computers.

One particularly brazen computer, Miriam Mann, took responding to the affront on as a her own personal vendetta. She plucked the sign from the table, tucking it away in her purse. When the sign returned, she removed it again. "That was incredible courage," says Shetterly. "This was still a time when people are lynched, when you could be pulled off the bus for sitting in the wrong seat. [There were] very, very high stakes."

But eventually Mann won. The sign disappeared.

The women fought many more of these seemingly small battles, against separate bathrooms and restricted access to meetings. It was these small battles and daily minutiae that Shetterly strove to capture in her book. And outside of the workplace, they faced many more problems, including segregated busses and dilapidated schools. Many struggled to find housing in Hampton. The white computers could live in Anne Wythe Hall, a dormitory that helped alleviate the shortage of housing, but the black computers were left to their own devices.

"History is the sum total of what all of us do on a daily basis," says Shetterly. "We think of capital "H" history as being these huge figures-George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and Martin Luther King." Even so, she explains, "you go to bed at night, you wake up the next morning, and then yesterday is history. These small actions in some ways are more important or certainly as important as the individual actions by these towering figures."

The book and movie don't mark the end of Shetterly's work She continues to collect these names, hoping to eventually make the list available online. She hopes to find the many names that have been sifted out over the years and document their respective life's work.

The few West Computers whose names have been remembered, have become nearly mythical figures-a side-effect of the few African-American names celebrated in mainstream history, Shetterly argues. She hopes her work pays tribute to these women by bringing details of their life's work to light. "Not just mythology but the actual facts," she says. "Because the facts are truly spectacular."

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The True Story of "Hidden Figures," the Forgotten Women Who Helped Win the Space Race

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A new book and movie document the accomplishments of NASA's black "human computers" whose work was at the heart of the country's greatest battles

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9. Intergenerational

We cultivate a communal network free from ageism and adultism because of our belief in the leadership and learning potential of all people, regardless of age.

This principal really speaks to me as a person who is still keen to become a better urban eduactor, and just a better person.

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I'd love to brainstorm some ways to get families more involved in my classroom. I used to have so many more relationships with parents, but somehow that has gotten lost. I wonder if this year the idea of BLM in my classroom can help reignite some energy around getting families involved. I don't have any big ideas, but I'm psyched to talk to my Classical teachers about this more.

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In the simplest of terms - We can open our minds enough to see and feel what human beings around us are seeing and feeling...because we are human

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Finding examples of literature, non fiction essays, poems by trans and queer identifying writers to feature and discuss.

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I come from a strong black family. We are millionaires, doctors, lawyers, criminals, drug addicts, business owners, alcoholics, teachers, scholars, laborers, mothers and fathers. But we are family and we are strong and together.

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I find myself no really understanding what this means at first. Upon reflection I take it to me that in the past individuals of color have been put in a position either internally or externally that they need to ask for forgiveness for being a person of color. This is not a fault of their own, but a social dynamic that the hegemonic culture has placed upon them as individuals and as an identifiable people. The goal of this principal is the eliminate this false idea from the consciousness of being a person of color or not.

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Diversity is what enriches any environment. Stone Soup is a simple but substantive example. It needs to be explicitly addressed in each and every class.

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justice, peace, and liberation

how can I bring lessons about ongoing efforts for liberation into my french classes?

how can I use francophone history as a way to inform the pursuit of liberation and justice? haitian slave revolt, the congo (current events and historical oppression)

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In the science classroom, I find that diversity is most fully felt and celebrated when students are given opportunities to work on projects together. Specific group roles, I find, allow students the opportunity to showcase their unique abilities in a team setting. In these instances, different languages, cultural differences, and ability are often times assets to the students' success.

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Why Everyone should learn Math in school - Neil deGrasse

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Diversity is what enriches any environment. Stone Soup is a simple but substantive example. It needs to be explicitly addressed in each and every class.

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We cannot afford to ignore injustice against anyone. Look how far we haven't come.

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We cannot afford to ignore injustice against anyone. Look how far we haven't come.

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Educators can have such an immense impact

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Introducing the different diversity my students bring into the classroom and celebrating the cultural heritage and differences by creating activities and lesson styles that aligns with their culture.

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I grew up in NK and remember that being part of the attitude when I lived there. It is unfortunate that those ideas are still ever after almost 40 years.

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Empathy: Culture sensitivity-understand how other feels

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Empathy: Culture sensitivity-understand how other feels

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By Cristina Paul in collaboration with Olivia Lozano and Nancy Villalta