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"What such critics also
fail to note, as Solomon and principal Sam Morgan have observed, is that the crumbling infrastructure uses up a great
deal more of the per-pupil budget than would be the case in districts with updated buildings that cost less to operate.
Critics also willfully ignore the health conditions and the psychological disarray of children growing up in burnt-out housing, playing on contaminated land, and walking past acres of smoldering garbage on their way to school."

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"Our children have become wise by necessity"

"Children reach the heart of these hypocrisies much quicker than the grown-ups and the experts do"

"You see a lot about the crimes committed here in East St. Louis when you turn on the TV. Do they show the crimes committed by the government that puts black people here?..."

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"The ultimate terror for white people," Ahmed says, "is to leave the highway by mistake and find themselves in East
St. Louis. People speak of getting lost in East St. Louis is a nightmare. The nightmare to me is that they never leave that
highway so they never know what life is like for all the children here. They ought to get off that highway. The nightmare isn't in their heads. It's a real place. There are children living here."

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We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated

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We also discussed how we need to avoid the "White Savior" Complex within our classroom.
It was also addressed the importance that people have a teacher that represents them.
Overall it is important that we can be kind and understanding to all of our students. We need to be aware of our prejudices and beliefs and make sure to check those before we are with out students.
LOVE THEM!

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Causes;

Bad facilities

No representation (within the community as well as politically)

District lines/school lines- no access to higher funded schools due to these drawn lines.

Money

Effects;

No representation/no role models

no access to adequate facilities

kids are staying one location with little training or hope for higher education

Later Effects;

Very few availability to leave the city

Few chances at attending higher education

lower chance of changing the culture/future of their community.

No newer teachers coming in due to lack of pay

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This week we met over teams on Thursday. We had a video call where we went over the graphic organizer and discussed the readings. These were some of the things we discussed;
- Prior Causes:

Access to Health Care (this includes dental care-how are students supposed to learn when they don't feel well or have a toothache)

Race

Money

Jobs-there are little to no access to them- the factor that pollutes their air is also the place that gives no jobs.

Prejudice literature- making sure they are reading FROM the writers IN these scenarios (The Help while great was written by a white writer).

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Think about your elementary school.

If you attended an American public school, chances are you went to that school because your family lived in that school's attendance zone. You probably didn't think twice about it.

We tend to assume these are neutrally drawn, immutable borders. But if you take a step back and look at the demographics of who lives in each attendance zone, you're faced with maps like this:

Once you look at the school attendance zones this way, it becomes clearer why these lines are drawn the way they are. Groups with political clout - mainly wealthier, whiter communities - have pushed policies that help white families live in heavily white areas and attend heavily white schools.

We see this in city after city, state after state.

And often the attendance zones are gerrymandered to put white students in classrooms that are even whiter than the communities they live in.

The result is that schools today are re-segregating. In fact, schools in the South are as segregated now as they were about 50 years ago, not long after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

But this exact strategy - gerrymandering school districts to include certain kinds of students and exclude others - can also be used to integrate a school, rather than segregate them.

In America, there is already a massive amount of residential segregation, shaped by a long history of racist government policies. This is why everyone going to the nearest school perpetuates very segregated classrooms. But using school zones, we can actually gerrymander these lines so we're not recreating the underlying segregation.

But that's not happening in most places.

Two recent studies - one by Meredith Richards and another by Tomas Monarrez - find that most districts draw these lines to perpetuate the underlying residentialsegregation.

Some even make it more segregated.

I get that this is a problem, but what does this have to do with me?

The decisions of where to draw these attendance zones are made on a very local level, which means we have a lot of influence on this matter.

In fact, recent research shows that school boards with members who are registered Democrats tend to draw lines that reduce segregation.

This means you can play an active part in deciding which children should be allowed to run bake sales together, learn their multiplication tables together, and shuffle through book orders together.

That's why we're using data that Monarrez shared with us to see how your own district is faring.

First, we'll show you what your district would look like if everyone went to the nearest school. Using that baseline, we'll show you whether or not your district reduces segregation - or exacerbates it.

Why thinking about segregation in the context of school attendance zones is important

There's kind of a twisted reason why we focus on school attendance zones.

On one hand, there is a lot more stratification between districts - between, say, an urban district and a suburban one.

This is a product of the white flight that ensued after the Supreme Court integrated schools in the 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education, which was aided by government policies that backed development loans to suburbs that would guarantee only white residents.

So a truly comprehensive integration plan would require a solution that mixes students from different districts together.

But in the 1974 Supreme Court case Milliken v. Bradley, the court ruled that school districts did not have to integrate among each other if the district lines weren't drawn with racist intent. Segregated geography, created by government policies, would just be recreated in our schools. As Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in his dissent, the decision meant "school district lines, however innocently drawn, will surely be perceived as fences to separate the races."

This still left room for districts to make sure their classrooms weren't separated by race. But the Supreme Court put limits on that, too. In a 2007 decision, the court ruled that school boards can't use the race of an individual student to decide where they go to school. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that schools could instead use demographic data to decide where to build new schools or draw attendance zones.

But even with the incredibly limited scope of this action, a huge portion of American districts are using these attendance zones to exacerbate segregation.

It's important to clearly state what's happening here:

Government policies created segregated neighborhoods.

The Supreme Court said we couldn't integrate schools across the most stratified boundaries.

School districts could still ameliorate segregation within their own district.

But even then, a huge portion of districts used these school boundaries to actually further the segregation that exists in each neighborhood.

Meanwhile, a growing number of people are side-stepping integration efforts by attending charter schools, private schools, or even seceding from their school district - all of which further segregate schools.

This is what happens to school boundaries when racial demographics shift

In a 2013 paper, researcher Genevieve Siegel-Hawley studied Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia and she found that, in this racially changing suburb, "school officials responsible for the district's rezoning process failed to embrace the growing diversity of the school system and instead solidified extreme patterns of racial isolation within high school attendance areas."

She cited a blog post written by a parent who lives in heavily white areas:

This is clearly the hottest topic at the bus stop each day. ... My first reaction was that we would just move if the schools changed to ones which we do not want to send out kids to.

This anecdote plays out on a larger scale, too.

Richard's 2014 study found that districts with rapid changes in racial makeup end up having school attendance zones that are gerrymandered to further segregation. This indicates that white communities see an influx of minority families move into their neighborhoods and assume the defensive stance of fencing themselves in.

Richards also found that stable communities - ones where the demographics have stayed steady - also have high levels of gerrymandering toward segregation. "It seems as if [the boundaries] have been there so long that people have sorted across them," she told me. "The cusps of those boundaries are extremely strong."

This means that, when the dust settles, white families insist on moving next to other white families and recreating white havens.

This is what happens when school districts try to reduce segregation

Some districts, however, are using these school attendance zones to try to reduce underlying segregation. A 2015 study by Saporito and David Van Riper suggests some schools boards may be drawing irregular shapes that aren't just drawn on top of the existing segregated geography, and ultimately creating more diverse classrooms.

"This correlation implies (but does not prove) that some school boards adopt school zoning plans with weird shapes in order to integrate children who live in separate residential clusters within a school district," Saporito wrote to me in an email.

And this year, researchers Hugh Macartney and John D. Singleton published a paper that found that school boards with members who are registered Democrats tend to create more integrated schools within their district. It's an encouraging finding - one that shows local elections can have a big impact on how inclusive our schools are.

But they also found causal evidence that this integration causes "white flight" out of public schools.

It falls in line with a 2007 paper from Saporito which shows that the children in neighborhood public schools tend to be less white and significantly poorer than the neighborhoods in which they are located. In other words, white families in diverse neighborhoods are opting out and sending their kids to private or charter schools.

It also falls in line with Monarrez's findings, which show that when students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district were exposed to more black and Hispanic students, it caused a certain amount of white flight between 2000 and 2010.

And it falls in line with the increasing number of communities who, instead of moving, are using their political power to draw new school district boundaries and secede from the existing district. They are essentially fencing themselves in with the people they feel belong in their community, while excluding others.

In short, the way the courts have interpreted the segregation laws, white communities with political and economic clout still have quite a bit of agency to determine who their kids go to school with. And they're deciding that they only want a certain amount of diversity in their schools before they decide it's better to opt out of the system.

The maps in our heads

The maps at the top of this piece should create a sort of segregation baseline for each district.

Our neighborhoods are already quite segregated, and it's important to know if school attendance boundaries are being drawn to segregate our classrooms even more.

But groups that resist school rezoning often make the argument that there has been a valuable and strong community that has formed around a school. In Henrico County, Virginia, one couple wrote a letter that read:

None of these options shows the dire need to redistrict our small group of subdivisions, but ALL of these options uproot a longstanding Godwin community, potentially split close knit relations, and rob us of a nationally recognized school and education that many of us consciously chose when we purchased our homes.

This couple clearly has a map in their head of which neighborhood blocks belong in a group together, and which ones don't. It might be based on who they know, where they spend time, or what they've heard about other areas. In short, they have formed a geospatial bias based on their experiences.

But it's important for us to understand how much this country's racist history has shaped these maps that we've internalized.

One of my favorite pieces of research is by Maria Krysan, a University of Illinois sociologist. In a 2009 paper, she describes talking to a bunch of people who live in Chicago and asking them if they know anything about certain neighborhoods.

What she found was that white respondents had a blind spot for neighborhoods that were more diverse, even if they were majority white. Meanwhile, African Americans were less likely to know about far-flung suburbs.

This means America's long history of socially engineering where people live has not only segregated neighborhoods and schools; it's also created maps in our heads that tell us what is familiar, what is not, what is scary, what is safe.

And ultimately, we make small decisions based on these emotions that accrue into segregated neighborhoods and segregated schools.

That's what makes this data and research so powerful. They give us some baseline to challenge the imaginary fences, which ultimately allow schools to be separated by race.

Correction: A previous version of this piece said American schools were as segregated now as they were 50 years ago, but it's actually schools in the South that are as segregated as they were 50 years ago. That said, in the last 30 years, black students who attend heavily black schools has increased in every region in the US.

Read the conversation

Tomas Monarrez, a UC Berkeley economics PhD candidate, joined me for a discussion in Vox's The Weeds Facebook group about how school districts could be gerrymandering attendance zones to reduce segregation - but generally don't. The conversation ranged from what parents and school board members can do to the underlying housing segregation. Catch up on it here!

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We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does.

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Think about your elementary school. If you attended an American public school, chances are you went to that school because your family lived in that school's attendance zone. You probably didn't think twice about it. We tend to assume these are neutrally drawn, immutable borders.

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Be an advocate! These students need to have someone who cares enough to show compassion but also to try and fight for them.
One of the teachers talks about how they could be making a lot more money if they taught somewhere else YET they stay for these students. They are fighting and advocating for them.
This means advocating for better materials, representation, pay, security, etc.
ADVOCATE FOR THESE STUDENTS!
This reminded me a lot the first week's podcast with Cornelius Minor.

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This week on the Truth for Teachers podcast: Cornelius Minor talks about his new book and how teachers can be agents of change in their community. Today I'm talking with In our conversation, we're going to discuss some of the key themes I pulled out from the book, particularly his thoughts on rewriting the teacher-hero narrative and disrupting the status quo in our classrooms and schools. Cornelius Minor, a Brooklyn-based educator and staff developer with the Teachers College Reading a nd Writing Project. He's just released a new book called "We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be." Tell me about the heart of your message-the thing that you're most passionate about sharing with teachers.
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Download the audio, and listen on the go!

Well, Angela, first of all, it's so exciting to be here with you. Whenever I think about the heart of my message, it's actually really hard to encapsulate into one thing. There are so many hearts, but they all stem from this - I am quite uncomfortable with the reality that we live in America.
Can you give me an example of something you're thinking about, in terms of those inequities?
We live in a specific kind of America that's okay for one kind of education for some kids, and then a totally subpar education for other kinds of kids. Our country, and specifically our education system, has been defined by intergenerational inequity which really bothers me. And so, much of my message is around how we disrupt that, how we can begin to look at the things that have plagued us for generations and begin to take those things apart.

So many times as teachers, it's really easy to fall into platitudes like, "Oh, everyone should have the same thing," and, "People deserve opportunity." But then we really don't act on those platitudes. And so much of my message is around inspiring and moving people to action so that we can disrupt the things that aren't good for all children.

Oh, for sure. We exist in a system of schools and schooling that has been really defined by many of them. When we look at data, we have become all too comfortable with the reality that girls don't score as well as boys in sciences and mathematics. We've become all too comfortable with the reality that kids with disabilities don't always get to access the curriculum that they need in order to thrive. We've become all too comfortable with the reality that black boys don't read.
One part of your book that really resonated with me was about rewriting the teacher-hero narrative. Can you talk a little bit about why that narrative developed to begin with and how we can change it?

And these things are not natural: that girls aren't born bad at science; that black kids aren't born destined for poor reading scores; that these are the result of decades upon decades of policy that have really served to marginalize specific groups of kids.

One of the things that I'm really interested in is looking at how those systems work. So really looking at reading scores and asking the question, "How did we get here? What are the practices that delivered us here?" Or looking at performance in science, or looking at access to curriculum and really asking, "Okay, if I've got huge populations of kids that can't quite access a curriculum, what am I doing about that thing?"

It has been really rewarding and fulfilling to lead teachers and schools and districts into that work where we really take a hard, honest look at ourselves and we step fully into our potential as change agents.

I think a lot about oppression and how it works. When I think about the role of the teacher, just by definition, a teacher is anti-oppressive. That when we look a the role of a public school teacher, that comes from several places. And many smart people before me have theorized public schools; we've looked at Dewey, and we've really thought about the role of the public school in the social development of a community.

We all know that Thomas Jefferson is wildly problematic, but as problematic as he is, I often go back to one of the things that Jefferson theorized when he was drafting the document that would eventually become our Declaration of Independence. He was really imagining what America could be, and at this time, America was but an idea. And we know that in Great Britain, if you were poor, you weren't fully included. If you were a woman, you weren't fully included. If you owed money, you weren't fully included. If you weren't a landowner, you weren't fully included. Certainly, if you were black, you weren't included.

Jefferson began to ask the question, who could we be if we were more inclusive? I think that's a really powerful question. He began to theorize that if we want to move away from a monarchy and to have a democracy, one of the things that a democracy needs are strong public schools. That if people are to vote on the issues of the day, those people need to be educated. I think that that's a pretty radical idea because basically, Thomas Jefferson was positing that a strong public education is our greatest defense against tyranny. And, for me, that's huge. That means that the work that we do as educators is hugely disruptive. It keeps us free.

If you've got a group of people who are dedicated to preserving the freedom of a republic, in some regimes, and especially when we think about now that the market drives everything, that everything is driven by how much money that people can make. If you've got a group of people who are just dedicated to delivering on access and freedom, which is our work as teachers, then it benefits some populations of folks to undermine that work. One of the ways that you undermine the work of a freedom fighter, one of the ways that you undermine the work of a teacher, is you silence those people.

We all know what silencing looks like: that we don't respect people's voices, we don't allow people access to the discourses or to the communities where they can spread a message. One way to silence people is actually to deify them, and we saw it with women's suffrage. When women first wanted to go and get the vote out, one of the things that people said was like, "Well, they need to be at home because they're dainty, and we need to protect them. They don't need to be in the streets voting. They don't need to be in the streets advocating for themselves because they are fragile and frail."

That kind of deification led to this idea that people could be marginalized. I think the same is happening with teachers.

When you say, "I am a teacher, therefore I am a hero", you erase all the parts of me that are not quite heroic yet. You erase the parts of me that are still becoming, the parts of me that are still grappling with curriculum or with working in communities. And so what happens is we try to live up to this ideal, and then we hide all of the parts of us that are not heroic.

So when we're not afraid to talk about our imperfections, then we're removing this deification of teachers-this thing where we have to be perfect, and we have to be there to be the heroes to save kids.
If you walk into a teacher's lounge in America, everybody is struggling through something, but because we're all heroes, we're not allowed to talk about that out loud. I really wanted to use "We Got This" as an opportunity for us to talk quite candidly about the things that scare us, about the things that inspire us, about the things that move us, but also about the things that we're not quite complete on yet because I think in that becoming is where the revolution is.

When we think about who we want to be, we don't come out as fully formed perfect teachers. But if you listen to the discourse on teaching, one would think that we are. I just really wanted to get to a place where we could talk candidly about who we are and about who we're becoming.

Exactly. It's a lot of the work that has been done in so many communities where we're looking at the images that the media hands us and we're really resisting those and complicating those. If you look at what we've been handed as teachers, we've been handed this, like, you all are perfect.

I get that. I work with some of the best colleagues on the planet. There are days when I look at my colleagues and I'm like, "Wow, they're amazing."
You also mention in the book that teaching is an economic and political construct. I think that's an important point to understand because I hear a lot of teachers who want to separate their work from politics. They see politics as something controversial and divisive, and we're supposed to all just be there for the kids, right? They don't want to be divisive. So they'll say things like, "Oh, let's just stick to talk about teaching. Let's not get political." Can you help us understand why teaching is inherently political and why we can't really talk about our profession without understanding the politics that are affecting us?

But we all have work to do. I think that when we really embrace that idea, we can do this work and we can do this work in public. I don't have to hide in my classroom and close the door in order to improve. I don't have to cry silently in the teacher's lounge when something goes bad because I can't talk about it.

There are far too many schools where we do that. Where if I'm having a hard day, I can't quite speak up on it because I'm not supposed to have a hard day because I'm a hero. Or if I don't know what to do next, I can't talk about it because I'm not supposed to not know because I'm a hero. I just think really complicating that hero narrative is really important for the work and for the world that I want to see.

Well, absolutely.

I think the term "being there for the kids" in many ways is divisive. It is my work as a teacher to walk right into that division and stand for children. I always say that it is my role as a teacher to initially create opportunities for children and to eventually teach them how to create opportunities for themselves.

That's all of our jobs. That we look at kids, I look at my 32, you look at your 28, and every morning when we go in, it's our job to say, "What opportunities can I create for these kids? And how can I eventually teach them to create opportunities for themselves, with respect to each other and with respect to our environment?"

That being said, anything that stands in the way of opportunity for children is our enemy. And there are several things in society that attempt to abridge opportunity for kids. Those things are political, but they are real, and they're our prerogative.

So, if family separation threatens opportunity for my kids, then I've got to be against that. If access to health care threatens opportunities for my kids, then I've got to be against that. If kids can't have access to healthcare, and it's abridging opportunities, then I've got to figure out how do I stand on the side of history, the side of law, the side of politics, in order to make sure that my kids have the things that they need in order to be successful, in order to access opportunities. And, for me, it's been really powerful to see.

One big thing in Brooklyn here is food - we encounter kids who don't always have access to food, and that's a political issue. There were certain council folks who were for free lunches for kids and there were certain folks who were against free lunches for kids, and that was political. But one of the things that I know is that when kids eat, they can conjugate verbs better. When kids eat, they can compute numbers better. When kids eat, they can create better art. People say, "Well, Cornelius, you were advocating for free lunch for kids, and that's political."
Right. And when we say pro-kid, that doesn't mean my kids. That doesn't mean kids who live in my community, kids in my socioeconomic bracket, kids of my race. That means I've got to be pro-all kids.
Absolutely. Because at the end of the day, it impacts kids' abilities to conjugate verbs. It impacts their ability to do math.
I think as much as we talk about being there for kids, there's still a a division - whether it's consciously or subconsciously. It's sometimes "those kids." I go into that community and I teach "those kids", and then I go home. And when I vote and when I advocate, I'm thinking about my kids. I'm thinking about kids in my neighborhood, and the kids that my kids play with. And so we're not necessarily thinking about what's best for all our kids as a whole. What are the policies we need for all kids? What are the things that we need to do in order to stand up on behalf of all of them, particularly the ones who don't benefit from the way the system is now? So we can't choose not to see politics and how politics impacts education. Salaries are funded by taxpayers. And the budget for schools is determined by politics.

I always say when people ask me what my politics are: I am radically pro-kid. That definitely means that I am walking into every arena that attempts to abridge opportunity for kids and I'm attempting to disrupt those things.

It's all political here. And if we pretend that we don't see politics, it's kind of like saying, "I don't see color." You're missing a whole realm here of information that can be useful for you in better serving kids.
Exactly.

Exactly, yeah.

Absolutely. And when you choose to not engage in these things, you're complicit in them.

In this academic year alone, we've seen two major strikes by teachers, and that's important. A city as large as LA and also Seattle - they just went to the polls yesterday to vote on funding for teachers, and there were people in communities who were actively against funding for teachers.

And so, that we are not political, I think, works to our detriment. And so, it is important to be not just aware of issues, but aware of the systems that regulate our realities every day. That is really important work for me.
That's something that you mentioned more than one time in your book. There's a whole section that's called "You can disrupt the status quo in your class." In it, you talk about questioning what defines classroom culture and identifying any groups of students who, and this is a direct quote from the book, "that consistently benefit less from the way that things are."
No time to finish reading? Download and listen on the go!

The systems, yes. Moving beyond just the individual and thinking about systems. You're so right about the thing with the strikes. We want to stand with teachers who are walking out or who are striking, but that is, in fact, a political act. It's disrupting the status quo.

Again, I have become really ill at ease with how things are, that we are a society that sleeps well at night even though large numbers of disabled kids don't get the access that they need to school. We are a society that has grown okay with the reality that a large number of girls or children of color don't get what they need out of school, and that's just how things are. That's what I call status quo.

There are kids who benefit less from the way things are. Our data in every district, in every school, shows us who those kids are. It's not just this kind of pie in the sky number. We can name the kids depending on the school. I think that that's really important to assign names to our data so that we can think these are the kids that aren't receiving a benefit from the way that we're doing things right now.

What's interesting is I have been very upfront with people when I talk about the work that, overwhelmingly, those are the kids of color. Overwhelmingly, those are the disabled kids. Overwhelmingly, those are girls. And so, school, as we do it now, is sexist, is racist, is ableist. That's really important to say.

Now one of the things that often happens in common discourse when we talk about things like sexism or racism or ableism, people get really emotional about that. They're like, "Well, I am not racist because I am nice," or, "I am not sexist because I say hi to women in the office," or, "I am not ableist because I have a friend that's disabled."

I think it's really important to note here that when we talk about these things, sexism, racism, ableism, these things are not merely personality traits. Rather, I posit that these things are systems. And systems are the rules, the policies, the procedures, the customs that govern a place that lead to inequitable outcomes for specific subsets of people.

So any rule, any policy, any tradition that leads to an inequitable outcome for girls is a sexist system. Any rule, any policy, any tradition that leads to an inequitable outcome for children of color is a racist system. And so, again, when we look at the rules and systems that govern school, it is clear from our data that we are okay with racism, that we are okay with sexism.

I really wanted to use the book to say, "Actually, we're not okay with those things." Then one question that I wanted to ask was, well, then what are the specific systems? I wanted to name them.

And oftentimes people say to me, "Well, Cornelius, I'm not the governor. I'm not the superintendent. I'm not the chancellor. How can I impact systems of oppression that are alive in schools?"

One of the things that I've done is I've really taken a look at classrooms. And so, yes, I am not the governor, so I can't impact the state. I am not the mayor, I can't impact the city. I'm not the chancellor. But I am the seventh-grade teacher, and there are systems, there are rules, there are practices, there are customs that govern my seventh-grade classroom. And those rules, those systems, as they exist, marginalize some groups of kids.

So, one of the things that I can do is I can labor intentionally to change those things so that the outcomes for the kids that I see every day are better. It's really exciting work to do. Those systems can be anything from the way we do our seating arrangements, to the way that we expect kids to turn in work, to the way that I have kids work in their notebooks.

I talked to a kid at the beginning of the school year this year. It was early September - we start after Labor Day here in the city. And I did the typical teacher thing where I mandated that all the kids bring in a certain kind of notebook and that they have their name on the upper left-hand corner of the cover. You know, the thing that we do every year.

And I sent the note home. They needed three spiral notebooks for my class. And this one kid came to me and said, "Cornelius, you just gave people a marginally hard time for not having spiral notebooks."

He's like, "And I get why you want kids to have spiral notebooks." He's like, "I get it. I totally respect you. You're the teacher." But he said, "But also, I'm left-handed and writing in a spiral notebook really hurts my hand. So, whenever I have to write in the notebook, I write slow. The ink gets all over the page. It's really messy. I don't like it. I don't want a spiral notebook."

And in that moment, I'm so glad that he brought that up to me. I was just like, "Of course I'm not going to make you have the spiral notebook." Unfortunately, this is my 19th year of teaching. He was the first kid to ever call me out on that. And I don't know how many kids over 19 years have had to suffer through the spiral notebook that marginalizes them. He was just like, "Yeah, I'll do a lot better with a composition notebook. I'm not arguing against the notebook. I'm not arguing against the writing that you want me to do. It's just that if I write in that notebook, I'm not going to produce what I know I can produce."

I just went home and I really thought. I was like, "Wow, I have been such a stickler for the rules, not even really thinking how that rule might marginalize specific kids in the room."

That's a small example where how many of us have been such sticklers for the rules, for the customs, for the systems that marginalize kids. And so, me insisting on that notebook made it incredibly uncomfortable for my left-handed student. I'm lucky enough that he was brave enough to come talk to me about it. But then I look back on my 19 years and I'm like, "How many kids weren't? How many kids had to live in that discomfort and just be okay with it?"

There are these small things, but then there are the bigger things. One of my best educator friends on the planet kind of left me eight years ago to become a principal. She was the literacy coach that raised me, and I tell this story often, but she is perhaps my best teacher friend in life. She taught me everything that I know about teaching literacy. Eight years ago, she left school to become a principal so she left teaching. Then she got her own school and it was really, really exciting. And because we're really good friends, we still check in with each other each Sunday night.

About a year and a half ago, she called me. It was March. She called and she was just like, "Hey. It's been one of the toughest Marches of my career." And for a woman like that, I wasn't really expecting a statement like that because, again, this is the strongest educator that I know. She's like, "Yeah, it's been a tough March. I've had to suspend 12 kids this March."

If you know where we teach, suspending 12 kids in one month is a huge number. As she continued, one of the things that she said to me, she was like, "You know, Cornelius, I really feel like this number, this 12 suspensions, has a racial dynamic to it." And she said, "Of the 12 kids that I suspended, 9 of them were black or Latino males. That's 75%.

The problem with that number is black or Latino males make up less than 20% at my school." Statistically, that is a racist outcome, that people who make up a statistical minority in your school make up an overwhelming majority of the suspensions. And we wanted to look at that. She was like, "Yep, absolutely, this has a racial component. This outcome is racist, statistically." But the thing about that is she's like, "Cornelius, we've been friends for years. You know that I am not a racist person. You know that I don't run a racist school. Yet, my school is perpetuating this racist outcome."

And, fortunately, because we're friends, we got to sit and look at her data. We kind of put all the office referrals out on the table. One of the things that we saw right away was that of the 12 office referrals that led to the suspensions, 10 of them occurred in a social studies classroom. Not in the same social studies classroom, but in the social studies department.

She was like, "Wow, okay. So 10 of my 12 suspensions originated in a social studies class." And what was powerful is she was like, "My social studies teachers are the most progressive people on campus. They're the people who are most willing to talk about this."

On the following Monday (in New York City, we have professional development on Mondays) we gathered the social studies teachers and we just shared the data with them. We were like, "Last month we suspended 12 kids. 10 of those suspensions originated in your classrooms. We need to take a look at this."

They were game to talk about it. After about 25 minutes of talking, one of the things that we discovered was that in that particular school, reading and writing were taught in a workshop-based way. Science was taught through inquiry. Mathematics was hands-on. Arts were through exploration. But social studies was taught through lecture.

So, we began to ask ourselves the inquiry question. And, again, we know that that correlation does not equal causality. And I'm a researcher, so we asked ourselves an inquiry question. We were like, "Could it be that lecturing at kids for 45 minutes is leading to the kinds of disciplinary actions that encouraged suspension? Could it be?" And once you ask an inquiry question, you've got to do the action research. So we did two weeks of action research. We said, "What would happen if we changed our teaching methodology for two weeks? Would office referrals go up or would they go down?"

We decided that we were going to try to use centers. We did centers-based activities for 10 school days, two weeks. Each day we monitored three things. We monitored student affect. We monitored their productivity - so how productive they were, how much social studies they did. And then we measured, of course, how many kids received disciplinary action and had to be removed from the room.

Over two weeks, we found that office referrals went down. And we did lots of end of class interviews with kids. So for 10 days of centers, we had all these interviews. We had all this student data in the form of their work. And then we had the number of office referrals themselves. And we were really able to sit at the end of that two weeks and say, "Wow. Because we changed our teaching methodology, suspensions went down."

That idea to change our methodology was an anti-racist act, even though it had nothing to do with signing a petition, even though it had nothing to do with going to a march, even though it had nothing to do with supporting Black Lives Matter. By changing our teaching methodology, fewer kids were suspended and fewer kids had to leave the classroom. More kids had access to social studies.
What advice would you give teachers who want to make a change in the norms in their school or their classroom, but they aren't sure how to make or execute on a plan?
So, when I talk about systems, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about looking at our everyday practice, our traditions, our customs, and really thinking about which one of these customs marginalize kids disproportionately. We found, in that specific instance, that lecturing the kids for 45 minutes was just not working. In how many schools do we lecture kids, watch them get suspended, and keep lecturing?

When I think about what it means to be an anti-racist practitioner, it means looking at the things that marginalize kids of color and changing those things. When I think about what it means to be fully inclusive of gender or class, it means looking at the things that marginalize those kids and changing our practice.

I'm a huge fan of inquiry - the action research has been how we have defined ourselves as a profession. So if something bothers me as a teacher - if I'm looking at my data and the girls aren't achieving, or if I'm looking at my data and my kids with disabilities just aren't getting what they need - then I get to invent something.

When we look at our heroes, the single most common characteristics that our heroes have, no matter who our heroes are - from Martin Luther King to Mae Jemison to Frederick Douglass, whoever we want to think about - all of our heroes had imagination, that they were able to imagine a reality that is better than the one that we currently exist in.

If the reality that I currently exist in says that girls don't do science well, then can I imagine a reality where girls would have more access to science? And once I imagine that reality, I try it. So, 5 days of action research, 10 days of action research where I invent a thing for my class, and then I try the thing. Again, I'm not trying the thing forever, but I'm trying the thing for 5 or 10 days.
There are so many good things in your book and so many great topics that we've discussed so far. I feel like this could be a six-hour podcast if I could get to all the questions that I have for you! But I want to give you a chance to share the most important idea from your book, the one thing that you wish every teacher understood.
What happens when I try a thing is then I begin to measure outcomes. I look at how productive are the kids, how happy are they? Are kids being removed from the classroom? Are kids are achieving more? Are they scoring higher in science? And then I can take that data, and then I can sit with my principal, and I can say, "Hey, I was really worried about the girls, but then for five days I tried this thing. Here is what happened to my data when I tried this thing," or, "I was really worried about the kids with disabilities," or, "I was really worried about the kids from single-parent homes. Here's what I tried, and here's how my data shifted."

I think that that's our work as teachers. That it's important to note that there will still be things in our school that are hard to deal with, and there will still be things in our school that we want to see improve. But if we wait around for the school district to tell us, if we wait around for even the principal or the literacy coach to tell us, that we're going to be waiting for a long time. Action research inquiry work allows us to take that practice into our own hands and walk toward the results that we want to see.

I think it's an idea that has kind of permeated our conversation: this idea that we cannot be okay with the way things are. That it's just too dire for too many kids. That education matters a lot. When families send their kids to school, they send us their best kids. They don't keep the good ones at home.

And so many times, we make excuses for the way things are by saying, "Well, this is how we've always done it," or, "Things aren't ever going to change," or, "I'm just a teacher. What power do I have?"

The most important thing to me is that, "Yeah, I'm just a teacher and we have a whole lot of power." To be able to step back, look at my practices, look at my customs, look at my traditions, and do the kind of action research that's going to lead to change really matters a lot to me.
Thank you, Advancement Courses, for sponsoring today's podcast episode. You can earn graduate credits or CEUs through over 200 online PD courses in 19 different subject areas for K-12 teachers. Everything is online and self-paced, and you have 6 months to complete. Right now, you can save 20% off each course with code TRUTH20 - that's just $120 per graduate credit hour. To learn more, visit advancementcourses.com/truth. The link to Cornelius' book is my Amazon affiliate link. When you purchase through that link I earn a small portion of the sale, at no extra cost to you.

I hope that people read We Got This and really take the title to heart, that I don't have to wait for city hall to say, "Let's do this thing."

I don't have to wait for the state of New York to say that, "Yes, we're finally going to get on board with equity." That I can look at the inequitable outcomes in my school, in my department, in my class, and I can address those things in a really intentional way using action research or inquiry. That's what matters a lot to me.

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We got this: Cornelius Minor on teachers as agents of change

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This week on the Truth for Teachers podcast: Cornelius Minor talks about his new book and how teachers can be agents of change in their community. Today I'm talking with Cornelius Minor, a Brooklyn-based educator and staff developer with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.

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Wow- the Savage Inequalities, broke my heart a little. These kids had so little going for them. Their government worked against. At one point the bridge between East St. Louis and across the highway was shut down. I was blown away by how unfair it was and almost symbolic.
Unfortunately I cannot solve these problems for these students BUT I CAN understand the cause and effects of these inequalities and then use my voice as a teacher to try and advocate for these students. This can include advocating for fairer school/district boundaries.
As teachers we MUST be advocates and try to bring awareness to our students! Try to bring in representations within out classrooms as well.

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This week addressed Cause and Effects within School Inequality. The readings were VERY intense! Specifically the reading Savage Inequalities. The reading addressed a lot of really intense issues that can occur within lower income (and unfortunately predominately people of color). These students did not even have access to adequate facilities (bathrooms, equipment, lighting, etc). They had to close down the school on various occasions because of sewage and garbage back up.

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The Yellow is the reflection, Green the quotes, Pink are the Take Aways, The Blue are the Impacts and the Purple is the discussion.

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See recording on Teams again in order to see other's ideas in depth.
Take Aways
- Make sure to be aware of student needs and abilities within the scope of the assignment.
- Create assignments that include other areas (potentially work with other teachers to get their input).
- Give students freedom in their assignments- let them decide how to present it.
- Use ideas such as TedTALKS, podcasts, etc.

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A lot goes into planning a lesson.
Make sure to know EXACTLY what you want to accomplish in mind throughout the formatting of a unit- use this to create essential questions.

Performance assessments are a good non-traditional route to test a students understanding. The assessments can include other content areas and force them to think outside of the box. It can also help students develop the ability to "deep think" and look at something as more than right or wrong.
Performance assessments are a great way to see a students comprehension.
USE THEM

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The assessments within the class need to be interesting and relatable to the student. Potentially something that could be used again later on (resume).
Performance assessments are good times to bring in the other literary and mathematical standards. Have them include other content areas (or even areas of interest) in these assessments- it should not just assess the content of this specific unit but should tie together large amounts of learning.

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I will continually use the Backwards Design in the classroom. start with what I want students to take away from the course and the. put it into practice.
- Using essential questions can help refocus students on the central focus.
- Essential questions can be an overarching idea or a topical one.
- Every unit will have essential questions that feed into what the scope of the lesson will be throughout the day.

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I like the Backward Design and believe it will be useful in preparing a lesson. Having a central focus keeps the lessons organized and with purpose.
It was frustrating this week because while I understand the idea of it in theory putting it into practice is difficult. I also struggled with creating essential questions that fed into the central focus.
Overall, the Scope and Sequence did not turn out how I wanted it to but it has been a learning experience and I am grateful for it.
The performance assessment was a great reminder to make all the assessments into something that can be adapted into something that can be applied into the students lives. Also- the performance assessments can help the teacher know how much the student really understood.

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This week was very informative but also very frustrating!
I have learned a lot about the amount of time and panning that comes into planning the lesson. The Backwards Design is very useful and makes a lot of sense when put into practice.
Having the objective goal and central focus helps keep the units on point and focused. In Social Studies it would be so easy to get distracted and teach just interesting information- but it is important to also take the time to adjust lessons towards a goal and intent.

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“Why history? Because it shows us how to behave. History teaches and reinforces what we believe in, what we stand for, stand up for”

“History shows us what choices there are…. The lessons of history are lessons of appreciation” (McCullough)

“Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant; its a form of ingratitude”

- David McCullough- Why History?

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“In a more practical sense, a question is alive in a subject if we really engage with it, if it seems genuine and relevant to us, and if it helps us gain a more systematic and deep understanding of what we are learning”- Essential Questions (8)

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“The essentialness of the question depends upon why we posed it, how we intent student to tackle it, and what we expect for associated learning activities and assessments.”- Essential Questions (7)

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“A good education is grounded in such lifelong questions, even if we sometimes lose sight of them while focusing on content mastery”. - Essential Questions (6)

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“Education should strive to develop and deepen students understanding of important ideas and processes so that they can transfer their learning within and outside school."- Essential Question (4)

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"Not answerable with finality in a single lesson or a brief sentence. Their aim is to stimulate through, to provoke inquiry, and to spark more questions, including thoughtful student questions, not just pat answers." - Essential Questions (3)

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“We need discourse that inspires young people to think gracefully and moves young adults to become teachers and foster such development" Rose Why School? (29)

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"Education is reduced to a cognitive horse race" Rose, Why School? (29)

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“Poverty does not necessarily diminish the power of one’s mind, but it certainly draws attention to the competing demands of safety and survival:….” Rose Why School? (28)

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“Policy discussion is also driven, and increasingly so, by various systems of standards and assessments that have consequences for how schools are rated, run and even financed. “ Rose Why School (25-26)

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The purpose of Social Studies is the enable students to make connections and reinforce what they believe in, what they stand for and what they will stand up for.
Social Studies help students critically think and helps them to have globally diverse ideas and mindsets. It prepares them to be global citizens as well as good national citizens.

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Essential Questions- Take Aways (Part 3)

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Essential Questions- Take Aways (Part 3)

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Within my classroom essential questions will be used to find deeper meaning and deeper questions.
Essential Questions should help me help my students find the larger meaning. Thus I should have my main goal or concept and then I should form essential questions around it and continually use them throughout the unit.
Essential questions are not just for one or two days. They should cover a unit if not several. This will help students draw conclusions and see the continued importance and connections within Social Studies.
I need to make sure to go back to my questions at the beginning and ending of the day.
In journals, bell ringers, quizzes, etc have students ponder this question and well as make connecting questions.
THERE IS NO CORRECT ANSWER WITHIN AN ESSENTIAL QUESTION- just a way to guide thoughts.

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Essential Questions- Take Aways (part 2)

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Essential Questions- Take Aways (part 2)

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As seen in the listed examples Essential Questions can cause students to begin to think and form conclusions.
Within my classroom I want to make sure that Essential Questions are consistently being applied to our lessons. Specifically within Social Studies we need students to see patterns in not just history but within their own lives.
Essential questions will help students understand the Big Goal or purpose of the unit. It will help the students see the Central Focus (enduring understanding).

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Examples of Essential Questions:
- How do historians and archeologists construct interpretations from artifacts, oral histories, legends, primary sources, and other evidence?
- What were the motives behind European exploration?
- How does geography affect cultures historically?
- Should the American colonists have rebelled against England?
- What leads to revolution?
- Is any war just?
- What is democracy?
- Why would people desire the freedom of speech?

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When setting up trackers in Mastery Connect, please use Utah: Social Studies 2017 core

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Topical Essential Questions are specific essential questions. They are based on one subject or idea and are surrounding that.
ex:
- Why did the Soviet Union collapse?
- Why drove the American colonies to revolution?

Overarching Essential Questions are questions that are more general and covers more of a general audience and not a specific event or time frame.
Ex:
- In what way does art reflect, as well as shape, culture?
- How does geography affect the culture and stability of a region?

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Week 2- Essential Questions- Impacts (part 2)

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Week 2- Essential Questions- Impacts (part 2)

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Essential Questions include 7 Characteristics:

1. Is open-ended; that is, it typically will not have a single, final, and correct answer.

2. Is thought-provoking and intellectually engaging, often sparking discussion and debate

3. Calls for higher-order thinking, such as analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction. It cannot be effectively answered by recall alone.

4. Points toward important, transferable ideas within (and sometimes across) disciplines.

5. Raises additional questions and sparks further inquiry.

6. Requires support and justification, not just an answer.

7. Recurs over time; that is, the question can and should be revisited again and again.

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Essential questions are vital within the educational world today. They are a way in which students can begin to inquire and look at the world through a different lense. Essential Questions are meant to spark more questions and provide multiple answers instead of just one. Their purpose is to uncover the depth and richness of a topic. Essential Questions should be used to frame the learning goals within the classroom.
The best essential questions should be questions that are ALIVE!
Essential Questions differ in their scope.

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Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding

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Week 2- Standards Within Education- Impacts (part 2)

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Week 2- Standards Within Education- Impacts (part 2)

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BUT I think there is something to be said about having standards. I think if we could find a balance much like Marzano was suggesting- standards would be efficient. Lessen the amount of standards that we have at this current time and but back on content. This would mean that we have several set standards BUT teachers would still have freedom to move without fearing standarized tests.

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Why School? comes from a professional lifetime in classrooms, creating and running educational programs, teaching and researching, writing and thinking about education and human development. It offers a series of appeals for big-hearted social policy and an embrace of the ideals of democratic education-from the way we define and structure opportunity to the way we respond to a child adding a column of numbers. Collectively, the chapters provide a bountiful vision of human potential, illustrated through the schoolhouse, the workplace, and the community.

We need such appeals, I think, because we have lost our way.

We live in an anxious age and seek our grounding, our assurances in ways that don't satisfy our longing-that, in fact, make things worse. We've lost hope in the public sphere and grab at market-based and private solutions, which undercut the sharing of obligation and risk and keeps us scrambling for individual advantage. Though we pride ourselves as a nation of opportunity and a second chance, our social policies can be terribly ungenerous. As we try to improve our schools, we rush to one-dimensional solutions, to technological and structural "game changers" that all too often lead to new problems. We've narrowed the purpose of schooling to economic competitiveness, our kids becoming economic indicators. And we've reduced our definition of human development and achievement-that miraculous growth of intelligence, sensibility, and the discovery of the world-to a test score.

Historically, national discussions about education have always had a political dimension to them and often have been contentious. But the current debates are so politicized and combative that positions easily get simplified and hardened, and nuance and possible areas of agreement are lost in the fiery polemics. We as a country and, certainly, the children in our schools, deserve better. Why School? was written in the midst of these debates and to be sure exhibits a point of view, but I hope that the book can contribute in some small way to a different kind of discussion of why we educate in America.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Why School?

1. In Search of Fresh Language of Schooling

2. Finding Our Way: The Experience of Education

3. No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the Spirit of Democratic Education

4. Business Goes to School

5. Intelligence in the Workplace and the Schoolhouse

6. On Values, Work, and Opportunity

7. Being Careful about Character

8. Reflections on Standards, Teaching, and Learning

9. MOOCs and Other Wonders: Education and High-Tech Utopia

10. Re-Mediating Remediation

11. Soldiers in the Classroom

12. The Inner Life of the Poor

13. Finding the Public Good through the Details of Classroom Life

Conclusion: The Journey Back and Forward

Afterword: Writing About School

Selected by Bill Moyers as a "must read" book of 2009. "I interviewed Mike Rose 20 years ago for my series WORLD OF IDEAS. He was already on the path to becoming one of our most exciting thinkers about education in the lives of marginalized people. He lives in the real world, and this new book-slim and vividly written-is an inspiration for how to cope with it in our classrooms."
Bill Moyers Journal

"Rose gives a larger sense of the interplay between what happens in the classroom and the world outside school...[and] a capacious sense of what can happen within the interior world of the classroom."
The New York Review of Books

"Rose puts into clear words what so many of us feel is lacking in our children's education...[He] recalibrates our thinking in this little book, the first step toward change."
The Los Angeles Times

Must Read. "This is a beautifully written work...Mike Rose draws on over 40 years of teaching experience and research, weaving memoir and policy discussion together in this moving call for the humane approach to education that accounts for the needs of every child."
Christian Science Monitor

"A compact and potent collection of essays."
The Nation

"Rose invites parents, community members, and other stake holders to join the conversation orbiting our educational system and reclaim it in the name of democracy and equity...Rose profiles remarkable teachers, engaged students, and blossoming schools. His descriptions of each are underlined by his convection that learning, as a human endeavor...is magnificent. It is wondrous."
In These Times

"Eloquent...Rose's collection is filled with stories of students and teachers working together in ways that dispel stereotypes about what is possible in the inner city classroom or the remedial college writing class. 'We have lost our way,' he writes in the book's opening pages, because our vision of what public education can and should be has become too small."
The Progressive

"Aims to reinvigorate a discussion on the value of education in a democracy...strongly advocates for education that values reflection, curiosity, and imagination rather than the quantifiable measures favored by economists."
Booklist

"Rose illuminates the ethical stance and the implied moral contract at the heart of teaching, [and] he encourages us to think deeply about what we want our schools to do and be... Why School? is essential reading. [It] is crisp, concise, lively."
Rethinking Schools

"Mike Rose is once again at his most bold and brilliant. My favorite parts are the vivid details of classroom life, but Rose's broad scope reaches far beyond the schools and asks essential questions of the meaning of 'a good society' in the great tradition of John Dewey. Rose is a rare treasure in this dreary moment of debate along the dismal flatlands of educational discourse. He brings us to the mountaintops."
Jonathan Kozol, author of The Shame of a Nation and Letters to a Young Teacher

"One of the most insightful, challenging, honest, helpful, and encouraging books I've read in many years."
Joe Nathan, Director of Center for School Change, University of Minnesota

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Why School? comes from a professional lifetime in classrooms, creating and running educational programs, teaching and researching, writing and thinking about education and human development. It offers a series of appeals for big-hearted social policy and an embrace of the ideals of democratic education-from the way we define and structure opportunity to the way we respond to a child adding a column of numbers.

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Week 2- Standards Within Education- Impacts

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Week 2- Standards Within Education- Impacts

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I am still somewhat unsure upon my views of standards. In some ways I support the idea of them but un others I think it is hurting the student, specifically the minority and low-income students. I attended a high school that did not follow the standards set by school boards or the US governemnt. My school was run by a parent school board. My History classes were formatted by my professor and she had the freedom to explore content in a different way. We spent a large amount of time on the industrial revolution and the annexation of Hawaii. She had the freedom to explore subjects and people. The students adored her class and students were passionate about the subject. In this form I appreciate the non-standards approach.

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Confused about the Common Core State Standards? Join the club. That's not to say the new benchmarks in reading and math are good or bad, working smoothly or kicking up sparks as the wheels come off. It is simply an acknowledgement that, when the vast majority of U.S. states adopt a single set of educational standards all at roughly the same time, a little confusion is inevitable.

Below is a handy FAQ about Common Core. We'll continue answering your questions in the coming months. You can post them in the comments section, or on Twitter and Facebook using #commonq.
What are the Common Core State Standards?
With the Core, it's best to begin at the beginning. They are benchmarks in English language arts and math that clarify the skills each child should have at each grade level. From the Common Core's own website: "The standards were created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live." If you have a few hours you're looking to fill, you can tuck into the standards one by one.

The standards have been adopted in 45 states and the District of Columbia. One good way to understand what they are is to know what they're replacing. States control their learning standards, and Common Core doesn't change that. But before the Core, state standards varied widely across the country and, in many cases, were weak and outdated. The Core standards are widely considered an upgrade.

The other problem the standards are meant to address is student mobility. Kids move around a lot. The 2000 census found that 18 percent of kids had moved in the last year. And, when they moved from school to school or state to state, many found themselves struggling to cope with very different standards.
Opponents of the Common Core argue that the standards tell teachers what texts they should teach. Do they?
Not really. The only required reading from Common Core comes in the 11th and 12th grades, when kids will be expected to read and understand foundational documents of historical and literary significance: the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Lincoln's second inaugural address.

Much of the confusion comes from the Core's Appendix B. It includes dozens of titles that the Core's writers consider "text exemplars" - in other words, suggestions for teachers looking for age-appropriate reading material that will help their students reach Core benchmarks. They include everything from Green Eggs and Ham to Shakespeare's Sonnet 73. But these texts are recommended, not required. The standards also call for a balance of informational texts and literature but, again, do not require specific books or reading materials.
Will the Core come with new standardized tests?
Yes. The states that have adopted the Core have divided into two consortia, and each will soon field-test new, Common-Core-aligned assessments. Beginning next week, some 4 million students (in grades three to 11) will take these new tests in math and language arts for the first time. This early testing will help test makers figure out what test items truly gauge "proficiency" (or grade-level skills) and what the cutoff scores should be. These tests are expected to be tougher for many of the children who take them. New York, an early adopter of the Core, has already administered Core-aligned tests and seen significant drops in student scores.
How do teachers unions feel about the Common Core?
That's tricky. Both the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers support the standards, but their rank-and-file are uncomfortable and increasingly unhappy with the standards' implementation. Seven out of 10 teachers say the transition to a curriculum tied to Common Core isn't working. Two-thirds of teachers say they were not asked for input on how to develop the implementation plan. Teachers also say they need time to make sure they understand the standards and are able to talk to parents about them. In the meantime, the unions are calling for a delay not in implementation of the new standards but in holding teachers accountable for test results. In California, Gov. Jerry Brown has already said teachers there won't be judged this year on student performance as the state transitions from old standards to new.

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Confused about the Common Core State Standards? Join the club. That's not to say the new benchmarks in reading and math are good or bad, working smoothly or kicking up sparks as the wheels come off. It is simply an acknowledgement that, when the vast majority of U.S.

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Week 2- Standards and Essential Questions Reflection

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Week 2- Standards and Essential Questions Reflection

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The second thing we addressed this week was th use of essential questions within our classrooms and teachings. Why are essential questions importnat? HOW can they be used? What is the most impactful way to do so.
I personally LOVE essental questions. Specifically within the social studies content area. Using essential questions can really make or break a lesson and a students understanding of the impact of an event.

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Week 2- Standards and Essential Question Reflection

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Week 2- Standards and Essential Question Reflection

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This week we addressed the use of standards within our school educational programs. There is a large debate about whether standards ehlp our student or if they impede them. Ar ethy heling students stay up to date and encouraging people to get to a certain standard? Or are they hurting students by pushing them aside? I am not 100% sure I have made up my mind at this moment in time but it is something worth podering.

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Take Aways-3

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Take Aways-3

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Inquiry- action research. If something is bothering you (looking at data- make sure to look into this) then look into solutions or look into the causes. Try something for 5-10 days and look at the results. We must be proactive in our own actions and beliefs.

Every quarter look at my results- who is passing, who is failing? Which students are attending regularly? Which are not?

Take these results and find the little things that can be changed- try it and then see what happens-adjust from there.

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Take Aways-2

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Take Aways-2

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Don't Make Excuses

Look at where the data is coming from and find solutions.

Where are the big things happening

What changes can we make

Have an open conversation.

Really look into reading and writing
Action research (?)

When I teach social studies I need to make sure my students are up and moving.

Teach to a student- not an idea!

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This week we covered the politics of teaching. It focused on a podcast which focused on New York Teacher CCornelius Minor who recently published a book "We Got This: Cornelius Minor on Teachers as Agents of Change".

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This week on the Truth for Teachers podcast: Cornelius Minor talks about his new book and how teachers can be agents of change in their community. Today I'm talking with In our conversation, we're going to discuss some of the key themes I pulled out from the book, particularly his thoughts on rewriting the teacher-hero narrative and disrupting the status quo in our classrooms and schools. Cornelius Minor, a Brooklyn-based educator and staff developer with the Teachers College Reading a nd Writing Project. He's just released a new book called "We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be." Tell me about the heart of your message-the thing that you're most passionate about sharing with teachers.
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Well, Angela, first of all, it's so exciting to be here with you. Whenever I think about the heart of my message, it's actually really hard to encapsulate into one thing. There are so many hearts, but they all stem from this - I am quite uncomfortable with the reality that we live in America.
Can you give me an example of something you're thinking about, in terms of those inequities?
We live in a specific kind of America that's okay for one kind of education for some kids, and then a totally subpar education for other kinds of kids. Our country, and specifically our education system, has been defined by intergenerational inequity which really bothers me. And so, much of my message is around how we disrupt that, how we can begin to look at the things that have plagued us for generations and begin to take those things apart.

So many times as teachers, it's really easy to fall into platitudes like, "Oh, everyone should have the same thing," and, "People deserve opportunity." But then we really don't act on those platitudes. And so much of my message is around inspiring and moving people to action so that we can disrupt the things that aren't good for all children.

Oh, for sure. We exist in a system of schools and schooling that has been really defined by many of them. When we look at data, we have become all too comfortable with the reality that girls don't score as well as boys in sciences and mathematics. We've become all too comfortable with the reality that kids with disabilities don't always get to access the curriculum that they need in order to thrive. We've become all too comfortable with the reality that black boys don't read.
One part of your book that really resonated with me was about rewriting the teacher-hero narrative. Can you talk a little bit about why that narrative developed to begin with and how we can change it?

And these things are not natural: that girls aren't born bad at science; that black kids aren't born destined for poor reading scores; that these are the result of decades upon decades of policy that have really served to marginalize specific groups of kids.

One of the things that I'm really interested in is looking at how those systems work. So really looking at reading scores and asking the question, "How did we get here? What are the practices that delivered us here?" Or looking at performance in science, or looking at access to curriculum and really asking, "Okay, if I've got huge populations of kids that can't quite access a curriculum, what am I doing about that thing?"

It has been really rewarding and fulfilling to lead teachers and schools and districts into that work where we really take a hard, honest look at ourselves and we step fully into our potential as change agents.

I think a lot about oppression and how it works. When I think about the role of the teacher, just by definition, a teacher is anti-oppressive. That when we look a the role of a public school teacher, that comes from several places. And many smart people before me have theorized public schools; we've looked at Dewey, and we've really thought about the role of the public school in the social development of a community.

We all know that Thomas Jefferson is wildly problematic, but as problematic as he is, I often go back to one of the things that Jefferson theorized when he was drafting the document that would eventually become our Declaration of Independence. He was really imagining what America could be, and at this time, America was but an idea. And we know that in Great Britain, if you were poor, you weren't fully included. If you were a woman, you weren't fully included. If you owed money, you weren't fully included. If you weren't a landowner, you weren't fully included. Certainly, if you were black, you weren't included.

Jefferson began to ask the question, who could we be if we were more inclusive? I think that's a really powerful question. He began to theorize that if we want to move away from a monarchy and to have a democracy, one of the things that a democracy needs are strong public schools. That if people are to vote on the issues of the day, those people need to be educated. I think that that's a pretty radical idea because basically, Thomas Jefferson was positing that a strong public education is our greatest defense against tyranny. And, for me, that's huge. That means that the work that we do as educators is hugely disruptive. It keeps us free.

If you've got a group of people who are dedicated to preserving the freedom of a republic, in some regimes, and especially when we think about now that the market drives everything, that everything is driven by how much money that people can make. If you've got a group of people who are just dedicated to delivering on access and freedom, which is our work as teachers, then it benefits some populations of folks to undermine that work. One of the ways that you undermine the work of a freedom fighter, one of the ways that you undermine the work of a teacher, is you silence those people.

We all know what silencing looks like: that we don't respect people's voices, we don't allow people access to the discourses or to the communities where they can spread a message. One way to silence people is actually to deify them, and we saw it with women's suffrage. When women first wanted to go and get the vote out, one of the things that people said was like, "Well, they need to be at home because they're dainty, and we need to protect them. They don't need to be in the streets voting. They don't need to be in the streets advocating for themselves because they are fragile and frail."

That kind of deification led to this idea that people could be marginalized. I think the same is happening with teachers.

When you say, "I am a teacher, therefore I am a hero", you erase all the parts of me that are not quite heroic yet. You erase the parts of me that are still becoming, the parts of me that are still grappling with curriculum or with working in communities. And so what happens is we try to live up to this ideal, and then we hide all of the parts of us that are not heroic.

So when we're not afraid to talk about our imperfections, then we're removing this deification of teachers-this thing where we have to be perfect, and we have to be there to be the heroes to save kids.
If you walk into a teacher's lounge in America, everybody is struggling through something, but because we're all heroes, we're not allowed to talk about that out loud. I really wanted to use "We Got This" as an opportunity for us to talk quite candidly about the things that scare us, about the things that inspire us, about the things that move us, but also about the things that we're not quite complete on yet because I think in that becoming is where the revolution is.

When we think about who we want to be, we don't come out as fully formed perfect teachers. But if you listen to the discourse on teaching, one would think that we are. I just really wanted to get to a place where we could talk candidly about who we are and about who we're becoming.

Exactly. It's a lot of the work that has been done in so many communities where we're looking at the images that the media hands us and we're really resisting those and complicating those. If you look at what we've been handed as teachers, we've been handed this, like, you all are perfect.

I get that. I work with some of the best colleagues on the planet. There are days when I look at my colleagues and I'm like, "Wow, they're amazing."
You also mention in the book that teaching is an economic and political construct. I think that's an important point to understand because I hear a lot of teachers who want to separate their work from politics. They see politics as something controversial and divisive, and we're supposed to all just be there for the kids, right? They don't want to be divisive. So they'll say things like, "Oh, let's just stick to talk about teaching. Let's not get political." Can you help us understand why teaching is inherently political and why we can't really talk about our profession without understanding the politics that are affecting us?

But we all have work to do. I think that when we really embrace that idea, we can do this work and we can do this work in public. I don't have to hide in my classroom and close the door in order to improve. I don't have to cry silently in the teacher's lounge when something goes bad because I can't talk about it.

There are far too many schools where we do that. Where if I'm having a hard day, I can't quite speak up on it because I'm not supposed to have a hard day because I'm a hero. Or if I don't know what to do next, I can't talk about it because I'm not supposed to not know because I'm a hero. I just think really complicating that hero narrative is really important for the work and for the world that I want to see.

Well, absolutely.

I think the term "being there for the kids" in many ways is divisive. It is my work as a teacher to walk right into that division and stand for children. I always say that it is my role as a teacher to initially create opportunities for children and to eventually teach them how to create opportunities for themselves.

That's all of our jobs. That we look at kids, I look at my 32, you look at your 28, and every morning when we go in, it's our job to say, "What opportunities can I create for these kids? And how can I eventually teach them to create opportunities for themselves, with respect to each other and with respect to our environment?"

That being said, anything that stands in the way of opportunity for children is our enemy. And there are several things in society that attempt to abridge opportunity for kids. Those things are political, but they are real, and they're our prerogative.

So, if family separation threatens opportunity for my kids, then I've got to be against that. If access to health care threatens opportunities for my kids, then I've got to be against that. If kids can't have access to healthcare, and it's abridging opportunities, then I've got to figure out how do I stand on the side of history, the side of law, the side of politics, in order to make sure that my kids have the things that they need in order to be successful, in order to access opportunities. And, for me, it's been really powerful to see.

One big thing in Brooklyn here is food - we encounter kids who don't always have access to food, and that's a political issue. There were certain council folks who were for free lunches for kids and there were certain folks who were against free lunches for kids, and that was political. But one of the things that I know is that when kids eat, they can conjugate verbs better. When kids eat, they can compute numbers better. When kids eat, they can create better art. People say, "Well, Cornelius, you were advocating for free lunch for kids, and that's political."
Right. And when we say pro-kid, that doesn't mean my kids. That doesn't mean kids who live in my community, kids in my socioeconomic bracket, kids of my race. That means I've got to be pro-all kids.
Absolutely. Because at the end of the day, it impacts kids' abilities to conjugate verbs. It impacts their ability to do math.
I think as much as we talk about being there for kids, there's still a a division - whether it's consciously or subconsciously. It's sometimes "those kids." I go into that community and I teach "those kids", and then I go home. And when I vote and when I advocate, I'm thinking about my kids. I'm thinking about kids in my neighborhood, and the kids that my kids play with. And so we're not necessarily thinking about what's best for all our kids as a whole. What are the policies we need for all kids? What are the things that we need to do in order to stand up on behalf of all of them, particularly the ones who don't benefit from the way the system is now? So we can't choose not to see politics and how politics impacts education. Salaries are funded by taxpayers. And the budget for schools is determined by politics.

I always say when people ask me what my politics are: I am radically pro-kid. That definitely means that I am walking into every arena that attempts to abridge opportunity for kids and I'm attempting to disrupt those things.

It's all political here. And if we pretend that we don't see politics, it's kind of like saying, "I don't see color." You're missing a whole realm here of information that can be useful for you in better serving kids.
Exactly.

Exactly, yeah.

Absolutely. And when you choose to not engage in these things, you're complicit in them.

In this academic year alone, we've seen two major strikes by teachers, and that's important. A city as large as LA and also Seattle - they just went to the polls yesterday to vote on funding for teachers, and there were people in communities who were actively against funding for teachers.

And so, that we are not political, I think, works to our detriment. And so, it is important to be not just aware of issues, but aware of the systems that regulate our realities every day. That is really important work for me.
That's something that you mentioned more than one time in your book. There's a whole section that's called "You can disrupt the status quo in your class." In it, you talk about questioning what defines classroom culture and identifying any groups of students who, and this is a direct quote from the book, "that consistently benefit less from the way that things are."
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The systems, yes. Moving beyond just the individual and thinking about systems. You're so right about the thing with the strikes. We want to stand with teachers who are walking out or who are striking, but that is, in fact, a political act. It's disrupting the status quo.

Again, I have become really ill at ease with how things are, that we are a society that sleeps well at night even though large numbers of disabled kids don't get the access that they need to school. We are a society that has grown okay with the reality that a large number of girls or children of color don't get what they need out of school, and that's just how things are. That's what I call status quo.

There are kids who benefit less from the way things are. Our data in every district, in every school, shows us who those kids are. It's not just this kind of pie in the sky number. We can name the kids depending on the school. I think that that's really important to assign names to our data so that we can think these are the kids that aren't receiving a benefit from the way that we're doing things right now.

What's interesting is I have been very upfront with people when I talk about the work that, overwhelmingly, those are the kids of color. Overwhelmingly, those are the disabled kids. Overwhelmingly, those are girls. And so, school, as we do it now, is sexist, is racist, is ableist. That's really important to say.

Now one of the things that often happens in common discourse when we talk about things like sexism or racism or ableism, people get really emotional about that. They're like, "Well, I am not racist because I am nice," or, "I am not sexist because I say hi to women in the office," or, "I am not ableist because I have a friend that's disabled."

I think it's really important to note here that when we talk about these things, sexism, racism, ableism, these things are not merely personality traits. Rather, I posit that these things are systems. And systems are the rules, the policies, the procedures, the customs that govern a place that lead to inequitable outcomes for specific subsets of people.

So any rule, any policy, any tradition that leads to an inequitable outcome for girls is a sexist system. Any rule, any policy, any tradition that leads to an inequitable outcome for children of color is a racist system. And so, again, when we look at the rules and systems that govern school, it is clear from our data that we are okay with racism, that we are okay with sexism.

I really wanted to use the book to say, "Actually, we're not okay with those things." Then one question that I wanted to ask was, well, then what are the specific systems? I wanted to name them.

And oftentimes people say to me, "Well, Cornelius, I'm not the governor. I'm not the superintendent. I'm not the chancellor. How can I impact systems of oppression that are alive in schools?"

One of the things that I've done is I've really taken a look at classrooms. And so, yes, I am not the governor, so I can't impact the state. I am not the mayor, I can't impact the city. I'm not the chancellor. But I am the seventh-grade teacher, and there are systems, there are rules, there are practices, there are customs that govern my seventh-grade classroom. And those rules, those systems, as they exist, marginalize some groups of kids.

So, one of the things that I can do is I can labor intentionally to change those things so that the outcomes for the kids that I see every day are better. It's really exciting work to do. Those systems can be anything from the way we do our seating arrangements, to the way that we expect kids to turn in work, to the way that I have kids work in their notebooks.

I talked to a kid at the beginning of the school year this year. It was early September - we start after Labor Day here in the city. And I did the typical teacher thing where I mandated that all the kids bring in a certain kind of notebook and that they have their name on the upper left-hand corner of the cover. You know, the thing that we do every year.

And I sent the note home. They needed three spiral notebooks for my class. And this one kid came to me and said, "Cornelius, you just gave people a marginally hard time for not having spiral notebooks."

He's like, "And I get why you want kids to have spiral notebooks." He's like, "I get it. I totally respect you. You're the teacher." But he said, "But also, I'm left-handed and writing in a spiral notebook really hurts my hand. So, whenever I have to write in the notebook, I write slow. The ink gets all over the page. It's really messy. I don't like it. I don't want a spiral notebook."

And in that moment, I'm so glad that he brought that up to me. I was just like, "Of course I'm not going to make you have the spiral notebook." Unfortunately, this is my 19th year of teaching. He was the first kid to ever call me out on that. And I don't know how many kids over 19 years have had to suffer through the spiral notebook that marginalizes them. He was just like, "Yeah, I'll do a lot better with a composition notebook. I'm not arguing against the notebook. I'm not arguing against the writing that you want me to do. It's just that if I write in that notebook, I'm not going to produce what I know I can produce."

I just went home and I really thought. I was like, "Wow, I have been such a stickler for the rules, not even really thinking how that rule might marginalize specific kids in the room."

That's a small example where how many of us have been such sticklers for the rules, for the customs, for the systems that marginalize kids. And so, me insisting on that notebook made it incredibly uncomfortable for my left-handed student. I'm lucky enough that he was brave enough to come talk to me about it. But then I look back on my 19 years and I'm like, "How many kids weren't? How many kids had to live in that discomfort and just be okay with it?"

There are these small things, but then there are the bigger things. One of my best educator friends on the planet kind of left me eight years ago to become a principal. She was the literacy coach that raised me, and I tell this story often, but she is perhaps my best teacher friend in life. She taught me everything that I know about teaching literacy. Eight years ago, she left school to become a principal so she left teaching. Then she got her own school and it was really, really exciting. And because we're really good friends, we still check in with each other each Sunday night.

About a year and a half ago, she called me. It was March. She called and she was just like, "Hey. It's been one of the toughest Marches of my career." And for a woman like that, I wasn't really expecting a statement like that because, again, this is the strongest educator that I know. She's like, "Yeah, it's been a tough March. I've had to suspend 12 kids this March."

If you know where we teach, suspending 12 kids in one month is a huge number. As she continued, one of the things that she said to me, she was like, "You know, Cornelius, I really feel like this number, this 12 suspensions, has a racial dynamic to it." And she said, "Of the 12 kids that I suspended, 9 of them were black or Latino males. That's 75%.

The problem with that number is black or Latino males make up less than 20% at my school." Statistically, that is a racist outcome, that people who make up a statistical minority in your school make up an overwhelming majority of the suspensions. And we wanted to look at that. She was like, "Yep, absolutely, this has a racial component. This outcome is racist, statistically." But the thing about that is she's like, "Cornelius, we've been friends for years. You know that I am not a racist person. You know that I don't run a racist school. Yet, my school is perpetuating this racist outcome."

And, fortunately, because we're friends, we got to sit and look at her data. We kind of put all the office referrals out on the table. One of the things that we saw right away was that of the 12 office referrals that led to the suspensions, 10 of them occurred in a social studies classroom. Not in the same social studies classroom, but in the social studies department.

She was like, "Wow, okay. So 10 of my 12 suspensions originated in a social studies class." And what was powerful is she was like, "My social studies teachers are the most progressive people on campus. They're the people who are most willing to talk about this."

On the following Monday (in New York City, we have professional development on Mondays) we gathered the social studies teachers and we just shared the data with them. We were like, "Last month we suspended 12 kids. 10 of those suspensions originated in your classrooms. We need to take a look at this."

They were game to talk about it. After about 25 minutes of talking, one of the things that we discovered was that in that particular school, reading and writing were taught in a workshop-based way. Science was taught through inquiry. Mathematics was hands-on. Arts were through exploration. But social studies was taught through lecture.

So, we began to ask ourselves the inquiry question. And, again, we know that that correlation does not equal causality. And I'm a researcher, so we asked ourselves an inquiry question. We were like, "Could it be that lecturing at kids for 45 minutes is leading to the kinds of disciplinary actions that encouraged suspension? Could it be?" And once you ask an inquiry question, you've got to do the action research. So we did two weeks of action research. We said, "What would happen if we changed our teaching methodology for two weeks? Would office referrals go up or would they go down?"

We decided that we were going to try to use centers. We did centers-based activities for 10 school days, two weeks. Each day we monitored three things. We monitored student affect. We monitored their productivity - so how productive they were, how much social studies they did. And then we measured, of course, how many kids received disciplinary action and had to be removed from the room.

Over two weeks, we found that office referrals went down. And we did lots of end of class interviews with kids. So for 10 days of centers, we had all these interviews. We had all this student data in the form of their work. And then we had the number of office referrals themselves. And we were really able to sit at the end of that two weeks and say, "Wow. Because we changed our teaching methodology, suspensions went down."

That idea to change our methodology was an anti-racist act, even though it had nothing to do with signing a petition, even though it had nothing to do with going to a march, even though it had nothing to do with supporting Black Lives Matter. By changing our teaching methodology, fewer kids were suspended and fewer kids had to leave the classroom. More kids had access to social studies.
What advice would you give teachers who want to make a change in the norms in their school or their classroom, but they aren't sure how to make or execute on a plan?
So, when I talk about systems, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about looking at our everyday practice, our traditions, our customs, and really thinking about which one of these customs marginalize kids disproportionately. We found, in that specific instance, that lecturing the kids for 45 minutes was just not working. In how many schools do we lecture kids, watch them get suspended, and keep lecturing?

When I think about what it means to be an anti-racist practitioner, it means looking at the things that marginalize kids of color and changing those things. When I think about what it means to be fully inclusive of gender or class, it means looking at the things that marginalize those kids and changing our practice.

I'm a huge fan of inquiry - the action research has been how we have defined ourselves as a profession. So if something bothers me as a teacher - if I'm looking at my data and the girls aren't achieving, or if I'm looking at my data and my kids with disabilities just aren't getting what they need - then I get to invent something.

When we look at our heroes, the single most common characteristics that our heroes have, no matter who our heroes are - from Martin Luther King to Mae Jemison to Frederick Douglass, whoever we want to think about - all of our heroes had imagination, that they were able to imagine a reality that is better than the one that we currently exist in.

If the reality that I currently exist in says that girls don't do science well, then can I imagine a reality where girls would have more access to science? And once I imagine that reality, I try it. So, 5 days of action research, 10 days of action research where I invent a thing for my class, and then I try the thing. Again, I'm not trying the thing forever, but I'm trying the thing for 5 or 10 days.
There are so many good things in your book and so many great topics that we've discussed so far. I feel like this could be a six-hour podcast if I could get to all the questions that I have for you! But I want to give you a chance to share the most important idea from your book, the one thing that you wish every teacher understood.
What happens when I try a thing is then I begin to measure outcomes. I look at how productive are the kids, how happy are they? Are kids being removed from the classroom? Are kids are achieving more? Are they scoring higher in science? And then I can take that data, and then I can sit with my principal, and I can say, "Hey, I was really worried about the girls, but then for five days I tried this thing. Here is what happened to my data when I tried this thing," or, "I was really worried about the kids with disabilities," or, "I was really worried about the kids from single-parent homes. Here's what I tried, and here's how my data shifted."

I think that that's our work as teachers. That it's important to note that there will still be things in our school that are hard to deal with, and there will still be things in our school that we want to see improve. But if we wait around for the school district to tell us, if we wait around for even the principal or the literacy coach to tell us, that we're going to be waiting for a long time. Action research inquiry work allows us to take that practice into our own hands and walk toward the results that we want to see.

I think it's an idea that has kind of permeated our conversation: this idea that we cannot be okay with the way things are. That it's just too dire for too many kids. That education matters a lot. When families send their kids to school, they send us their best kids. They don't keep the good ones at home.

And so many times, we make excuses for the way things are by saying, "Well, this is how we've always done it," or, "Things aren't ever going to change," or, "I'm just a teacher. What power do I have?"

The most important thing to me is that, "Yeah, I'm just a teacher and we have a whole lot of power." To be able to step back, look at my practices, look at my customs, look at my traditions, and do the kind of action research that's going to lead to change really matters a lot to me.
Thank you, Advancement Courses, for sponsoring today's podcast episode. You can earn graduate credits or CEUs through over 200 online PD courses in 19 different subject areas for K-12 teachers. Everything is online and self-paced, and you have 6 months to complete. Right now, you can save 20% off each course with code TRUTH20 - that's just $120 per graduate credit hour. To learn more, visit advancementcourses.com/truth. The link to Cornelius' book is my Amazon affiliate link. When you purchase through that link I earn a small portion of the sale, at no extra cost to you.

I hope that people read We Got This and really take the title to heart, that I don't have to wait for city hall to say, "Let's do this thing."

I don't have to wait for the state of New York to say that, "Yes, we're finally going to get on board with equity." That I can look at the inequitable outcomes in my school, in my department, in my class, and I can address those things in a really intentional way using action research or inquiry. That's what matters a lot to me.

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We got this: Cornelius Minor on teachers as agents of change

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This week on the Truth for Teachers podcast: Cornelius Minor talks about his new book and how teachers can be agents of change in their community. Today I'm talking with Cornelius Minor, a Brooklyn-based educator and staff developer with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.

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“We cannot be okay with the things how they are”

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Discussion Points

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Discussion Points

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A lot of the students commented upon the need to be constantly changing. This is a change within the classroom but also a change within our society and how we VIEW education as well as WHAT we do.

Other people commented on the need to avoid "2-D" content. We should not just be reading or preaching at them but leading them to make their own conclusions- they need to be autonomous in their learning.

It is also mentioned how neither student nor teacher should be silenced. All should be able to share thier views and as a teacher we need to be able to demonstrate how to do this respectfully. We are the example- what are we showing them? Silence and acceptence? Or a williness to stand up and make noise and fight for others?

A lot of other students mentioned the ability to make changes within their own classrooms.

Someone also shared this video which I liked.

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Voting age debated in S06e17 of The West Wing

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"A Good Day" is episode 127 of The West Wing that aired first in march 2005. A group of middle school children who are part of the Future Leaders for Democracy visit the White House and seek out Toby to discuss abolishing the voting age.

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Take Aways

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Take Aways

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This is something to look at. What are our everyday practices and are they helping or impending the kids? Are we teaching the kids?

When someone is suspended we need to look at what caused it- not just the kids actions but ours as well.

KNOW WHERE I STAND ON ALL ISSUES

Keep up to date

FIGHT FOR MY STUDENTS

Understand the politics and know WHO I need to contact and WHAT I need to do to help them.

Have patience with myself as a teacher-I will not be perfect- but I can grow and "become".

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"So, one of the things that I can do is I can labor intentionally to change those things so that the outcomes for the kids that I see every day are better. It’s really exciting work to do. Those systems can be anything from the way we do our seating arrangements, to the way that we expect kids to turn in work, to the way that I have kids work in their notebooks."

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Impacts- "Change in the System"

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Impacts- "Change in the System"

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Something important to remember is that intentionally or unintentionally teachers can at times uphold racist, sexist or ablist ideas.
99.9% of teachers NEVER intentionally do this, but when we sit and keep doing things that have been done for the last 100 years, we uphold these traditions.
It goes back to the idea of "becoming". Are we self aware enough to know when there is a problem? Are we mature enough to confront and then change it? This is not alway comfortable but change never is.

Minor states "systems don't change just because we identify them; they change because we disrupt them".

I LOVE this statement. Change comes from self-awareness and looking at statistics and outcomes and the students themselves and finding what is best FOR THEM! Not for anyone else- what is right and helpful to them?

Change your methodology to teach TO the students. Don't teach the subject- teach the STUDENTS.

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"I am radically pro-kid. That definitely means that I am walking into every arena that attempts to abridge opportunity for kids and I’m attempting to disrupt those things."

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- impacts- "Becoming"

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- impacts- "Becoming"

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One of the aspects of the podcast which I adored was the idea of constantly "becoming".
Minor addresses the need for teachers to talk with one another about different challenges or ideas they are having. A lot of teachers have this idea that they are heros (as they are) but this comes with the idea of perfection.
Teachers feel that they cannot have a hard day because they are a hero or they cannot make a mistake because they are a hero. This is simply NOT true- teachers are human and need help as much as anyone else.
There needs to be a greater support system as well as a more open conversation between educators.

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"...to eventually teach them how to create opportunities for themselves."

“We are not political acts to our detriment”

“Questionsing what defines classroom culture and identifying any groups of students who, and this is a direct quotes from the book, “that consistently benefit less from the way that things are.”

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Impacts- "Advocates"

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Week 1- Politics in Teaching- Impacts- "Advocates"

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One of the most impactful ideas presented was the idea that everything within education is related to politics. Minor states that  "Anything that stands in our way to give opportunity is our enemy. If something is threatening the opportunities of my students I cannot stand idly by- we need to help them access opportunities."

A teachers responsibility is to FIGHT for their students. They don't have a voice in the meetings or at the voting booths. But WE do!
It is up to us to be their ADVOCATES and offer as many opportunities we can.

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“If you’ve got a group of people who are just dedicated to delivering on access and freedom, which is our work as teachers, then it benefits some populations of folks to undermine that work. One of the ways that you undermine the work of a freedom fighter, one of the ways that you undermine the work of a teacher, is you silence those people.”