# data[].attributes.body
Just read Bettina Love "Theory over Gimmicks" and her section of Settler Colonialism made me think of Louise Erdrich's newest novel "The Night Watchman" which I just finished

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In various places on my site and in this blog, I have mentioned centrifugal force. Invariably when I do so, someone pedantically comes along and says "That's not a real force! It's fictional! It's really just centripetal force". Let me clear and blunt here: that's wrong. Centrifugal force is every bit as real as centripetal force. It's just in a different frame. "Centripetal" means "center-seeking", and "centrifugal" means "outwards-seeking" or, more literally, "center-fleeing". You'd think these are opposites, but they are in fact the same thing! It just depends on your point of view. If you are standing outside a spinning object, and then draw a diagram of the forces, yes, you're better off using centripetal force. The math works out more easily. But if you're on that spinning object, then the forces are easier to draw assuming a centrifugal force. Really! Think of it this way: watch a car make a right turn. The people inside have inertia, and they "want" to stay moving forward. The car pushes them to the right, toward the center of the circle it is making. Centripetal. Now sit inside that car. When the car turns right, which way do you feel yourself leaning? Toward the left, away from the center. You feel a force towards the outside of the circle. Tadaaa! Same thing, different viewpoints. Centripetal = centrifugal. Got it? They're the same thing. If one is real, then so's the other. Once more, just to make sure: Centripetal = centrifugal. Cripes, I hope I don't ever have to explain that again. If I run across this non-issue again, I will link the perpetrator to this page and make them read it three times. And if you don't get it, don't feel bad. James Bond didn't either.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When I say centrifugal, I mean centrifugal!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In various places on my site and in this blog, I have mentioned centrifugal force. Invariably when I do so, someone pedantically comes along and says "That's not a real force! It's fictional! It's really just centripetal force". Let me clear and blunt here: that's wrong.

# data[].attributes.body
From Beth...Dr. Burke-Harris on Adverse Childhood Experiences.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
童年創傷如何影響一生健康

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
童年創傷不是一件長大就能解決的事。兒科醫生娜汀‧哈里斯 (Nadine Burke Harris) 解釋虐待、忽視、和父母精神健康不良或有藥物或飲酒問題，都會影響兒童的大腦發展。童年經歷影響終身，在高壓環境下長大的兒童比他人得到心肺疾病的比例高三倍。這是一位慷慨激昂的兒科醫生祈求眾人面對、預防和治療心理創傷的演講。

# data[].attributes.body
From Beth...Dr. Burke-Harris on Adverse Childhood Experiences.

# data[].attributes.body
Say what you will about TikTok’s meme-y ways but one thing is for certain: through the repetition of certain sounds, movements, and outfits, TikTok users have created a unique code of storytelling.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Say what you will about TikTok's meme-y ways but one thing is for certain: through the repetition of certain sounds, movements, and outfits, TikTok users have created a unique code of storytelling. Its visual language is best understood by those who have spent the most time on the app, but the aesthetics are beginning to bleed into the real-world, and by consequence fashion, as well. Instagram has already proven social media's effect on how we look by creating a demand for grid-worthy outfits of the day and popularizing a certain body type. Now, TikTok stands poised to have a comparable influence on its Gen Z-centric users.

The video-sharing platform is unlike other apps because TikTok's algorithm isn't solely dependent on who you follow. Users are encouraged to view content on a recommended viewing page called the For You Page, which supplies an endless stream of videos that the app has deemed relevant to the type of content you engage with. The best way for creators to get on For You Pages is to create a video that is connected to a variety of popular trends, based on the music, content, or hashtag of the post. The result is an environment in which users are bombarded with different amalgamations and collages of hyper similar content. Within this, style trends are disseminated and tailored to the various genres of TikTok videos.

This content is imported from TikTok. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

The ideal TikTok outfit is good for dancing or moving and is visually interesting enough to stand out in some way but generic enough to play into the app's unique set of popular symbols. TikTokers will often wear clothing of similar silhouettes or cuts but with different patterns. Though many of the fashion trends seen on TikTok may not have necessarily been born on the app itself, the app quickly ingratiates users' senses of style with barrages of similar images and therefore contributes to shaping a generation's sense of style. Consider how J.Lo's Versace Grammy's dress or Kate Moss' sheer slip have been forever burned into pop culture just by sheer visual saturation alone. TikTok fashion trends grab hold in a similar way.

Men's athleticwear in the 1980s

Take men's micro shorts-it seems that every stylish man is rocking a pair of loose boxer-inspired thigh skimmers this summer. While designers like Thom Browne have long sent innovatively-cut creations down the runway, the popularity of men's short shorts has hit news heights over the past couple seasons. It is particularly surprising that young men and teens-demographics that have historically been drawn to safer cuts-have been rocking a look previously associated with serious distance runners and 50-something year old joggers longing for the 1980s. Now, however, male influencers on TikTok flaunt the style. In many ways, the look feels especially appropriate for the new decade. Over the past 10 years, the fashion industry's ideal male body type has shifted more and more towards a skinny, androgynous look, and the "leg-day" memes that flooded even the pre-Instagram internet demanded men pay better attention to their bottom halves. But, more importantly, the shorts are great for dancing.

This content is imported from TikTok. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

The members of the male influencer collective Sway House almost always wear them. Many of the Sway boys' popular videos are of them dancing and lip-syncing. More often than not, the predominantly White, conventionally attractive boys are shirtless and in short shorts. The shorts are often baggy, and cut like boxers or shorts so they move with the boys as they dance, but are still cut loosely enough to have movement of their own. Other TikTok Stars like the Hype House's Chase Hudson, Taylor Holder, and Nate Wyatt frequently wear the same look.

The trend has also been meme-ified, with inseams at the punchline. Many users who are attracted to men post that those who wear a five-and-a-half-inch inseam could "hit it for free" while those who wear a seven-inch inseam will be "charged a fee" (a phrase from a commonly used soundtrack about attraction). Similarly, male-presenting users joke about how their past long-short wearing self is un-evolved compared to the quad-bearing man standing in front of a ring light and an iPhone.

This content is imported from TikTok. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

The recent resurgence of men's short shorts is by no means exclusive to TikTok. The growing trend reflects the push and pull between designers taking inspiration from the world around them, and their collections then influencing what's in style. One of the highlights of Dior Men Spring/Summer 2021 collection was a pair of pin striped short shorts. With perfect pleating and a subtle but sexy loose fit, it's hard to imagine any person not copping the airy summer garment. Just last year, Bottega Veneta's Spring/Summer 2020 Men's runway was full of flirty short shorts. Earlier this summer, Google searches for "micro shorts" increased by 122 percent the day after Normal People actor Paul Mescal was photographed in a pair of white thigh-grazers.

Dior Men Spring/Summer 2021

Many of mainstream TikTok's aesthetic trends have constituted a sartorial challenge to gender norms. TikTokers like Chase Hudson have popularized a punk-inspired e-boy look complete with chunky necklaces, dangling earrings, and nail polish. Hudson and his fellow TikTokers' looks are often informed by the sartorial practices of marginalized communities; modern iterations of men's short shorts are rooted in predominantly spaces, and heavy gold jewelry, chain belts, name plate necklaces, stem from a rich Black sartorial tradition. Further, the app itself has come under fire for not promoting creators of color (especially Black creators), but individual users have made posts holding influencers accountable for their sartorial choices. The Sway boys in particular have recently been called out for queerbaiting.

The movement for a reconsideration of gender norms through fashion did not start with these influencers, but TikTok's unique visual economy is able to amplify the exposure of both socially-tinged aesthetics and designer fashions. When Harry Styles wore a rainbow JW Anderson cardigan, fans online loved it. One loved the look so much that they created a video with the tag #HarryStylesCardigan. Users began to knit their own version of the cardigan, creating a new "challenge." Currently, the hashtag over 7 million total views, and Anderson himself acknowledged the phenomenon in a recent Instagram post and even shared the patterns for the piece.

This content is imported from Instagram. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

So far, TikTok's set of visual codes has allowed it to accelerate and popularize trends in menswear. Given both the app's surging popularity and the increasing number of five-and-a-half-inch inseam memes, it doesn't seem like it will be stopping anytime soon.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
global women’s designer of the year award

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Short Shorts for Men: TikTok's Algorithm, Menswear, and the Power of Exposure

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Say what you will about TikTok's meme-y ways but one thing is for certain: through the repetition of certain sounds, movements, and outfits, TikTok users have created a unique code of storytelling. Its visual language is best understood by those who have spent the most time on the app, but the aesthetics are beginning to bleed into the real-world, and by consequence fashion, as well.

# data[].attributes.body
making sure students have the opportunity for choice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The power of choice | Zane Skuja | TEDxMRU

# data[].attributes.body
Connecting digital activists in a space that empowers indigenous languages to thrive

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We are Rising Voices

Helping bring new voices from new communities and speaking endangered or indigenous languages to the global conversation by facilitating the creation of peer learning networks to leverage the internet and digital media for their self-determined needs.

Mayan Language Digital Activism

Project to support emerging digital activists promoting Mayan Languages in digital spaces.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rising Voices · Helping the global population join the global conversation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rising Voices aims to extend the benefits and reach of citizen media by connecting online media activists around the world and supporting their best ideas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

# data[].attributes.body
More concrete ways to offer students choice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. People to Work With. Give students the chance to choose whether to work independently or with another student(s). As a teacher, you can still maintain some control by giving students input. Poll them to see the four students they would most want to work with and then give them the guarantee that at least one of those students will be working with them. Let's face it, life would be great if nobody got left out of the picking process or if every student felt welcomed in every group, but teachers might want to maintain some input here as well, if only to help students who socially need the push. Nevertheless, give students the ability to have some say in their coworkers. Don't you wish you could have some say in yours?

2. Resources to Use. Guide students in how to research, but don't point them to every possible resource. Help foster independent learning by giving them the choice in what they are learning from.

3. Driving Questions. In inquiry-based learning, students tend to develop their own questions that require research in order to form a solution. Being able to develop these questions, the questions that drive the learning, is not a small task, and can be used as their own informal assessment as well. By allowing students to set the train on the track, you will have them buying into the learning throughout the journey.

4. Ways to Show Their Knowledge. As Marzano said above, there are many ways in which a student can show what they know about the content area. From essays to dramatic interpretations, from digital slideshows to sculptures, from websites to podcasts, students can prove their knowledge and give evidence of their learning in an infinite number of ways.

5. Which Rubric to Be Scored On. Some teachers have taken to developing different rubrics that reflect different levels of understanding. In other words, if students feel they are ready, they can attach the advanced rubric to their essay or if they feel they aren't quite ready for that challenge, they can be assessed using a more standard or grade-level rubric. Rubrics can also be used to assess different elements of an assignment. Just imagine a student setting their own goals and then selecting the rubric to match that goal.

6. What They Need to Work on to Improve/Learning Goals. And speaking of setting goals, allow students to set their own goals and objectives. When I have my students begin the revision stage of essay writing, for instance, I always have them first state what they choose to have me look for in order to give more targeted feedback. In so doing, they not only show me that they are reflective and aware of the skill they need to work on, but they also pay closer attention to the feedback overall.

For instance, one student used the commenting tool in Google Drive to indicate what she wanted me to look for as I was reading her initial essay. She asked me the following:

Katie: How should I change my title to make it seem like a strong representation of the theme?

Student choice, therefore, helps me to help them.

7. Ways to View and Record Assignments for Time Management. Tweens and teens continue to need advice in how to manage their time, but they don't all connect with the same methods. Therefore, I give my students three different choices as ways to record their assignments or track their assignments. This is yet another way that choice feeds into our mission to differentiate.

Weekly: I post our classroom and homework online each week. On Mondays, students see what the upcoming week holds. This allows students to plan their workload and know when things are due in manageable pieces.

Daily: I break down each day on the board and let students know what we are doing throughout the period. Some students really can only take in bite-sized information at a time.

Quarter/Semester: I give students a rough timeline of what the quarter or semester looks like including key dates when larger assignments are due. Some students find this overwhelming, while others really like the overarching knowledge of what's to come.

8. Scaffolds. By the time students get to middle school, it's really vital that they have a choice in how they take notes or in what scaffolds to use. I'm not a fan of dictating what Thinking Map to use or if a student needs to use one at all. However, if they learned one earlier that they continue to rely on, why not allow them to use it? There might also be a different kind of graphic organizer that does help them. Perhaps a student likes using Cornell Notes, while others might prefer index cards or a digital program like Evernote. We can dictate that a brainstorming element needs to be included in the learning process, but we shouldn't be dictating for students the scaffold that works best for them.

9. Text Structures. Give students choice in the structure of their essays. We know that the traditional five-paragraph essay doesn't exist in the world outside of school, and in fact, in many of the formal tests administered to students, that standardized structure never even appears, so teach students to take risks with their written structure. Teach students how to organize their thoughts using subheadings, bullets, and numbering. Teach them how to use transitions that not only work between paragraphs, but also work between sections of text. Teach them about captions and integrating quotes. Allow students to embed images and videos into their essays as well as data or textual evidence. Give them choice in the structure of their essay, and you might just find that they can communicate their knowledge more clearly than trying to fit what's in the brain into a structure that doesn't connect with them.

10. Choice of opinion/prompts, etc. Give students options of prompts to respond to and/or create open-ended questions that can only be answered by each individual student. By giving them leeway to decide on their own opinions or choose from a list of content-related prompts, you will find that their excitement for responding increases. And if their engagement increases, you will get the highest level of response they can muster.

11. Seating. Choice of seating was actually mentioned a number of times in our student engagement survey. In my classroom, for instance, I have beanbag chairs, standing desks with bar stools, video game chairs, small group tables, and plenty of carpet. Different kids like to work in different positions. Some like to work under tables or facing walls. I call them "cave dwellers." Others like to stand at the taller tables, dismissing chairs altogether. Others like to sit, back-to-back, on the floor. I also find that they tend to make wise choices. More hyper kids, for instance, will work quantitatively more while rocking in a video game chair than seated static at a desk. The only drawback is that it took me longer to memorize the names because they also liked to try different views of the classroom and different seating options, particularly at the beginning of the year. But (shrug) that was my problem. When we're talking about engagement, it's a no-brainer.

12. Deadlines. You know how you get slammed when all those essays or projects come in all at once? Why not avoid that dilemma and allow students to select the deadlines themselves? Once I have introduced a long-term assignment, I generally open up a window of dates for students to choose from. I send out a Google Form that allows students to select from a drop-down menu of choices. Their selection then seeds a spreadsheet automatically that I can sort by date. The date they select is their firm deadline. So I'm still honoring the assessment of responsibility, but I am also honoring the process of bringing students into the decision-making process.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Giving Students Choice Looks Like in the Classroom | KQED

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It can be hard to imagine incorporating student choice into an already hectic classroom. Here are 12 ideas that don't have to mean big dramatic changes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Good Will Hunting | 'It's Not Your Fault' (HD) - Matt Damon, Robin Williams | MIRAMAX

# data[].attributes.body
"By limiting Donald’s access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, [his father] Fred perverted his son’s perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Donald Trump waves to staff members of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort as they cheer him on before the start of the grand opening ceremonies in Atlantic City, N.J., on April 6, 1990. Trump attended the gala with his mother, Mary; father, Fred; and sister, Maryanne Trump Barry. (CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

A tell-all book by President Trump's niece describes a family riven by a series of traumas, exacerbated by a daunting patriarch who "destroyed" Donald Trump by short-circuiting his "ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion," according to a copy of the forthcoming memoir obtained by The Washington Post.

President Trump's view of the world was shaped by by his desire during childhood to avoid his father's disapproval, according to the niece, Mary L. Trump, whose book is by turns a family history and a psychological analysis of her uncle.

Mary's father, Fred Jr., - the president's older brother - died of an alcohol-related illness when she was 16 years old in 1981. President Trump told The Washington Post last year that he and his father both pushed Fred Jr. to try to go into the family business, which Trump said he now regrets.

Donald escaped his father's scorn and ridicule, Mary Trump wrote, because "his personality served his father's purpose. That's what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them toward their own ends - ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance."

The president, Mary Trump wrote, is a product of his domineering father and was acutely aware of avoiding the scorn that he heaped on his older brother, called Freddy, Trump writes.

"By limiting Donald's access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son's perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it."

Mary Trump wrote that her grandfather's children routinely lied to him but for different reasons. For her father, "lying was defensive - not simply a way to circumvent his father's disapproval or to avoid punishment, as it was for the others, but a way to survive."

For her uncle Donald, however, "lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was," Trump writes.

Mary wrote that her father had a "natural sense of humor, sense of adventure, and sensitivity," which he worked hard to hide from the family patriarch.

"Softness was unthinkable in his namesake," she writes.

"Fred [Sr.] hated it when his oldest son screwed up or failed to intuit what was required of him, but he hated it even more then, after being taken to task, Freddy [Fred Jr.] apologized. 'Sorry, Dad,'" Mary wrote of the way her grandfather treated her father, known as Freddy. Fred Sr. "would mock him. Fred wanted his oldest son to be a 'killer.'"

Donald, seven-and-a-half years younger than his brother, "had plenty of time to learn from watching Fred humiliate" his eldest son, Mary Trump wrote.

"The lesson he learned, at its simplest, was that it was wrong to be like Freddy: Fred didn't respect his oldest son, so neither would Donald."

The book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," became an instant bestseller based on advance orders, underscoring the intense interest among the public about the forces that shaped the man who became president.

Mary Trump, 55, who has a doctoral degree in clinical psychology, shares a history of family tragedy and division with President Trump. In 1981, when she was 16 years old, her father Fred Jr. - the president's older brother - died of an alcohol-related disease. Friends of her father told The Washington Post last year that they questioned whether Donald and other members of the family bore some responsibility for Fred Jr.'s decline.

Mary Trump once stood up to her uncle Donald. How her book describes a 'nightmare' of family dysfunction.

President Trump, who rarely admits mistakes, told The Post in an interview last year that he regrets the way he way he and his father pressured his brother to go into the family business instead of encouraging to continue with the dream of becoming a commercial airline pilot.

"I do regret having put pressure on him," Trump said. Running the family business "was just something he was never going to want" to do. "It was just not his thing. . . . I think the mistake that we made was we assumed that everybody would like it. That would be the biggest mistake. . . . There was sort of a double pressure put on him" by his brother and his father.

Trump pressured his alcoholic brother about his career. Now he says he has regrets.

After her father died, the Trump family agreed to help support Mary and her brother Fred III.

But when Mary's grandfather Fred Sr. died in 1999, she and her brother did not get the inheritance they expected, a sum that might have equaled the amount that would have gone to their father, if he had lived. Mary and Fred contested Fred Sr.'s will, contending that one or more people connected to the Trump family coerced him to change it and give them less money.

Fred and Mary eventually reached a settled with Donald and his siblings, receiving an undisclosed amount and signing a confidentiality agreement. President Trump's younger brother, Robert, filed a petition in New York Supreme Court seeking to stop publication on grounds that she had agreed not to publish an account of the family. But the court's appellate division ruled last week that the publisher, Simon & Schuster, was not a party to that agreement and lifted a temporary restraining order against it.

As Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, Mary Trump does not appear to have said anything publicly about him.But when it became clear that her uncle had won the presidency, she took to Twitter. "Worst night of my life," she wrote at least 12 times in tweets that have been deleted recently. She wrote that "We should be judged harshly. . . . I grieve for our country."

The publisher said it had already shipped thousands of copies, and it moved the publication to July 14, two weeks ahead of the original schedule. Mary Trump has sought to lift the temporary restraining against her, and a decision on that could come within days.

This article will be updated.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trump's worldview forged by neglect and trauma at home, his niece says in new book

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A tell-all book by President Trump's niece describes a family riven by a series of traumas, exacerbated by a daunting patriarch who "destroyed" Donald Trump by short-circuiting his "ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion," according to a copy of the forthcoming memoir obtained by The Washington Post.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Avatar TLA - Zuko "Im angry at myself!" (The Beach)

# data[].attributes.body
We read a lot about trauma-informed teaching and how to approach it and I was reminded of this TEDTalk that gives a first-hand example.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Trauma Informed Teaching | Dr. Meredith Fox | TEDxFieldstoneDriveED

# data[].attributes.headline
WHOA TREAT YOURSELF TO TIME SPENT LOOKING AT THIS ART -- Ellen

# data[].attributes.subject
WHOA TREAT YOURSELF TO TIME SPENT LOOKING AT THIS ART -- Ellen

# data[].attributes.body
"But the “self-taught” or “outsider” labels were inaccurate for quilters. Effie Mae Martin had grown up as her mother’s apprentice in a kind of atelier: a small town full of female friends and relatives who quilted, the older ones showing and telling the younger ones how it was done."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1997 I walked into the Berkeley Art Museum to be greeted by a staggering sight: an array of some 20 quilts unlike any I had ever seen. Their unbridled colors, irregular shapes and nearly reckless range of textiles telegraphed a tremendous energy and the implacable ambition, and confidence, of great art.

They were crafted objects that transcended quilting, with the power of painting. This made them canon-busting, and implicitly subversive. They gave off a tangible heat. I left in a state of shock - I knew I had been instantly converted but I didn't yet know to what.

In memory the show became a jubilant fugue of small squares of velvet in deep gemstone hues, dancing with not much apparent order yet impeccably arranged for full effect. My first thought was of Paul Klee, that kind of love-at-first-sight allure, seductive hand-madeness and unfiltered accessibility, only bigger and stronger.

The planets had aligned: I'd happened on the first solo show anywhere of Rosie Lee Tompkins, an exemplar of one of the country's premier visual traditions: African-American improvisational quilt-making - an especially innovative branch of a medium that reaches back to African textiles and continues to thrive.

Tompkins's work, I came to realize, was one of the century's major artistic accomplishments, giving quilt-making a radical new articulation and emotional urgency. I felt I had been given a new standard against which to measure contemporary art.

Rosie Lee Tompkins was a pseudonym, I would learn, adopted by a fiercely private, deeply religious woman, who as her work received more and more attention, was almost never photographed or interviewed. She was born Effie Mae Martin in rural Gould, Ark., on Sept. 9, 1936. At the time of the show, she was 61 and living in nearby Richmond, Calif., just north of Berkeley.

Over the years, I would be repeatedly blown away by work that was at once rigorous and inclusive. Tompkins was an inventive colorist whose generous use of black added to the gravity of her efforts. She worked in several styles and all kinds of fabrics, using velvets - printed, panne, crushed - to gorgeous effect, in ways that rivaled oil paint. But she was also adept with denim, faux furs, distressed T-shirts and fabrics printed with the faces of the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King Jr. and Magic Johnson.

A typical Tompkins quilt had an original, irresistible aliveness. One of her narrative works was 14 feet across, the size of small billboard. It appropriated whole dish towels printed with folkloric scenes, parts of a feed sack, and, most prominently, bright bold chunks of the American flag. What else? Bits of embroidery, Mexican textiles, fabrics printed with flamenco dancers and racing cars, hot pink batik and, front and center, a slightly cheesy manufactured tapestry of Jesus Christ. It seemed like a map of the melting pot of American culture and politics.

While works like this one relate to Pop Art, others had the power of abstraction. One of her signature velvets might be described as a "failed checkerboard." Its little squares of black and dark green, lime and blue, slide continuously in and out of register, creating the illusion of ceaseless motion, like a fractal model of rippling water.

This surface action, I discovered, reflected her constant improvisation: Tompkins began by cutting her squares (or triangles or bars) freehand, never measuring or using a template, and intuitively changed the colors, shapes and size of her fabric fragments, making her compositions seem to expand or contract. As a result her quilts could be deliriously akimbo, imbued with a mesmerizing pull of differences and inconsistencies that communicates impassioned attention and care.

"I think it's because I love them so much that God let me see all these different colors," Tompkins once said of her patchworks. "I hope they spread a lot of love."

That 1997 Berkeley show was my first Rosie Lee Tompkins moment. Organized by Lawrence Rinder, the museum's chief curator, it helped boost her reputation beyond the quilt world centered in and around San Francisco. This September many more people will have similar moments of their own, and feel the love implicit in her extraordinary achievement, when "Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective" - the artist's largest show yet - opens its doors once more at the Berkeley Art Museum for a run through Dec. 20. (It debuted briefly in February before the coronavirus lockdown.) The museum's website currently offers a robust online display and 70-minute virtual tour.

This exhibition, again organized by Mr. Rinder, the museum's director until March, with Elaine Y. Yau, a postdoctoral curatorial fellow, marks the end of a 35-year saga. Though it began with Effie Mae Martin, it came to include a small, nervous collector named Eli Leon, who met her in 1985, fell in love with her quilts and those of many other African-American creators in and around Richmond - and devoted half his life to acquiring and studying, exhibiting and writing about their work.

Rosie Lee Tompkins grew up the eldest of 15 half-siblings, picking cotton and piecing quilts for her mother. In 1958 she joined the postwar phase of the Great Migration, relocating to Milwaukee and then Chicago, eventually settling in Richmond, Calif., a busy port and shipyard that had become a destination for thousands of African-Americans who moved out of the South, many bringing with them singular aspects of rural culture.

She studied nursing, and for the next two decades or so worked in convalescent homes, a job she is said to have loved. During this time she married and divorced Ellis Howard, raised five children and stepchildren and started to make quilts to sell at the area's many flea markets, along with other wares. She even had a printed business card that offered "Crazy Quilts and Pillows All Sizes." By the late 1970s, according to the current exhibition's catalog, she was earning as much as $400 a weekend from sales and was able to quit her nursing job.

The flea markets were a quilter's paradise in the 1970s, '80s and beyond, places where the necessary materials were plentiful and cheap: printed, embroidered and sequined fabrics, beaded trim, crocheted doilies, needlepoint, buttons, secondhand clothing, costume jewelry - all of which, and more, Tompkins incorporated into her art.

The area was also paradise for quilt collectors, one of whom was Eli, born in the Bronx in 1935 and trained as a psychologist, whose collecting instincts verged on hoarding. Eli had also worked as a graphic designer and sometime in the late 1970s, after years of haunting the area's flea markets and yard sales for whatever appealed, he zeroed in on the visual vibrancy of quilts, evolving into a self-taught scholar. He lived frugally in a small bungalow in Oakland that was eventually packed to its rafters with quilts, except for his dining room and kitchen. These were menageries of previous flea-market obsessions, artifacts of between-the-wars popular culture - crafts, milk glass, dolls, cookie tins, but also meat grinders, toasters and enamel saucepans - mostly in the jade greens.

Around 1980, Eli turned his gimlet eye to searching out African-American quilts and interviewing their makers. At flea markets he would approach anyone selling anything to ask if they knew of quilts for sale. One day he asked a woman selling kitchen utensils - Effie Mae Howard. He would later write, "She was evasive, but eventually let on that she herself dabbled in the craft."

Thereafter he bought everything she would sell him, sometimes going into debt to do so. They were the jewels in the crown of a collection of African-American quilts that would eventually number in the thousands.

Rosie Lee and Eli were an odd pair, both willful, defensive and fragile. Each had survived a nervous breakdown or two; Rosie Lee's, coming sometime in the late '70s, deepened the spirituality and intensity of her work, making it more than ever a haven from the world. Eli's first came early, after his wife of five years left him. (They had met as students at Reed College and married, even though they both knew he was gay.)

Eli believed Rosie Lee was a great artist and at one point made notes about illustrating an essay about her with works by Michelangelo, Mondrian and Picasso. The quilter felt she was an instrument of God and saw her work as an expression of her faith and his designs. "If people like my work," she once told Eli, "that means the love of Jesus Christ is still shining through what I'm doing."

In photographs, Rosie Lee looks tall, of regal posture. Eli's devotion to her work made him a supplicant, willing to do anything - bring her fabrics and art books - to help with her work. He also wanted to promote it, devising Rosie Lee Tompkins as her "art" name, to preserve her privacy. Some people thought she might not exist, that Eli had made the quilts himself.

His promotional efforts, however, did not involve much selling: Eli was almost congenitally incapable of parting with any of his quilts, or anything else, that he accumulated. But within a year he began building a résumé of articles, exhibitions and lectures about the importance of African-American quilts as well as their frequent emphasis on improvisation and their links to African textiles. In doing so, he contributed to the national awareness of quilts of all kinds by African-Americans, which have been increasingly studied and exhibited since around 1980, thanks to the combined influences of the civil rights movement, feminism and multiculturalism.

His 1987 show, "Who'd a Thought It: Improvisation in African-American Quiltmaking," included a catalog essay by the well-known Africanist Robert Ferris Thompson alongside his own. It opened at the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum in 1987 and, over the next decade, toured to 25 museums - including the American Craft Museum in New York City in 1989. (It was written about in the Home Section of The New York Times, but significantly not in the Art pages.)

Eli made three trips to the South - on a Guggenheim grant in one instance - to meet the relatives of quilters he knew and collected around Oakland. In Arkansas he visited Rosie Lee's mother, Sadie Lee Dale, and bought one of her quilts, too.

Mr. Rinder's Rosie Lee Tompkins conversion took place in a show of black and white quilts by African-Americans that Eli organized in 1996 at the Richmond Art Center. The textile of hers that jumped out at Mr. Rinder is impressive even in photographs. Made from a family of velvets, it resembles Op-Art, only softer, less mechanical and altogether more appealing.

Eager for more information about the artist, Mr. Rinder called up Eli, who responded, "You like that piece? You should see what she does with color!"

Though I never met Tompkins, her quilts became stuck in my mind, sometimes at the forefront, sometimes in a corner. I mentioned her work in my writing when I could. Initially she seemed to belong to the first rank of outsider artists who began reshaping the American art canon around 1980, such geniuses as Martín Ramírez, Bill Traylor and Joseph Yoakum. Like Rosie Lee, they were artists of color. (Others, like Henry Darger and James Castle, were white.) She was the only female artist I knew who seemed of their stature - perhaps beyond it - which was doubly exhilarating.

But the "self-taught" or "outsider" labels were inaccurate for quilters. Effie Mae Martin had grown up as her mother's apprentice in a kind of atelier: a small town full of female friends and relatives who quilted, the older ones showing and telling the younger ones how it was done. More and more I saw her as a great American artist, no qualifier needed.

She reminded me of George Ohr, the unparalleled turn-of-the-century potter from Biloxi, Miss., whose his work was rediscovered in the early 1970s. Ohr's precariously thin-walled vessels, unlikely shapes and inspired glazing shared a kind of bravura with Tompkins's works. They both possessed an extraordinary skill and idiosyncratic abandon that creates a new sense of the possibilities of the hand, visual wit and beauty in any medium.

As with Ohr, Tompkins's work triggered a kind of joy on first encounter. You could hear it in the reviews of the 2002 Whitney Biennial, which Mr. Rinder organized during his stint there as curator of contemporary art. He put three of her quilts in the show, one of which the Whitney acquired.

After a final decade that was a nearly vertical trajectory, hurtling toward art world fame, Rosie Lee Tompkins died suddenly, at 70, in December 2006, in her home. There were obituaries in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe.

Then, in 2013, Eli began to leave me urgent phone messages: "You have to come out here. I need help," his thin reedy voice said. He had received a diagnosis of dementia, and was worried about what would become of his collection, which he wanted to keep intact. It was overflowing not only his house, but also a small, climate-controlled annex he had built behind it.

I visited him that fall, to be stunned all over again when Eli and Jenny Hurth - his exemplary friend, assistant, fellow quilt-lover and, after 2011, his most constant caregiver - unveiled a succession of Tompkins velvets, clipping them to the molding above the double doors between his living and dining rooms. I listened as Eli spoke about Tompkins, her life and work, and also his. (Eli was not shy about his considerable brilliance.) Wedging myself into the narrow gaps between the shelves of folded quilts in the annex, I got an inkling of how much I hadn't seen.

With this visit, I joined a scattered group of individuals who had been seduced by Eli's dedication but mainly by his collection, and were now concerned for its fate. In addition to Mr. Rinder and Ms. Hurth, it included Elsa Longhauser, then director of the Santa Monica Museum of Art (recently renamed the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles).

No one quite knew the actual size of his holdings - Eli provided only the vaguest of numbers when asked - but it seemed immense, judging from the two- and three-foot-high stacks of quilts that had to be navigated to get through his darkened living room.

I saw Eli once more, in 2016, when I went to Berkeley to review the inauguration of the museum's new building. His dementia was much further along but he smiled as Ms. Hurth introduced me to another dimension of Tompkins's creativity: the words and numbers that she awkwardly whipstitched to her quilts, adding a layer of personal meaning in a spidery script that sometimes resembled graffiti done with a Rapidograph. She signed nearly everything with her real name, Effie, or some combination of Effie Mae Martin Howard, and often added her nearly palindromic date of birth, 9.6.36, or the birth dates of her sons, her parents and other relatives she wanted to honor.

Sometimes the embroidery reflected her daily Bible reading, including the Gospels, as did her addition of appliqué crosses. Occasionally she stitched the addresses of the places she had lived, and Eli's home. The information suggested talismanic properties, perhaps prayers. She also said they were meant to improve the relationships between the people evoked by the numbers. In her "Three Sixes" quilts - inspired by the sixes in the birth dates of three family members - she acknowledged them by limiting her palette to three colors: orange, yellow and purple.

Eli died on March 6, 2018, at 82, in an assisted-living home. To raise money for his care, Ms. Hurth oversaw multiple yard sales for the contents of his house - except the quilts. The question of their destiny hung uneasily in the air.

Then, several months later, came the amazing news: Eli had bequeathed his entire quilt collection to the Berkeley Art Museum, a tribute to the early advocacy of Mr. Rinder. The final count of the Eli Leon Bequest was 3,100 quilts by over 400 artists.

Tompkins - represented by more than 680 quilts, quilt tops, appliqués, clothing and objects - is undoubtedly the star. Laverne Brackens, a well-known fourth-generation quilter in Texas, runs a close second, with around 300 quilts in the collection.

While fraught with obligations regarding care, storage, display and access that few museums, large or small, would take on, the bequest automatically transforms the Berkeley museum, and its parent institution, the University of California, Berkeley, into an unparalleled center for the study of African-American quilts. Interest and support are coming forth: The museum has already received a $500,000 grant from the Luce Foundation for a follow-up survey of Eli's entire gift in 2022, which should be every bit as surprising as this one.

On the plane out to San Francisco in February, I read the exhibition catalog cover to cover. The organizers' excellent essays included Mr. Rinder vividly relating Tompkins's use of improvisation to the innovations of Ornette Coleman and his "no-hold-barred free-jazz sensibility." (Although he notes that she was an opera fan who listened to disco while doing her work.)

Ms. Yau provides the foundational account of Tompkins's life, her working methods and the role of family ties and religion. And Horace D. Ballard, a former divinity student who is now a curator and art historian at Williams College and its museum, writes that Tompkins "lived in service of a higher calling," tying her efforts to sacred music, texts and architecture.

But even they couldn't prepare me for the visual force of the 62 quilts and five assemblage-like memory jugs, dating from the 1970s to 2004. Spread out in the museum's sky-lighted galleries, the work's beauty is more insistent than ever.

Because of Tompkins's improvisation, a close look doesn't reveal refinement or rote technique - skill for skill's sake. It shows small individual adjustments made and liberties taken, almost granular expressions of imagination and freedom. In addition, the fabrics - variously elegant, every day and ersatz - bring a lot with them, not just color and texture, but also manufacturing techniques and social connotations. Do you think that polyester double knit might look cheap used in a quilt? Think again. Cotton flannel and beaded and sequined silk crepe might not be a winning combination? Likewise. Such physical realism is all but impossible to achieve with paint.

A measure of Tompkins's ambition is that she preferred to concentrate on the 'free-jazz' aspect of her work: piecing the quilt tops. Other women finished the quilts by adding a layer of wadding and the back, a standard practice. Most of the pieces in this show were quilted by Irene Bankhead, whose work Eli also collected.

The show begins by demonstrating Tompkins's unusual range and versatility, juxtaposing quilts in smoldering velvets with a medley of found denims - a homage to her grandfather and other farmers in her family.

A remarkable early quilt from the 1970s is pieced almost entirely of blocks of found fabric embroidered with flowers - old and new, machine- and handmade. They bow to an ancient craft and, at the quilt's center, a spare image of the risen Christ blessing. Above and to the right a circle of twisted bands and leaves suggests both a crown of thorns and a laurel wreath. Was Tompkins aware of this possible reading? Perhaps, but the main point is that her work is open to the viewer's response and interpretation.

As an artist, Tompkins may have taken improvisation further than other quilters. She all but abandoned pattern for an inspired randomness with an emphasis on serial disruptions that constantly divert or startle the eye - like the badge of a California prison guard sewn to an otherwise conventional crazy quilt. Another narrative quilt is more like a wall-hanging, or maybe a street mural, pieced with large fragments of black and white fabric and T-shirts printed with images of African-American athletes and political leaders. Rows of crosses made from men's ties evoke the pressures of succeeding while black in America.

Her big velvet quilts - the exultant heart of the show - are most often disrupted by dramatic shifts in color and scale. In one, several blocks of stark black and white triangles break through an expanse of rich colors like icebergs in a dark sea. The opposite corner features a distinctive Tompkins device: a small framed area composed of tiny squares that creates a quilt-within-a-quilt - which reads as a witty self-reference to the quilting process, and pulls us into the intimacy of making.

One of Tompkins's most spectacular velvets is edged with these framed mini-quilts, which surround an enormous field of blue velvets that creates a kind of van Gogh night sky; they can read as small painted side panels on an altarpiece. Some feature abutting triangles that suggest desert landscapes and pyramids, perhaps the Flight into Egypt. (In the catalog, Mr. Ballard resonantly likens the field of blues to the vault of a cathedral and the borders to clerestory windows.)

There are many museum exhibitions on lockdown in the United States right now. They closed in one world and will reopen in a very different one, and the relevance of "Rosie Lee Tompkins: A Retrospective" has only expanded in the hiatus. The sheer joy of her best quilts cannot be overstated. They come at us with the force and sophistication of so-called high art, but are more democratic, without any intimidation factor.

Her work is simply further evidence of the towering African-American achievements that permeate the culture of this country. A deeper understanding and knowledge of these, especially where art is concerned, must be part of the necessary rectification and healing that America faces.

Tompkins seems to have been an artist of singular greatness, but who knows what further revelations - including the upcoming survey of the Eli Leon Bequest - are in store. The field of improvisational quilting by African-American women is not small, but beyond the great quilters of Gee's Bend, Ala., and a few others, their work is not widely known. Rosie Lee Tompkins's version of what Eli Leon called "flexible patterning" may have been more extreme than anyone else's. Or perhaps not. It would be gratifying to learn that she did not act alone.

Roberta Smith, the co-chief art critic, regularly reviews museum exhibitions, art fairs and gallery shows in New York, North America and abroad. Her special areas of interest include ceramics textiles, folk and outsider art, design and video art. @robertasmithnyt

Grid image credits: UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Eli Leon Bequest; Sharon Risedorph and Ben Blackwell

Produced by Alicia DeSantis, Gabriel Gianordoli, Laura O'Neill and Josephine Sedgwick.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Radical Quilting of Rosie Lee Tompkins

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1997 I walked into the Berkeley Art Museum to be greeted by a staggering sight: an array of some 20 quilts unlike any I had ever seen. Their unbridled colors, irregular shapes and nearly reckless range of textiles telegraphed a tremendous energy and the implacable ambition, and confidence, of great art.

# data[].attributes.body
This was an interesting podcast - Duncan-Andrade reminded me of it when he spoke about Tupac

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Slate's wildly popular investigative podcast, , is back for its third season, which dives into the murders of two of the biggest hip-hop stars of the 1990s - Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G.

Although the subject might seem like a left turn ( Slow Burn's first two seasons focused on the Watergate scandal and Bill Clinton's impeachment, respectively), it fits into the show's commitment to carefully covering the biggest stories of the past 50 years.

In their heyday, Tupac and "Biggie" were at the center of a feud between East Coast and West Coast rappers. Tupac was killed in September 1996 in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting, and although there have been multiple police and journalistic investigations, no one was ever convicted for the crime. Six months later, The Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down in Los Angeles, and his murder also went unsolved. Naturally, rumors have swirled about a potential connection between each rapper's death and their legendary feud.

Slow Burn has set a strong precedent of diving past surface level on its subjects, and season three is no exception. "We had a sense of what generally animated the beef, but we didn't know the stories underneath that," season three host Joel Anderson says. "So that's what we're trying to do with this podcast - talking to people that were there at the time, figuring out all these lovely little relationships and incidents that led up to their deaths."

The first episode shifts the mainstream narrative: Pac and Biggie were initially friends, Anderson says. They met at a party in LA and Pac took Biggie under his wing, but that friendship shattered when Pac was shot five times upon entering a studio in New York. Pac, who survived, noticed that members of Biggie's crew, Junior M.A.F.I.A., were on-site and believed it was a setup.

Joel Anderson says there's no evidence to suggest that Biggie was involved in this shooting, but Pac thought otherwise. He and other West Coast rappers released a string of songs dissing Biggie and his label, Bad Boy Records. In turn, Biggie released songs such as "Who Shot Ya" that many interpreted as replies.

Anderson says that the loss of these two artists speaks volumes about the state of black people in America, even today.

"You have two guys, two of the brightest stars to emerge out of the hip-hop era in that time, and they're gone, just like that," Anderson says. "And if those two guys can get killed and nothing can happen, then what does that say for the rest of us? As you see, it's not like we've been able to solve that problem."
The first two episodes of Slow Burn season three from Slate are out now.
Digital intern Mano Sundaresan and digital editor Cyrena Touros contributed to this story.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Slow Burn' Season 3 Turns Its Investigative Eye To The Murders Of Biggie And Tupac

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Slate's wildly popular investigative podcast, , is back for its third season, which dives into the murders of two of the biggest hip-hop stars of the 1990s - Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G.

# data[].attributes.body
“I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.”

# data[].attributes.body
Freedom is a natural state - question the systems and choose authenicity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Maya Angelou, "Caged Bird" from Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? Copyright © 1983 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House Inc., 1994)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Caged Bird by Maya Angelou | Poetry Foundation

# data[].attributes.headline
Jarvis Masters- That Bird's Got My Wings

# data[].attributes.subject
Jarvis Masters- That Bird's Got My Wings

# data[].attributes.body
In the prison yard at San Quentin, a few men were throwing stones at a bird and Jarvis stepped in and said, "that bird has got my wings." This statement resonated in a thoughtful way and speaks to the idea that everything and everyone is a teacher

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
That Bird Has My Wings by Jarvis Jay Masters

# data[].attributes.body
Influence and connection is a subconscious act. We influence others with every action and word, without even realizing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
INVISIBLE INFLUENCE: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior by Jonah Berger

# data[].attributes.body
Anne Hass Dyson mentions that pretend play is programed in children and that it acts as a natural component to larger trains of thoughts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Avatar The Last Airbender Aang and Bumi Reunite

# data[].attributes.body
"My elders taught me that I belonged to a tradition of resilience, of music that resonates across the globe, of spoken and written language that sings. If you’ve had the good fortune to experience a holiday with a large black American family, you have witnessed the masterful art of storytelling, the vitality of our laughter, and the everyday poetry of our experience."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wesley Lowrey: Why Minneapolis was the breaking point
One of the classic texts in African American studies is Zora Neale Hurston's 1928 essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me." Her playful yet profound articulation resonates for me now. She wrote, "I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it ... No, I do not weep at the world-I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."

Some of her words, I must admit, are too hopeful, at least for me right now. In fact, I do weep at the world; I am, in a sense, part of the sobbing school; and I am skeptical that my lone oyster knife can cut any of the rot out of this nation. But, like Hurston, I refuse to see the story of who I am as a tragedy.

Joy is not found in the absence of pain and suffering. It exists through it. The scourges of racism, poverty, incarceration, medical discrimination, and so much more shape black life. We live with the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow, and with the new creative tides of anti-blackness directed toward us and our children. We know the wail of a dying man calling for his mama, and it echoes into the distant past and cuts into our deepest wounds. The injustice is inescapable. So yes, I want the world to recognize our suffering. But I do not want pity from a single soul. Sin and shame are found in neither my body nor my identity. Blackness is an immense and defiant joy. As the poet Sonia Sanchez wrote in a haiku about her power-and her struggles:

Come windless invader

I am a carnival of

stars a poem of blood

People of all walks of life are protesting the violent deaths handed out by police officers. This is extraordinary both because the victims were black-and when does black death elicit such a response?-and because Americans in general have a hard time dealing with death. Think about how uncomfortable many Americans are with grief. You are supposed to meet it with a hidden shamefulness, tuck yourself away respectably for a season, and then return whole and recovered. But that is not at all how grief courses through life. It is emetic, peripatetic; it shakes you and stops you and sometimes disappears only to come barreling back to knock the wind out of you.
Rebecca Carroll: You should be feeling miserable
Black Americans right now are experiencing a collective grief, one that unfolds publicly. And we are unable to tuck it away. I do think Hurston would have to admit this too, were she around today. She wrote her essay before Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Birmingham crusade, the March on Washington, Freedom Summer, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Acts, the rise of black mayors, the first black governor, the first black president. She wrote her essay before we understood how tightly this nation would grasp onto its original sin even after legions of black people came with razor-sharp oyster knives and hands full of pearls.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wesley Lowrey: Why Minneapolis was the breaking point One of the classic texts in African American studies is Zora Neale Hurston's 1928 essay "How It Feels to Be Colored Me." Her playful yet profound articulation resonates for me now. She wrote, "I am not tragically colored.

# data[].attributes.body
The 4th branch of government. Democracy needs everyone. I can connect you to the director of this project if you're interested!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is a collection of stories from people who are incarcerated about their experiences inside the walls. We are a non-profit organization focused on supporting journalism and writing from inside the walls.

# data[].attributes.headline
Accountability in action (in three parts)

# data[].attributes.subject
Accountability in action (in three parts)

# data[].attributes.body
Read all three if you can! -- The next two are in the comments.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Our movements themselves need to be healing or there is no point to them." - Cara Page

Since November 2019, I have struggled with whether to publicly reflect on my experience at the project formerly known as Healing Justice Podcast (now known as Irresistible Movements).

As a Black, queer woman I have contemplated ways that I could share what happened without tainting the brilliant work of the mostly Black, Brown, disabled, and queer healers and movement workers who have contributed to the project over the last few years. As with most confrontations in my life, I've been living with the fear of being painted as "the angry Black woman" - domineering, aggressive, threatening, loud. I feared this even more, knowing that the Irresistible (formerly known as Healing Justice) podcast continues to be (co) led by the same white organizer who caused me harm.

But after the performative allyship shown by Irresistible in the last few weeks, I have found myself consumed by sadness, fear, and yes - anger.

"My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also."

- Audre Lorde, On The Uses of Anger, 1981

So, in the spirit of the Black women who raised me and fought tirelessly against the tyrannies of silence, I want to speak my truth plainly.

"We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us." - Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

In August 2019, I joined the Healing Justice Podcast (now Irresistible) on contract as the Digital Organizer. In this role I was responsible for running the digital presence in every way - except for the podcast itself (which was managed by the Podcast Producer). On paper, this seemed like a dream role that would allow me to couple my love of storytelling, design, and social media with my (inherently) political identity as a Black queer woman from the South. Given the podcast features, I moved into the project assuming that leadership had a strong anti-racist, disability justice, & healing-centered ethic. I was wrong.

In my three months with the project, I experienced nearly all of the characteristics described in "The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture from Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun (ChangeWork, 2001). The experience and perpetuation of this culture was damaging because it upheld norms, standards and thinking rooted in white supremacy at the cost of the two women of color contracted to work on the project.

The instances of anti-Blackness emerged at the onset of my tenure with Healing Justice ( Irresistible) on a team-building retreat in upstate New York in August 2019 - starting with an untenable sense of urgency.

Sense of Urgency
A continued sense of urgency that makes it difficult to take time to be inclusive, encourage democratic and/or thoughtful decision-making, to think long-term, to consider consequences

- frequently results in sacrificing potential allies for quick or highly visible results, for example sacrificing interests of communities of color in order to win victories

- for white people (seen as default or norm community) reinforced by funding proposals which promise too much work for too little money and by funders who expect too much for too little.

- THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE from Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun (ChangeWork, 2001)

Each day started in the early morning with minimal breaks. The pace did not allow for generative conversations & leadership's desire to always move with a sense of urgency was overwhelming. This came to a head when KW confronted us (myself and our podcast producer) about having "side conversations" about task management systems during a brief break in production calendar planning. I pushed back at the assertion that we weren't present to the conversation. I noted that we had been working with no break since 9am and believed we should be given more space to transition between tasks. It was then that KW noted that she understood there was a "cultural difference" in the ways that "Black people work" that she had always had trouble adjusting to. At this point, I was the only Black person on the team and I was stunned to silence.

Perfectionism
- little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway

- more common is to point out either how the person or work is inadequate or even more common, to talk to others about the inadequacies of a person or their work without ever talking directly to them mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are - mistakes

- making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong

- little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes tendency to identify what is wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what is right

- THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE from Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun (ChangeWork, 2001)

In addition to the never-ending sense of urgency that we were forced to operate under, there was little room for error. Even as we were expected to "hit the ground running," there was little patience for mistakes. Just weeks into "taking the reins" on social media, I posted a photo on Instagram that disrupted the grid pattern. In response, KW reached out to let me know I "fucked up the grid." She would later claim she was "joking" to which I replied that we didn't yet have a relationship that made that energy or language appropriate.

In late September, days before a one-on-one workday with KW, I was asked to be available for a conference that fell well after the end of my contract period with the project. As such, I had committed to a conflicting event - to support at an annual conference for my partner's nonprofit. It was only after receiving the email announcement about the conference, did she message me to say that she understood "the conflict" but wanted to be clear it would be "hard to do the work without" me there.

When I told her that I would have appreciated knowing about the event when she found out 2 weeks prior, I was told to "give her a break."

Defensiveness
the organizational structure is set up and much energy is spent trying to prevent abuse and protect power as it exists rather than to facilitate the best out of each person or to clarify who has power and how they are expected to use it

- because of either/or thinking (see below), criticism of those with power is viewed as threatening and inappropriate (or rude)

- people respond to new or challenging ideas with defensiveness, making it very difficult to raise these ideas

- a lot of energy in the organization is spent trying to make sure that people's feelings aren't getting hurt or working around defensive people
- the defensiveness of people in power creates an oppressive culture
- THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE from Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun (ChangeWork, 2001)

On September 30th, I traveled by train to Milwaukee for the workday. The first half of the day was presented as a conflict mini workshop. She noted three disagreements we had experienced in my first month - the confrontation around "cultural" ways of working, "the fucked up" Instagram grid, and the expectation for participation in events that fell outside of the contractual agreement.

As we got into the discussion, I expressed that her overall defensiveness in previous conversations made it difficult for me to share my frustrations with her. I disclosed that I had considered reaching out to the project's advisory circle for support. It was then that KW scolded me, saying I was never to reach out to them without speaking to her first. This action, she said, "would be an extreme breach of trust."

As we closed out the conflict mini workshop, she told me that she would begin tracking our disagreements to determine whether it was a good fit for me to remain on the project. It was shortly after this meeting that I began communicating with members of the advisory circle without her approval. From the beginning, they agreed that these issues were worth communicating to them & that they wished to support however they could.

Paternalism
- decision-making is clear to those with power and unclear to those without it

- those with power think they are capable of making decisions for and in the interests of those without power

- those with power often don't think it is important or necessary to understand the viewpoint or experience of those for whom they are making decisions

- those without power understand they do not have it and understand who does

- those without power do not really know how decisions get made and who makes what decisions, and yet they are completely familiar with the impact of those decisions on them

- THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE
from Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun (ChangeWork, 2001)

On Friday, October 4th I was asked by KW to speak at an all-day Patreon Creator Panel event being held in Chicago. KW noted that she offered to have me speak after learning there would be no other people of color on the panel. Since this fell outside of the scope of my role, I inquired as to whether this would be a paid opportunity. I was informed that the event paid $1500 but that money would be going back into the project. I would only make my regular base pay - roughly $200 for an 8-hour Saturday event. She touted that it would be "good exposure."

This would not be the only instance of questionable decision-making around pay while I was on this project. In conversation with our podcast producer, I found that I was making $5 less per hour than the other two workers on the team. In the hiring process, KW candidly told me that she would be paying me less because our producer had "more experience" in her field. Later I would learn that when our producer asked for more money to adequately reflect her experience, she was told "everyone on the project is being paid the same." No raises or adjustments would be given in the name of equity.

The paternalistic behavior would again emerge during the renaming process for the podcast from Healing Justice to Irresistible Movements.

On November 4th, we were called into a meeting with KW and a member of the advisory circle to discuss the forthcoming name change. We were met with the contents of an email, written to KW, from a prominent organizer in the foundational Healing Justice movement.

The message left both myself and our podcast producer shook. We had always been told that those most central to the Healing Justice movement had given her permission to use the name. That no longer seemed to be the case.

In this email, a question was posed regarding the project's current name: Irresistible. At a brainstorming session during the on-boarding retreat, both myself and our podcast producer voted for the name Irresistible with one specific caveat - the name had to be rooted in the quote from which it was born. That quote?

"As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible."

- Toni Cade Bambara
"An Interview with Toni Cade Bambara." By Kay Bonetti. Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara. Ed. Thabiti Lewis. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2012. 35-47. Print.

The podcast producer & I expressed a desire to develop a more transparent and intentional process for repatriating the name Healing Justice in line with the ask made by this prominent member of the movement - pushing for a specific plan of action to be developed in response to their main question: How would this white-led project AGAIN reckon with its name being born from the intellectual labor of Black women (Toni Cade Bambara)?

KW rebutted, saying that she was inspired by a myriad of readings and quotes, not just the one by Toni Cade Bambara. Of course, none of those would be mentioned until well after she was challenged. As the conversation came to a close, we agreed to discuss this further with the entire advisory circle in an upcoming meeting. Privately, KW would refer to a prominent figure in the Healing Justice movement as "a mean girl" when they did not respond to an invitation for a year-end, live event to celebrate the upcoming name change.

After spending weeks supporting the podcast's efforts towards accessibility, I would face my own issues around disability and access needs when a hand infection required two separate surgical procedures.

Ableism is "a system that places value on people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence and productivity. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in anti-Blackness, eugenics, colonialism and capitalism. This form of systemic oppression leads to people and society determining who is valuable and worthy based on a person's appearance and/or their ability to satisfactorily [re]produce, excel and "behave."

You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism.
A working definition by Talila "TL" Lewis in conversation with Disabled Black and other negatively racialized folk, especially Dustin Gibson; updated January 2020

On November 11th I underwent a surgical procedure on my hand that my doctor specified would take six weeks to fully heal. I informed the entire team of this three weeks prior after undergoing another (less invasive) procedure. Though she was hesitant at first ("six weeks is a long time"), I guaranteed KW that I would work through the weekend leading up to my procedure to ensure a smooth process for episode launch that week.

(*Note: Prior to my arrival on the project, KW handled all digital organizing tasks on her own. I had continued to implement her process once I joined the team. Though Article 5 of my contractor agreement stated that I was "to retain the sole right to control or direct the manner, means and methods of accomplishing the result of the services described." 🙃)

On the morning of November 12th, I would wake up to this exchange with KW:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
An Open Letter & A Call for True Healing Justice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Our movements themselves need to be healing or there is no point to them." - Cara Page Since November 2019, I have struggled with whether to publicly reflect on my experience at the project formerly known as Healing Justice Podcast (now known as Irresistible Movements).

# data[].attributes.headline
The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

# data[].attributes.subject
The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

# data[].attributes.body
"My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also."

# data[].attributes.headline
I was released back into society a better person but to a F-ed up world

# data[].attributes.subject
I was released back into society a better person but to a F-ed up world

# data[].attributes.body
"In prison, we have our own society, our own microcosm, our own rules, and our own family. I saw my brother and mother once in my entire incarceration and even though they are my blood, the people I have done time with, my cellmates, my coworkers, my friends who listened to my pain and trauma, that was my family. "

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On May 1st, 2020, I was released back out to society from San Quentin State Prison. I spent almost 16 years in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). While in prison, I was able to take self-help groups and find ways of understanding my core issues to which I made a horrible decision. The state of California found me suitable for parole on September 11, 2019. While I waited for the Governor to make his decision, I found myself in a peculiar situation. San Quentin was in its initial stages of quarantine for COVID-19, everyone knew that if COVID-19 came to San Quentin, it would not be safe for anyone both inside and out. I was of course worried about my own health given my asthma and health issues, but I was more concern about the people I would be eventually be leaving behind.

In prison, we have our own society, our own microcosm, our own rules, and our own family. I saw my brother and mother once in my entire incarceration and even though they are my blood, the people I have done time with, my cellmates, my coworkers, my friends who listened to my pain and trauma, that was my family. My friend, Tommy Wickerd, born in 1967 has been in CDCR since I was basically a kid, is positive for COVID. He is my friend, my brother, a father to three kids, a loving husband, a youth mentor, an ASL interpreter to the incarcerated deaf population, and running partner who to this day has beat my in four San Quentin marathons. I was so joyous the day I left the gates of San Quentin and had imagined it for so long but I couldn't be more sad that as I walked out those gates and smiled at my friends who came to pick me up risking their own health, knowing I left Tommy behind along with so many people I care about.

I left my family behind and moved onto the next chapter of my life. I went to a transitional house and entered back out into society. In prison, we watch the news to see what the world is. But to experience it in real life was alarming. The disparity of homeless encampments and people who pass them in million dollar cars is ridiculous. The people who chooses to go outside without a mask potentially infecting other people making our way towards the second wave. Our society is not perfect, it was divided and problematic pre-COVID and will be post-COVID. I was lucky to miss the economic recession in the late 2000s and the ongoing violence in our country but now I am back and wondering, where did our society go? I left to rehabilitate myself for 16 years while the world got worse. People are more angry, bitter, and judgemental about people and things they have no vested interest or even having the right information.

I learned about empathy through the years understanding other people's pain as well as my own. People in society has not and in a way understand where other people are coming from. I went in when America hated Middle Eastern people and then onto Hispanics and the Asians for COVID-19 and now back to the people who help create this country. In prison, majority of people are African Americans and while I believe in the criminal justice system to hold people accountable for their actions, can we say it's been use fairly across the board? Do people care that majority of the homeless population is also Black? Who are we as a society when we let people die on the streets and in prison. Yes, there is a duty to protect our communities, but are we (including myself) actually protecting our community but letting people die?

Most if not many say criminals don't matter and don't change but it's a blanket statement about people who they'd never met and judging on past choices. I was a bad person. I made the most horrendous choice anyone could make and accepted the consequences of my actions. I don't at all defend myself or anyone who is guilty of their actions. At the end of the day, we made bad choices as humans and the question is aren't incarcerated people still humans?

I walk by Lake Merritt and see people out and about and see how life is for them, going on with their day and not having the slightest thought of global warming and environmental destruction, the homeless encampments which at this point are part of the background and scenery for Oakland, to a place out of reach and out of mind where bad criminals are away from my family members and who cares what happens to them. I want to speak to everyone of them to show them the reality of life and what is happening to our society. I want to care as much as I do about what we are doing as a society and how we want the next generation to care about how we treat people. But for many many people, ignorance is bliss because the truth is miserable.

I was happy enjoying life again until San Quentin skyrocketed with COVID cases. I fell into a depression when I found out Tommy was infected. I felt helpless even more so than his wife, because I wanted to go back to those gates and tell the guards, let me in, so if my worse fears came true, I could have said goodbye to him one more time. Knowing my family is in danger, what can I do? What would you do? What would any of us do? I don't have the answers, I also don't envy the Governor on the life and death decisions he has to make every single day. This will pass and we will look back on our society and ask was this tragedy preventable on all accounts. Every life matters and every death matters. Where we go from here, it's up to us.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I was released back into society a better person but to a F-ed up world

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On May 1st, 2020, I was released back out to society from San Quentin State Prison. I spent almost 16 years in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). While in prison, I was able to take self-help groups and find ways of understanding my core issues to which I made a horrible decision.

# data[].attributes.headline
An important resource for helping us see how Whiteness gets constructed in community

# data[].attributes.subject
An important resource for helping us see how Whiteness gets constructed in community

# data[].attributes.body
Fun 4 all ages.

# data[].attributes.body
We cannot afford to wait for someone else. There is no one coming to save us, inspire us, or tell us what to do. We must be willing to build communities of resistance, love and belonging to make the progress we need and deserve.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by LaShawn Routé Chatmon, Executive Director, National Equity Project

Mural in Downtown Oakland, 23rd & Broadway, June 2020

"To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible - and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people - must be prepared to "go for broke." Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point in pretending that this won't happen."
- James Baldwin, "A Talk to Teachers", 1963

We have come to an unparalleled moment of definition as a country. There is no middle ground for us to seek, or cower for refuge.

With structural inequities laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic, now worsened by further evidence of racial terror being waged against Black bodies, followed by maligned indifference to demands for justice... We can no longer deny the violence, pain and loss that is being disproportionately beset upon Black people and Black communities.

As citizens of this promising yet conflicted nation, it is time for us to go for broke!

Wynta-Amor Rogers, Justice Warrior

We each must make a choice: take conscious action to learn about and dismantle injustice and the winding tentacles of white supremacy in our lives, families, workplaces and communities; or stay asleep, seek comfort, look away and in doing so - perpetuate racism and the racist systems that produce the inequity and injustices we face.

This moment does not represent a fight for the humanity of Black people. Black people have long demonstrated our humanity in the face of unrelenting injustice and oppression.

America, we are fighting to reclaim our collective humanity!

It is time to put our collective stakes in the ground for racial justice, belonging and freedom.

We speak the names the most recent victims of state sanctioned unjust policing: George Floyd. Tony McDade. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. We speak their names to invoke their memory, to link their humanity to our own. We speak their names to summon the courage and conviction we need to speak, engage, connect, change, heal. To act in service of our own liberation.

As a mother of three beautiful, brilliant, Black young adult men, I find myself sitting with acute rage, horror and heartbreak simultaneously. Our sons have been preparing for this their whole young lives. We have raised them in community to know who they are (these were not lessons learned in school); to understand their history and systems of oppression (here schooling usually provided case in point examples of ignorance, racism and bias); they have been taught how to maintain their personal safety and that of their peers in public spaces (for as much as they can control it). In this moment they are speaking out, teaching, protesting, stepping into their role as the young rebel leaders we've raised. I am both deeply proud and at the same time overwhelmed with shame and sadness that they are inheriting this centuries old fight - the fight for their right to be seen, admired, respected and treated as men... as human.

As a former history teacher, I know that these are not isolated incidents but rather a continuation of a long history of anti-Black oppression our communities have had to endure. Its roots are structural and interrelated; our education, healthcare, and justice systems are equally imbued with the same roots of white supremacy and othering.

As a Black woman of deep and abiding faith, I also know that in this moment, we have the opportunity, agency, and power to transform these crumbling public systems into resilient, antiracist, equitable institutions committed to our ensuring our basic human rights and collective wellbeing.

We cannot afford to wait for someone else. There is no one coming to save us, inspire us, or tell us what to do. We must be willing to build communities of resistance, love and belonging to make the progress we need and deserve.

The fight for our collective future will not be fair or gentle - power concedes nothing without demand. We are already witnessing the callous and negligent responses to demands for justice and accountability. We must not be deterred. As we press forward with the wisdom, courage and tenacity of our ancestors, we must commit ourselves to designing a new way forward. We get to choose who we will become.

In 1963, James Baldwin told teachers: "I don't think anyone can doubt that in this country today we are menaced - intolerably menaced - by a lack of vision." While many of his words still ring true, I don't believe this holds for us today. Instead, I see examples of a shared vision for a just and inclusive world in the streets, in my sons, and in my work with educators and leaders every day. Let's keep working towards this vision, towards creating a world where everyone belongs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
by LaShawn Routé Chatmon, Executive Director, National Equity Project "To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible - and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people - must be prepared to "go for broke."

# data[].attributes.headline
What if we... DON'T return to school as usual?

# data[].attributes.subject
What if we... DON'T return to school as usual?

# data[].attributes.body
"Many more have realized that what they do day-to-day in schools actually perpetuates the current inequitable system, the very one they would like to interrupt and change. So although we want change, we find ourselves maintaining the status quo. Why?"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by Hugh Vasquez, Senior Associate, National Equity Project

Photo by Gary Knight

Let's start with the end in mind. Fast forward to a time in the near future, say 12 months from now when we have made it through this world health crisis. Imagine that you have been invited to be on a panel at a conference because you decided to do something unusual amidst the crisis. You decided you were going to refuse to return to schooling in the same way you left it when COVID-19 erupted. You decided you would not return to doing business as usual in how we educate children. On this panel you share why you made this decision and your remarks focus on a desire to change the system because you realized it was designed to produce inequities. You share what it took to stop doing business as usual and how you became a catalyst for others to join in this effort too. You talk about the innovations you and a team of educators, parents, and students created and what you are learning from taking those actions. Then you share the impact those changes had on students, families, and staff. You close by describing how you used the opportunity of the system shutdown to create a better way of educating children and how you are going to make sure the old system doesn't return.

Let's be clear. When the COVID-19 crisis is over, we do not have to go back to business as usual in our educational system, or any other system for that matter. We just don't. The question confronting us at the moment is not can we prepare to come back differently but will we?

Working in the field of social justice education, we know there are many education leaders from superintendents to policy makers to site leaders to teachers who have come to the realization that our education system is designed to produce what it produces - inequity in who succeeds. We also know that many do not want to continue educating the way education was designed. Many more have realized that what they do day-to-day in schools actually perpetuates the current inequitable system, the very one they would like to interrupt and change. So although we want change, we find ourselves maintaining the status quo. Why?

Nothing changes without disturbance. Since it is people who change things, that means change can't happen until people are disturbed. Margaret Wheatley in her article "Willing to be Disturbed" says,

" As we work together to restore hope for the future, we need to include a new and strange ally - our willingness to be disturbed."

Wheatley is talking about change within individuals where we have to be willing to be disturbed by actively engaging with those who challenge our way of doing things. It is in this place of discomfort where we expand our beliefs and innovations are born. When we are disturbed, we change. What is true for the individual is also true for systems. If we want to change systems, we have to be disturbed by what we see and engage with others to disturb, catalyze and influence what we do.

The biggest changes in our society have only come about when there was a strong enough disturbance - an interruption to "business as usual" - and when people were willing to come together even though the path forward was cloudy. This United States was created out of disturbance. We have Social Security because of disturbance. To the extent that we have civil rights for people of color, women, people with disabilities, gay/lesbian/bi-sexual/transgender people (to name a few) - it is because of disturbance. People interrupted the status quo way of doing things and created an opening to change something, to build something new.

COVID-19 has produced what may be one of the largest worldwide and systemic disturbances of all time. While schools closed overnight and our daily routines have changed, the inequities produced by our systems are even more stark in terms of which students have access to technology, internet, food, and housing and which families have the privilege of sheltering in place to stay safe.

Since we know that disturbance is required for change and there is no doubt that disturbance is happening as we speak, the question is, are we willing to use this opportunity to create the kind of educational system we want? We have learned that if we are going to change a system, we as individuals first have to SEE what the system is producing, then we have to ENGAGE with others to design something different, and finally we have to ACT. Cornel West puts it this way:

It takes courage to look in the mirror and see past your reflection to who you really are when you take off the mask, when you're not performing the same old routines and social roles. It takes courage to ask - How did I become so well-adjusted to injustice?

Seeing the system doesn't guarantee we will engage and act differently. The system is designed to keep us busy perpetuating it so that we don't have time to redesign it. The system is a well-oiled machine that has tremendous momentum to keep things going as they are; just look at Education Codes in any state. The result is that even those who see the system and have a desire to interrupt it do not usually have the mindset, time, resources or support to do so. The demands of "doing school" prohibit us from engaging and acting differently. But now, that machine has ground to a halt.

What would acting differently (both during and after) this crisis look like for education? Below are a few ideas on what we could do differently. With each idea ask yourself "what if..." as you read it, and notice what thoughts come to mind. If you find yourself saying "oh, we can't do that," read it again and ask "but what if we did..."

What if we... gather our teams now (virtually) to get ready to return to another way. Schedule virtual meetings with educators and school staff in whatever configuration works best for you to engage them in discussions under the theme "we WILL do school differently when we return." Present your "what if we..." approach and talk about WHY you want to return doing school differently. The goal of these meetings is to enroll and recruit people to this approach and set a new direction, to engage their agency and their imagination. Allow people to talk about their excitement and concerns with this idea and engage them in responding to both the idea of coming back differently and to some of your "what if we..." ideas. Ask them to brainstorm other "what if we..." ideas and come to agreement on what you will collectively create, build and test.

What if we... use this time to re-purpose our leadership structures to build our leadership muscle to be strategic equity leaders instead of reactive leaders. Strategic equity leaders identify education challenges through an equity lens and engage others in collaborative inquiry to figure out what to do to address the challenges. Strategic equity leaders build the competencies of others to interrupt status quo ways of doing things that perpetuate inequities. Strategic equity leaders keep a birds eye view of what's going on in the system, the school site, and the classroom and facilitate others to see what is happening and co-create strategies to adjust to needs. What if we took time now to develop our strategic equity leadership muscles and re-purpose (or create) existing leadership structures such as leadership team meetings, staff meetings, grade level meetings, professional learning communities, etc. to focus on learning from our actions. What if teams committed to meeting every week for a while to assess how things are going, review the actions being taken, discuss what we are learning from what we are doing, and adjust actions accordingly. What if we implement minimum day/early release Fridays and use the afternoon for collaboration time to be in a strategic equity leadership mode looking at what to do more of because it is producing a climate for learning and what to stop or do less of because it is not.

What if we... focus each hour on student learning instead of seat time? Tony Smith, former Illinois State Superintendent says in his article " The Invisible Blizzard and the Importance of E-Learning" that we have prioritized seat time over student learning and that our schools waste our children's time and creativity every day. Our current way of doing school is organized around a dominant culture view of time: time to sit, time to learn, time to move on, time to test, etc. Smith says that we can, if we wish, create a new system where teachers can use their creativity to connect with students about ideas, projects, activities and learning "in ways not dictated by hands on a clock." We can use the moment we are in to ask teachers how they would work or what they would do differently if their days were designed around student learning as opposed to seat time. What if we do what Smith suggests - engage teachers now to design a system that focuses on learning and competency development.

Hugh Vasquez in conversation with Tony Smith, April 2020

What if we... gathered data from students about their experience of our classrooms and schools regularly? We know that how students feel about being in school impacts their learning. What if we implement a system to learn in real time how the learning environment is working or not working for students? Ideally these assessments are conducted every week by every teacher in every school so that teachers and other leaders see how well students are engaged in their learning, the extent to which they feel like they are getting enough support to learn, and how relevant the material is to their life. Tools like PERTS' Co-Pilot/Elevate allow teachers to gather and discuss real time feedback from students and work together to design and lead changes in their classrooms.

What if we... implement a focal student approach where we structure the classroom to meet the needs of students farthest from learning?Return to school with teachers prepared to name the students who are struggling the most to learn and teach the teachers how to use a focal student approach that discovers what these students need and how to best reach them. This approach does not assume a teacher knows what is in the way of a student learning, but instead has the teacher engaging with the student to figure out what the barriers are to learning and finding innovative ways to meet their needs.

What if we... organize the curriculum with project based learning (PBL) as a key component and create opportunities for every student to participate. Think about it, a plumber doesn't become a good plumber without being an apprentice and learning by doing. They do not become an expert by sitting at a desk listening to a lecture about how to unclog a pipe. Nor do medical doctors, electricians, teachers, mechanics, writers, chefs, or nurses. All career and professional learning involves learning by doing. Apprenticeships, medical residencies, and being mentored by someone skilled in their craft is project based learning, and project based learning is a good practice that we know works. We can revise the curriculum so that every school and every classroom implements project based learning and every child has the opportunity to engage in learning through projects. We can make our first teaching moves facilitating learning by projects before we lecture on a subject and hand out worksheets. What we can do now is build the conditions to put PBL into play when we return?

What if we... co-design and plan a "Return to a Different School Back to School" event. This pandemic will end and we will return to our buildings and school communities. Invite students and parents back in a new way. Assemble the school community and engage in new ways together. Talk about the excitement you have as educators to do school in a different way and the challenges you will face to make the new way work. Acknowledge the way we were doing things before the virus was not working for everyone and explain how you want to work in partnership with them to design new ways. Break into classroom size groups for sense making, allowing students to meet with students and parents with parents to build relationship and contribute to a new vision focused on student learning.

The first step in designing a new way is to decide now that you won't return to normal - a normal that was never neutral and wasn't working well for most students, teachers or families. Engage with your teammates and community now to articulate a bold, audacious, wild vision of what your education system can look like. Focus on a couple small but powerful pieces to change. Gather your people to engage in equity by design and engage in collaborative inquiry to continuously design, test, and adjust your practices based on what you learn. And, commit to sticking with the process- for at least a year, to stay the course. This is how we can collectively take the opportunity to design for change in how we do school.

For my fellow rebel leaders - those who have learned about equity, who are "woke" to how inequities are produced and perpetuated, who have built leadership skills to engage others in working toward equity, who have been trying to take action to change things...we have been preparing for this moment of interruption, the moment when a great disturbance would bring the system to a halt. We are strong in what we know, strong in what we see, strong in what we want. We have to act courageously NOW so we can come back together differently. What if we...

When the world becomes a fantasy / And you're more than you could ever be / 'Cause you're dreaming with your eyes wide open / And you know you can't go back again / To the world that you were living in / 'Cause you're dreaming with your eyes wide open / So, come alive! - The Greatest Showman

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What if We... Don't Return to School as Usual

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Let's start with the end in mind. Fast forward to a time in the near future, say 12 months from now when we have made it through this world health crisis. Imagine that you have been invited to be on...

# data[].attributes.headline
Pretty solid Common Core aligned lessons on the Big Bang

# data[].attributes.subject
Pretty solid Common Core aligned lessons on the Big Bang

# data[].attributes.body
Grades 9-12, it says.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this lesson, students will explore the Big Bang Theory through academic games and a large technology-based project that accommodates all learner types, deepening their knowledge and understanding of the evidences for the Big Bang Theory.

# data[].attributes.body
A Black woman rocket scientist breaks it down.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Research the Big Bang Theory and three key pieces of evidence that supports it. Create a presentation or 5-paragraph essay that describes the Big Bang Theory and the evidence that supports it. Your presentation or essay should include a detailed description of the Big Bang Theory along with a detailed description of the three pieces of evidence that supports it.