https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks en-us 2020-10-16 14:56:00 UTC 2026-01-22 22:46:22 UTC hello@padlet.com nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1627232355 Racism, Antiracism, and YOU]]> 2021-06-27 20:09:50 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1627232355 nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1627233586 As teachers we need to help students recognize the racism in the news and media and how BIPOC are portrayed and how this enters our psyche and influences how we think about BIPOC. 
"Another kind of power stories have is that they get inside our hearts and minds and stick around for a long long time. Sometimes we may read stories without realizing the harm they cause, without recognizing racist ideas inside them. And because stories stick, those ideas can get tangled up inside us."
Some examples include:
- Tarzan of the Apes (portrays Africans as "savages" needing rescuing)
- The Cat in the Hat and many books by Dr. Seuss (The cat is a mischievous character in black face meant to distract and get the white children into trouble)
- King Kong (Ape from Africa worshiped by "savages" and only stoppable by white men)
- Dumbo 
- Peter Pan
- The Lady and the Tramp
- The Jungle Book
- Aladdin 
- Pocahontas
- Curious George
- Little House on the Prairie
- Swiss Family Robinson
 ]]> 2021-06-27 20:12:32 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1627233586 nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1627240872 In Stamped, Sonja Cherry-Paul notes, "Black students attended schools that were under resourced. There wasn't enough money to build or maintain schools, school buses, and for materials such a books, desks, and chairs. White students went to schools that were well resourced. Their schools were spacious and well maintained, and there was enough money for school buses and supplies. The supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, against the law. But a racist ideas was part of the ruling. It was decided that Black students would integrate into White schools. But White students did not have to integrate into Black schools. This reinforced the racist idea that White people are superior - that for Black kids to succeed, they needed to be around White kids."
And though schools were desegregated (on paper if not in practice), racists found a new way to make public education a weapon: standardized testing. "They are standardized," meaning that the same test is given to all kids in a state, no matter where they live or go to school. And of course, this is exactly why they aren't fair... Because they were never created with each student in mind... Because they treat all students as if they are the same and have the same resources."
"But the test rerults in underfunded and segregated schools (which of course aren't as good as results in schools where students have lots of resources!) are used to support the age-old racist idea that Black people aren't as smart as White people; that Black and White people are biologically different."]]> 2021-06-27 20:26:35 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1627240872 nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1628806529 The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools]]> 2021-06-28 18:42:43 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1628806529 nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1628890917 Monique W. Morris writes, "These circumstances did not emerge through osmosis. The contemporary social conditions that Black girls experience are an extension of long-standing, judgmental popular perception about Black girl responses to injustice." She then speaks of Claudette Colvin and how she staged a similar protest to Rosa Parks but because she was young, 15, pregnant, and darker skinned, she was viewed as belligerent and "unreliable." She did not "fit the profile" of an assimilated Black woman and instead experienced racism and colorism from within her own community; the NAACP of which she was a member of the Youth Council and was not chosen to advance the civil rights movement.]]> 2021-06-28 20:07:18 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1628890917 nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1628898388 "Indeed, a failure to acknowledge one's whole self silences a more sophisticated analysis about how race, gender, class, sexual identity, ability and other identities interact. Acknowledging the complexity of social identity has been termed "intersectionality," a concept coined by legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw - "Each identity intersects with the other to generate a more complex worldview than the one that would exist if any of us were ever truly able to walk through life with a singular identity. Oppressed identities further complicate this experience. This assertion -- that no single form of oppression is more important or dominant than another -- is key to understanding and combating the harmful and dehumanizing experiences faced by all manner of human beings, including all too many Black girls Actively engaging this framework in daily life creates places to expose, confront, and address questions of privilege. In this practice and in those open places, freedom lives."
This is they type of learning environment I intend to create for my EL students. My learners are ELs with rich and complex home and family lives. As their teacher I need to learn about my students, what makes them excited, how they like to interact with the world, etc. And then use that knowledge to help them build their own understanding of learning. Specifically, language learning. ]]> 2021-06-28 20:15:36 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1628898388 nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1634822987 "While the exact definition of high quality is the subject of many heated debates, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond offers a well-rounded description. She contends that quality teaching includes engaging students in active learning, creating intellectually ambitions tasks, using multiple teaching modalities, assessing student learning and adapting to the learning needs of students, creating supports, providing clear standards, reflection, and opportunities for revision, and developing a collaborative classroom in which all students have membership. this collaborative atmosphere is strengthened by a strong student-teacher relationship." 
and later,
"The extent to which family traditions and values mirror school expectations is important to the relationship between schools and families, as well as to the external motivation of the student. However, Black students' academic performance is more directly linked to their relationships to teachers, which may be problematic given that Black children are often labeled as "less conforming and more active," than their white counterparts, resulting in interactions with teachers that are "characterized by more criticism and less support." 
I would argue that this is also true of ELD students - classroom teachers often find it hard to connect with their ELLs and their families and little effort is given to integrating them into the classroom if the student does not explicitly try to be included.]]> 2021-07-02 12:00:56 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1634822987 nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1647886425 Austin Channing Brown]]> 2021-07-13 16:19:28 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1647886425 nnicodemus https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1647893440 Austin Channing Brown's book is a must read for educators and administrators who sincerely wish to understand systemic racism and some of the things they can do to combat it or even be an ally.
Channing Brown does such a phenomenal job of explaining without blaming but also holds white people accountable for their actions at the same time. She speaks of reconciliation at the end of her book and says, "I am convinced that one of the reasons white churches favor dialogue is that the parameters of dialogue can be easily manipulated to benefit whiteness. Tone policing takes priority over listening to the pain inflicted on people of color. People of color are told they should be nicer, kinder, more gracious, less angry in their delivery, or that white people's needs, feelings, and thoughts should be given equal weight. But we cannot negotiate our way to reconciliation. White people need to listen, to pause so that people of color can clearly articulate both the disappointment they've endured and what it would take for reparations to be made. Too often, dialogue functions as a stall tactic, allowing white people to believe they've done something heroic when the real work is yet to come." 
I hope to recommend this books to many people and re-read it again and again. There is so much for me to unpack as a white person operating within a system that gives me benefits people of color don't get the same benefits or even considerations from. ]]> 2021-07-13 16:26:13 UTC https://padlet.com/nnicodemus/Bookmarks/wish/1647893440