Hedreich Nichols

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Uptown Girl

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Small Bites Friday Five 09-18-20:

PE – Read this article that talks about a Black American PE teacher talking, much like me tonight, about her privilege.  Then reflect with your students on how— and why— privilege affects the opportunity to play, or even watch sports.

Math – Investigate this overview on how to “find an issue that fits the math, not the other way around”, from Radical Math.

ELL – Tolerance.org for the win again with ELL/ESL lessons on identity exploration.

ELA – Watch this Ted video from the passionate, ‘articulate’, spoken word “tri-tongued” artist, Jamila Lyiscott to get perspective on the different ways we English. Then reflect with your students on the different ways we talk to different audiences.

STEM – Get the curriculum from the underrepresentation project designed to examine and address inequities and inclusion in science.

My son and I have a family culture of helping. We volunteer, help out at missions and food banks, build houses (him, not me), work telephone banks (me not him) and do other things that are all about serving others. That’s important to us and it goes back for generations, if the stories my great grandmother told are to be believed.

We are able to do those things because we are privileged. Not a lot of little girls from my South Park neighborhood in Houston grew up and spent half their adult life in the Alps teaching and performing. Living in the middle of Europe as a Black musician, I was privileged to know life as an American, not a hyphen-American. That privilege and the achievement that comes along with it, has given me blind spots. My talent made room for me. My mother’s reputation as a singer and composer opened doors for me. I may have worked hard to make something of all that, but I earned none of it.

My son has inherited that privilege and then some. He is a generous spirited human who allows his momma to tell his stories. Even in his generosity, he has blind spots. So do I, and my guess is, if you are here, you do too.

This year, we can’t afford to ignore our blind spots. We can assume nothing. We talk about devices and meal service for our students, but do we really know if they are hungry? Are they are sharing a phone at a cousin’s house to do assignments? Are they not answering emails because they lost their home and phone service?

As you read this article, I am simply asking that you remember, your normal may not be everyone’s. Your students may have needs that you could never imagine. “No, everyone has not gone to the orchestra, son”. And no, every one of your kids may not have even their most basic needs met.

As you go through this year, pay special attention. If you sense a need, see how you might help. Find the services in your area that your students might need or get together with a group of friends to provide your own set of resources.

Yes, we are taxed beyond measure this year, but remember your why. One less grade in the gradebook won’t make a difference, but the time you take to notice and help fulfill a child’s basic needs will.

Uptown Girl Read More »

Peaceable Kingdom

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Small Bites Friday Five 09-11-20

20-30m – Listen to the podcast Whiteness Visible part 2 from the Teaching While White website to gain perspective on various stories and viewpoints taught as history.

15-20m – Read how our country’s reckoning with race affects students—in their own words, also from the TWW website.  

10-15m – Comb through the Center For Restorative Practice resources for a rich selection of materials for SEL and culturally responsive culture building.   

5-10m – Watch this PBS Black Folks Don’t episode to find out about the complicated history of Black people and the medical community.

0-5m – Watch students talk about their first experiences with racism and reflect on what you can do to make sure other children don’t keep having those experiences.  

BONUS: If you are looking for an excellent set of quality resources on the manifold, oft untold stories of Americans, visit the Pulitzer Center’s educational programming page.

On the anniversary of one of the most devastating attacks on American soil, I cannot help but think about how hatred causes so much pain. I can’t help but think about the loss that mothers, husbands and children endured because of hatred. I can’t help but think that even though we know that nothing good comes of it, we so often choose to hate.

Love and hate are not feelings, they are verbs. If you say you feel love but your actions don’t back that up, it’s not love. If you say you hate no one but spend your time relentlessly attacking those who think, believe or look differently, you may want to redefine what hatred really means.

The destructive forces of overt and covert hatred are ripping our nation apart because of our refusal to reckon with our origin story. Our nation is great but our greatness is in peril because we refuse to confront our flaws in order to fully realize that greatness.

Some of the the saddest moments for me in recent history have been watching our nation’s status as a full democracy erode when our country was downgraded to a flawed democracy. The UN has warned us about racist rhetoric and admonished us about criminal justice reform.

My patriotic soul wails. WE are the protectors of democracy. WE are the ones who issue human rights sanctions and warnings. And now, WE are the nation being warned. We don’t need foreign terrorists to destroy us. Our hatred is as powerful and destructive as any terrorist act.

This morning, I had the honor of speaking for the New York Public Library’s back to school kickoff. I was asked what we should do in our libraries, classrooms, lives, to dismantle systematic racism. My reply was simply that we can’t–unless we do it one brick at a time. We can’t change the system until we change ourselves, our families, our own spheres of influence. We can’t do it until we confront our flaws with the purpose of being better.

As we remember the incredible loss at the hands of terrorists, the best possible way to honor loss of life, whether through wars or acts of terrorism, is to finally reckon with the hatred and incongruence woven through our nation’s fabric.

In support of our nation’s greatness, we have to confront our past together, no matter how painful. As Benjamin Franklin said, we must “join or die”. If we don’t, we won’t need outsiders to bring destruction.

Peaceable Kingdom Read More »

Divide

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Catch up on the latest episodes of Small Bites!

Small Bites Friday Five 09-04-20

20-30m – Listen to Howard University Alumnus Chadwick Boseman address the 2018 graduating class in the HBCU’s 150th commencement address.

15-20m – Listen to 1st and 2nd person stories on this set of podcasts from Historically Black.

10-15m –Listen to the first person stories of people who survived the Tulsa Black Wallstreet Bombing.

5-10m – Read this Smithsonian Mag article on looking back honestly at our founding fathers, judging neither by the imagined whole, nor ugly part.

0-5m – Read about racism and immigration history in the US which highlights important stories of many peoples afflicted by racist policies.

In a year in which

  • COVID-19 has killed over 13,000 to date;
  • thousands of students cannot access learning;
  • almost 3 million people have filed for unemployment and
  • homelessness is so rampant that even the government created homeless camps–already an ignominy–cannot house them;

police funding outpaces every other budget item in Texas major cities. Think about that for a minute. In a year in which local shelters, schools, food pantries, social services and mental health support organizations are struggling to meet the needs of our communities, we believe that policing is the number one concern. And communities like Austin who are reallocating a small portion of funding into proactive community programming are being threatened with sanctions.

What would happen if more money was poured into education than policing? What if money was poured into eradicating hunger and mental health issues instead of funding prisons? What would happen if we valued humanity by investing in humanity?

Defund the police was the most ridiculous slogan I heard this year–until I realized how much more money we put into policing than into preventing the need for policing.

Before you believe the false narrative that we need protection because “some people just want to live like animals” let me ask you: How many generations out of slavery is your family? How many generations out of Jim Crow is your family?

My great grandmother was born in 1892, one generation out of slavery. She lived her life, until her 80s, under the Jim Crow laws of the south. She helped raise me and lived long enough to see me through high school graduation and my first year in college. The stories I heard about the Jim Crow south are first hand, the stories of field work still fresh in the minds of Mommie’s friends who came to visit in my early childhood.

I represent the first post Jim Crow generation in my family.

Does that put criminality and poverty in perspective? Lack of education, access and opportunity has plagued the black community since we were forced on to slave ships.

I represent the first post Jim Crow generation in my family: the first generation in which the law has supported my choice of school, neighborhood, job, bank and hospital–as long as I can pay for access. And therein lies the problem. The Black community on the whole has not had generations to build, to stand on the shoulders of parents who achieved in the generations before. That’s why talking about slavery or Jim Crow isn’t divisive, it’s simply the connection between poverty and crime, between education and lack, between generations of wealth building and generations of fighting to be twice as good to get half as much.

Before you decide what is divisive, ask yourself if you would rather look away than see that the problem lies not with one community of “thugs and criminals” it lies with the vestiges of what a community has lived through.

And before you decry that connection as divisive, please, consider whether your own upbringing gave you opportunities that others did not have. I know mine did, one of them being the divisive language my great grandmother used in telling me her first person stories so that I would know the truth.

Divide Read More »

What Child is This

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Catch up on episodes 1-11 at YouTube/Hedreich

Small Bites Friday Five 08-28-20:

History – Explore US history through first person narratives with this lesson plan from EdSitement.

Language Acquisition – Integrate this resource that teaches language proficiency beginning with the question, “Where does our food come from?”

STEM/Theater – Pull from this tolerance.org resource on how power determines access.

Art/Design – Explore and discuss art and artifacts from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

PE – In the wake of the brutal shooting of Jacob Blake, ask students why they believe players boycotted their games in major league sports.

This week as I settled into a new school year, I thought about my kids. I thought about the check-ins that I have done and how they have been brave in the face of so much upheaval. So many of them know someone who was sick or died from COVID related illnesses. Some of them were sick themselves. Some of their families have suffered financial or job loss.

And then, there is my own family to look after, and of course a job that, at the moment, takes and takes. All of those things should have been uppermost in my mind this week.

But what kept me up at night is the fact that with so much to think about and to do, my mind has kept coming back to George Floyd, and now to Jacob Blake.

My mind has gone back to my son’s new height and facial hair, and how that has caused him to suddenly be a target.

I thought about how many of my colleagues can think about school reopening and never consider the upside of COVID: In a year when my child is driving, I am thankful that he’s mostly home.

As you move toward school reopening, remember that equity practices are not something that you can put on the back burner until you get Schoology sorted out. You have to make them a priority every single day. You have to move forward with the same urgency that you did after George Floyd’s death.

You have to do it as if your child’s life depends on it–because my child’s does.

What Child is This Read More »

Everybody Everybody

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Small Bites Friday Five 08-21-20:

PE – Adapt this lesson about being a team player and fairness from Tolerance.org to your grade level.

Math – Expose students to diverse math experts with this A Not Old Dead White Dude Mathematician list from Annie Perkins.

Science –Teach about Race as a social construct using the Smithsonian Institute’s Evolution of Human Skin Color. (Courtesy of Bonnie Nieves)

ELA – Choose great new classics from the We Need Diverse Books extensive list of, well, diverse books.

Fine Arts – Visit Tolerance.org and do a content search for theater, art or lessons like Sounds of Change for secondary music.  

On the weekend I borrowed a few historical books for my son from a dear friend. My son is more into reading notes on a page than words on a page, but this really caught his attention. As he finished the first 30 or 40 pages, he told me not only that he was learning a lot, but also that he had never learned any of what he was reading in school. By now, you may have guessed, this was a book on prominent Black Americans.

It seems that my son has learned little more about people who look like him than I did many moons ago. He’s learned little more than he would have, had we still been living in the Alps where he was born. He’s at an age where his own thirst for knowledge led him to finish the book in a record 3 days and oh the stories he’s regaled me with!

I wonder, how many students leave high school never knowing about Fannie Lou Hamer who endured child labor, forced sterilization and life-long injuries for being beaten for trying to vote; but went on to found the Freedom Democratic Party and the Women’s National Political Caucus.

How many students eat PBJs for lunch without knowing that scientist George Washington Carver found over 300 other uses for the peanut and introduced farming sustainability to the south.

How often are Black hairstyles the topic of conversation while early Black female tycoons who revolutionized the Black hair industry go unknown? How about watching the Netflix movie on Madame C.J. Walker to start you off?

The point is, America is diverse and so are her stories. Don’t wait until November to honor the stories of the indigenous peoples of North America. Don’t wait until September to honor Hispanics or February to honor Blacks. Most of all, don’t wait on your humanities department to provide knowledge that we all need to celebrate diversity and move towards more equitable campuses and communities.

Whatever your content is, you can help your students to be more knowledgeable and more inclusive. All you have to do is start.

Everybody Everybody Read More »

(#TeacherTurnout) Tuesday

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#SmallBites e10 LIVE! Watch the latest episodes on my YouTube channel.

Small Bites Friday Five 08-14-20:

20-30m – Sort through resources at NEA’s Black Lives Matter at School site and choose activities for the coming school year.

15-20m – Watch episodes 3, 4 and 5 of Small Bites. Use the info to make an impact on Tuesdays (see below).

10-15m –Listen to the brilliant young voices of the Social Justice Poets on NEA’s Youtube channel.  

5-10m – Paste your latest 10 social media posts into WorditOut.com to get a snapshot of what’s important to you. Use the information for crafting your Tuesday message.

0-5m – Introducing #TeacherTurnout Tuesday. Make Tuesday your day to let elected officials know what they are doing well and what they can do better.

If there is one unifying theme in my blog and in #SmallBites, it’s social action. There can be no equity without action. There can be no inclusion without each one of us pushing for social justice. Maybe your pushing is marching with a sign. Maybe your pushing is ordering a novel by an author not on the “classics” list. Maybe your pushing for social justice is coming here to read and listen until you feel brave enough to step out.

Whatever your brand of pushing for equity is, it’s for sure easier when we do it together. The loud ones and the quiet ones. The ones who have been at the party forever and the ones who just arrived.

Tuesday is our chance. You’re on social media anyway, so whatever your platform of choice is, make Tuesday your day to tell elected officials how they are excelling or how they need to change to better meet the needs of the communities they serve. Educators wear so many hats, we have our fingers on the pulse of our communities in a way that no politician ever could, so here’s my ask:

Every Tuesday, send a post, tweet, email, letter or make a call to an elected official. It can be someone local, state or national. We may not all agree on what’s going right and what’s going wrong, but if nothing else, COVID has shown us that our voices are too often not taken into consideration even when things directly affect us.

Using the hashtag #TeacherTurnout, let’s make sure that our voices are heard and that the people we elect know that we are a creative, powerful, force to be reckoned with, unafraid to stand up for what we believe in.

(#TeacherTurnout) Tuesday Read More »

Different

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Diversity is NOT Equity. Watch Episodes 1-8 at Youtube/Hedreich

Small Bites Friday Five 08-7-20:

20-30m – Watch the rest of Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise on PBS.

15-20m – Check out Burbank High School’s curated Justice in June resources.

10-15m –Reflect on Kellie Bahri’s ITEA (Inquiry-Truth-Empathy-Action) learning framework and article.

5-10m – Watch Kenyona “Sunny” Matthews talk about how she hates diversity. Funny and poignant.

0-5m – Pick a Small Bites episode or blog you missed and catch up.

While talking to Chuck Poole on a recent episode of his Teacher Summit live series, we started talking about the HUGE difference between two words that are often used interchangeably, ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’.

When talking about education in the classroom or workplace, the Big Three, diversity, equity and inclusion or, ‘DEI’, are always a part of the conversation. So often do we use the three terms together, in fact, that they have come to mean the same thing in the hearts and minds of many.

Let’s be clear, those terms are not coequal. Diversity means we all have a seat at the table. But equity means that each person at the table is being served dinner. Further, the dinner meets the unique needs of each individual. Is it equitable to serve a Philly cheesesteak to someone who is gluten and lactose intolerant? Umm, no. Is it equitable to serve turkey and dressing to a vegan? Again, no. Well meaning offerings to diverse students without understanding and considering their unique needs will never lead to equity.

Some ways to better understand the needs of diverse students:

Until we start focusing on the needs of diverse students in all the ways they are diverse, we will be able to celebrate diversity but not reap the benefits of equity.

Small Bites Episode 10!

Next week, join me for a frank conversation on equity and social justice for the new school year. Bring your questions and I’ll see you on YouTube at 8PM Central–LIVE!

Different Read More »

Brothers in Arms

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Visit my YouTube channel for previous Small Bites episodes.

Small Bites Friday Five 07-31-20:

20-30m – Watch the next 30 minutes of Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise on PBS.

15-20m – Research the qualified immunity police laws in your city.

10-15m –Review Kahn Academy’s lesson on Richard Nixon employing the Southern Strategy in 1968 and explore the hyperlinked resources.

5-10m – Review the 5Ds of bystander intervention; Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct. You can even take a training and download an infrographic to share.

0-5m – Drop “late to the party” from your vocabulary. Shaming someone for arriving whenever they arrive is not cool. Take zero minutes and stop.

“Teaching, for me, has always been a vehicle. A vehicle for freedom…Teaching is great power” — Jamilah Pitts

If you never read Teaching as Activism, Teaching as Care, now is the time to read it. With so many of us feeling helpless in the face of tsunami sized waves of a politicized pandemic, protests and schools reopening, teaching can be the place where we can remember how powerful we really are.

Watching the footage of John Lewis on Edmund Pettus bridge in 1965 and then similar violent footage of protests this year have caused me to think about my own role in creating change. Yes, there is Small Bites. Yes, I am raising a son to be respectful and also vocal in the face of injustice. But knowing that my son could be hurt or killed for using his voice, even respectfully, causes me to want to do more.

Am I intentional in my classroom? Am I using the opportunities presented in curriculum to teach my students to connect learning to the larger issues of health, welfare and social justice? Probably not as much as I could.

Whether online or face to face, we have the ability to help our students to think about the happenings around them. We have the ability to let them know that their voices are valuable now, that they can act now. Tilly Krishna is acting now with her antiracism calendar on Instagram. Gabby and Gigi are acting now, already releasing their third book. Global Youth Media is acting now modeling ethical journalism.

We can use our classrooms to help students think critically and disagree civilly. We can let them tell us what they want to do now to make a difference and let them learn 21st century competencies along the way.

There are many ways to make a difference, to be an activist. You can write letters or even send social media posts to the appropriate elected officials. Students who can’t yet vote already have this power. Teachers can teach through the lens of social justice.

You don’t have to march to protest. Learning about different perspectives on history and sharing those with your students is a way to say that silencing voices is not ok.

You don’t have to march to protest. Telling a colleague that you acknowledge his struggle is powerful. Telling a peer that her comments don’t leave room for other perspectives is critical.

You don’t have to march to protest. But like we tell our students, if you see something say something. Use the links above to do just that and click on the last 3 posts on the right to go back and delve into the resources and strategies that Small Bites offers.

You don’t have to march to protest, but you do have to use your voice for good. It’s activism, it’s care, it’s good teaching.

Brothers in Arms Read More »

If A Picture Paints a Thousand Words

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Visit my YouTube channel for previous Small Bites episodes.

Small Bites Friday Five 07-24-20:

20-30m – Watch 30 minutes of Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise.

15-20m – Visit Yaritza Villalba’s website with history, engagement and equity resources.

10-15m –Review Kahn Academy’s lesson on Richard Nixon employing the ‘Southern Strategy’ in 1968 and explore the hyperlinked resources.

5-10m – Buy a mask, support a cause. You’ll find several companies designing tons of styles to support various causes.

0-5m – Follow Antiracism Calendar on Instagram from 16 year old Tilly Krishna out of Vermont.

When John Lewis died last week, I realized that I, like most Americans, knew very little about the man, the civil rights icon who organized with Martin Luther King, won a Freedom Medal from President Obama and fought for human rights, from the marches on Washington to the congressional halls of Washington.

I knew we’d lost someone important but I didn’t realize the depth of his lived experience. If a picture paints a thousand words, then video footage speaks volumes. John Lewis’ life is a testament to tenacity and a deep well of hope; hope, not as a strategy, but hope that breathed life into decades of fighting and winning in a system stacked against people who looked like him.

Through reading John Lewis’ stories, I found raw footage of the civil rights protests. The brutality of the attacks against the marchers in Selma, the Little Rock Nine or even the threats against a 6 year old Ruby Bridges made my heart hurt. Looking at the ugliness just below the surface of our founding principles of freedom is difficult, painful.

When we look back on the protests of the 1960s now, we use words like powerful, world changing, heroic, but those were not the words being used then. They are often not the words used now, as protests against police brutality and systemic racism continue.

Much has changed since the 1960s but too much hasn’t. Now that we are beginning to understand that racism is about a system built on stacked inequities, I hope that we, as a nation, won’t look away.

My question to you is, what side of history will you be on? Will you turn away or start your own journey to help realize the dream of equality still deferred for so many?

Even if you have been a supporter of racially divisive rhetoric until now, it’s never too late to change. Big steps and baby steps, just keep moving forward. Our communities depend on it, our future as a great country depends on it. And whether you believe it or not, your children’s future depends on us owning our wrongs and righting them so we can move forward.

We are in the middle of a movement and everyone is welcome to the party, late or not.

If A Picture Paints a Thousand Words Read More »

I’m Not Your Super(wo)man

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Visit my YouTube channel for previous Small Bites episodes.

Small Bites Friday Five 07-17-20:

20-30m – Delve into Jorge Valenzuela’s SEL strategy article from Teacher2Teacher.

15-20m – Visit the National Child Traumatic Stress Network website and choose resources you can use to support students in the coming months.

10-15m – Have conversations with colleagues and admin to figure out about how you can best support each other.

5-10m – Read Why Are Blacks Dying at Higher Rates From Covid to get an idea of how lack of equity means more than just gaps in education and income.

0-5m – Wear a mask, wash your hands and refrain from gathering in crowds, especially if you are in an area where COVID cases are spiking.

Most teachers I know are not in education for the paycheck. They are not in it for the summers folks think they have off and they certainly don’t do it for the prestige. The teachers that I know are dedicated, capable and will leave it all on the field for their kids.

Sadly, these same dedicated professionals are being cast as not only unwilling to work, but they are also seen as unworthy of consideration as plans are being made to reopen schools.

In Texas and many other states, not only teachers, but also districts have been emasculated and left out of the decision making process.

The response from teachers across the country has been colossal. Teachers used to “doing it for the kids” recognize that this is not about the kids and no amount of guilt is making us believe that it is. We are not willing to watch even one of our students or colleagues die, and we are certainly not willing to sacrifice the health of our families to do it, not if we have any say in the matter.

What does this mean for us? It means that each of us has to decide if we risk lives or livelihood. Or it means we risk the health and welfare of our communities because losing our income or our educational funding is simply not an option. Maybe it means asking for a leave, taking a paycut and dealing with the personal economic consequences. Maybe, for some, it means not understanding what the fuss is all about and being at odds with teachers who are expressing fear for their safety and the safety of others around them. Whatever your stance right now, it is bound together with anxiety, stress and possibly fear.

Our students will also return full of anxiety and fear. Between COVID exposed inequities, loss, economic distress and the protests, we are experiencing trauma as a nation and that trauma will show up in our f2f or virtual classes in a few short weeks. Unlike loss, our trauma is ongoing and our most vulnerable students will need us even more. Students will need us to be aware of signals for help and even codes like posts about pasta on social media. SEL will have to be a priority and if your school isn’t yet equipped, Casel has excellent SEL resources for helping students during the COVID crisis.

What are you doing to prepare personally? Are you bingeing on news and COVID statistics or are you being mindful? Are you staying awake late mulling over possible scenarios or are you practicing wellness in in a way that brings you peace? Summer will be over soon and we will have to be prepared to meet our students where they are.

You can’t pour from an empty cup so I implore you, as you go through the resources to help your students learn while they manage grief, anxiety and traumatic experiences, make sure that you are practicing self-care. As much as we say teaching is our superpower, we can’t take it all on. The best way for you to take care of your students is for you to take care of yourself.

I’m Not Your Super(wo)man Read More »