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New Rules

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Small Bites Friday Five 07-10-20:

20-30m – Listen to a conversation between Barbara Bray and I on embarking on the journey to create more equity in your classroom and community.

15-20m – Go to Openculture.com and sign up for free courses on “Black history” from Yale and Stanford.

10-15m – Buy a book, toy or doll that represents a culture other than your own.

5-10m – Read the doc that accompanies the reflection at Bbray.net for some hands-on try this, not that resources.

0-5m – Send whenweallvote.org to 5 people, tell them to check their registration status and remind them to vote in upcoming local elections.

If you are a white person born in the early 80s or before, I can only imagine that the world looks a little different today than the world you grew up in. And if you were born even earlier and were raised in a That 70s Show southern or heartland community, it must look downright crazy.

It must be difficult to understand that Mt. Rushmore and confederate flags aren’t just symbols of American pride or why “10 Little Indians” or “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” might be fine for history books but not university football fields or primary classrooms.

It must be hard to understand why there is protesting when the blacks have come so far and when there was even a black president. (Or, why you don’t say “the blacks”).

I can imagine that it hurts having your character impugned because your thoughts and opinions don’t line up with those on “the other side”. All of the new rules must be confusing and it can’t be easy to see the need for change when things have been chugging along just fine within your circle.

On the flip side, it must be difficult for people not satisfied with just drinking at the same fountains or going to the same schools. Maybe it’s exhausting pushing a train uphill all day, every day because job and economic opportunities are still too often just out of reach.

Perhaps it’s defeating for people to know that their sacred land was stolen under the harshest of conditions, but to still see how people flock to those lands, many unknowingly, to celebrate the American Heroes who perpetuated and sanctioned the violence.

If you are an American, it must be unthinkable to hear calls for shooting and tear gassing instead of calls for unity, especially when you grew up pledging allegiance to “one nation, under God, indivisible“.

Fact; if you are white, you may have a hard time “getting” what all the fuss is about and you may feel defensive when you hear words and phrases like Black lives matter, racism or white privilege.

Fact; if you are black, you likely can’t imagine why people don’t understand that you just want your life to matter as much as the next guy’s and that black communities are still playing catch up in every way. (FYI, Indigenous people, females and other minority groups, with the exception of some Asian males, likewise.)

Now that we know how hard it is for everybody these days, how about we talk about how we will handle those facts as teachers on one side or the other? If we are spending hours on Facebook ranting about “the other side” as portrayed by our favorite news outlet, we are all in for an even worse school re-opening than we fear.

Now that we know how hard it is for everybody, what will you do between now and August to make sure you can do your best for each and every one of your students?

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Guide Her Through the Night

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Small Bites Friday Five 07-03-20:

20-30m – Research at least one issue that directly affects your community and customize the template you set up last week to send an email to your elected officials.

15-20m – Watch a couple of mini episodes of the PBS series Traitors and Patriots.

10-15m – Listen to ‘White Fragility’ author Robin Diangelo on How To Start Anti-Racist Work in an 11+ minute interview with NPR. 

5-10m – Remember last week’s conversation you had with a young person on race? This week, reflect on the information you gathered. Do the people you talked to think like you? Is there room for expanding your opinions or your circle?

0-5m – Google #blackAtAndover or #BlackAt(enter institution name here), to find a rising number of social media accounts exposing racism at elite academic institutions.

If only, in honor of this 4th of July, we could end politically charged Covid and racial discrimination to rise from the ashes of this year and fly full staff in a glorious post-virus, post-racial time where we find America to be a land of liberty and justice for all.

It should be easy, at least the post racial part. Ending discrimination should be as easy as following the golden rule or loving thy neighbor as thyself (which, btw, includes wearing a mask). But somehow, something akin to self-preservation blocks us from delving into the possibility of complicity so that we have to work especially hard to face the fact that we’ve historically not treated others as we’d like to be treated. It seems too, that many are having great difficulty recognizing that this historical inhumanity is as American as apple pie.

A conversation with my friend Kellie made me see American self-preservation for the gaslighting it is. Why did it take a white educator to get me to even consider that the American practice of creating false historical narratives that selectively glorify some and diminish others as gaslighting? How could I have missed that? Because we in the Black community have also been fed the same narratives. We are taught to love our country in it’s whiteness which means we are taught disdain and disregard for our own culture by default; American history vs. Black history; Hulu’s movies vs. Hulu’s Black Stories; The Civil War vs. The Civil Rights Riots.

Every time our nation comes to a point of reckoning with race, white America is ripped apart, some taking stock but others digging in, refusing to see that the land grants and Jim Crow laws intentionally kept black families and communities from flourishing. Black Americans take stock as well, often grieving as we feel yet another seismic shift in the careful construct of the Black and American compartments of our psyche.

I have been taught to love and honor my country. I grew up a proud southerner and it hurts to think of my homeland as perpetuator of atrocities. But enslaving humans, Jim Crow laws and a for-profit prison system, well, there is nothing free or brave or even honorable about any of that.

As one nation under God, we are unwilling to reckon with the fact that we have not loved our neighbor as we love ourselves. We have not and do not treat others as we want to be treated, and as a nation, we have not embraced the Black community as the widows and fatherless we have made them to be, beginning with the middle passage and continuing through 401 years of systemic inequities that put the black community at a disadvantage.

The country that I love has the potential to become far greater than she has ever been, but only if we acknowledge the reality of our past. Beginning now, as we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence that did not include the independence of my forebears (well, most of my forebears, because, you know, #metoo was not a thing for enslaved girls and women), we have an opportunity. Instead of pretending that we should work to be as great as we once were in some imagined era of glory, let’s confront our past and make necessary changes within ourselves and our communities to make good on the promise of liberty and justice for all.

Happy 4th of July.

Guide Her Through the Night Read More »

A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action

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#SmallBites E3

Small Bites Friday Five 06-26-20:

20-30m – Set up a doc with contact info of https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials. Then create a basic “Dear Official” template. Use it often to quickly and efficiently let your voice be heard.

15-20m – Use Ballotpedia to find out when school board elections are and what’s at stake, then vote. Better yet, run for office or help support someone who will!

10-15m – Watch Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man from Emmanuel Acho.

5-10m – Remember last week’s conversation you had with a young person on race? This week talk with someone older than you. Again, don’t guide the conversation, just listen.

0-5m – Find an organization to support or donate to.

The recent protests and Covid19 have combined to spotlight inequities that have long plagued our country. People who don’t look like me are waking up to the reality that people who do look like me face daily. They are finding out that we are more likely to die early; in childbirth, of curable diseases, from violence. We make less money, hit glass ceilings before our less pigmented peers and are, as a community, experiencing the traumatic effects of the vestiges of enslavement, Jim Crow and systemic inequitable practices of the last 400 years.

People are beginning to have conversations about issues of racial inequities that are long overdue. I’m glad.

I’m also tired.

I am tired of big words and bigger concepts. How do I fight systemic racial discrimination and marginalization anyway? Do I use a sword? A pen? Expo Markers? A protest sign? How can I fight hate? With more trainings? With firings? With well-crafted laws? We’ve seen how well those work.

Yes, we need to talk, listen, have uncomfortable conversations. But if we are not taking some form of action while we are talking, listening and learning, we are getting smarter but not making an impact on students and communities. While you are reading the third chapter of White Fragility, a child is going hungry, a man is dying of preventable causes before he’s reached retirement and another top student is leaving an ivy league campus because the constant onslaught of microaggressions has started to affect her mental health (“Oh, you’re only here because of affirmative action, right?”).

Let me be clear, the talking, listening and learning are necessary. It’s just that they are not a precursor to action, not a phase that we complete before we go on to the action phase. The action phase has to happen now. If you’re not sure how to start, watch episode 3 of #Smallbites (and 1 and 2) to find out what you can do this week.

The world needs your voice, but it needs your hand to the plow too.

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Keep On Keeping On

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Small Bites Friday Five 06-19-20:

20-30m – Google anti-racism or something simple like “how to be a more culturally responsive teacher”. Nothing beats finding your own rabbit hole to fall into.

15-20m – Google “HBCU”, pick one and then read about its rich history and even consider giving your support. Here’s one option.

10-15m – Read or watch a social justice story from your favorite news outlet then read or watch a story covering the same topic from your least trusted news source. Reflect on perspective vs. fact.

5-10m – Have a conversation with at least one child or teen about race in America. Don’t proselytize, just listen. Consider it a fact-finding mission.

0-5m – Read “Teaching as Activism, Teaching as Care” from tolerance.org.

Every January I start a new health and fitness routine. Like clockwork. And every March I start the slow slide into the next January when I have to start all over again. The excitement of a new chance to do something big is always a huge draw at the year’s beginning. So is the likelihood that it won’t stick. According to a University of Scranton study, only 19% of those resolutions are kept long term.

The current social awakening to systemic disenfranchisement of marginalized populations bears every hallmark of a January 1st new beginning. Outrage and the opportunity for sweeping change is fueling a movement around the world. But I wonder, what will change look like 2 months or even 2 years from now?

The truth is, as much as we want to say we’ll keep pushing for change, life happens. You will have to learn new tech to teach in a blended environment, figure out how to work out without your 5AM spin class, give your personal kids more learning support or find new childcare for a totally new routine.

It will get cold and you won’t want to stand outside at a rally. Christmas will come and you may face balancing taking the kids to see grandma with Covid 2nd wave health and safety concerns.

Life will happen and, unless racism is causing you personal pain or at least personal difficulty, you will re-prioritize. You won’t want to, you may not even mean to but you will—unless you have a plan.

Decide now what your priorities are. Are you a letter writer? Grant writer? Check writer? Are you a relationship builder, library collection builder, a content connection builder? Do you see yourself making a difference with one? With a few? With many? In your family? In your classroom? In politics and policy?

Where and how can you keep pushing change forward when life hits? Whatever you can see yourself doing, make a plan now to do it when it’s cold, uncomfortable, busy and 100th on a list of 150 things you need to have done yesterday. Put your supports in place and make a plan to do it even when your best laid plan has gone wrong or made you the object of constant “oh-here-she-comes” eye-rolls.

Make a plan because when the protests stop, the real work will just be starting. Small Bites can be your go to. But even if it’s not, find one thing you can do even in the busiest of times because we can’t afford to lose one voice. We can’t afford to lose your voice.

You can get tired, you can get it wrong but you can’t give up.

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Times They Are A-Changin’

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Replay of tonight’s live edition of #SmallBites!

Small Bites Friday Five 06-12-20:

20-30m – Watch ABC’s Blackish or Mixed-ish for light fare through a social justice lens.

15-20m – Find the local city council and school board websites and inform yourself.

10-15m – Visit Tolerance.org’s magazine section and read one article.

5-10m– Check your voting status at whenweallvote.org and encourage one friend to do the same.

A Whole Zero Minutes– Don’t judge anyone else’s helping unless it’s doing harm.

– #SmallBites

With the launch of #SmallBites, I have set out to help those who want to create more equitable classrooms and communities. Many, in shock and outrage, are eagerly consuming resources and investing time and energy to learn about and stand against systemic inequities that have long plagued our society. I feel in that energy a world-wide awakening, even as some alte-Garde political and cultural regimes dig their heels in.

We decide if this will be a trend or a moment, if that “one day when the Glory comes” will be sooner rather than later. You can begin with strategies mentioned in #SmallBites. The weekly Friday Five will allow you to keep up the anti-racism marathon by allowing you to pace yourself and not get so overwhelmed that you give up. As you hit your stride, you can create some space to go deeper.

Unfortunately, every problem can’t be tackled only with strategies that take less than 30 minutes. Going to a protest takes a day, reading a book, a few days. Making lasting change for marginalized populations across the globe, a lifetime and more.

To that end, I have had inspiring conversations with white colleagues this week, in particular with Barbara Bray, author of Define Your Why. Those conversations have produced this work in progress that uses Helm’s framework of racial identity to help people identify where they are on the journey to becoming more culturally responsive.

If you find yourself wanting a heaping round of seconds after consuming #SmallBites, open the document, set a spell and sift through the links, book titles and social action sites. Cut on some Brad Paisley with LL (hey, I liked the song!) or Freedom Sounds while you do. Take what you need, leave the rest. This ain’t a clean your plate kind of party. Social responsibility is both necessary and personal.

For now, go fast–because it’s been too long in coming to go slow–but keep a sustainable pace, because we can’t afford to lose even one voice.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, so pop in to YouTube next week for a serving of #SmallBites and follow me on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Times They Are A-Changin’ Read More »

More Than Words

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How I came to create #SmallBites

If there ever was a modern martyr, George Floyd is one. His daughter’s declaration of “Daddy changed the world” was manifested in protests from Amsterdam to Zimbabwe. His death has begun policing policy reform change in Washington and in cities throughout the country and the world is saying his name as they search for ways to bring about change.

People all over the world are not only waking up to the sometimes brutal realities that BIPOCs face, but they are understanding that, like being born pretty, sometimes life comes with unearned privilege that is wielded, unwittingly causing harm.

If you are someone who wants to teach better, include better, be better, join me for Friday night’s 8PM central live launch of #SmallBites. Each week you’ll get a Friday 5 with 5 actionable steps you can use to help create a more level playing field for those of us who all too often never even get inside the ballpark. Want to ask a question? You can do that too.

Fighting racism is a full time job, and most of us already have full time jobs. You can’t do everything, but you can do just one thing. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

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Eat the Elephant

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For this week’s post, I’d like to invite you to read my latest article, “A Guide to Equity and Antiracism for Educators”, published by Edutopia. It’s all about actionable steps that you can take now.

I would also like to invite you to Small Bites, my YouTube channel soft re-launch, next Friday. If you’re familiar with the UN’s Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World, the concept is similar. Look for news on Twitter and Instagram.

We can’t eat an elephant all at once, but we can move forward if we commit to actionable steps that move us forward one bite at a time.

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What Cha’ Gonna Do…

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Last night, as I scrolled and double-tapped my way through post after post of black squares for #BlackoutTuesday, after my friends across the globe assured me that they stand with the us in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and halting mixes of the above, I felt hope. I felt the hope of 2008. I felt the hope of MLK and Johnson. I felt the hope of our collective ancestors crossing the Mason-Dixon line. Even as I read of fires, and of the reprehensible hate-stoking by our nations fearmongers, I felt hope.

The overwhelming support of my less melanated sisters and brothers enveloped me in a warmth and kindled the hope that this time, we just might take a step forward in our fight against prejudice, racism and the inequities that have been plaguing our country since European settlers arrived here and created an Indian problem.

I’ve talked to friends and I’m not the only one who felt that hope. It felt significant. Hope can kindle change bigger than any riot fire IF the outrage of every individual is translated into action. Yes, fighting for social justice is a big ticket challenge. But like eating an elephant, if you do it one small bite at a time, it’ll get done, just start. Here are 5 things you can do today to advance the cause of equity and social justice.

If You Have at least 5 minutes:

If You Have at least 15 minutes:

If You Have At Least 30 minutes:

  • Watch an episode of Blackish. It’s light fare, but the lessons and issues tackled are not.

Conquering, enslaving and oppressing other humans is not a new concept, it is, unfortunately, the concept that has fueled competing powers since the beginning of time. Keeping that in mind, fighting for social justice is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. If you are just joining this fight, don’t get so overwhelmed now that you lose steam. Take small bites. That doesn’t mean don’t act with urgency, we need revolutionary change now. I’m just reminding you to take action at a sustainable pace. Set a measurable, attainable goal for today, for this week, for this year.

You have no idea how moved I have been at the great outpouring of solidarity. Now the question is, how will you translate that into action. What cha’ gonna do?

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What’s Going On

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While being interviewed this week for Ted Nesloney’s #tellyourstory series, we talked a little about equity. He mentioned, rightly so, that the word equity is kind of “buzzy”, meaning that it’s one of the words popularly thrown around in education these days. He asked me what equity means to me. My encapsulated reply is that equity means doing the very best you can do for the student standing right in front of you.

When we think of the Big Concepts surrounding equity, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Be a culturally responsive educator. Decolonize your classroom. Teach anti-racist curriculum. Where do you start? How do you start? How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you begin to make your corner of the world a more equitable place as an educator? By doing the best for the one student standing in front of you.

Let me be clear: systemic racism is a big problem in the US and across the world and this week we have seen it play out in ugly ways in our country, once again. However, seeing the problem, acknowledging the problem, being aware of the symptoms and solutions of the problem and maybe even seeing your own part in the problem is not going to change anything unless you do one thing: Do your very best for the student standing in front of you. A child standing in front of you needs to know 3 things:

  • You value all students;
  • Every student deserves to be valued;
  • If someone is not valued, you will use your voice to help make sure that they are.

If every teacher would model and teach those three things, we could stop defining terms that essentially all mean the same thing: value others just as you value yourself (if you’re so inclined, you may recognize this as one of the 10 commandments). If every teacher had been teaching those three things, Amy Cooper might have grown up to be a person who leashed her dog instead of pulling the Fear Of The Black Man card. If teachers had been teaching students to value others all along, George Floyd would likely still be alive.

If every teacher would do the best for each child in front of them by valuing all students and speaking out against those who don’t, I wouldn’t have to worry about my teenager driving/running/living while black. That’s a hashtag, you know, #livingwhileblack. My pride and joy, a well-liked 16 year-old kid, who is now taller than I am, is perceived by the world as a black man, and we see what happens to black men, even when they are Harvard educated birders or lying faced down, pleading for breath as a peace officer’s knee crushes the life out of them.

Educators, if you are reading this and thinking that my recipe for eradicating racism is overly simple, I’ll concede that. I just don’t understand why it can’t be.

As a teacher, how can I not use my voice to speak out against wrong and teach my students to do the same? How can I not understand that melanin can mean convictions and rogue justice death sentences, often without vindication? How can I not understand that #blacklivesmatter means that students in your class, who look like me, don’t feel like their lives matter as much as the lives of whites because of what we experience and what we see happening in our communities.

As an educator, how can you not want to hug them and protect them and make sure that everyone who does NOT look like them knows that it’s not ok that they feel that way. It’s not ok that they die early and often for reasons rooted in systemic disenfranchisement, reasons that should make every educator into an activist, even if it’s only for one child at a time.

You want a more equitable classroom? Do your very best for the student standing in front of you. Make your campus a place where fairness and justice are not regulated by race, class, ideology or popularity. Esteem and celebrate those whose stories and histories you may have to look beyond the textbook for. When you read the painful stories of those who are not being valued, don’t look away. Teach your students the truth about what happens to people of color and the ugly historical truths surrounding the ugly present realities. Then teach them that they can make a difference. Send cards and letters to mothers of the slain, work with organizations who fight for social justice and teach your students that the grief we feel today will lessen if they value those who look like them– and those who don’t.

Don’t worry about the Big Concepts surrounding equity. Just do your best for the student that’s standing in front of you.

What’s Going On Read More »

Imagine

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Twitter Chat Bitmoji Intro (3)

For those who know me from Twitter, you may know that I am a member of a group of educators that host the popular Saturday morning #CrazyPLN chat. One of this week’s questions was, “What’s your greatest fear about reopening in fall?” That one gave me pause. I have been reading about various district fall plans and contingencies much like Kermit sipping tea, as very much the outsider. Today’s question tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me that this coming fall, fraught with all of it’s challenges, is my world and the world of people I care about. My students will rely on me to provide calm, consistency, courage, communication and care–my 5 Cs of education in the Covid era. It’s hard to do that if I am freaking out–which after this morning’s discourse, I kinda was.

The inequities are being unearthed (for those for whom they were still earthed) and those who control the purse strings are having to consider making decisions based on human need and the fact that, if we are to remain a first world country, we have to decide how to be capitalists and care for the most vulnerable among us. With minority communities being hit hardest by Corona mortality, digital inequities, job loss and food insecurity, 30-40% of the country will suffer lasting, life trajectory altering consequences related to Covid-19. Again, that’s only minority communities. White households experienced a 10% jump in unemployment and our country’s overall employment rate is 14.7%.

While the families represented in our school buildings are suffering, the education sector layoffs have already started with some larger districts predicting 15-25% revenue loss, according to the Washington Post.

Then there is the social distancing piece of the puzzle, with the average square footage per classroom woefully inadequate to allow 6 feet of distance between students, if they even want to be distant. Because, you know, kindergartners never touch each other or their teachers and no one in secondary ever has a boyfriend or girlfriend in school. Add to all that the scarcity of sanitation supplies and toilet paper and…and…honestly, thinking of it all gave me the sweats and a headache.

But then I remembered that this situation, with all it’s uncertainty, is also rife with opportunities and rewards. Spoiler alert, fall will not look like any school opening we’ve ever known and that’s really not a bad thing. Yes, I miss the certainty of knowing just what it will look like, but I am ecstatic that we have to re-imagine the institution of education and its role in our society. I am calmed by the front line workers I know who invest deeply in their students, all while battling their own fears. If we concentrate on those 5 Cs–calm, consistency, courage, communication and care, I can imagine us fighting like heck to get our students to an even better place than they would have been if we’d maintained the status quo. I’m not so much of a naïf that I believe we will magically emerge stronger and better like a Tiktok #dontrush challenge. There will be painful loss, change and more than a few missteps on the way to getting it right. But I do know that if we could transform our whole existing system to an online one within days, we can emerge from any dust with a new vision for educating children that reflects the people and society we are now.

What we’ve been doing hasn’t been working for a long time and now, we have the opportunity do better. Now we’ll have to do better, lean in, try new things. If you’re not sure what new things, read the post below, “From A Distance” for some ideas. Or, I’ll be hosting a virtual learning session Tuesday at 4:30 with the incredible Traci Nicole Smith, PhD to talk about how we can better connect. Join us!

Imagine Read More »