Seattle Teacher March for Black Lives Matter

Wow!

Seattle Teachers Plan Black Lives Matter Demonstration

About 1,000 teachers have united for the event, which is supported by the school district and the Seattle Parent Teacher Student Association. 

Teachers in the Seattle Public Schools district have planned a Black Lives Matter event next week to coincide with an effort by the school district to close the gap of opportunity between students of different races.

KIRO 7 reports that about 1,000 teachers have ordered Black Lives Matter T-shirts that will be worn Oct. 19 during an event called Black Lives Matter in the Seattle Public Schools, a move that is endorsed by Seattle Education Association, the labor organization that represents more than 5,500 educators.

Teachers at Seattle’s John Muir Elementary School took part in a similar event Sept. 16, wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts and hosting Black Men Uniting to Change the Narrative, during which black men from the community welcomed kids to school. KIRO 7 reports that the event was almost canceled after the school received threats of violence, but the school staff decided to have the event anyway.

Jesse Hagopian, a teacher at Seattle’s Garfield High School, told KIRO 7 that the threat against John Muir was made by a white supremacist and that Seattle teachers responded by taking the event districtwide.

“I’m going to be promoting the concept that black lives matter and that my black students’ lives matter in my classroom, in the school district,” Hagopian said. “But I want my students to grapple with the issues that the Black Lives Matter movement has raised. And I want them to be able to understand the criticisms of the movement. … I want them to be able to come up with their own decision about what this movement really means.”

KIRO 7 asked Hagopian how he would respond to those who say, “All lives matter.”

“If all lives matter, then black lives would matter,” Hagopian said.

The Seattle Public Schools district respects the teachers’ right to express themselves. A district spokesperson told KIRO 7 that the T-shirts are a good visual, and they hope that the message inspires people to do the work of eliminating opportunity gaps, an effort the district itself is focused on. A campaign highlighting the district’s efforts is also planned for next week.

In addition to the district, the Seattle Parent Teacher Student Association has come out in support of the educators.

The event Oct. 19 will culminate in a rally featuring parents, students, activists and Grammy Award-winning artist Kimya Dawson in the evening.

 

Teaching More Than the Three R’s in Texas

Not only do the conservatwerps tweak the textbooks in Texas…They have a propensity to tweak the kids.

Texas on record-setting pace for inappropriate teacher-student relationships

Reports of Texas teachers having inappropriate relationships with students are on track to beat last year’s record total.

The Texas Education Agency reports it has launched 162 investigations of reported inappropriate teacher-student relationships between Sept. 1 and May 31. The Amarillo Globe-News reports that the agency had 188 investigations last fiscal year, marking at least the fifth year of growth in a row.

The issue in Texas shot back into the national spotlight after it was revealed last week that former Houston-area teacher Alexandria Vera, 24, had been impregnated by a then-13-year-old former student.

Court documents allege she was introduced to his family as the boy’s girlfriend, and the woman said that his parents supported the relationship and invited her to family gatherings. She reportedly said she told a school district investigator the family was “very supportive and excited” when she disclosed her pregnancy. She allegedly said she and the boy “love each other.”

According to the probable cause document, she aborted the pregnancy after a child welfare investigator questioned her in February about the relationship, which she denied at the time.

Texas lawmakers could address the topic of such relationships during next year’s legislative session. The state Senate held a hearing on the subject in December, and the Texas House Public Education Committee took similar testimony last month. At the House committee hearing, lawmakers and testimony from experts blamed social media.

 

A System That Cares…

As a kid growing up in segregated Virginia…

My Mother was a primary School Teacher. Besides learning to write in perfect letters in both cursive and block letter, she insisted that every piece of paper I handed in look perfect.

She would often correct papers at home, after dinner, One day, when I was in about 3rd grade,  noticing that some of the papers had grease stains on them, I asked why. That question led to a sit down, which opened my eyes to realities beyond our black middle class home. She told me that some of the kids I went to school with lived in homes where the only place to do homework was at the kitchen table. They had no other place to go, and sometimes he food stains got on the papers as their mother was preparing dinner. I had honestly never considered that some of my friends lived in small, very old homes, where 5 or 6 kids tried to live in in 2-3 bedrooms. Scotty was my friend who played baseball after class….It never occurred to me that anything wasn’t as it should be, or that his home life would be any different than my own.

She organized a food and supplies drives through her Sorority and Church, and very quietly made sure these kids had enough food, clothing, and supplies – often delivering them herself, after sending a note home with the kids – who often didn’t have telephones in their homes. I went with her to deliver some of the supplies, and what I saw truly changed my worldview…I got strict orders never to discuss any of it, ever with my friends or school mates. It was our secret for many years.

The black community looked after the black community in those days…Because nobody else would. And did so in a way to try and preserve the dignity of those receiving aid. My Ebony and Jet reading dumb behind, never thought about it until then.

Now I grew up in what has consistently been ranked by those who keep track of such things as one of the 5 or 6 wealthiest counties in America. After desegregation, many of the white teachers were shocked to learn that abject poverty (both black and white) existed in the cracks and crevices of our otherwise wealthy and highly educated area.

It has taken damn near 50 years…But somebody else caught on to the things my parent’s generation knew.

School’s Private Pop-up Shop Lets Underserved Students Buy Basics With Dignity

Students require more than just books to succeed in school, and this innovative resource is helping teens in need build confidence both in and out of the classroom.

Administrators and the student government at Washington High School, in Washington, North Carolina, have created an anonymous, in-house shopping experience that provides underprivileged students with basic resources like food, hygienic products, school supplies and clothing. To eliminate stigma or judgment, students are able to discreetly approach a school administrator to privately take what they need from the shelves, where all items are targeted specifically to teenagers.

“If we want academics to improve, we have to make certain we’re meeting our students’ basic needs,” Misty Walker, the school principal, told The Huffington Post. “We want to strengthen our community, and schooling is just one aspect of that.”

The idea for the pantry came about when Walker realized her students’ needs were constantly growing. Though Washington High offers free and reduced meals, some students would not eat their next meal until they were back at school the next day, Walker explained. Students even began coming up to her personally, asking for items like toothpaste and toothbrushes.

As more of these needs began to surface, Walker consulted with Washington High School partner Bright Futures — an organization focused on school and community development. With the group, school administrators and the student leaders first developed a hygiene closet, and when that was successful, local donors helped expand the service into a school supply closet, food pantry and clothing shop.

“It’s a slightly different concept because we focused really on trying to help our high schoolers, versus the experience of preparing a whole box of food for a family,” Walker said.

To gain access to these resources, students simply speak in confidence with a teacher, counselor or administrator about their needs. A member of the school staff will then take them to shop in the pantries, all of which are located inside the school. This system both provides teens in need with basic resources, and strengthens the school community…Read the rest here…

 

The Importance of Black Teachers

And this isn’t just because HBCUs generated nearly 10 percent of all Black STEM doctoral degree recipients. Black kids do better in school with the presence of black teachers...

But… White kids need them too!

Why Schools Need More Teachers of Color—for White Students

Noah Caruso, 17, calls South Philadelphia home. Known for cheesesteaks, pizza, and bakeries, South Philly is a close-knit, largely Italian American neighborhood where much of the population has traditionally shared the same background, culture, and race. Though an influx of immigrants has made the area more diverse in recent decades, South Philly, like the rest of the city, remains highly segregated. Caruso’s predominantly white community was echoed at his middle school, Christopher Columbus Charter School, where he says all of his teachers were white like him, as were virtually all of his classmates. It was against this backdrop that Caruso enrolled in Science Leadership Academy (SLA)—a public magnet high school in the city—and landed in the freshman English class of Matthew Kay, his first black teacher.

Now a rising senior, Caruso looks back with appreciation on his ninth-grade year in Kay’s class. “He’s the most inspiring teacher I ever had by far,” Caruso said, recalling Kay’s emphasis and commentary on fraught topics such as present-day racism. “He definitely pushed us to really think about these social issues [that] weren’t talked about before in my life because everyone grew up in the same area,” he continued. “We were all white … and everyone had the same opinion.” Caruso recalled a class in which Kay had students watch a scene from American History X, a graphic 1998 film about neo-Nazis and white supremacy in America. The teacher, Caruso noted, didn’t hold back in expressing his perspective on the persistence of prejudice in the country. It was one of many discussions with Kay that Caruso said opened his eyes “to all of these things I never even thought about before … It inspired me to want to do something about it.”

The importance of recruiting and retaining more teachers of color for students of color is well-reported and deeply researched. Most teachers—over 80 percent—are white, and surveys suggest that won’t change anytime soon. Among the ACT-tested graduates in 2014 who said they planned on pursuing an education major,72 percent were white, compared to 56 percent of all tested students. Yet nonwhite children are now believed to make up a majority of the country’s public-school population. Studies show that, academically, nonwhite teachers produce more favorable outcomes for students of similar backgrounds; emotionally and socially, these educators serve as role models who share students’ racial and ethnic identity. What hasn’t gotten much attention, however, are the potential gains for white students.

The call for more teachers of color has grown more urgent in recent years because of America’s changing demographics. In an increasingly multiracial, multicultural society, some education experts question the impact on white students’ world views when the face of teaching almost always mirrors their own. Gloria Ladson-Billings, an African American professor of urban education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, broached this subject in a recent essay forEducation Week responding to the apparent decline in nonwhite teachers—what some observers have described as a “disappearance crisis.” “I want to suggest that there is something that may be even more important than black students having black teachers and that is white students having black teachers! It is important for white students to encounter black people who are knowledgeable,” she wrote. “What opportunities do white students have to see and experience black competence?”

In public schools, where roughly 90 percent of the country’s children are enrolled, the lessons students learn are often skewed because of who is delivering the instruction and what kind of curricula and learning materials that instruction entails. Not only is the vast majority of the country’s teaching force white, but Eurocentric attitudes also tend to filter into classrooms. Some scholars, including the Temple University African American studies professor Ama Mazama, even attribute the notable rise in homeschooling among black families in part to the predominance of Eurocentric school curricula and teacher perspectives. American children’s literature is also often limited to white characters and narratives…

The societal advantages of more teachers of color become clearer when considering the racial socialization—or the processes by which people develop their ethnic identities—of white adults, including the parents who may stumble in communicating racial understanding to their children. A Public Religion Research Institute study on “American Values” circulated last summer, following the shooting in Ferguson, showed that 75 percent of white Americans have all-white social networks. This self-segregation could help explain the racial divide over Michael Brown’s death and why it was seemingly so hard for many whites to understand what transpired in Ferguson: Their worldview was restricted to mostly white friends and family. And in a 2014 study researchers found that “the messages that white teens received [from parents regarding race] were contradictory and incomplete,” concluding that schools are a crucial link in building “productive and genuine relationships” between whites and people of color…

Of course, integrated and diverse student bodies are just as important as interracial student-teacher pairings when it comes to building a more racially literate generation. Greta Haskell, another student at SLA, where thedemographics closely reflect those of Philadelphia, said learning alongside students of color helps actualize the new perspectives she gains from nonwhite teachers. Last December, Haskell participated in a “die-in” at SLA to protest the non-indictment in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. “If I went off to college [as a white student] and didn’t know how to interact with [people not like me] I wouldn’t feel prepared,” Haskell said.

 The racial composition makes the school a place where students “listen to each other and absorb what the other students are saying and make sense of it,” said Larissa Pahomov, an SLA teacher of color who serves on the school’s diversity committee. And according to the education professor Genevieve Siegel-Hawley,white students are “more likely to have a concrete understanding of racial and social injustices” and less likely to be prejudiced when they’re immersed in racially diverse schools. Still, the push for diverse schools—which in part because of housing segregation are uncommon nationwide—typically highlights an array of benefits for students of color, rather than that for their white counterparts….(The entire article here)