Blog #11: Restorative

Inspirations for Blog 11:

Nieto, S. (2008). Nice is Not Enough

Restler, V. (2017). Mapping Interconnected Care

Ginwright, S. (2016). Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Urban Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart

One quote from each read that hit me:

My reaction to the words of this quote being a reality in 2018.

Nice is Not Enough: "The late Meyer Weinberg a historian who studied desegregation defined racism as a system of privilege and penalty - a student is rewarded or punished in education (as they are in housing, employment, health, and so on) by the simple fact of belonging to a particular racialist shroud despite his or her individual merits or faults."

It's time to dry my eyes and with my awareness do my part to change the script  going forward.

Active Awareness is Step 1. What do I mean by that you ask?  I mean once aware, I will do my part to open the conversation, hear it and take action against it.  How do I do this?  I think I will do it with my students first.  At this time, I do not know what my next step will be.  

Mapping Interconnected Care:  

"Looking at myself through the eyes of a student."

This was a very relatable quote as I do this every day intentionally with my students. I look at them looking at me. I think how do they see me? What do I want them to see. Then, I react accordingly. First and foremost, I connect with them as a person. I listen to them. I teach them the way they present their individual needs to me.

Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Urban Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart:  

"So what do you do when a kid is so upset that they pick up a chair and try to throw it at you, Dr. Ginwright? How do you use healing and restoration when the kid threatens you, and then punches a wall?"

This is what we face daily in our school. Yes, in Kindergarten. I have begun the practice of restorative circles. I do see the benefit. I crave more training. The voice of kindergarteners in this way is amazing and powerful. To support their voice at a young age, (I believe) will set these individuals up for success.

Blog #10 That is Just Good Teaching!

Inspirations of Blog #10:

"Introduction to Culturally-Relevant Pedagogy" 5 minute video

"Teaching bilinguals even if you’re not one" Vogel, S

"But That’s Just Good Teaching!  The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy" by Laddings-Billings, G

This weeks resources demonstrate a positive direction for our students.  Teachers begin to learn about and take on the Culturally Relevant Pedagogy to include the practice of Translanguaging in today's classrooms.  

IT CAN BE DONE DESPITE THE HOME LANGUAGE OF STUDENTS!!  HERE ARE SOME WAYS!

Blog #9

From the Viewing and Reading of:

"Paulo Freire" 

(a 15 min documentary)

"Engaged Pedagogy" 

(chapt 1 of Bell Hooks' teaching to transgress)

"How did they do that?" 

New York Collective Radical Educators Inquiry to Action Groups

 Some quotes and notes:

• Freire:  “banking system” of education - all students need to do is consume information fed to them by a professor and be able to memorize and store it.
• critical pedagogy - commitment to society and self.  well being; scholarly health; our own health.
• gaining critical consciousness as students understand selves 
• Concientization in the classroom:  critical awareness and engagement.  a conviction that every student and teacher is to be an active participant, not a passive consumer.
• Education = the practice of freedom.  Freire’s work affirmed that education can only be liberators when everyone claims knowledge as a field in which we all labor.  
• Hanh’s philosophy of engaged Buddhism, the focus on the practice in conjunction with contemplation.
• - teacher = healer
• - Friere focused on the mind; Hanh’s offered a way of thinking which emphasized wholeness, a union of mind, body and spirit.
• teachers must actively be committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well-being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students.

 Questions:

1. Is it realistic for Freire's pedagogy to be implemented nationwide?  Teachers come in with their own philosophies and thoughts around their own teaching pedagogy. 
2. It makes sense to me that a teacher needs to be constantly self aware, self conscious and always self actualizing in order to be the best they can for themselves and their students.  It makes sense to me that all human's should be doing the same (self actualizing) to be the best they can be for themselves and as members of society and all that it encompasses; but, is it realistic for us to think that each member of society will get there?  Some people are more open to this approach than others.
3. I wonder if current Societal norms, expectations, and movements play a central role in the Pedagogy of best practices for learning and movement?  
4. Hasn't it been proven through research of learning acquisition and best practices that when the students are paired with more knowledgeable others and the content is meaningful to the students that more learning will occur?   
5. Freire's philosophy can work well; but do you think self-actualization may be difficult for some to obtain due to pre-existing Societal roadblocks?

Intersectionality - March 20

From the content of:

Kimberle Crenshaw, The Urgency of Intersectionality

Bell, Monita K. (2016). Teaching at the Intersections, Teaching Tolerance

Exploring identity and intersectionality in poetry (2015) PBS News Hour [LESSON PLAN]

Intersectionality:  "Being impacted by multiple sources then being left to fend for yourself." 

Kimberle Crenshaw

We do not understand intersectionality because of the trickle down approach to social justice.  This is the reason why Kimberle Crenshaw defined the term intersectionality.  If we do not have a 'frame' for the injustice that is happening then we do not think it exists.  She gives the example of black women brutalized by police.  WE need to establish/build a frame for the injustices so Society has a better understanding and so the injustices can be highlighted, supported, and dealt with.

The more I learn, it saddens me for the incessant cruelty....

#SAYHERNAME

This is me frustrated for all the injustices.

1955; Emmet Till (14 yrs old; murdered for 'whistling/flirting with a white woman)

I scrunch my brows and think and think, 

then I start to unpack where I came from to figure out

how I could not know that 

although we are all born human, this does not define us or 

shape our opportunities and struggles.

What does define us?

Is it who our parents are? 

..the color of our skin?

…the abilities we are born with?

These answers and traits play a part in the game of life and how we are defined.  

In turn they also define the path of life experiences, privileges, struggles, injustices, violence, and judgements which will occur and which we will incur.

Then I think, privilege is something we all know about; but wherever our baseline exists based on our identity and Societal Norms, we may not know of the struggles and injustices of those who are not “privileged” because it is not our experience or exposure.  

This is not an excuse to not know, it is just my thought of how we come to where we are.

We come from our parents - whomever they may be or were and the Societal Norms of their times.  

They come from their parents and whomever they may have been and the Societal Norms of their times.

Societal Established Norms which exist model and

shape people; humans.

Whose hands shape us?

So, I unpack.

Quiet, in my world a child of ‘white’

parents both from poverty 

one purely Italian strict Catholic who grew up in inner city privileged by her straight A’s and love of school to gain scholarships to Catholic Schools.

one mixed Italian with Portuguese, from a mixed race of teenage parents who grew up in poverty with holes in his shoes and ragged clothes from stories told

he barely made it through high school

she would have been a great scholar beyond high school; the culture of her family and society did not support that or give her that vision at that time.  

Did they know of Emmet Till’s glass topped casket?  What did they think of that in 1955?  My Dad was ten.  My Mom was 7.  Did their parents tell them? Did they know?

What was their take on the Civil Rights Movement?  Did they pay attention?  Did they have an opinion?

Dad was the product of teenage parents who had very limited resources.  Perhaps he was not educated by them?

My dad working class hard worker, who worked and failed until he became an entrepreneur with the assist of my mother’s organized mind.

together they would find

societal and personal success measured by what they provided for us and what they believed to be success

Despite their own struggles, they taught with their invisible wand to keep race segregated from an intersection of family of races.  Did they know what they were doing? 

Defining races other than ours as dirty and not as good as we are… teaching us that we are privileged and hard working; others are not.

It’s okay to coexist just don’t mix.

This felt wrong, I didn’t understand.  I listened but did not follow.  But did not know more or less.

What’s the difference?  People are people.  This is what I thought.  This is what I think, this is what I know.

Now I have begun to learn about White Privilege, BLM, LGQBT,#SAYHERNAME, and the term Intersectionality.  

As a human with this awareness, I have the obligation to stay aware and stand with all who are human and to teach what I know to my children, who know more than I do.  

Snowy Day Jig Saw

My Snowy Day Reading:

In the Shadow of Brown: Special Education and Overrepresentation of Students of Color

By Beth Ferri & David Connor

This article published in 2005 discussed the 2004 50 year Anniversary of the Brown vs the Board of Education Decision to desegregate schools in 1954 ... 

 as well as discussing the 30th Anniversary of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Act)

To me the article focused more on:

 Despite the fact that segregation in public school ceased - society at that time reflected these images:

and...

Let's also remember White Privilege which is reflected here...

 and...

To summarize for you who have not read this article, my perception is reflected in the pictures above and below .

Clearly the culture of the time 1954 thru the 1970's was much different than it is today.  

Back then, the teachers grew up in a society where segregation was the way of life and as a result it was very clear that being White was Privilege.  Not being white was very clearly NOT Privilege.  Then came the order to DEsegregate in schools.  This was NOT the known culture.

This article directly looks at feedback from the "Brown" decision in 1954. It follows up on the progress of desegregation in schools reporting through the 1970's. The following are direct quotes from the article to report on how 'desegregation' was working in recent years following 1954's decision:

• unfair educational practices including teacher bias
• overrepresentation of white teachers to student population.  90% teachers white 40% students not white
• similar disproportionate representations licensed to administer assessments
• Special Education has paradoxically participated in maintaining rather than minimizing obvious inequities.
• Black students remain 3 x's as likely to be labeled as having MR as White Students.
• Black students are almost 2 x’s as likely to be labeled as having emotional disturbance
• Disability assignment of students of color are also the most subjective - labels most reliant on clinical judgment are all the labels that are overly ascribed to students from racial and linguistic minority backgrounds
• Black students who attend school in wealthier communities are more likely to be labeled as having MR and assigned to segregated classes than those attending predominantly Black, low-income schools.
• not confined to African American students but Native American and Hispanic Students also fall into this category
• ELL & bilingual Students in elementary schools are likely to be disproportionately placed in special ed in the upper grades
• Asian American students less likely to be overrepresented in Special Ed
• White boys with similar scores as not white boys on IQ were more likely to be labeled as LD NOT MR
• inappropriate classification of racial, ethnic & linguistic minorities for special ed leads to lowered achievement and poor post school outcomes
• Black boys more likely to be identified than black girls yet they come from same socio-economic community
• Although teachers were not willing to attribute differences to race, they had no problem pathologizing students’ cultural or familial backgrounds.
• Learning from Brown we must consider how many of our current educational practices serve as tools of social control and exclusion and not, as we might prefer to think, as democratic tools of social transformation.
• We hope that by attending tour failures and our complicities, we can, from the shadow of Brown, create a different and more inclusive future.

To me, it makes sense, as a society that teacher bias would play a prominent role in what was reported in this article.  These teachers grew up in a segregated society in which they were bred to believe exactly what this article finds.  The reason for segregation was partly due to the fact that White's were obviously (at the time) the dominant race; any other race was inferior.  Differently, today (as I speak for myself and those who surrounded me), we teachers grew up in a different society, one where there was integration; not segregation. I now know to use the term loosely as my knew knowledge has made me aware of the continuation of White Privilege, on a less obvious level to a White Person like me, as I was growing up in the 1970's to now.   My first awareness of White Privilege occurred last semester in College as a Graduate Student.  I guarantee you my Colleagues who have NOT attended College within the past five to ten years also do NOT know of White Privilege.  

I believe with the perseverance of the knowledge we bring to the table today, included in the movement of change will be the migration our educational system to one that practices what is best for all students, period.

Societal Norms change based on the voice and the diversity of our youth.  Negative residuals from generations past do exist and will always exist.  From what I see and continue to hope for is that change is always in motion.  

With awareness of past societal norms on the horizon, positive movements persevere for the betterment of the Society of our future as we diminish the inequalities of yesterday.