schoolracetalk.org

In Philadelphia yesterday, I did a day-long workshop on Everyday Antiracism with members of the Delaware Valley Minority Student Achievement Consortium. We role-played a number of situations that participants wanted to practice -- talking to students about banning the use of the n-word in school; talking to colleagues about the importance of ensuring that a history curriculum shows the full breadth of American experience. A lot of people described wanting to engage their colleagues more successfully on issues of equity.

It was a fabulous group.

I started reading it to my kids and was moved again by how much wisdom is in it, so I thought I'd post it for various folks working on various things.

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Particularly resonant to me today was this quote:

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

And, this take on the importance of "tensions":

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

And this take on how injustice plays out in everyday life:

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

In Arizona, the Raza Studies program in the Tucson Schools is again being attacked by state officials for its work to support/inspire/retain Latino students in particular. Here's a letter I wrote in June 2009 to the *Arizona Daily Star* after a visit to the classroom of one of the program's teachers:

"I visited a Raza Studies class at Tucson High during a professional visit to the University of Arizona. I was impressed by the caliber of the teacher's instruction and by the level of critical thinking skill that he demanded. In an inspiring discussion of literature, the teacher asked students to take multiple perspectives on social problems and to build their skills in analyzing literary narratives. Why squash excellent instruction? This teacher should be replicated, not removed."

I've described his teaching since. What the teacher did particularly well was engage students in discussion of literary concepts by making connections to issues that students were familiar with. Students stayed attuned throughout to developing their academic skills, and the teacher urged students repeatedly to think carefully about complex issues to which there is no right answer. There were also non-Latino students participating actively in the course.

I've been putting much of my professional energy into OneVille, a research and community action project described in full at oneville.org. Please join me and others over there.

Here's a live blog on a talk I gave recently on our OneVille work. Ethan Zuckerman did an extremely good job commenting in real time -- a communicative skill indeed!

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/11/30/mica-pollock-and-oneville-...

I'm always struck by how the conversation tools we have available shape our conversations about young people.

Bud Mehan, a well known sociologist/anthropologist of education, got me thinking years ago about how an IEP -- an Individualized Education Plan -- has boxes on it for "types" of disabilities, such that a child can enter a meeting without a "disability" and leave an IEP meeting labeled with one.

I'm working on various tools now (oneville.org) that shape conversations about young people. For example: what should go on a "dashboard" of data available online at any time to support conversation between student, parent, and teacher? What graphs, charts, and text boxes would shape the optimal conversation about and with a young person, regarding the young person's learning and achievement? These are key questions in education!

I'm increasingly learning to check out the details of translation in districts. Translating material so that parents can equally access information on issues affecting young people's education is a very important civil rights issue in 21st century districts. I talked today to an administrator from a district in California that pursues a great strategy for using local bilingualism as a resource: they train and employ an "on call" translator/interpreter force that includes many parents in the community. They have 75 folks on call, who, when called, are paid $13-14/hr to interpret at parent-school meetings and to translate paper documents. Some of these parents are now becoming teachers as well.

Another example: Somerville's Welcome Project trains local bilingual young people as interpreters, and they get employed to do interpretation at local events.

We tend to simply keep debating the same arguments in America -- at conferences, in school hallways, over dinner tables. When we get stuck, we can't really think about the issues in any complex way.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/15/04rights.h30.html?tkn=MVTFu...

I often find it most useful to name the debate we're stuck on, rather than simply keep debating.

Here's one that shows up in schools all the time; it's another version of the stalled debate described in the article above. Are young people responsible for their own fates, or are their fates shaped and constrained by other people?

Of course it's both. Young people and the people around them make youths' fates together.

Ironically, when we're stalled in predictable debate, we're all less likely to partner in making things better for young people. That's why it's so important to name the debate as predictable and oversimplified. I've seen, in many face to face dialogues, that naming the simplistic debate helps people actually analyze the issues at hand with far more nuance. I call this naming "core tensions."

After many years of working to understand and support everyday communications about diversity in educational communities, I’ve expanded to examine the full range of communications in diverse communities that affect the success of young people.

In fall 2009, the Ford Foundation funded me as PI of the OneVille Project to work with people across the diverse community of Somerville, MA, to explore ways to support communication between the family members, educators, community members, and peers in young people’s lives. I’m now working with a growing community team of parents, researchers, community organizers, media people, young people and educators. OneVille's working hypothesis: if young people and the people who share their lives communicate regularly about how young people are doing, share ideas and information about supporting young people, and work together to support young people in targeted ways, every young person in Somerville can succeed. The project also contends that every young person’s success lifts the success of other young people and the community, as the learning environment improves overall.

The Superintendent, Mayor, and community of Somerville have welcomed our inquiry. This is an exciting joint exploration into a community as an ecosystem of communications about young people -- communications among educators, family members, young people, and community members, that happen using technology, face to face, and on paper. We’re learning a great deal about which communications among which people in a diverse community support community members to support the success of every child. (www.oneville.org).

The team has been testing tools and approaches that could support people in Somerville to communicate and work together to pursue the full potential of every young person. I'm researching those efforts and existing communication between the different people in Somerville young people’s lives.

Join me over at www.oneville.org to learn more!

Here's a recent article I wrote, with suggestions for educators working together to engage issues of race, diversity, and inequality in their everyday work.