parent - educator - scholar - activist
Folks,
There’s a lot of misinformation spreading about LAUSD attendance during the strike. So some teachers came up with this informational sheet to address the rumors and questions out there, and 99% of it is applicable to everyone else (the 1% not-applicable part is the name of our school). They are in Spanish, Korean and English.
Please share widely.
HT Janice Chow and Janet Lee-Ortiz (LA teachers)
#UTLAstrong
#UTLAstrike
The #TeacherLives Speaker Series is a set of talks sponsored by the Department of Educational Studies at Swarthmore College. The series centers on the lives of teachers, topics and perspectives that intersect with teaching for social justice.
Follow the ongoing conversation on Twitter at #TeacherLives.
Friday, February 13th | 3:00-5:00 pm | Science Center 104
More Than a Score is a collection of essays, poems, speeches, and interviews—accounts of personal courage and trenchant insights—from frontline fighters who are defying the corporate education reformers, often at great personal and professional risk, and fueling a national movement to reclaim and transform public education.
Courtesy of J. Hagopian
Book editor, Jesse Hagopian, teaches history and is the Black Student Union adviser at Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013.
Courtesy of VPerezRosario
Thursday, March 5th | 6:00-8:00 pm | Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall
Becoming Julia de Burgos Cover, courtesy VPerezRosario
In the first book-length study written in English, Dr. Vanessa Pérez-Rosario examines poet and political activist Julia de Burgos’s development as a writer, her experience of migration, and her legacy in New York City, the poet’s home after 1940. Becoming Julia de Burgos departs from the prevailing emphasis on the poet and intellectual as a nationalist writer to focus on her contributions to New York Latino/a literary and visual culture. It moves beyond the standard tragedy-centered narratives of Burgos’s life to place her within a nuanced historical understanding of Puerto Rico’s peoples and culture to consider more carefully the complex history of the island and the diaspora. This talk will also feature newly discovered archival material not included in the book that focuses on the poet’s legacy in the New York City Public Schools in the 1970s.
*This event cosponsored by Deaprtment of Educational Studies, Program in Latin American Studies, ENLACE, the Spanish Program, the Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, & the Department of English
Teaching feminism in high school: A Conversation with Ileana JiménezThursday, March 19th | 4:30-6:30 pm | Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall
Teacher, activist, and blogger, Ileana Jiménez, M.A., is a teacher at LREI (Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School) in New York, NY and founder of Feminist Teacher, feministteacher.com. For eighteen years, Ileana Jiménez has been a leader in the field of feminist and social justice education. In an effort to inspire teachers to bring women’s and gender studies to the K-12 classroom, she launched her blog, Feminist Teacher, in 2009; she is also the creator of the #HSfeminism and #K12feminism hashtags. Since then, Feminist Teacher has become recognized by educators nationally and globally. A frequently-asked speaker on feminism in schools, she travels nationally and globally to speak to educators in both secondary and higher education.
Jose Luis Vilson & Dr. Bree Picower
Courtesy of NYCoRE
Dr. Picower will discuss ideas from her book, Practice What You Teach. The book follows three different groups of educators to explore the challenges of developing and supporting teachers’ sense of social justice and activism at various stages of their careers. This timely resource helps prepare and support all educators to stand up for equity and justice both inside and outside of the classroom and offers a more nuanced portrait of what the struggle to truly “make a difference” looks like.
Dr. Bree Picower is an Assistant Professor at Montclair State University in the College of Education and Human Development. She is the co-editor of the annual Planning to Change the World: A Planbook for Social Justice Teachers published by the New York Collective of Educators (NYCoRE) and the Education for Liberation Network.
From: thejosevilson.com
This is Not a Test:José Vilson
Sunday, November 16th | 4:00 pm, Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall, Swarthmore College
In his book This Is Not a Test A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education, José Vilson writes about race, class, and education through stories from the classroom and researched essays. In this talk he will describe his rise from rookie math teacher to prominent teacher leader which takes a twist when he takes on education reform through his now-blocked eponymous blog, TheJoseVilson.com. He calls for the reclaiming of the education profession while seeking social justice.
José Luis Vilson is a math educator for a middle school in the Inwood / Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, NY. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Syracuse University and a master’s degree in mathematics education from the City College of New York. He is also a committed writer, activist, web designer, and father.
For questions about the series please email Edwin Mayorga (emayorg1@swarthmore.edu)
Thursday, March 19
4:30-6:30 PM
Swarthmore College, Scheuer Room
Ileana Jiménez, founder of the internationally recognized blog, Feminist Teacher (feministteacher.com), will talk about how she teaches intersectional and transnational feminisms to high school students as well as how she has launched a movement to bring women’s, gender, and queer studies to schools across the country and around the world. As part of her talk, she will highlight how she created the first high school global partnership on feminist and queer issues between her students in New York and students in India. This partnership provided leadership opportunities for students to address slut-shaming, gender-based violence, sex trafficking, the sexualization of women and girls, and queer youth rights. Merging activism, social media, and global travel, this innovative partnership ultimately resulted in forging new conversations on student activism on gender and sexuality globally.
Ileana Jiménez, M.A., is a teacher at LREI (Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School) in New York, NY and founder of Feminist Teacher, feministteacher.com. For eighteen years, Ileana Jiménez has been a leader in the field of feminist and social justice education. In an effort to inspire teachers to bring women’s and gender studies to the K-12 classroom, she launched her blog, Feminist Teacher, in 2009; she is also the creator of the #HSfeminism and #K12feminism hashtags. Since then, Feminist Teacher has become recognized by educators nationally and globally. Based in New York, Ileana teaches innovative courses on feminism and activism that have gained the attention of education and activist circles. In 2010, she was named one of the 30 Women Making History by the Women’s Media Center; later that year, she was named one of the 40 Feminists Under 40 by the Feminist Press. She is also the 2011 recipient of the Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching, for which she traveled to Mexico City to create safe and inclusive schools for LGBT youth. In 2012, she appeared on the Melissa Harris-Perry Show to talk about teaching feminism to high school students and to advocate for safe schools. Sought after for her insight on education, she has written for Feministing, Gender Across Borders, the Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine, On the Issues, the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, and the Women’s Media Center. A frequently-asked speaker on feminism in schools, she travels nationally and globally to speak to educators in both secondary and higher education. She received her B.A. in English Literature at Smith College, and an M.A. in English Literature at Middlebury College.
Contact: emayorg1[at]swarthmore.edu or isacks1[at]swarthmore.edu with questions
Friday, February 13thLight refreshments to follow
Across the country, students are walking out, parents are opting their children out, and teachers are refusing to administer bad exams. In fact, the “education reformers” find themselves facing the largest revolt in US history against high-stakes, standardized testing.
More Than a Score (Haymarket) is a collection of essays, poems, speeches, and interviews—accounts of personal courage and trenchant insights—from frontline fighters who are defying the corporate education reformers, often at great personal and professional risk, and fueling a national movement to reclaim and transform public education.
JESSE HAGOPIAN teaches history and is the Black Student Union adviser at Garfield High School, the site of the historic boycott of the MAP test in 2013. He is an associate editor of Rethinking Schools, a founding member of Social Equality Educators, and winner of the 2013 “Secondary School Teacher of Year” award from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. He is a contributing author to Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation and 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radicals Who Changed US History, and writes regularly for Truthout, Common Dreams, Socialist Worker, Black Agenda Report, the Seattle Times Op-Ed page and his blog iamaneducator.com.
Follow the conversation via twitter: @eimayorga, @CritEduPolicy, #TeacherLives #MoreThanAScore and #CritEdPol
For questions: emayorg1@swarthmore.edu
More than A Score
Jesse Hagopian, editor and a leader of the Seattle MAP test boycott
Helen Gym, cofounder of Parents United for Public Education
Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147, United States (map)
https://www.facebook.com/events/1427417407548514/
Protesters_with_signs_in_Ferguson.jpg via Wikipedia
News from Ferguson began streaming in last night, and I found myself searching. Searching for answers, searching for justice. As an educator at a higher education institution, who is committed to ending racial, economic, and educational injustice, I found myself thinking about what I had been trying to do this semester, and what more I could do now.
The failure to indict Darren Wilson was sadly not surprising. Instead it is a changing same. It speaks to the way oppressions, and racism specifically, are sown into the fabric of our society. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore notes, “racism, specifically, is the sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death”[1]. What happened last night was a sanctioning of the legal system as a group differentiated death-dealing machine. What happened last night is injustice by design within the racial capitalist carceral state in which we live. Clearly the racial and economic conditions in Ferguson, nationally, and globally remain the grounds on which state violence takes place. As so many would remind us through tweets and memes a system cannot fail those it was never designed to protect.
A system cannot fail those it was never designed to protect #blacklivesmatter #Ferguson @itskvalentine’s photo http://t.co/oATrWQQ8qR — edwin mayorga (@eimayorga) November 25, 2014
This is the “changing same” that we must recognize and continue to document and analyze if we are seeking to interrupt it, or downright abolish it.
There is more to dissect, analyze and teach about Ferguson, the killing of Michael Brown and the numerous other Black people and people of Color who have died premature deaths at the hands of the state. I have been inspired by the various collections of resources that have been assembled through committed educators who have sought to support educators and parents in working through this tragedy (see resources below). These resources are admirable and extremely useful.
Still in my haste to analyze and respond to injustice and to get resources in the hands of my students and fellow educators, I have found that I lose sight of the broader challenge to humanity moments like these pose, and the shock and awe that consequently comes in tow. Last night was no different, I spent a lot of the evening just going through Twitter, reposting tweets that analyze the situation in #Ferguson or noted infomration about marches and demonstrations happening in Missouri and in other cities like nearby Philadelphia.
What was different about last night is that as I was scrolling through my Twitter feed, I was also receiving emails from students about a project they were supposed to submit last night. Some students were struggling with uploading documents, while others were asking for extensions because they had not taken into account how much work this was going to entail. And still others were struggling with what was happening in Ferguson and could not complete the work in time. Then in the morning I was going through the routine of helping my five year old get ready for school and I wondered if I should address what is happening with him now? And if not now, when?
My students and my son reminded me that we are all human, filled with complicated thoughts, and saturated with emotions. In scrambling to share information with my students I felt like I was neglecting the varied emotions that we were experiencing. I needed to give my students AND myself time and space to grieve over last night’s negation of human life and Black lives in particular. With that in mind I sent out an email to all of my students. I shared information from the night before and encouraged them to continue following social media to remain in the conversation loop. Most importantly, for me, I offered up my office as a space for students to convene if they needed to.
Not many students stopped by, but a few did, and several others thanked me via email for sharing information and making the office available. Swarthmore College was also organizing transportation to Philadelphia so that community members could participate in the marches if they sought to.
In speaking with those that came by there was a loss for words to describe what they were feeling. At the same time they had a deep desire to speak out against injustice, but were not sure where to speak.
In an email one student noted, “I really appreciate your dedication to us as students and as people…,
What happen last night was painful and enraging, but reaffirmed for me aspects of the ongoing work of educator-activist-scholars.
First, it affirmed for me that in looking to carve out spaces for teaching and talking about Ferguson, we must give ourselves opportunities to grieve (again). Engaging our grief, letting it circulate through us, is a part of moving forward.
Second, grieving is something not to be done alone. So often when we talk of social movements we lose the emotional and relational dimensions of the work. We certainly have shared material concerns, but the shared joys and pains of struggle are also part of what brings us, and keeps us, together. Spaces for grieving are also spaces for coming together and embracing one another. As I think about the marches that have taken place in the last 24 hours I see them as a reoccupation of space in order to come together. To grieve. To speak out.
After attending the march in Philadelphia last night, Joelle Bueno, a student in my Intro to Educational Studies course, noted in an email:
thank you so much for sharing about the protests in Philly. I really appreciate your dedication to us as students and as people, it really means a lot to me especially as a freshman.
I share this not to pat myself on the back, but to highlight the impact of centering people in the higher education classroom. When we show our students that they matter to us, and that the injustices happening in the world must matter to all of us, we are having an impact. Centering people in the classroom is also an ongoing process rather than a reaction. The infrastructure for a people-centered classroom begins in the planning of the curriculum and is as every bit as essential as is the content we teach (I will discuss this point further in my next post).
The ideas I am sharing here are modest suggestions, but I think they should remind educators that teaching in the time of Ferguson requires us to teach with our humanity at the center. In carving out spaces to come together we can begin to see each other, and we can begin to connect ourselves to stories of human struggle that are often, intentionally, blurred from sight.
In coming together we can find hope in each other, and can begin to take further action.
Resources (more resources to follow)*
Desmond-Harris, J. (2014, September 2). Do’s and Don’ts for Teaching About Ferguson. Retrieved November 26, 2014
Ferguson Syllabus from Sociologists for Social Justice
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
Otherwise, Ferguson by Ashon Crawley.
Teaching and Learning in a Ferguson World (Paul Tritter, BTU Director of Professional Learning)
Teaching about Ferguson from the Zinn Education Project from Teaching for Change
*Thanks to the various folks who have been putting these resources together since August, and specific thanks to Dr. Lee Smithey (@peacesociology) and the New York Collective of Radical Educators (@nycore3000) for sharing many of these resources.
References
1. Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.
José Luis Vilson, courtesy of @theJLV
In his book This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education, José Vilson writes about race, class, and education through stories from the classroom and researched essays. In this talk he will describe his rise from rookie math teacher to prominent teacher leader which takes a twist when he takes on education reform through his now-blocked eponymous blog, TheJoseVilson.com. He calls for the reclaiming of the education profession while seeking social justice.
José Luis Vilson is a math educator for a middle school in the Inwood / Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, NY. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Syracuse University and a master’s degree in mathematics education from the City College of New York. He is also a committed writer, activist, web designer, and father.
Follow on Twitter: #TeacherLives
For questions about the series please contact Edwin Mayorga emayorg1@swarthmore.edu or @eimayorga
Educational Studies, Sociology & Anthropology, Latin American Studies & The Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility (all at Swarthmore College)
Through the book runs references to rap music, to Hip-Hop, to other cultural references that flow naturally among those a generation far younger than mine and in a culture that is not mine. And yet, of course, it works for Vilson, because it is his generation and his culture. These references help to illustrate one of his central themes: that teachers must be able to identify with their students to understand them, to get below their surface, to make connections beyond academics, in order to reach them and teach them. He cares deeply what his students think and feel.
– Diane Ravitch (read review)
Perhaps our task as readers and critics can be to see how certain stories might reclaim or decolonize these older genres, how they highlight the power dynamics and the cultural values we don’t often recognize or confront, and how they prompt us to consider not just whose stories get told but how these stories get told.
José Vilson’s soon-to-be-published book This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education does just that.
– Audrey Watters, Hack Education blog (read review)
But if Vilson has a primary thesis, it’s to be found in the quote above: the “teacher voice” is sorely lacking in our conversations today about education and its role in the perpetual problems of race and class that dog our society.
– Jersey Jazzman blog (read review)
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