Spotlight on Dyan Watson

Dyan Watson joined the Rethinking Schools team as an editorial associate last year. You’ve probably noticed her wonderful articles in the magazine: “What Do You Mean When You Say Urban” (fall 2011) and “A Message from a Black Mom to Her Son” (spring 2012).

What you may not realize is that she co-edited our new publication, Rethinking Elementary Education. We thought you might like to know a little more about Dyan, who is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education and Counseling at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon.

Q: How did you get involved with Rethinking Schools?

When I was a junior at Portland’s Jefferson High School, I had Bill and Linda as my teachers in a combined U.S. history/American literature class. They introduced us to Rethinking Schools and a new way of learning and teaching. At some point, they included a poem I wrote in Rethinking Our Classrooms. My first subscription came with acceptance of that poem and I’ve been hooked ever since. Then, this past year, the board invited me to participate. As an RS fan—and
someone who wanted to participate in making the positive difference in others’ lives that Linda, Bill, and Rethinking Schools has made in mine—it was an easy choice.

Q: How have you felt about being on the editorial board?

My writing and ability to give meaningful feedback have improved tremendously. Listening to others critique and praise the submissions makes me a better writer and a more compassionate reviewer. This spills over into the classroom as I provide feedback to my students. I often feel my brain growing.

Q: Which articles in Rethinking Elementary Education would you especially recommend to teacher educators?
I think that a teacher ed program preparing elementary teachers couldn’t go wrong with any of the pieces. Taken as a whole, Rethinking Elementary Education is a powerful work that helps teachers think deeply about the impact they have on kids’ lives.

Q: How did you come to write “A Letter from a Black Mom to Her Son”? Why do you think it has resonated so strongly with parents and teachers nationally?

I didn’t think we had enough pieces in Rethinking Elementary Education that addressed race. After some discussion, the co-editors of the book decided I needed to write a piece since this is my area of research. I tried to put what I’ve learned in laymen’s terms, but it was boring and flat. The piece started with a story from my childhood, and that’s what captured the other editors’ interest.

Linda said, why not write it as a letter? After many drafts and tears—some of the stories were hard to put on paper—I had
a letter to Caleb, my older son. In the letter, I explained that there were many things about my education that I loved and am happy to have experienced, but there were some lessons that were unnecessary and painful. I don’t want Caleb or his baby brother Nehemiah to have to go through those kind of experiences. So this is a letter to their future teachers as much
as it is to either of them or any of our collective children.

I think the letter resonated with folks because of the Trayvon Martin murder. Even though it was written before this tragedy, the message in the letter and the experiences described are not unique to me or a small group of people. Folks from all over the country have written me to express their gratitude and how it summed up what they felt. For many folks of color, my letter is their letter. Many white teachers and folks who work with them want all teachers to be better than the majority of the teachers I describe. As one principal told me, they struggle with how to broach the subject and, fortunately, my letter to Caleb helps.

Read Full Post »

The Real Irish American Story

Saint Patrick’s Day is approaching, so it’s time for the all-too-brief attention that media and schools pay to Irish American history. Rethinking Schools editor Bill Bigelow has a new article posted at the Huffington Post, “The Real Irish American Story Not Taught in Schools.” Bigelow writes:

“Wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or get pinched.” That pretty much sums up the Irish-American “curriculum” that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.

Sadly, today’s high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

Bigelow analyzes several of these corporate-produced textbooks and offers some thoughts on what should be taught about the Great Irish Famine, including a role play, “Hunger on Trial,” that he has used with his own students, and that is posted at our Zinn Education Project site.

In this role play, as Bigelow describes in his Huffington Post article, “students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? A system of distribution, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?”

This is the Zinn Education Project’s first “If We Knew Our History…” column for the Huffington Post. The more people immediately read, comment, and share the article, the more likely Huffington Post is to give us prominent placement for future posts.

Please read, comment and share today!

Read Full Post »

Michelle Alexander on The New Jim Crow and the school-to-prison pipeline

by Jody Sokolower

Last spring I went to hear Michelle Alexander, the dynamic author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. She spoke to an overflow audience at a primarily African American church.

We were transfixed as she described how difficult it had been for her, as a civil rights attorney, to face the current realities of what is happening with prisons in this country and its impact on people of color. It was the stories of one formerly incarcerated person after another that finally broke through her long-held beliefs about the justice system. She went on to explain her thought-provoking and disturbing thesis: Mass incarceration, justified and organized around the war on drugs, has become the new face of racial discrimination in the United States.

At that point, we were in the midst of planning the winter issue of Rethinking Schools—available the first week in January—which focuses on the school-to-prison pipeline. I realized how important Michelle’s perspective is in understanding how the criminalization of youth fits into the larger social picture. So we asked her to provide a context for our readers by sharing her thoughts about the implications of her work when applied to education and the lives of children and youth. She agreed. Here is the interview:

RS: What is the impact of mass incarceration on African American children and youth?

MA: There is an extraordinary impact. For African American children, in particular, the odds are extremely high that they will have a parent or loved one, a relative, who has either spent time behind bars or who has acquired a criminal record and thus is part of the under-caste—the group of people who can be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives. For many African American children, their fathers, and increasingly their mothers, are behind bars. It is very difficult for them to visit. Many people are held hundreds or even thousands of miles away from home. There is a tremendous amount of shame with having a parent or other family member incarcerated. There can be fear of having it revealed to others at school.

But also, for these children, their life chances are greatly diminished. They are more likely to be raised in severe poverty; their parents are unlikely to be able to find work or housing and are often ineligible even for food stamps.

For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated.

When young black men reach a certain age—whether or not there is incarceration in their families—they themselves are the target of police stops, interrogations, frisks, often for no reason other than their race. And, of course, this level of harassment sends a message to them, often at an early age: No matter who you are or what you do, you’re going to find yourself behind bars one way or the other. This reinforces the sense that prison is part of their destiny, rather than a choice one makes.

A Birdcage as a Metaphor

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

RS: At one point in The New Jim Crow, you refer to the metaphor of a birdcage as a way to describe structural racism and apply that to mass incarceration. How does what is happening to African American youth in our schools fit into that picture?

MA: The idea of the metaphor is there can be many bars, wires that keep a person trapped. All of them don’t have to have been created for the purpose of harming or caging the bird, but they still serve that function. Certainly youth of color, particularly those in ghetto communities, find themselves born into the cage. They are born into a community in which the rules, laws, policies, structures of their lives virtually guarantee that they will remain trapped for life. It begins at a very early age when their parents themselves are either behind bars or locked in a permanent second-class status and cannot afford them the opportunities they otherwise could. For example, those with felony convictions are denied access to public housing, hundreds of professions that require certification, financial support for education, and often the right to vote. Thousands of people are unable even to get food stamps because they were once caught with drugs.

The cage itself is manifested by the ghetto, which is racially segregated, isolated, cut off from social and economic opportunities. The cage is the unequal educational opportunities these children are provided at a very early age coupled with the constant police surveillance they’re likely to encounter, making it very likely that they’re going to serve time and be caught for committing the various types of minor crimes—particularly drug crimes—that occur with roughly equal frequency in middle-class white communities but go largely ignored.

So, for many, whether they go to prison or not is far less about the choices they make and far more about what kind of cage they’re born into. Middle-class white children, children of privilege, are afforded the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes and still go on to college, still dream big dreams. But for kids who are born in the ghetto in the era of mass incarceration, the system is designed in such a way that it traps them, often for life.

RS: How do you define and analyze the school-to-prison pipeline?

MA: It’s really part of the large cage or caste that I was describing earlier. The school-to-prison pipeline is another metaphor—a good one for explaining how children are funneled directly from schools into prison. Instead of schools being a pipeline to opportunity, schools are feeding our prisons.

It’s important for us to understand how school discipline policies have been influenced by the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement. Many people imagine that zero tolerance rhetoric emerged within the school environment, but it’s not true. In fact, the Advancement Project published a report showing that one of the earliest examples of zero tolerance language in school discipline manuals was a cut-and-paste job from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration manual. The wave of punitiveness that washed over the United States with the rise of the drug war and the get tough movement really flooded our schools. Schools, caught up in this maelstrom, began viewing children as criminals or suspects, rather than as young people with an enormous amount of potential struggling in their own ways and their own difficult context to make it and hopefully thrive. We began viewing the youth in schools as potential violators rather than as children needing our guidance.

The Mythology of Colorblindness

RS: In your book, you explain that the policies of mass incarceration are technically “colorblind” but lead to starkly racialized results. How do you see this specifically affecting children and young people of color?

MA: The mythology around colorblindness leads people to imagine that if poor kids of color are failing or getting locked up in large numbers, it must be something wrong with them. It leads young kids of color to look around and say: “There must be something wrong with me, there must be something wrong with us. Is there something inherent, something different about me, about us as a people, that leads us to fail so often, that leads us to live in these miserable conditions, that leads us to go in and out of prison?”

The mythology of colorblindness takes the race question off the table. It makes it difficult for people to even formulate the question: Could this be about something more than individual choices? Maybe there is something going on that’s linked to the history of race in our country and the way race is reproducing itself in modern times.

I think this mythology—that of course we’re all beyond race, of course our police officers aren’t racist, of course our politicians don’t mean any harm to people of color—this idea that we’re beyond all that (so it must be something else) makes it difficult for young people as well as the grown-ups to be able to see clearly and honestly the truth of what’s going on. It makes it difficult to see that the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement manifested itself in the form of mass incarceration, in the form of defunding and devaluing schools serving kids of color and all the rest. We have avoided in recent years talking openly and honestly about race out of fear that it will alienate and polarize. In my own view, it’s our refusal to deal openly and honestly with race that leads us to keep repeating these cycles of exclusion and division, and rebirthing a caste-like system that we claim we’ve left behind.

RS: We are in the midst of a huge attack on public education—privatization through charters and vouchers; increased standardization, regimentation, and testing; and the destruction of teachers’ unions. Much of it is justified by what appears to be anti-racist rhetoric: Schools aren’t meeting the needs of inner-city children, so their parents need choices. How do you see this?

MA: People who focus solely on what do we do given the current context are avoiding the big why. Why is it that these schools aren’t meeting these kids’ needs? Why is it that such a large percentage of the African American population today is trapped in these ghettos? What is the bigger picture?

The bigger picture is that over the last 30 years, we have spent $1 trillion waging a drug war that has failed in any meaningful way to reduce drug addiction or abuse, and yet has siphoned an enormous amount of resources away from other public services, especially education. We are in a social and political context in which the norm is to punish poor folks of color rather than to educate and empower them with economic opportunity. It is that political context that leads some people to ask: Don’t children need to be able to escape poorly performing schools? Of course, no one should be trapped in bad schools or bad neighborhoods. No one. But I think we need to be asking a larger question: How do we change the norm, the larger context that people seem to accept as a given? Are we so thoroughly resigned to what “is” that we cannot even begin a serious conversation about how to create what ought to be?

The education justice movement and the prison justice movement have been operating separately in many places as though they’re in silos. But the reality is we’re not going to provide meaningful education opportunities to poor kids, kids of color, until and unless we recognize that we’re wasting trillions of dollars on a failed criminal justice system. Kids are growing up in communities in which they see their loved ones cycling in and out of prison and in which they are sent the message in countless ways that they, too, are going to prison one way or another. We cannot build healthy, functioning schools within a context where there is no funding available because it’s going to building prisons and police forces.

RS: And fighting wars?

MA: Yes, and fighting wars. And where there is so much hopelessness because of the prevalence of mass incarceration.

At the same time, we’re foolish if we think we’re going to end mass incarceration unless we are willing to deal with the reality that huge percentages of poor people are going to remain jobless, locked out of the mainstream economy, unless and until they have a quality education that prepares them well for the new economy. There has got to be much more collaboration between the two movements and a greater appreciation for the work of the advocates in each community. It’s got to be a movement that’s about education, not incarceration—about jobs, not jails. A movement that integrates the work in these various camps from, in my view, a human rights perspective.

Fighting Back

RS: What is the role of teachers in responding to this crisis? What should we be doing in our classrooms? What should we be doing as education activists?

MA: That is a wonderful question and one I’m wrestling with myself now. I am in the process of working with others trying to develop curriculum and materials that will make it easier to talk to young people about these issues in ways that won’t lead to paralysis, fear, or resignation, but instead will enlighten and inspire action and critical thinking in the future. It’s very difficult but it must be done.

We have to be willing to take some risks. In my experience, there is a lot of hesitancy to approach these issues in the classroom out of fear that students will become emotional or angry, or that the information will reinforce their sense of futility about their own lives and experience. It’s important to teach them about the reality of the system, that it is in fact the case that they are being targeted unfairly, that the rules have been set up in a way that authorize unfair treatment of them, and how difficult it is to challenge these laws in the courts. We need to teach them how our politics have changed in recent years, how there has been, in fact, a backlash. But we need to couple that information with stories of how people in the past have challenged these kinds of injustices, and the role that youth have played historically in those struggles.

I think it’s important to encourage young people to tell their own stories and to speak openly about their own experiences with the criminal justice system and the experiences of their family. We need to ensure that the classroom environment is a supportive one so that the shame and stigma can be dispelled. Then teachers can use those stories of what students have witnessed and experienced as the opportunity to begin asking questions: How did we get here? Why is this happening? How are things different in other communities? How is this linked to what has gone on in prior periods of our nation’s history? And what, then, can we do about it?

Just providing information about how bad things are, or the statistics and data on incarceration by themselves, does lead to more depression and resignation and is not empowering. The information has to be presented in a way that’s linked to the piece about encouraging students to think critically and creatively about how they might respond to injustice, and how young people have responded to injustice in the past.

RS: What specifically?

MA: There’s a range of possibilities. I was inspired by what students have done in some schools organizing walkouts protesting the lack of funding and that sort of thing. There are opportunities for students to engage in those types of protests—taking to the streets—but there is also writing poetry, writing music, beginning to express themselves, holding forums, educating each other, the whole range. For example, for a period of time the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, Calif., was focused on youth engagement and advocacy to challenge mass incarceration. They launched a number of youth campaigns to close youth incarceration facilities in northern California. They demonstrated that it is really possible to blend hip-hop culture with very creative and specific advocacy and to develop young leaders. Young people today are very creative in using social media and there is a wide range of ways that they can get involved.

The most important thing at this stage is inspiring an awakening. There is a tremendous amount of confusion and denial that exists about mass incarceration today, and that is the biggest barrier to movement building. As long as we remain in denial about this system, movement building will be impossible. Exposing youth in classrooms to the truth about this system and developing their critical capacities will, I believe, open the door to meaningful engagement and collective, inspired action.

Subscribe now to receive this issue in your mailbox. Use holiday discount code 7BHL11 for 25% off the subscription price!

Read Full Post »

Taking Teacher Quality Seriously: A Collaborative Approach to Teacher Evaluation

Next spring, we will release the book, Pencils Down: Rethinking High-Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools, edited by Wayne Au and Melissa Bollow Tempel. The following original essay by Rethinking Schools editor Stan Karp will be included in the book. In it, Stan discusses some of the problems with the current conversations around teacher quality, and examines better alternatives.  

————————-

by Stan Karp

So what’s the alternative? If narrow, test-based evaluation of teachers is unfair, unreliable, and has negative effects on kids, classrooms, and curricula, what’s a better approach?

By demonizing teachers and unions, and sharply polarizing the education debate, the corporate reform movement has actually undermined serious efforts to improve teacher quality and evaluation.  For example, there is a lot of common ground among educators, parents, and administrators on the need for:

• better support and evaluation before new teachers get tenure (or leave the profession, as nearly 50% do within 5 years).
• reasonable, timely procedures for resolving tenure hearings when they are initiated.
• a credible intervention process to remediate and if necessary remove ineffective teachers, tenured or non-tenured.

Good models for each of these ideas exist, many with strong teacher union support. But overreaching by corporate reformers has detached the issue of teacher quality from the conditions that produce it. Class sizes are growing and professional development budgets are shrinking. Federal and state plans are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into data systems and tests designed to replace collaborative professional culture and experienced instructional leadership with a kind of “psychometric astrology.”  These data-driven formulas lack both statistical credibility and a basic understanding of the human motivations and relationships that make good schooling possible.  Instead of “elevating the profession,” corporate reform is eroding it.

But better alternatives do exist. One promising model is the Montgomery County, Maryland Professional Growth System (PGS), which has taken a collaborative approach to improving teacher quality for more than a decade. Several defining features make the Montgomery model very different than the test-based “value-added” or “student growth” approaches. The Montgomery Co. professional growth system:

• was negotiated through collective bargaining rather than imposed by state or federal mandate.
• is based on a clear, common vision of high quality professional teaching practice.
• includes test scores as one of many indicators of student progress and teacher performance without rigidly weighted formulas.
• includes a strong PAR (peer assistance and review) component for all novice and under-performing teachers, including those with tenure.
• takes a broad, qualitative approach to promoting individual and system-wide teacher quality and continuous professional growth.

Developing and sustaining good teachers, rather than “getting rid of bad ones” has always been the main goal of the Montgomery system. But real consequences for persistently poor performance are part of the process. New York Times education reporter Michael Winerip wrote that the program “has worked beautifully for 11 years,” providing teachers with “extra support if they are performing poorly” and getting rid of those who do not improve.”

In 11 years, the PAR process has led to some 500 teachers being removed from the classroom in a countywide system of about 150,000 students with approximately 10,000 teachers and 200 schools. Over the same period, nearly 5,000 teachers have successfully completed the PAR process.[ii]

But PAR is only part of a professional growth system designed to improve teacher capacity throughout the system, not just identify and remove ineffective teachers. It’s a qualitative approach growing out of a shared vision of high quality professional practice. The PGS begins with “six clear standards for teacher performance, based on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards” and includes “performance criteria for how the standards are to be met and descriptive examples of observable teaching behaviors.”

The six standards are:[iii]

• Standard 1: Teachers are committed to students and their learning.
• Standard 2: Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.
• Standard 3: Teachers are responsible for establishing and managing student learning in a positive learning environment.
• Standard 4: Teachers continually assess student progress, analyze the results, and adapt instruction to improve student achievement.
• Standard 5: Teachers are committed to continuous improvement and professional development.
• Standard 6: Teachers exhibit a high degree of professionalism

An extensive system of supports and professional development activities, including detailed protocols for assessing progress towards these goals, is outlined in various handbooks, evaluation rubrics and contractual agreements. The system also provides resources necessary to turn these ambitions into real commitments.

For example, the PAR system relies on 24 “consulting teachers” who are recruited from master teachers with 5 years of experience in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). The consulting teachers (CT) make a commitment to work for three years as CTs and then return for at least two years to a school in a teaching or other non-administrative position. CTs receive special training to work intensively with an average of 16-18 “clients” who include new teachers and experienced teachers referred to PAR by their principals. The supports provided by CTs include:[iv]

• Informal and formal observations
• Written and verbal standards based feedback
• Equitable Classroom Practice (“Look-Fors”)
• Coaching sessions
• Lesson planning
• Model lessons
• Co-teaching modeling
• Peer observations
• Classroom management
• Time management
• Alignment of school supports

CTs document their work, but do not do formal evaluations. Their reports go to the PAR panel made up of eight teachers appointed by the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA) and eight principals appointed by the administrators association. The panel reviews the documentation and makes a recommendation for non-renewal/dismissal, an additional year of PAR, or “release” to the “regular” PGS evaluation process that covers all staff. If either the client or the principal disagrees with the panel’s recommendation, he/she can initiate an appeals process that allows all parties to present additional info and speak to the panel, which ultimately reaffirms or alters its original decision. A tenured teacher dismissed through PAR does retain tenure rights and can appeal a dismissal decision. But in practice, the PAR process generally documents fully the basis for such decisions and formal challenges to PAR decisions are rare.

While the system is spelled out in detail, what really makes it possible is the level of trust and cooperation that grew out of years of developing a collaborative approach to issues of teacher quality. The commitment to collaboration between the MCEA and the district is summarized in unusual contract language:

We define collaboration as a process in which partners work together in a meaningful way and within a time frame that provides a real opportunity to shape results. The purpose of the process is to work together respectfully to resolve problems, address common issues, and identify opportunities for improvement. To be successful, the collaborative process must be taken seriously and be valued by both parties. The process must be given the time, personal involvement and commitment, hard work, and dedication that are required to be successful. The partners will identify and define issues of common concern, propose and evaluate solutions, and agree on recommendations.[v]

“It wouldn’t work without the level of trust we have here,” MCEA president Doug Prouty told the NY Times. Jerry D. Weast, former superintendent of the Montgomery County system, added “It took three to five years to build the trust to get PAR in place,” he explained. “Teachers had to see we weren’t playing gotcha.”[vi]

Beyond PAR, the larger PGS system is based on a belief that “good teaching is nurtured in a school and in a school system culture that values constant feedback, analysis, and refinement of the quality of teaching.” Formal performance evaluations are part of “a multi-year process of professional growth, continual reflection on goals and progress meeting those goals, and collegial interaction.” The aim is to support “a collaborative learning culture among teachers in each school, integrating individual growth plans into school plans, and utilizing student achievement and other data about student results.”[vii]

Besides teachers, there are separately articulated PGS standards and evaluation protocols for administrators, non-classroom professionals and support staff. Ideally, this contributes to a school-wide sense of accountability and collective purpose that helps sustain healthy school communities, and there is significant evidence that it works.

Over the past decade, student achievement as measured by Maryland’s state assessments has increased across-the-board in every student subgroup—by race, ethnicity, and income level. Achievement gaps have narrowed at all grade levels and in both math and reading. In grades 3 and 5 math, and grade 7 reading, the gap narrowed by 16 points; in grades 3 and 5 reading, it narrowed by over 20 points.[viii]

Beyond the test scores, 84% of Montgomery Co’s students go on to college and 63% earn degrees.[ix] The collaborative approach has also extended beyond teacher evaluation issues. For example, Broad Acres elementary school serves a population almost completely comprised of students of color and free/reduced lunch students. In 2000, it was on the verge of state takeover and a “reconstitution” that would have included wholesale replacement of school staff and leadership. But a collaborative approach initiated by MCEA and embraced by the school leadership led to a sustained process of renewal and reform that has dramatically improved student performance and school culture. According to the school’s principal, “The reason Broad Acres succeeded was teacher leadership; and everyone holding themselves accountable for every student.”[x]

These successes and the national debate about teacher quality have brought new attention to the Montgomery County PGS/PAR model. Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told MCPS Supt. Weast, “you’re going where the country needs to go.”[xi] Yet the PGS approach is exactly the opposite from where federal policies have led the country.

Under the Obama Administration’s Race To the Top competition, states were pressured to tie teacher evaluation to student test scores. Maryland won a $250 million RTTT grant by promising to base teacher ratings on state test results. Implementing the grant in MCPS would have meant dismantling a successful system developed by collective bargaining that works to improve results for teachers and students. After failing to get a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education to continue using the PGS system, the Montgomery Co. school board withdrew from the state’s RTTT plans and had to forfeit its $12 million share of the grant funds.

If federal policy were serious about improving teacher quality it would be investing precisely in programs like peer assistance and review, which have significant costs. One Harvard study estimates the cost at $4,000-$7000 per participant.[xii] Instead the federal government has poured hundreds of millions into the development of more test-based data systems and pressed states to use them to rate both teachers and the college certification programs they came from. It’s wasted money chasing bad policy.

Montgomery County is not the only district that has implemented collaborative, peer approaches based on collective bargaining. Long-standing peer review programs in Toledo, Cincinnati, Rochester and elsewhere have shown various degrees of success. A recent in-depth study of two California districts using PAR programs reached some striking conclusions about the current push for new and better teacher evaluation models:[xiii]

The study compared the types and quality of support provided by Consulting Teachers in two districts using PAR, one near San Diego, the other near Sacramento. It also compared the work of the CTs with the more traditional performance reviews done by principals. Finally, it observed and analyzed the work of the joint labor-management PAR panels that reviewed the evaluations and recommendations of both the principals and the CTs.

“What we found,” wrote the study’s authors, “belies conventional wisdom.…integrating support and evaluation can be a more effective approach to improving instructional practice than isolating one from the other. The programs…clearly show that PAR is a rigorous alternative to traditional forms of teacher evaluation and development.”

“In an era when policymakers are calling for better teacher evaluation, our research shows that peer review is far superior to principals’ evaluations in terms of rigor and comprehensiveness. Equally important, peer review offers a possible solution to the lack of capacity of the current system to both provide adequate teacher support and conduct thorough performance evaluations.”

The study confirmed another benefit that Montgomery teacher union leaders and administrators had previously demonstrated. Collaboration about core issues like teacher quality and evaluation has ancillary benefits. The PAR panels “turned out to be problem-solving arenas where district officials and union leaders collaboratively addressed operational and policy problems that might otherwise have ended up as grievances or gone unresolved….we were struck by the collaborative labor-management interactions that form the foundation of PAR. Though both [districts] have in the past experienced rocky union-district relations, PAR has served as a springboard for building strong connections. More than simple collaborative efforts, through PAR, management and unions are doing the hard work of confronting tough, high-stakes issues and reaching accord on how to proceed when decisions carry real and human consequences.”

Just as with student assessment, evaluation can be a tool for improving teaching and learning or an instrument of bad policy and external control. The key in both cases is to make sure that people, not tests, are the point of departure and that real collaboration among all parties shapes the process.

---

[i] Michael Winerip, Helping Teachers Help Themselves, New York Times, June 5, 2011

[ii] MCPS Schools at a Glance, 2010–2011, Office of Shared Accountability Montgomery County Public Schools. Webinar presentation by MCPS Consulting Teacher Team, Office of Human Resources and Development, 7/25/11

[iii] MCPS Teacher Professional Growth System Handbook (PDF), p 3

[iv] MCPS webinar presentation, 7/25/11

[v] Bonnie Cullison, former MCEA president, Union Leadership: How Teacher Professional Growth Systems Can Help Transform Schools, The Union Role in Systemic Change, Coalition for Educational Justice presentation, September 24, 2011

[vi] Winerip, New York Times June 5, 2011

[vii] MCPS Teacher Professional Growth System Handbook, p 1

[viii] Cullison

[ix] Winerip

[x] Kevin Hart, Collaboration Results in Transformation at Maryland School, March 11, 2010

[xi] Winerip

[xii] A User’s Guide to Peer Assistance and Review, Costs and Benefits of PAR, Harvard Graduate School of Education

[xiii] Julia E. Koppich & Daniel C. Humphrey, Getting Serious About Teacher Evaluation:A fresh look at peer assistance and review, Education Week, October 12, 2011

Read Full Post »

Children’s Literature for the 99%

by Elizabeth Marshall

Children’s literature is inherently political, whether it upholds social and economic inequality or resists it. For educators, the Occupy Wall Street movement offers an opportunity to think about children’s and young adult books that deal with issues of equality and economic justice. What kinds of stories do adults tell children about social class?

Below are some titles that deal explicitly with economics and inequality, its causes and its potential remedies. To be sure, these are not the only children’s and young adult texts available that explore and explicitly critique the relationship between boss and worker, work and money, but they offer a place to begin. The three books described below serve as examples within a larger set of texts that aim to challenge the status quo, some more radically than others.

Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature

Julia Mickenberg and Philip Nel’s anthology, Tales for Little Rebels, offers a history of radical literature for children. Their collection focuses on works published in the United States in the 20^th century. The anthology includes fiction and nonfiction, poems, biographies, and illustrations from what Mickenberg and Nel define as “left of center” authors and artists, including Lucille Clifton, Syd Hoff, Langston Hughes, Munro Leaf, Eve Merriam, Julius Lester, and Dr. Seuss.

Herb Kohl reviewed Tales for Little Rebels for Rethinking Schools in the winter 2008/2009 issue. He wrote that, “Taken as a whole, the book reveals a unique, vibrant, imaginative, and energetic left-wing tradition of writing for young people.” The book includes reproductions of the original (and often out of print) texts. Two sections, “Work, Workers, and Money” and “Organize” would be most relevant for discussions about labor, economics, power, and the unequal distribution of wealth.

One excellent example is “Mr. His: A Children’s Story for Anybody” written and illustrated by Syd Hoff (author of Danny and the Dinosaur and other successful children’s books) under the pseudonym A. Redfield and published in 1939 by New Masses press. In this book, a rich capitalist named Mr. His lives in a small town called Histown because “everything in it was his.” Mr. His skips through the street each day with a paper and pencil, calculating profits and singing. Mr. His has no friends in the town as the townspeople hide from him.

The poor people would peep through their windows and shiver. They didn’t know it made Mr. His very happy to see they were afraid of him       and that they were doing nothing to improve their lot. For there were no strikes in Histown—and no picket lines and no unions. The newspapers, which Mr. His owned, too, said that these things were wicked. (Mickenberg & Nel, p. 125)

One day as Mr. His “was dreaming of a way to get all the air in Histown into cans so the people would have to buy it from him,” he looks out the window and sees the townspeople holding signs of protest. Mr. His tries to divert them by running a newspaper story that encourages the people in town to see each other as the enemy, but they don’t fall for it. Mr. His is run out of town by a large group, who march through the streets chanting, “We’re tired of being stepped on! Now we are stepping forward!” In the end, wealth is redistributed and the town renamed Ourtown, where “The fields of wheat and corn, the fruit trees, the great mines—everything belongs to the people.”

Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type

In this contemporary picture book written by Doreen Cronin and illustrated by Betsy Lewin, the cows on a farm organize for better working conditions.

After finding an old typewriter, the cows post a note on the barn door that reads, “Dear Farmer Brown, The farm is very cold at night. We’d like some electric blankets. Sincerely, The Cows.” When Farmer Brown says “No,” the cows go on strike. They post another note: “Sorry. We’re closed. No milk today.” When the cows and the hens (who also want electric blankets) become allies, the animals find strength in numbers and revise their tactics: “Closed. No milk. No eggs.”

Farmer Brown is incredulous that cows and hens would demand such things. Finally, furious, he types a response to tell the cows and the hens that he will not provide electric blankets.  Farmer Brown concludes: “You are cows and hens, I demand milk and eggs.” The cows hold a meeting to discuss the farmer’s ultimatum. They propose an exchange—typewriters for electric blankets—and the farmer agrees. While perhaps not as radical as the stories in Tales for Little Rebels—Farmer Brown remains in power at the end and the cows continue to provide labor—the book could be used to spark conversations about organizing for change and using technologies for resistance.

The Hunger Games

The bestselling dystopian trilogy, The Hunger Games features 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in Panem, a district in what used to be the United States. The Capitol forces 24 children to fight to the death in a reality television show as a way to keep the 12 districts from rebelling against it.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch—this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen. [pp. 18-19]

The novels deal directly with economic repression, the use of media to uphold the interests of the one percent, and the necessity, as well as the often-violent consequences, of resistance. The books are brutally violent as Collins’s intent is to capture the realities of war. As Collins said in an interview in the New York Times, “I write about war. For adolescents.” Given that The Hunger Games is now a major film and a media spectacle of its own, with features in magazines like People, it will be interesting to see if and how the subversive elements of the books are co-opted into the mainstream.

The above are brief overviews of children’s and young adult literature that seek to represent the 99 percent. Readers of this blog may have other titles to suggest. What is clear is that children’s and young adult literature teaches profound lessons about economic equality—some that challenge and others that reinforce injustice.

What children’s or young adult books do you use to spark conversations about economic (in)justice? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

————————————————-

Elizabeth Marshall, Ph.D. teaches in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver Canada, where she researches children’s and young adult literature and popular culture. She is co-editor with Özlem Sensoy on Rethinking Popular Culture and Media. Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals, including the Harvard Educational Review, Reading Research Quarterly, Gender & Education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, and The Lion and The Unicorn.

This post represents the views of the author, and not necessarily those of Rethinking Schools.

Read Full Post »

From the Archives: “Rethinking Thanksgiving: Myths & Misgivings”

Teacher educator Vera Stenhouse wrote “Rethinking Thanksgiving: Myths and Misgivings” for us for our Fall 2009 issue of the magazine. It’s reprinted below with a new introduction from Vera.

For a parent’s perspective on the coming holiday, download “Why I’m Not Thankful for Thanksgiving” (PDF) by Michael Dorris, published in our newest book Rethinking Popular Culture and Media.

“Rethinking Thanksgiving” Revisited

by Vera Stenhouse

For several years I have worked with teachers concerned about providing a quality education for their students. As such, I have felt my responsibility as a teacher educator is to support their efforts by offering opportunities to engage them in critically conscious and responsive ways.

One opportunity is examining the story of Thanksgiving. It’s a place for teachers to begin investigating the non-neutral construction of curricula, and their agency in teaching students—not as passive learners, but as active participants in constructing knowledge and applying skills to prepare them to be informed decision-makers.

Since initially complicating the Thanksgiving story with aspiring teachers, as I discuss in my article, I have noticed fewer of the overt iconic racist stereotypical images/artifacts associated with “Indians” during Halloween and at Thanksgiving. I have also observed the tendency to teach about Thanksgiving as simply a time to be thankful and a time with family and friends. Although these trends can be seen as improvements to the explicit teaching of the historically inaccurate portrayal of “Indians and Pilgrims,” a couple of issues remain.

First, avoiding teaching about the historical roots that inform the day further negates the established cultural legacy of thanks-for-giving practices that pre-date colonization in the Americas.

Second, Thanksgiving Day is also observed as a Day of Mourning. We should not ignore this aspect during Thanksgiving because in doing so, we ignore the significance of historical events that have profound implications for contemporary concerns of Native Peoples/tribes, for example:

• eradication of offending mascots/media portrayals,
• minimizing inappropriate uses of culture, and 
• advocacy for sovereignty. 

We need to be vigilant in asking ourselves, and others, why the Thanksgiving story, as inaccurately retold, is so indelible, for whose benefit, and at what cost?

From the Archives: Fall 2009
Rethinking Thanksgiving: Myths and Misgivings

In 2006, an Atlanta newspaper ran several photos with captions describing the celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. The first picture featured a 5-year-old girl wearing a precision-cut fringe vest made out of a brown paper bag from a local grocery store (as identified by the store name and tagline detailed prominently in big blue letters on the vest). On top of her head sat a multicolored feather headdress made of construction paper. The caption under the picture read: “Feathers in her cap. Ava adjusts the headdress of her American Indian costume for a Clairemont Elementary School Thanksgiving feast. More photos from the feast are on page J9.”

Page J9 includes three additional pictures—one showing a group of Pilgrims (with white paper collars and hats) and Indians (as identified by their feather headdresses, of course). A second picture shows students in “costume” working on a coloring project and a third captures a student showing off his “homemade American Indian costume.” Between the pictures it reads: “Clairemont Elementary School studied American Indians and Pilgrims in preparation for today’s big holiday. Last week, they re enacted the first Thanksgiving and dressed in costumes for a feast with family members.” In the center is the phrase “Thanks for the lessons.”

What lessons did they learn? Between Columbus Day in October and Thanksgiving in November, Native Americans [the “official” curricular name in Georgia] play a key role in the mythology of U.S. history as taught in schools. As someone who works with pre- and inservice elementary teachers, I see firsthand how these happy stories maintain children’s ignorance and reinforce stereotypes.

The traditional first Thanksgiving story recounts Pilgrims from Europe settling in the wilds of the New World and celebrating their survival by sharing their bountiful feast with the Indians. As my students learn, this version of Thanksgiving is inaccurate. The Pilgrims did leave Europe and comprised 35 out of 102 colonists traveling on the Mayflower, eventually settling in 1621 at Patuxet—aka Plimoth. The “new” and “wild” world to which they arrived was neither new, wild, or unnamed, thanks to the Wampanoag, the indigenous people who lived there. Given the Pilgrims’ ignorance of the “new” land, their survival was made possible through indigenous knowledge, labor, harvest traditions, and trade. Most significant to the first Thanksgiving story: According to the Wampanoag and the ancestors of the Plimoth settlers, no oral or written account confirms that the first Thanksgiving actually occurred between them in 1621. The Wampanoag, however, did participate in daily and seasonal thanksgivings for thousands of years prior to the Pilgrims’ arrival.

Beyond the inaccuracy of the first Thanksgiving story itself are its omissions: Colonists initially stole bushels of corn buried and stored by Wampanoag families for their own use, robbed graves and homes, and left diseases that devastated (albeit unintentionally) Native American communities, subsequently enabling European settlers to overtake Indian land.

The traditional Thanksgiving story is continuously retold through plays, activities, worksheets, and children’s books, perpetuating misinformation and stereotypes that maintain a deep misunderstanding of American Indian history and current issues. Thanksgiving Day, for example, is considered a Day of Mourning by many American Indians—a time to acknowledge the ongoing painful legacy of removal from their homelands, enslavement, and deaths from diseases. Thanksgiving images further negate significant cultural and sacred distinctions among indigenous peoples. Long feather headdresses and tipis are not part of an accurate portrayal of Northeast Coast Native Americans. Thanksgiving pictures tend to depict garments and housing of Plains Indians, whom the Pilgrims would have not met.

As a teacher of teachers, I attempt to engage students in a more accurate, inclusive, and culturally respectful approach to a time in history that began to set the pattern for U.S. race relations. I choose to critique the first Thanksgiving story because of its familiarity, inclusion in so many schools’ curricula, and persistent misrepresentation of Indians and Pilgrims.

Flipping the Script on the First Thanksgiving

Before launching into the myths and omissions surrounding the “first Thanksgiving,” I ask my teacher education students what they already know about the event: Who celebrated the original Thanksgiving and when? What was celebrated and for how long? Who initiated the celebration? Why? Where did the event take place?

My students find the details difficult to recall. Generally, their contributions reflect a disjointed recollection: Pilgrims and Indians; something about religious persecution; the Mayflower; Jamestown, Va.; an abundant harvest after tough times; the Pilgrims’ generosity toward the Indians; and three days of fun, games, and eating popcorn, turkey, and pie. Sometimes students suggest names of actual “Indians” like the Sioux or Cherokee nations or people such as Sacagawea, Squanto, or Pocahontas.

I challenge my students’ knowledge about Pilgrims, Indians, and Thanksgiving through a series of exploratory activities using elementary-appropriate materials. I designed activities meant to model how they might introduce a critique of Thanksgiving to their own elementary students that also identifies stereotypes about Native Americans and explores the events surrounding 1621. The activities require my students to work first within and then across small groups to compare and contrast the histories of the “Indians” and “Pilgrims,” separate fact from fiction about the Thanksgiving story, and uncover new information concerning Native Americans past and present.

For one activity, I divide a set of students into “Indians” and “Pilgrims.” Both groups visit a website elementary teachers and students could use that offers an interactive timeline with key dates in the history of the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims. I send the students to the “path to 1621” for their respective group’s story. The “Indians” follow the Wampanoag ancestor Ahsaupwis’ story and the “Pilgrims” follow English ancestor Remember Allerton. In the penultimate phase of the activity, I combine the “Indians” and “Pilgrims” and tell them to create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting what they learned.

Other student groups work to determine the facts, fictions, and omissions of the first Thanksgiving story using a selection of traditional first Thanksgiving picture books. To add to their critique, students receive additional texts that provide perspectives and information often distorted or omitted in traditional texts. I send the students to partner-read their selected books with questions: From whose perspective is the story told? Whose voices are active and passive? What words are used to describe the groups? Whose story has the most detail? What details were offered or implied in the text or illustrations about Thanksgiving and each group’s lifestyle (e.g., food, clothing, beliefs, and traditions)? Are the illustrations accurate? How do you know?

After partner-reading, students read the short version of Judy Dow and Beverly Slapin’s article “Deconstructing the Myths of The First Thanksgiving.” I tell them to mark new and surprising information. Typically during this activity, as students read and discuss, I’ll overhear one say, “So there was no Thanksgiving at all? I’m confused.” I clarify that although the Thanksgiving story as told is not historically accurate, Native Americans and Pilgrims had thanksgiving traditions exclusive of each other.

When the groups reconvene as a whole class, I ask each to report what they learned and to share what they believe to be the main points of their activities. It is clear from their reactions that in most instances, the activities presented different depictions from what they had previously believed or known. As Lorrie said, “I remember learning about a huge friendly feast between ‘Pilgrims’ and ‘Indians.’ It was taught almost as though it was a culmination of a friendship that had been building from day one.”

Charlie commented, “I remember making the feather headdress for Thanksgiving. I had no idea it could be inaccurate, let alone inappropriate.” Students often remark on the cultural disrespect implicit in illustrating Thanksgiving stories with clothing that the Wampanoag didn’t wear.

By the end of our re-examination of Thanksgiving, students grow anxious and begin to consider if and how they might integrate a more critical perspective of Thanksgiving with their own students. As Iris later wrote:

So, how do we go about talking about Thanksgiving now that we have all of this new information? How should we treat it with our students? Truly, it is not a day of Thanksgiving for all people in this country. I am at a loss now. I think that we could approach it with the new information that Ms. Stenhouse gave us and debunk some of these myths for our students, but I’m beginning to question what the bigger message should be. Is the holiday real? Is there really something to celebrate? I mean, sure, I’m glad to be here, and I’m thankful for the blessings in my life, but am I celebrating at the expense of others? If I do teach my children that the coming of the settlers was at the indigenous people’s expense, will they want to continue celebrating this day? Will their parents thank me if I do? I am not sure how to proceed.

My response to Iris’ conundrum and to students who ask “now what?” starts with prompting my students to generate alternative ideas for teaching Thanksgiving. I want them to start thinking about how they might use or adapt our activities or their underlying concepts with their students. I notice that, as they share their ideas with each other, they introduce a variety of ways to reframe Thanksgiving based on what they experienced in class (for example, book critiques or use of the two-voice poem, as described in Rethinking Our Classrooms, Vol. 1) and begin to consider tactical approaches to parents’ and administrators’ potential concerns. Given my students’ focus on the repercussions from school authorities, I also ask them to imagine for a moment what the first Thanksgiving story means for Native American children in their classes. And based on their own experiences, I ask them to keep in mind the lasting impressions about Indians and Pilgrims from their own schooling. I further encourage them to first find out what their students already know, which is how I started with them.

More recently, I have also begun showing a video clip of Monty, a former student of mine, who discusses how he addressed Thanksgiving with his 1st graders. After witnessing parents, students, and teachers delight in a Thanksgiving re-enactment held at his school, he determined he needed to provide his students with a more complex perspective of Native American-Pilgrim relations. Monty shares candidly the steps he took (including a trip to his principal’s office) and the process he went through to teach his students about fairness through a lesson on the consequences of colonial encroachment on indigenous lands. Watching Monty adds a perspective to our discussion other than my own about the possibilities, relevance, and power of teaching critically at any grade level.

I know that what I am asking my students to consider is unsettling to many of them; however, I’m convinced that it is necessary in order for them to be the teachers they wish to be. In addition to our in-class discussion, I ask my students to continue thinking, problem-posing, and talking with me and each other through the class blogs and journals.

Waiting for Later to Disrupt the Status Quo

As preservice teachers, my students are overwhelmed by learning to teach the prescribed curriculum and consumed by their university schoolwork. They work in schools they assume are not populated by indigenous students or other students for whom it is relevant to know the unpleasant details of historical events. Why trouble a good story?

Silent in most discussions about indigenous peoples are the current realities of Native American life, including widespread poverty; relegation to reservations; the persistent political, social, and economic disregard for things cultural or sacred by the dominant U.S. society; and the advocacy necessary for linguistic, cultural, economic, and territorial sovereignty. I use the Thanksgiving story to provide an opportunity for my students to ask themselves, “If not me, who?” and “If not now, when?” as it relates to challenging the status quo.

In terms of measuring progress, we have come a long way from learning how to count to 10, one “Indian” at a time. Yet national multimillion-dollar franchise sports teams retain derogatory “Indian” names, logos, and chants; commercial products still utilize “Native” names and imagery as brands; and we still have the enduring uncritical portrayal of the first Thanksgiving. I believe a connection exists between the unwillingness to “give up” the beneficent 1621 Thanksgiving story and the ongoing appropriation of the imagery, spirituality, ceremonies, sovereign rights, and identity of this country’s indigenous peoples. Students from all racial and cultural backgrounds learn early that it is OK to play Indian. They learn that Indians wear “costumes,” feathers define cultural features for all Indians, and sacred cultural artifacts are crafts to be made from brown paper bags, paper towel rolls, paper plates, and construction paper. And after Thanksgiving, crafts and all, the “Natives” disappear back onto the shelf.

Confronting racism, injustice, prejudice, and stereotypes through a consciousness-raising education is a far cry from the fun-filled, feel-good activities characteristic of how schools approach holidays. With respect to indigenous peoples, I want my students to acknowledge the diverse and unique traditions among Native American cultures and to explore the historic and contemporary legacy of colonial intrusion, brutality, and cultural ignorance. As a teacher educator, I seek to invite my students on a journey of interrogating the fallacy of the “standard” curriculum as neutral and push them to develop an understanding of official knowledge as politically constructed and contestable. Critiquing received fact, such as the first Thanksgiving, is an integral piece of an overall critical approach to teaching and learning. I want my students to recognize that the histories of indigenous peoples have been subverted, silenced, and misrepresented in the curriculum. Equally important: I want my students to recognize that we can do something about it.

Vera L. Stenhouse is an educator, researcher, and writer with a multidisciplinary focus in teacher education, diversity, multicultural education, Indigenous education, and curriculum development. Stenhouse is currently a member of the leadership team of the Georgia Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education (GA NAME).

RESOURCES

Evaluating resources about Native Americans:

Boston Children’s Museum. Evaluating Resources: The Wampanoag in Teacher Resources on Native American History and Culture.

Seale, D., and Slapin, B., eds. (2005)
A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children. Lanham, Md.: Altamira Press.
Cultural appropriation in books for children. Evaluates hundreds of books for children and teenagers published from the early 1900s through 2004.

“Evaluating Children’s Books for Bias.” Integrating New Technologies into the Methods of Education.

Wampanoag information past and present:

“Mashpee Wampanoag Timeline.” Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Website.  Timeline of events from precolonial times to current federal recognition.

Boston Children’s Museum. “People of the First Light.” Teacher Resources on Native American History and Culture. Information and suggested activities about Wampanoag origins and life before, during, and after 1620; survival; and current day.

Teacher and student resources on Thanksgiving, Native Americans, and colonists:

Dow (Abenaki), J., and Slapin, B. “Deconstructing the Myths of The First Thanksgiving.” Oyate. Facts and fiction about the first Thanksgiving story, including critiqued excerpts from popular books.

Oyate. Primary Sources from a Colonialist Perspective.

Oyate. Recommended Books About Thanksgiving.

Recommended books, links, and videos:

Goldstein, K. “As American as Pumpkin Pie.” Plimoth Plantation. How, when, and why the “first Thanksgiving” came to be known as such.

Boston Children’s Museum. Teacher Resources on Native American History and Culture. Wampanoag voices, information, and suggested activities.

Seale, D., Slapin, B., and Silverman, C., eds. (2001) Thanksgiving: A Native Perspective. Berkeley, Calif.: Oyate. Historical and contemporary information about Thanksgiving. Context and counterstories for a critical cultural approach to Thanksgiving.

Jones, G., and Moomaw, S. (2002) Lessons from Turtle Island: Native Curriculum in Early Childhood Classrooms. St. Paul, Minn.: Red Leaf Press. Problems and appropriate alternatives to addressing Native peoples’ experiences.

Loewen, J. (2007) Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York City: Touchstone Press. Detailed information on the first Thanks-giving based on primary resources.

Bigelow, B., and Peterson, R., eds. (1998) Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years. Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools. Essays, poems, historical vignettes, and lesson plans.

Slapin, B., and Seale, S., eds. (2006) Through Indian Eyes: The Native Experience in Books for Children. University of California Press (available at www.oyate.org). Stereotypes and myths in children’s literature.

Rethinking Schools. (2008) Unlearning “Indian” Stereotypes (DVD). Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools (available at http://www.rethinkschools.org). Introduction to Native American history through the eyes of children. Includes teaching ideas and resources.

Rosenstein, J. (1997) In Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots in Sports. New Day Films. Examination of the use of racist logos, nicknames, and caricatures as “mascots” in college and professional sports—and the impact of this practice on Indian families and communities.

Read Full Post »

A Letter in Support of CTU President Karen Lewis

A few right wing bloggers have been highly critical of the talk that Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis gave at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference, and they are pressuring her to resign.

Rethinking Schools was a sponsor of the conference, and our curriculum editor Bill Bigelow served on the conference planning committee. He drafted a letter in support of Karen Lewis on behalf of conference organizers and Rethinking Schools, reprinted below:

November 15, 2011

To Whom It May Concern:

Speaking on behalf of the planning committee for the 2011 Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference and Rethinking Schools magazine, I am dismayed that certain individuals and groups are seeking to undermine the important work of Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis and to misrepresent what transpired at our conference. Our committee invited Lewis to be the keynote speaker at our 4th annual conference because of her defense of children, public schools, and public school teachers—and because of her work to build a teachers union that promotes the interests of communities and children, not only of teachers. In fact, one of the major sessions at our conference cited Karen Lewis’s election and outspoken work on behalf of teachers and public schools as one of the most hopeful recent developments and “part of the steady growth of a deep, broad, and thoughtful pushback against a corporate school reform movement.”

Let me offer a bit of context about Karen Lewis’s keynote. Lewis was the lead-off speaker for a day-long conference that brought together several hundred educators from around the Pacific Northwest. The conference — planned and staffed entirely by volunteers —was held on a Saturday—October 1, 2011 at a public school in Seattle, Chief Sealth International High School. In addition to Lewis’s keynote, there were over 60 workshops offered, and dozens of community organizations displayed materials. None of the educators in attendance was paid, and everyone gave up part of a weekend to attend — some driving for several hours. Teachers attended because they wanted to learn from one another and to hear about how one of the country’s major teacher unions is transforming itself to put children first.

I was the liaison between the NWTSJ planning committee and Ms. Lewis. I encouraged her to be informal in her presentation, that her talk would be the first thing on a Saturday morning and no one was coming expecting a formal recitation about the CTU’s work in Chicago. I encouraged her to be conversational and that I hoped that she could inspire teachers to see themselves as participants in a broader national struggle to defend public education from those who want to bust unions and use schools to further their own narrow economic ends. And that’s exactly what Ms. Lewis did. Here is what one longtime Portland, Oregon high school teacher, Hyung Nam, took away from Lewis’s talk: “The message I heard was about teachers standing up for disadvantaged kids whose school was about to shut down for the interests of developers. I took away the importance of rank and file teachers challenging city leaders, the school district, and even one’s union leadership in order to advocate for students and families. This is a courageous and inspiring story of teachers’ commitment to justice, students, and communities.”

Compare this substantial message with the petty and silly soundbites about “potty talk” that a few bloggers have focused on. “Potty talk”? Evidently, some commentators think that they can use some off-hand remarks to distract people from Lewis’s important work of building a union focused on education and justice. And let me just add that educators in attendance at the NWTSJ conference were all grown-ups and are unlikely to be corrupted by a few humorous remarks about college marijuana use.

Finally, I’ll offer a bit of additional context. It’s common for a keynote speaker to come to a conference, deliver one’s remarks, take a few questions, and leave. Karen Lewis, on the other hand, stayed for the entire conference, made herself available to teachers throughout the day, and attended and participated in sessions. She was gracious, warm, and thoughtful in all her communication with Northwest educators. In other words, Lewis walked her talk: She demonstrated what a new generation of union leadership looks like.

The message that Karen Lewis brought to the Northwest from Chicago was one of renewed commitment to the best ideals of public education—that schools should serve all children and all communities, and that teachers should be treated with dignity. I hope that people in Chicago hear her message as clearly as we did when she visited us in October.

Sincerely,

Bill Bigelow
Curriculum Editor
Rethinking Schools magazine
Planning Committee
Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference

Read Full Post »

No One Said Transforming Unions Was Easy

by Stephanie Walters

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

I think that’s how many people would describe life as a teacher union staffer these days. Minus the best part, of course.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that folks like me, who understand the importance of unions, recognize that we have a tough road to hoe. The road is even rockier here in Wisconsin, where Scott Walker has attempted to destroy our unions by eliminating our right to collectively bargain with employers. And while the way we operate as a teachers union at the local and state level here in Wisconsin most likely will never look the same as it did just few short months ago, I think we will be stronger for it.

For many years now, teachers unions (specifically NEA affiliates) talked about the need to change the way we did business, that the reliance on union staff to fix problems severely hindered the leadership development and participation from the rank and file, and that the seeming fixation on bread and butter issues (wages, hours, and benefits) alienated us from parents and community members. At Rethinking Schools, we often wrote about the need to reshape union operations. We are all union members and supporters; some of us are union leaders, too. Our book, Transforming Teacher Unions, explored ways that unions could be more involved in community struggles as well as engaging leaders on professional issues like evaluation and teacher preparation.

Many leaders called for the change from a service culture to an organizing one; this would be a culture where members were far more involved in problem solving and conflict management at the school and district level, and there would be more work with administrations to create meaningful professional development and curriculum.

But for all the talk about creating this kind of culture, it was occurring at a painfully slow pace. The reasons why are too numerous to list here, but I think one of the most important ones boils down to three words: change is hard!

But the actions of the Republican Party over the past nine months shone a white hot spotlight on our union’s difficulty in connecting to members. We had to spring into action; the pace of change was not going to work any longer. It would continue to be the worst of times if we continued to conduct business as usual.

So WEAC decided that as a union they could not continue to do business as usual. Extraordinary attacks called for extraordinary responses and that is what they dialed up. The game plan: take the case for preserving and strengthening the union to members where they live. Literally.

In early May, WEAC unveiled a door-to-door summer membership campaign. The goal: talk to as many members as possible about their concerns and questions about union membership and ask them to stick with the union. I was thrilled about the effort. What a great way to connect with members! What a great way to build solidarity and exhibit union values! Not everyone was as excited as I was about the effort, however. Many were predicting resounding failure before we even knocked on one door.

“Members will hate us coming to their homes. They won’t even open their doors.”

“No one will want to knock on doors; people are too busy in the summer.”

“They will just think we are trying to get their money.”

Bad excuses were thrown around to continue living in the worst of times; excuses uttered by established leaders and staff alike.

Luckily, they were widely ignored because they were soon refuted by members who became the new leaders of the new teacher union movement. I actually saw in these people and their efforts the best of times for the future of teacher unionism.

Stephanie (seated on cooler) was accompanied by many teacher leaders in home visits. From the back, l to r: Tom Baribeau, Janet Rich, Ted Chaudoir, Dave Campshure, Julie Hannon, Jim Geoffrey, Danny Smith, Stephanie Walters, Stacie Kaminski

I went door to door with folks like Ted Chaudoir, a bus driver in tiny Southern Door School District who spoke passionately about why he would continue his union membership when he asked fellow members at their doors to do the same.

I visited members with Stacie Kaminski, an English teacher from Pulaski School District who had never really been involved in her union until this year and came to door knock every Tuesday and Thursday without fail from June to August.

And I went with Sue Smits, until she recruited her friend to do visits with her instead.

These are just a few of the people who came day after day to talk to their fellow members about the importance of keeping their union strong. And their work translated into more than 1600 members pledging to remain members. Some of those people would have continued on as members; certainly a significant number wouldn’t have if folks like Ted, Sue, and Stacie hadn’t asked them to. It was so exciting to hear people say, “I agree with you; I appreciate you coming to my house and I will continue to be a member.”

The commitment and passion they showed was infectious and gave me hope that this union will weather this storm and will emerge stronger because of their efforts.

This post represents the views of the author, and not necessarily those of Rethinking Schools.

---

Download a free chapter from Transforming Teacher Unions: “Survival and Justice: Rethinking Teacher Union Strategy,” (PDF)  by Bob Peterson, Rethinking Schools co-founder who is currently serving as president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association.

Read Full Post »

Occupy the Curriculum

by Bill Bigelow

The other day on the Zinn Education Project’s Facebook page, we asked “What period in history—or theme in history—are you teaching this month?”

New Jersey Teacher Activist Group stages Teach-In at Occupy Wall Street last month.

The responses were fascinating.

Chris Conkling is teaching about “Forced removal of Native Americans/Andrew Jackson.”

Ariela Rothstein is teaching about the “Haitian revolution and the effects of colonialism on the Caribbean.”

Samantha Manchac is teaching about “the early women’s movement” from Chapter 6, “The Intimately Oppressed,” in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

Melanie Lichtenstein is teaching about Afghanistan, before and after 2001.

Mustafa Miroku Nemeth is using the film The Corporation to teach about the development of corporate “personhood” with the manifold consequences we see today.

Ian Martin is teaching about industrialization and imperialism and how they are inseparable.

Ruth Razo is teaching about the U.S. war with Mexico and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

I found people’s responses enormously encouraging. In this age of standardized, scripted curriculum and corporate-produced textbooks, it looks like not everyone is following the script. Teachers are “teaching outside the textbook,” in the slogan of the Zinn Education Project.

This kind of defiant “We’ll decide what our students need to learn, not some distant corporation” needs to happen in schools across the country. We don’t need to take tents and sleeping bags to our town squares to participate in the Occupy Movement—although it would be great if more of us did. We can also “occupy” our classrooms, “occupy” the curriculum. At this time of mass revulsion at how our country—our world—has been bought and bullied by the one percent, let’s join this gathering movement to demand a curriculum that serves humanity and nature, not the rich.

Read Full Post »

Saviors and Burnouts: Rethinking Teachers in Popular Culture

by Elizabeth Marshall

Receive 20% discount during Media Literacy Week, Nov. 7-11. Use code 5BRPCMJ11.

From movies such as Blackboard Jungle and Freedom Writers to televisions shows like Degrassi: The Next Generation and The Wire, teachers and students are regular subjects of film and television.

November 7-11 marks Media Literacy Week in Canada, and it affords educators—Canadian as well as those south of the border—the opportunity to ask the question: What sorts of pop culture stories are told about teachers, and how do these fictional stories matter in the real world?

In our recent book, Rethinking Popular Culture and Media, authors critically engage with numerous representations of teachers in television and film. It is clear that a number of stereotypes about teachers are consistently reproduced in mainstream North American popular culture. What is at stake in popular representations of us as teachers? Let’s begin with a focus on two familiar characters, the “Savior” and the “Burnout.”

The Savior: This character appears in numerous “urban” movies. S/he is usually White and seeks to save students of Color in under-resourced schools. In Rethinking Popular Culture and Media, Chela Delgado analyzes these representations for readers in her piece, “Freedom Writers: White Teacher to the Rescue.” In Freedom Writers and other scripts like it, one teacher saves the students—not through structural change, but through individual pluck. Delgado suggests a different kind of plot. She writes: “I want a teacher movie where there aren’t cardboard heroes and villains, but a genuine analysis of how race and class play out in schools” (p. 226).

The Burnout: This teacher has worked in the schools for too many years. The following clip of the economics teacher from the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a good example of the teacher who continues to try, if ineptly, to impart information to disengaged students.

Some might argue that representations of teachers in popular culture are just entertainment; however, these images and storylines all have real life implications. For instance, the consistent use of the savior-teacher-who-saves-students-one-classroom-at-a-time continues the myth of the individual teacher and teacher education as the main problem with schools, rather than structural issues such as poverty. Images of the burnout-teacher, who teaches the same lesson year after year in a coma-inducing tone, and has a “job for life,” like the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller, help sustain the fiction that tenure is the problem with schools (Not Waiting for Superman; Wisconsin). These representations then lay the foundation for films like Waiting for Superman, which have an explicit ideological agenda that is bolstered by both the Savior and the Burnout myth.

All of these representations are caricatures meant to distort, and therefore deflect, the real challenges teachers face. However, as the contributors to Rethinking Popular Culture and Media demonstrate, we can promote alternative representations of teachers that frame educational issues in different and more complex ways. In her chapter, “More Than Just Dance Lessons,” Terry Burant analyzes how the documentary Mad Hot Ballroom raises for educators a number of important questions about teaching that challenges the familiar teacher-as-savior storyline, such as “How can we change the face of teaching to reflect a more diverse nation?” Similarly, in Gregory Michie’s piece “City Teaching, Beyond the Stereotypes,” he points out how a film like Half Nelson complicates teacher-hero movies, and how a documentary such as The First Year moves away from “grand or symbolic gestures” in favor of “steady, purposeful efforts to make the curriculum more meaningful, the classroom community more affirming, and the school more attuned to issues of equity and justice” (p. 233).

Too often educators focus on critiquing children’s popular cultural texts as somehow separate from that of adults when in reality, television and film cross over between audiences and share familiar images and storylines. Educators can and should use Media Literacy Week as an invitation to improve our own digital citizenship, to use technologies to resist and rewrite representations of teachers as saviors and burnouts, as well as any other number of stereotypes, in popular culture and in mainstream media.

Analyzing representations of teachers and teaching is important and necessary work. As the writers in Rethinking Popular Culture and Media suggest, thinking critically about how educators are represented is the first step for repositioning ourselves “from cogs in the machine to social actors intent on resisting and/or rewriting the status quo” (p. 11). In this way, critical media literacy is not just for youth.

Classroom Resource for Analyzing Teacher Stereotypes  

Media Awareness Network, a sponsor of Media Literacy Week, has a unit of study for grades 6-8 entitled “Images of Learning” through which educators and students can undertake a critical media literacy analysis of how teachers and youth are represented in television and film. Readers can access it here.

—————

Elizabeth Marshall, Ph.D. teaches in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver Canada, where she researches children’s and young adult literature and popular culture.  She is co-editor with Özlem Sensoy on Rethinking Popular Culture and Media. Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals, including the Harvard Educational Review, Reading Research Quarterly, Gender & Education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, and The Lion and The Unicorn.
This post represents the views of the author, and not necessarily those of Rethinking Schools.

Read Full Post »