Tuesday SOL: Why should I care about Black Lives Matter?

I am participating in the
Tuesday Slice of Life.
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day.

A big thank you to Two Writing Teachers for providing this unique opportunity

for teacher-writers to share and reflect.

I've been busy working on something very exciting and thought I should share it here, in this space, and - just maybe - I'll excite another teacher to join the fun. The week of February 5-9, 2018, I am participating in the Black Lives Matter Week of Action: 

The goal of the Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools is to spark an ongoing movement of critical reflection and honest conversations in school communities for people of all ages to engage with critical issues of social justice. It is our duty as educators and community members to civically engage students and build their empathy, collaboration, and agency so they are able to thrive. Students must learn to examine, address, and grapple with issues of racism and discrimination that persist in their lives and communities.

Why should I, a white teacher, participate in and celebrate Black Lives Matter in my preschool classroom? It's very simple, really:

I want to give preschoolers a foundation of love and respect for all.

I want them to learn to listen and wonder about other perspectives.

I want them to believe in their personal power and purpose. 

I want my preschoolers to imagine a world without the distortion of systemic racism.

I want to do right by my students of color.

I believe in social justice.

I believe in teaching empathy.
I believe each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14) - yes, each and every child, without exception.

I believe I can make positive change in our world. 

I care. 

I must act.
I am a teacher.


Our nation is so troubled. It feels to me like people of color are under attack. Can my students of color anticipate a life of true equality? A world where they will be treated fairly? I have to start somewhere. Black Lives Matter feels like an important step to take.

I have been hard at work on lesson plans for the week, ways to integrate anti-bias, empathy, and perspective-taking in my preschool classroom. Honestly, I already think a lot about this in my work with young children. It is not a huge paradigm shift for me. I'm focusing on read-alouds that celebrate Black families, Black communities, Black culture, Black excellence, and Black authors - thankfully these are really easy to find. I will surround us with Black music. We will explore the color Black in our art. We will talk about how to help one another feel welcome, how to show kindness, what is fairness.These are simple, ordinary, intentional steps in any preschool classroom and I believe they will also bear witness to Black Lives Matter.

I've said this before: childhood lays the blueprint for the rest of our lives...it creates our 'norm', what is ordinary for us. What if anti-bias was the norm? What if equity was ubiquitous? What if skin color was irrelevant? 

I can dream. I can act. I can start.

I am excited.

sol17-5 Am I ranting or reflecting?

I am participating in the
Slice of Life Story Challenge (SOLSC).
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, every day of March 2017. 

A big thank you to Two Writing Teachers for providing this unique opportunity
for teacher-writers to share and reflect.

Just recently, I opened up the Washington Post and read a beautifully written piece by a woman I knew a long time ago...her name is irrelevant to this slice, the topic she wrote about is irrelevant to this slice, but seeing her name in print took me back in time.... 

The local elementary program was a paired program with two schools. My boys were bussed to an "early childhood campus" in a poor, immigrant community two miles away for pre-K through second grade; for third grade through sixth grade, the immigrant children were bussed to attend the older elementary campus in my middle-class ('white') neighborhood, a school only a few blocks away from my house. I loved this pairing. I loved the early childhood campus and its dynamic principal, I loved our diverse schools, I loved the education my boys were receiving. All was well.

But not for long.

We entered into a painful period the year I agreed to be on the PTA Board. Due to population growth, the boundaries for our local schools were being redrawn. Some local folks (including the writer I mentioned earlier) were adamant that this was an opportunity to unpair the two schools - to give our middle-class neighborhood its own school again, pre-K through 6th. I don't remember anyone in the immigrant community wanting the schools to be unpaired. But the middle-class neighborhood was in an uproar. This woman and I felt differently. Although I loved the school pairing, I remember this woman speaking in opposition to it (PTA meetings, town halls, school board meetings), speaking passionately, fervently, relentlessly, "I want my child to be able to walk to school." 

The boundary issue pitted neighbor against neighbor. 

She lives in my neighborhood but I don't call her friend. 

It still seems to me that she only wanted her views heard. It still seems to me that she feared the campus, the neighborhood that she did not know. It still seems to me that we humans have a lot to learn about listening, about sitting with the tension of opposing views, about considering the possibility that a different opinion may also be right.

How did it all shake out? The boundary decision left the two schools paired and intact; I don't know if my neighbor/the writer took her child out of the public school system or if she made peace with the decision. Why don't I know? Because, unfortunately, my own house/address was placed in a new school district...my boys had to leave the school we loved and attend a new public school. They still received a great education.

“If I were asked for two words to summarize the habits of the heart American citizens need in response to twenty-first-century conditions, chutzpah and humility are the words I would choose. By chutzpah I mean knowing that I have a voice that needs to be heard and the right to speak it. By humility I mean accepting the fact that my truth is always partial and may not be true at all—so I need to listen with openness and respect, especially to “the other,” as much as I need to speak my own voice with clarity and conviction. Humility plus chutzpah equals the kind of citizens a democracy needs. There is no reason, at least no good reason, why our number cannot be legion.” ― Parker J. Palmer, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit

The view from the doorway

This is a Tuesday
Slice of Life.
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day. 

A big thank you to Two Writing Teachers for providing this unique opportunity
for teacher-writers to share and reflect.

8:30 a.m., the school day begins.

A wave of children coming from the cafeteria, from breakfast, on their way to class.

Families arrive with their children in tow.

The hallway double-doors just outside my classroom are no longer closed but are opened wide, inviting students to their classrooms.

So much happens at these double-doors first thing in the morning. 

Administrators with walkie-talkies, rushing through the doorway with welcoming expressions on their faces, making way for the stream of children and families, and needing to be somewhere else at exactly that moment in time.

A long line of water pours from an open water bottle in a backpack, and another child rushes up to the backpack-wearer, tapping him on the shoulder, "Your water bottle! You need to get paper towels!"

Two kindergarteners, sprawled on the floor, near tears, clutching Pokemon binders, and an administrator guiding their negotiation. I hear snippets: "Who had the card first? Who brought the card from home? Are you both happy with the trade? I hear him say he wants his own card back. Let's back this up to the beginning."

Laura tarries behind her mother and slips behind the propped open door. Her mother signs her into my class and I say, "Good morning! Where's Laura?" Her mother says, "right here," and turns to look behind, "I mean, right behind me," and she looks all about, "What? Where's Laura?" Stepping back into the hall, she says firmly, "Laura! Where are you?!" 

Laura giggles, so excited by her trick, and steps out from behind the door.

"Oh, child!" laughs her mother. Now, we will have a new daily ritual, I suspect.

A beleaguered Mom, rushing by with a young student in full 'boneless' tantrum mode, like Trixie in Mo Willems' Knufflebunny...the child cries out, steadily, "No! No! No!" Based on the velocity of this tantrum, this is not going to be an easy start to the day for this child or, actually, anyone in the entire class....

Yes, the view from the doors provides a lens on the day ahead.

What are we doing?

This is a Tuesday Slice of Life for Two Writing Teachers. 

Check out their website for many more reflections on teaching.

I have been obsessively watching the New York Times “undercover video” at a NYC public charter, which shows a first grade teacher berating her students. There have been several great pieces written in response to this article, including Michelle Goldberg's on Slate.com and two pieces in the Huffington Post - Alan Singer and John Thompson. But I need to vent a bit, too!

What stuns me, what I can't quite shake, is what is revealed by everything in the background of the video, everything behind the scene of the teacher and the young girl. These things stay the same even when the teacher isn't yelling.

I'm talking about the classroom environment, the classroom community, the classroom itself.

Look closely.

The room is sterile. I do not see any children's work on the walls, I don't see anything personal. I see many charts written by the teacher. I see a large flag for a university. How much voice do children have in this environment, when everything in the room is of the teacher? There is a permanent calm down chair. (And you go to this not when you are worried or sad or upset, but when you make academic mistakes.) What a sad routine in a young child's classroom.

Most importantly, look at the peers of the young girl. Throughout the video, the young children sit calmly, quietly, cross-legged, hands folded in their laps, perfectly still. Is this healthy, for children to not even flinch when an adult raises her voice? When a peer is chastised? What has led them to such a state of dullness? They do not flinch when the teacher rips up the young girl's paper. They quietly raise their hands, when the teacher insists "Somebody come up and show me how she should have counted." The teacher is upset, the young girl has been disciplined, and no one in the classroom looks sad or particularly concerned. In fact, they are ready to simply do it better than the young girl did...to ignore her issues, pass her right by, conditioned to step right over others  and take care of oneself. This sends chills up my spine. This is the classroom community. This is not a healthy learning environment. What about children's emotions? What about being part of a community, working and learning together? What will these children be like as adults, as future citizens?


How many schools operate like this?


What are we doing?


Chilling.