#wellrED Week 2

José, Larissa, Scott, and I got together Thursday night in an on-air google hangout to discuss Lisa Delpit’s Other People’s Children for the second week running. While the schedule said we’d be talking about “Part 1” of the book, our conversation focused only on “The Silenced Dialogue.”

It was a thought-provoking hour of conversation that I’m still mulling over, and likely will be until next week’s conversation. You can read about the catalyst for the reading group here, and join the group here.

As for my part, I’m enjoying having a space to look forward to each week where race, ethnicity, culture, privilege, equity, power, and other critical issues that are easily overlooked in education is the set focus.

Last week, I switched from the print to Kindle version of the book. You can track highlights and comments here.

More importantly, consider joining in the reading. The book is a collection of essays, so you can easily jump in mid-book. Next week, we’ll be talking about pgs. 48-69. Join the hangout or the twitter chat. Maybe just post to the discussion board. Either way, let’s elevate the conversation and critical thinking around these important issues of practice.

It’s about time to show we’re #wellrED

#wellrED logoEarly February, I announced that Jose Vilson and I were starting a book group through GoodReads for folks whose lives are entangled with education. We saw a general lack of conversation around the tough issues we face in districts, schools, and classrooms, and thought maybe there was something we could do about that.

A little over a month later, and we’ve got about 50 members of the #wellrED group, and are about to start our conversations around Lisa Delpit’s Other People’s Children. Just looking at the group members, I know this is going to include some great dialogue. Folks from all over the US have signed on to think deeply and listen to understand other people’s thoughts around the book.

You should too.

Pick up a copy of Children today. You’ve got plenty of time to read the introduction and forward by the time we post this week’s questions Wednesday. Then, join us Thursday from 7:30-8:30 EST for an on-air Google hangout discussion of what we’ve read and/or join us for a twitter chat at the same time with the hashtag #wellrED.

Being connected gives us a chance to create the type of professional learning we’ve been looking for. Hopefully, this discussion is something you’ve been hoping for.

If you have any questions about any of the above information, leave a comment below, and I’ll be happy to help you get connected.

The Book Group We’ve Been Waiting For

#wellrED logo

You and anyone you care to invite are invited to join the new book group on GoodReads – #wellrED.

Jose Vilson and I have started the group, and our first book study will start March 19 when we dive into Lisa Delpit’s inaugural work Other People’s Children. The book is scheduled to last 5 weeks, with a second book starting not long after that.

I anticipate online discussion forums, hangouts, and twitter chats will be on the schedule as we move forward.

More than all that, though, is my excitement over the conversations we’ll be having. For me, it’s been a jarring experience heading to Colorado after being on the East Coast for 5 years. Here, there is little-to-no practical conversation about race, class, privilege, and all of the other difficult conversations that should come up when we consider what it means for people of all backgrounds to come together for a joint educational enterprise.

I’ll let Jose explain his hopes for the group, and I’d like to think this is a continuation of his EduCon conversation with Audrey Watters – “The Privileged Voices in Education.”

I don’t expect the conversations to be easy. I expect some folks will be uncomfortable. That’s how growth and change usually work. I also expect that it’s an important conversation we’re not having enough of in our schools, in our district’s, and in our country.

Join us.

Learning Grounds Ep. 010: In which The JLV talks math, wrong answers, and how he found his way to the classroom

In this episode, Zac talks with José Vilson about how he shapes his practice in the math classroom, why he hates “wrong answers,” and how education became his life. You can find José at www.thejosevilson.com.

Play

Things I Know 243 of 365: Teachers might be too institutionalized to occupy

We must rediscover the distinction between hope and expectation.

– Ivan Illich

In class today, we learned of Erving Goffman’s description of the structures surrounding the social relationships of mental patients and other inmates.

Goffman describes the structures as follows:

  1. Basic split between a large managed group, called inmates, and a small supervisory staff.
  2. Each grouping tends to conceive of the other in terms of narrow, hostile stereotypes: staff seeing inmates as bitter, secretive, untrustworthy and inmates seeing staff as condescending and mean.
  3. Social mobility between the two strata is restricted and the social distance is formally prescribed.
  4. Inmates are excluded from knowledge of the decisions taken regarding their fate.
  5. The institutional plant identified by both staff and inmates as somehow belonging to staff. Reference to the institution implies the views and concerns of the staff.

In the context of class, these qualities were presented as representative of Ivan Illich’s position of deinstitutionalizing schools because teachers have too much power in relation to children.

Replace “staff” with “teachers and administration” and “inmates” with “students” and you see where this was going.

My question was this, what if we replace “staff” with “policymakers and education officials” and “inmates” with “teachers?”

Professor Lawrence-Lightfoot said my point was well taken but challenged it with the idea that teachers have ample opportunity to use what Joseph McDonald refers to as their “teacher voice.” McDonald writes that teachers too rarely engage in voicing the intimate, complex and nuanced understanding of the practice of teaching.

McDonald posits it is this voice teachers must better mine.

José has an excellent post over at GOOD calling for #OccupyTheClassroom, and he’s not wrong. “Teachers live in a space where they worry about every move they make,” he writes, “fearful that some administrator might come out of the bushes with a rubric that decides they’re not proficient.”

This fear is a piece of it for some.

For others, it is a conditioning of supporting and listening. To teach is to help students, in the words of George Dennison, “discover themselves in more richly human terms.”

Unfortunately, teachers suffer institutionalized silence – an unofficial and unhealthy gag rule on the areas of our expertise.

Historically, and too easily in modern society, teacher become so focused on this act and honing their listening to draw out the better version of their students that they lose the voice that shows the better versions of themselves.

What José calls for and what McDonald advocates is the use of teacher voice to reframe how others see the profession of teaching.

Karl, one of the voices I read and listen to most closely wrote this:

…this thing we call school doesn’t happen without us.

What if we just said, “Enough.”

What if we just said, “Your reform is bad for our students. We need to transform.”

What if we just said, “Not in my classroom. Not to my students. Not to my own children.”

What if we did #occupytheclassroom?

What if I #occupiedmyclassroom?

What if you #occupiedyourclassroom?

Sadly, these ideas are revolutionary. One needs only look at the forfeiture of curriculum, scheduling, assessment, and learning to see how much the inmates have given up to the staff.

McDonald charges teachers are being irresponsible individually and collectively for not combining our voices of expertise with our voices of advocacy to speak against those who would demean and misappropriate the teaching profession and the learning of children.

What if we #occupytheclassroom?