Camden’s Blog

I LOVE the Alice Walker quote “ Keep in mind always the present you are constructing.  It should be the future you want.”  It is a wake up call that we cannot be bystanders.  Lipton and Oakes shape this chapter with a warning “Navigating toward socially just teaching and education requires a full and unblinking understanding of the present – the status quo”.  The injustices that permeate our education system are firmly implanted and unless we commit ourselves to consistently digging up the weeds and trying new crops and methods of growing, we will be ever stuck with the status quo that does little to build a just future.  We are making progress with programs like ours in and new teacher programs in universities across the country that are making positive steps at providing coursework that looks a multicultural, socially just teaching.  But there is a lot more for us all to do within our classrooms and out of them.  Everyone is different, have different career decisions to make and different outside influences but we all need to be active.  It’s our profession and we need to insist on our voices being present and heard.  I consider it our biggest challenge – why are we unable to unite our voices into a deafening choir that heralds respect in compensation, equity in schools, democracy in school culture and acknowledgement of our deep profession expertise?  It is just simply wrong that we do not have a teacher’s union in this state.  It doesn’t surprise me that the Secretary of Education, Roderick Paige called the NEA a “terrorist organization” for criticizing NCLB.  It seems the very nature of NCLB to oppress teachers by blaming them in the name of accountability for being unable to triumph in a game that is designed for teachers and students to lose.  A game they have absolutely no voice in at that.  Lipton and Oakes do provide us with some ideas for activism.  It’s a little like going Green, you have to start somewhere and every little bit helps.  It’s about changing your mindset and then moving on to changing others.  I am inviting myself, and anyone who reads this to try all of Lipton and Oakes ideas.  Start by reaching out and starting a conversation with a teacher you do not know.  Remember all those summer reading books we are going to read?  Get a few others to read it with you and get together to discuss it.  I am going to do it with my two walking partners.  Mentor a new teacher at your school, informally need be.  Ask your principal if you can do a staff development on social justice.  Have a conversation about race – MSN just sponsored a documentary called Meeting David Wilson perhaps you can get a copy.  Or use Paul Gorski’s power point.  I plan to do one of those if my principal will let me.  Join national forums, foundations, projects etc.  Most of all become active. Committing to a hopeful critique is often difficult for me but I believe it is possible if you pay attention to Lipton and Oakes next suggestion of finding satisfaction in the Everyday.  This attitude replenishes and will sustain a hopeful outlook if given a conscious effort.  Frederick Douglass said it best “Power never concedes anything without a demand.  It never did and it never will.” – no bystanding!

I wasn’t eager to read this chapter and through most of the beginning was not overly engaged in the history of standardized testing.  Good thing we don’t have a test on it The first quote I was struck by was “the twentieth-century Western world invented a peculiar way of thing about a person’s capacity for learning: Intelligence represented an upper limit, a ceiling, on how successful a student might become.”  This made me think of our gifted testing, where we use a series of intelligence tests to “select” children for the best and most rigorous learning.  It’s only another form of tracking and privileging a group of students.  It should not surprise us that students of color are underrepresented in gifted classes.  And I ask rhetorically, when will we put our learning capacity dollars where our mouths are if our schools give credence to multiple intelligence theories like Howard Gardner’s (these are actually listed in my county’s 13 essential teaching strategies) but continue to insist our students be tortured and judged by a standardized method of evaluating their learning capacity that takes none of their intelligences into account save one?  Lipton and Oakes attempt to provide alternative routes to assessment that match current conceptions of learning and intelligence but tell us that school districts that have tried them, shortly abandoned them due to their time consuming nature and inability to standardize the results.  So I like my other counterparts, administer the standardized ones and pay close attention to my own alternative classroom assessments to drive my instruction.  I get to know my students learning styles and I strive to make my lessons relevant to their lives and their individual learning styles.  In Kindergarten, I guess it’s much easier to incorporate Gardner’s theories but I believe it’s applicable all the way into higher education.  I believe in giving an amazing amount of praise, just as if my child had taken their first step.  I also believe in inviting students to self-critic and establish rubrics for their assessment.  I have found that students will be more demanding than I would have been if I had created the rubric without them.  Additionally, collaborating with my colleagues to evaluate with me, adding a more eyes and perspective to the assessment. 

As a parent, I was aware of the studies that showed a correlation to student achievement and parent involvement.  As a teacher, I now know that my students confidence soars when their parents are involvement and visible at school.  I often attribute our class success to parent involvement in my reflections at the end of the year on my goals.  This is the first year that I have had little parent involvement in my class and at first, I found myself “blaming” parents for this until I dug in and got to know my parents and developed a relationship with them.  With some, I have had to settle for a voice on the phone but never-the-less I believe most of my parents trust me as I trust them to do what we can to help their child succeed.  Going more broadly in my school, parent involvement is sadly dwindling and I see the complaints of “too little” coming from both teachers and administrators.  We have a lot of marginally and not so marginally poor families and the accusations come flying out in all direction over parents who don’t care and the more socially acceptable ones of can’t care or don’t know how to care, spurred by deficit thinkers. What is new in the past few years is that administration has also began to say these things.  I believe the cause for this is two fold.  One, our administration does not want to share decision-making power with parents and should be no surprise because they do not want to share it with teachers.  Second, they are often in a position where they feel they must, as Lipton and Oakes put it, acquiesce to parents’ demands, even if it means giving special privileges or reining in a reform.  This pressure usually comes from the county main office in response to a complaint.  It is a reactive action rather than a proactive action brought about by collaboration with parents.  Another aspect of this is being federally mandated to do so through NCLB and Title 1.  Once parent involvement becomes something outsiders tell you to do, authenticity goes out the door. And despite the mandates, few schools “allow parents a deep influence over the core practices or resources of the school” according to Lipton and Oakes.   I noted Lipton and Oakes’ comments on traditional parent involvement.  That which includes enlisting parent support or services for the school and providing support for families and is controlled by the schools.  This is the type of parent involvement that our school really seeks and the problem lies with being unable to see a way to constructively engage parents to participate.  As Lipton and Oakes argue, we have to rethink the roles of parents in our school and issue genuine invitations to take part in the process.   I was particularly interested in the section on schools meeting families’ needs.  At my school, I believe we have had difficulty in this area for two reasons.  One, we approach it with deficit thinking.  Two, we as teachers are either unwilling or unable to provide the extra effort it would take to provide some of these services.  I am though, very encouraged by an effort by one of our AP’s this year to provide after school clubs.  Teachers have had to volunteer their time but she has been successful in getting parents to do this.  But this does not reach out to parents, parents have to get their children to or from the school and that has limited participation.  Home visits are pretty much forbidden by our administration but this is the one thing that I am committed to trying next year.  Wish me luck!

I don’t think there is anyway that I could read this chapter without a deep sense of sadness when thinking about my own school.  The four features that Lipton and Oakes say shows up in research on what make a good school with good school culture time and time again are: 1) press everyone toward learning and social justice 2) provide broad and deep access to learning 3) build an environment of caring relationships 4) support teachers’ inquiry and activism.  I am fairly sure that these features are not realized at my school.  Lipton and Oakes discussion on school culture was reminiscent of our discussion on identity – specifically school identity.  I still believe that the principal sets the stage for school culture and school identity and we have problems with equity and democracy evidenced by our principal’s actions.  We actively engage in reform efforts that are consistently lauded as productive and effect at other schools but we fail to make a dent in our negative unproductive school culture.  It seems to me we will have to start with #3 – building an environment of caring relationships.  And it actually seems the most possible place for us to start.   Our school seems to have problems with producing a shared vision and I think the following quote from Lipton and Oakes may shed light on this for us.  “Good schools have cultures where it makes sense for faculty to teach all students well and for all students to learn well.  That doesn’t mean that all good schools are alike.”  My first response is – does that make my school a bad school if it is not a good school?  My second response is more to the crux of our problem.  Our school seems to think that if we teach like they do in good schools, the students will learn like they do in good schools and therefore, we will be like good schools.  So…… all we have to do is get their lesson plans, follow their script, use their method etc.  Concepts such as  “press” as described by Lipton and Oakes require inquiry, critical thinking and collaboration to construct.  It is not encouraged at my school.  Learning is a top priority but not for the reasons that are student-center learning based.  Shooting for passing scores on the CRCT is considered setting high-expectations at my school.   The saving grace at our school is our teachers.  They are definitely high quality but they walk at the door too often.  They are well trained, go the extra mile and most genuinely care for their students.  But we fall short of keeping them.  We do not use approaches that are innovative such as team-teaching strategies and looping.  We do not promote social justice inquiry and confront racism. And teacher activism is squelched not supported.  The press in our school culture is silence. 

I was very impressed with most of what Gorski had to say in person and would very much like to hear his full presentation.  I wholeheartedly agreed with what he said about how it was not courageous of him to be doing this work but in fact he was the very person who needed to be doing it since he was of the most privileged group in our society.  I completely co-sign that we were a group more opened to understanding and supporting the need to challenge and dismantle the systems of our society that rely on some being privileged and some being unprivileged.  But there were way too many women, people of color, and progressive scholars in the room for us to feel as if his message was growing any wings to take flight.  What we need is for more white people, men and women to see this as an “our” problem and not a “their” problem that we are going to help them with.  A sort of off-the-subject aha moment for me was his quiz and in particular the statistics on unions in this country.  When did I fall asleep on this one?  My father is the first postal union president ever elected and he absolutely wants to beat me when I tell him a shop at Walmart!  So here I live in a right-to-fire state, wondering why it doesn’t have a teacher’s union, and exactly what connection does that have to poverty –duh!  Thanks for reawakening my consciousness Mr. Gorski J

I hear the teacher comments that Gorski lists in his first paragraph of this article all of the time at school.  In particular the one that goes something like “why don’t those people value education” which is the umbrella statement for all deficit thinkers.  His comments on classism and how people fall into the idea of having to “fix” poor people so that they will not have to take on the larger task of dismantling the systematic inequities that oppress them in the first place are right on target.  Moreover, I believe these classist ideologies serve another purposes for those of us in education.  It serves to distract us from the fact that we are so very close to being one of them.  If we engage in this way of thinking, we are able to create an Us vs. Them situation that serves to mask the fact that teachers are closer to being the working poor in our economy than we are to the middle class.  We further equate poor with uneducated far too generally for the same reasons.  Just because our students come to school from poor families does not mean we should assume their families lack or unappreciated education.   Gorski purports that we tend to fixate on saving our students than taking on the more difficult task of addressing societal issues that create poverty such as preventable illness, lack of health insurance, contaminated living spaces, sufficient food, and save living conditions.  Poignantly he says these conditions speak nothing at all to the culture of those who live in them but rather to the “values of a nation that can afford to eliminate these inequities but chooses not to.”  We would rather wait until our attention can be corralled by an entertainment package of stars like Idol Gives Back that plead with us to “send what we can” for children living in poverty than to “do what we can” on a daily basis to rid ourselves of the conditions that perpetuate poverty.  As teachers we need to post Gorski’s anti-classist plan of action or laundry list of changes on our white boards, in our lesson plans, on our share drives and in our lunchrooms.  It’s a question of action.  

Taco Night at my school is called International Night.  We have had a different version of it every since we started it 5 years ago.  I stress different but not new and improved.  The upside is we do ask students to participate with dances, songs, and poetry and to wear clothing from their culture and we are a very ethnically and nationally diverse school.  Also, there has been an attempt to represent food from different countries – though it lack authenticity and sometimes countries are represented and we do not have students from those countries.  Most notably are the many nations in Africa from which we have students from that are seldom represented.   The most striking aspect of Gorski’s article for me is that of intent, or what he says may be lack of intent with these functions.  His point is that although the intention may have been to engage in a “multicultural awareness” activity, the actuality promoted racial superiority by presented a distorted sense of marginalized groups and their otherness.  This issue of intent reminds me of when I was a police dispatcher and we were experiencing a natural disaster – a firestorm in the Oakland Hills.  We were very busy and experienced a constant barrage of reporters calling in trying to get information.  I worked for a small agency that was very involved in the disaster.  One reporter called in and said “I do not mean to bother you” and I responded, “You may not mean to but you are in fact bothering me.”  This is how I feel about these so-called well-intended acts of intercultural activities and instruction.  Gorski also challenges us that inaction is just as insidious as unintended action.  We need to examine our philosophies, motivations and world views that underlie our consciousnesses when we teach the adults of tomorrow.  Are we preparing them to go out and compete in a  “global economy” and in effect reproduce this economic exploitation and globalize poverty?  Or have we already done this?  If we have or if we are, we do so by not teaching them to challenge and question the very systems that reproduce poverty in our world.  Do we intend that?  No, but we are in fact doing it. 

The first I heard of Ruby Payne was here in Georgia, I guess about 5 years ago and it was along the same vein of reverence, she was a guru when it came to understanding children who lived in poverty.  I never read her book, I didn’t need her help to understand poverty and my students who lived in it.  What I appreciated her for at the time, was that she opened a door for discussion and that people who were definitely on the wrong track might at least get off the train before it wrecked.  But now I am not so sure.  I thank Gorski for exposing the fraudulent nature of her research and her greedy exploitation of people who are already living in object oppression. To continue the analogy of the train, it appears that Ruby Payne may just be the conductor on that train to nowhere.  Also, Gorski is correct in that she preaches a downright dangerous message.  As I teach in a title one school that flip flops each year on making AYP and not, I hear teachers continually blame our students and their families for low scores and underachievement.  They assign characteristics to culture with absolutely no validity whatsoever.  The “good intended” see themselves as saviors to the few that are achieving despite our low expectations.  And finally the real tragedy to the administration and the teachers are that it prevents real social change from occurring.  Frankly, all I had to hear about Ruby Payne to really understand her motives and validate her “findings” as appropriate was that she is connected to and remains supportive of NCLB. 

“The use of cultural referents in teaching bridges and explains the mainstream culture, while valuing and recognizing the students’ own cultures.”  This statement marries Vygotsky theories of learning with social just teaching practices – the right way to learn/the right way to teach and in a way that is righteous.  Of the many features of culturally responsive teaching in this packet of information, I chose three to comment on.   Communication of High Expectations:  I like the way this is written because we simply cannot stop at setting high expectations and expect that to be communicated with our students.  And the active engagement of students with taking on those expectations of themselves requires purposeful two-way communication. Students should participate in the construction of those expectations and we should ensure these expectations are culturally and authentically relevant to our students.  Teachers provide genuine praise and celebration is a critical component and I we like to see the complete dismantling of all tracking in schools. Cultural Sensitivity:  It is imperative that I get to know the cultures represented in my classroom.  I need to seek out literature and provide instruction that values those cultures.  Only then to I start to even the learning process in my classroom.  I need to understand the cultural contexts that my students bring to my classroom if I want to maximize their learning and make sure that I am aware that being sensitive to their development as a student – I do not want to do harm.   Student-Controlled Classroom Discourse:  I think this is important for all students as a necessary engagement tool to promote self-confidence and self-empowerment but I think it is particularly important for students who are marginalized by just being of another culture than the mainstream.  It is not only to provide teachers insight but to provide students with voice.  Communication in all forms should be investigated, understood and engaged in. 

I had some difficulty with this question at first because my simple answer to this was – that would never happen!   I didn’t have a white child in my classroom until I began my third year of teaching and I know that in some part this was by my design.  So I dug back into the text from the perspective that it was indeed me that it was speaking to and not those other “unenlightened” well-meaning white teachers that I am just slightly arrogant enough to believe these articles are meant for to read and learn from.  I have a tendency to believe my perspective on racism in our country and in education is well focused and completely socially just.  I have come to realize that it is not and I have room for improvement.  Particularly, I read and re-read the following quote in the first paragraph “white people need to undergo a profound shift, from viewing the world through a lens of dominance to a comment to equitably shared power and resources.”  This key paradigm shift calls on educators and families to nurture white children’s early identity and social-emotional development in new ways.”  So far in my first 9 years of teaching, I have focused my attention on children of color in the classroom and of doing my very best to build confidence, self-esteem and self-empowerment in my students.  It seriously never occurred to me that I needed to “fix” white children and their families, just that I needed to “help” students of color and their families.   I listened to a program on MSNBC called A Conversation About Race.  Unfortunately, I missed the documentary about the two men who held the conversation and I joined the program where a selected guest panel was continuing the conversation.  It reminded me of this article and the various guests made points with key concepts discussed in it.  Concepts of how racism is socially constructed through our economic, political and educational system and how power has been historically distributed by it.  Poverty was the prevailing theme in the discussion and the legacy of racism for Americans today it that it profoundly influences our social relationships today.  One part of the discussion I found particularly interesting and would like to apply to this article, is that of the discussion of African American people (and this applies to all people of color) and how they must find ways to transcend racism in this country.  One panelist argued that the word transcend implies that racism is something to step over because it will continue to stay put, and they argue that it is something that all people should seek to transform. And I believe that is where this article is most relevant for me as a teacher, especially a white teacher.   Of course I know that children are not colorblind and they see physical differences.  I know they are socialized at a very young age to assign personality characteristics to physical qualities through media and subtle messages that trusted adults provide them.  But I needed the invitation that this article offered to me to join in on the “much-needed conversation about how to “grow” white children who will strive for a just society and thrive in an anti-racist, multicultural world.” Who better to hold the watering can and turn on the sunshine for them than a white teacher who has just grown up a little more herself?