Enid Lee. Photo by Rick Reinhard.

In the face of Chicago Board of Education plans to close 50 public schools—teachers, parents, and students have rallied to protest what Chicago Teachers’ Union president Karen Lewis describes as a “scorched earth policy.”

Teaching for Change adviser Enid Lee offers her insight on the significance of the current activism surrounding the closures. Lee recommends that when teaching young people about the school closings in Chicago and other cities, the resistance and activism to this injustice should be at the forefront of classroom discussion:

“My thought was, it’s so important for the children to focus on not only the fact that the schools have been closed, but on the resistance to schools being closed.”

“It’s the piece of the headlines in the news that can get missed, because the headline is, ’49 Schools are Closed,’ and it’s terrible. Which it is. And they mostly affect African-American communities. Equally important is what the African-American communities and others are doing about it.”

Listen to Enid Lee.

Lee also discusses the importance of digital media, such as YouTube, as a platform for connecting and collaborating across communities. “When technology and ideology are aligned for human liberation, we have a winning combination,” Lee said.

The video clips below, featuring nine-year-old Asean Johnson, offer an example of how stories of activism in the face of school closings can inspire solidarity:

Lee asserts that technology, such as these video clips, offers a way:

“in which we can… create real villages in our educational worlds because we can reach each other and the voices that would typically be lost, or not heard at all, can be heard.”

“It allows us for an evolving curriculum; an up-to-date, up-to-the-minute, hot-off-the-press evolving curriculum that we need to just take advantage of every day.”

Listen to Enid Lee.

This is the first in a series of reflections from Enid Lee on contemporary issues in education. Enid Lee is the co-editor of Teaching for Change’s publication, Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development.

Thanks to Teaching for Change intern Shelly Wen for preparing this post for the internet.

You are invited to an event featuring the new book

Thunder of Freedom: Black Leadership and the Transformation of 1960s Mississippi 

 African American Civil War Memorial and Museum
Thursday, June 20, 2013, 7-9 pm

Presentation: Congressman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS)

Welcome: Frank Smith, Director of the African American Civil War Museum

Speakers: Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner and Cheryl Reitan

The Thunder of Freedom: Black Leadership and the Transformation of 1960s Mississippi  by Sue [Lorenzi] Sojourner with Cheryl Reitan has just been released by the University Press of Kentucky (2013).

From September 1964 until her departure from the state in 1969, Sue Sojourner and her husband, Henry, worked with Holmes County, Mississippi leaders on an ambitious African American voter registration project. Often met with violent resistance from white supremacists, the group persevered and in 1967 elected Robert G. Clark to the Mississippi legislature, the first African American to hold a Mississippi state office in the 20th century. Sojourner chronicles the early voting registration work in Holmes County that pre-dated her and her husband’s work there. She collected an incredible number of documents, oral histories, and photographs of the decade long struggle in Holmes County. In this book, written in collaboration with Cheryl Reitan, Sojourner presents an account of one of the civil rights movement’s most active and broad-based community organizing operations in the South.

A book signing will follow the presentation.

Teaching for Change, a co-sponsor of the event, will have copies of the book available for purchase.

Refreshments will be served.

Photo above of Ozell Mitchell, 1968 (c) Sue Sojourner.

Please join us for a special reception with students
and their teachers from McComb, Mississippi.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

6:00-8:00pm

African American Civil War Museum
1925 Vermont Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001

Sixteen students and their teachers from McComb will be in D.C. for the National History Day (NHD) competition. This is the second time McComb has participated in National History Day. They won at the state level and now they are coming to DC for the national competition.

One of their entries was a mini-documentary about the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the voting rights struggle in McComb. Students also created a website about the voting rights struggle and a play about Isaiah Montgomery.

The students will show their 10-minute documentary about SNCC and the voting rights struggle in McComb. They will also talk about how and why they are documenting local activist history and engage in a dialogue about carrying on the legacy today.

The event is free and open to the public. We ask that you RSVP so we can plan accordingly. If you have questions, call 202-588-7205 or send an email.

For more information about the work of the students in McComb, see the McComb Legacies Project blog.

The event is funded by a W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant to Teaching for Change.

Do you love listening to StoryCorps? We do. And so will your students. StoryCorps U is looking for teacher and/or whole high school partners in Washington, DC.

Here is a an overview of what they offer including a 29-unit curriculum, training, and coaching.

The curriculum makes great use of StoryCorps’ database of 45,000 interviews, drawing on stories that can be connected to a range of topics in your curriculum. The curriculum is also designed to promote peer listening and understanding in the classroom. Check out the sample lesson.

Contact Eva Liao at eliao@storycorps.org at StoryCorps ASAP if you are interested in having your classroom or school serve as a StoryCorps U site. There are limited slots available for next school year.

Using a relationship-building approach that effectively addresses racial, ethnic, and class diversity, Teaching for Change supports parent leadership in their schools. Through community building activities, parent meetings, and academic-based workshops and events, Teaching for Change helps parents develop skills to help their children achieve. At the same time, Teaching for Change provides professional development and coaching for parent coordinators, teachers, and school administrators to create a welcoming, inclusive, and collaborative school environment.

The meeting will be held at the NEA, 1201 16^th Street, NW, Washington, DC in Conference Room B. There will be a networking at 9:00 AM, and presentation will be from 9:30 – 11:30 AM. The call-in number for those who cannot attend in person is 1-866-846-3997. The code to connect to the call is 7888942#.

The event is free and open to the public.

Dialogue in DC with Jesse Hagopian about the Scrap the MAP Campaign

Two generations of activists: SNCC veteran Frank Smith (founder and director of the African American Civil War Museum) and teacher activist Jesse Hagopian.

As public school students in DC braced themselves for another round of the  DC Comprehensive Assessment System (DC CAS) test, Seattle teacher Jesse Hagopian spoke to 60 DC teachers and students about the Garfield test boycott. Teaching for Change, the DC Social Justice Teaching Network, and Haymarket Books hosted Hagopian’s presentation on the “Scrap the MAP” campaign at the African American Civil War Museum on April 15, 2013.

Garfield High School has become the latest battleground for high-stakes testing with its January 2013 boycott of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) exam, with teachers including Jesse Hagopian leading the charge. [Read an article by Hagopian about the boycott in Rethinking Schools.]

“Testing is the lifeblood of the corporate education model,” Hagopian told the audience. “Reducing students and teachers and all their many talents into tiny data points is how they get away with closing schools. They label your school a failure.”

Jesse Hagopian shares the story of the Garfield boycott with teachers and students.

The teachers at Garfield and other critics say that the MAP exam doesn’t reflect the curriculum being taught and is improperly used to measure teacher effectiveness, among other significant charges. In addition to learning about the test and the boycott, the participants engaged in small group dialogues about improving or resisting high-stakes testing. Those present discussed meaningful assessments and what schools could use as an alternative to these tests.

Participants asked Hagopian for tips to help them mobilize in their own schools and about the role of parents and students.

A teacher, parent, and student from Wilson SHS confer about the implications of the Garfield boycott for testing in DC, along with a teacher from Woodson SHS.

The “Scrap the MAP” campaign began last December, when a veteran teacher at Garfield informed Hagopian in his role as the union representative that she would not be administering the MAP test. The rest of the staff determined she should not take the stand alone. Despite risking unpaid suspension, insubordination charges, and even their jobs, the entire faculty voted unanimously to boycott the test. Donations, gifts, and letters of support began to pour in from all over the country and even England—just as the district and superintendent began issuing mandates about the test and warnings about consequences. Former D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee weighed in with a Seattle Times op-ed, criticizing the campaign for “distract[ing] from what’s best for students.”

Undeterred, by the time the first test date rolled around in January, the student body government, the Parent-Teacher-Student Association, and two more Seattle schools had joined the boycott, backed by hundreds of opt-out letters from parents. Students who did not have opt-out letters showed their solidarity by invalidating their exams. Of the 810 tests that were supposed to be administered at Garfield, only about 100 were actually given, a majority of which had been invalidated.

Participants discuss questions about testing, assessment, and learning before the formal presentation and dialogue.

At the end of the event, participants were encouraged to take the discussions back to their school communities and were asked to share their thoughts. Kimberly, a student at Capital City Public Charter School who attended the event with her mother, said:

“I don’t know why we do D.C. CAS. They never told me why; they just gave me the test. They’d take a month out of the year to have to learn some random topic for a one-day test, and they assess us on what they thought we’d know, not what we’re actually learning. It should test whether we can think and solve problems. I should know how to problem-solve instead of learning random facts. It’s a waste of time.”

There was a round of applause in agreement with Kimberly’s critique and insights. Now the challenge is how to turn those concerns into action. The lessons from Garfield provide ideas and inspiration.

Photos and story by Jazelle Hunt, Teaching for Change Communications Associate.

Proud of his Puerto Rican heritage and a stalwart advocate for economic and social justice, he spoke openly against racism, Jim Crow, and oppression. His personal heroes were Martin Luther King, Jr. and Puerto Rican leader Luis Muñoz Marín, and Clemente became a hero to African Americans and Latinos in the United States (especially Puerto Rico) and abroad.

“It is ironic that the profession in which he achieved ‘legendry’ [status] knew him the least,” reads a line from an obituary written by the Black Panthers. “Roberto Clemente was simply a man, a man who strove to achieve his dream of peace and justice for oppressed people throughout the world.”

Modesto Lacen in role of Roberto Clemente at GALA Theater.

Teaching for Change is pleased to share resources that can help students and teachers paint a comprehensive picture of the life and legacy of Roberto Clemente. These resources are offered in conjunction with a musical about Clemente titled DC-7: The Roberto Clemente Story by Luis Caballero.

The musical will be performed in Washington, D.C. at the GALA Hispanic Theatre from April 18 – May 19, 2013 in Spanish with English surtitles. GALA Theatre generously selected Teaching for Change as the beneficiary of the preview night on April 17.

Teaching Activity

One strategy teachers can use to introduce Roberto Clemente to students is to complete a K-W-L chart. As a group, students write out and/or discuss what they know (K), what questions they want answered (W), and what they have learned from reading the text (L).

Procedure:

1. Engage students in a discussion of what they already know about Roberto Clemente. The short bio above may be used to prime students if they have no familiarity with Clemente.
2. List what students know in the K column of the chart. (Often times this will be what they think they know.)
3. Note disagreements and questions in the W column as questions they want to have answered. Ask students what else they want to learn and record responses (as questions) in the W column.
4. Distribute the short readings to students individually or in small groups. There are twelve readings for middle and high school students. Make enough copies so that every student has one reading or there are sets of selected readings for small groups. The readings  are excerpted from the Roberto Clemente PBS film transcript and two books by Dave Zirin: A People’s History of Sports in the United States and Welcome to the Terrordome.
   
5. Direct students to read their respective text and jot down information they learn as well as new questions that arise.
6. Engage students in a discussion of what they have learned from the readings. Summarize the discussion in the L column of the chart.

Source: Kent State University

Resources for the Classroom

Clemente from the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative
Poster by artist Colin Matthes 

Clemente was the first Latino star in major league baseball and the first to wear his Latin heritage proudly, speaking out on the way racism in the United states affected Latino ballplayers.

February 28
My Name is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize

March 4
A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing for School Reform 

Co-editors Mark R. Warren and Karen L. Mapp talked about the successes and challenges faced by community-based school reform efforts across the country. The event was co-sponsored by NCPIE and others.

March 11
Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City

Author Barbara Miner was interviewed by Bill Fletcher Jr. about the lessons learned in Milwaukee about school reform, in particular school “choice.”

March 12
Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson 

Historian Barbara Ransby (best known for her book on Ella Baker) was interviewed by the author and professor Clarence Lusane about the remarkable yet little known life of Eslanda Robeson. The event was introduced by the chair of the Howard University Department of Afro American Studies, Greg Carr.

March 28
This is How You Lose Her and Quality Education as a Constitutional Right

Award-winning author Junot Diaz and SNCC veteran/founder of the Algebra Project Bob Moses spoke at two events for the Young People’s Project in Mississippi. There was literally a line out the door for both events.

Don’t miss our upcoming author events.

This was a competitive multi-step application process involving interviews with the Teaching for Change board and staff. As a partner, we will receive expert help with financial management and analysis, fundraising, board development, leadership development, strategic planning, outreach, communications, and more.

Our Fair Chance capacity builder, Jessica Solomon, has a background in non-profit management and the arts.  She will meet with us weekly for an entire year, beginning with a thorough organizational assessment and developing a comprehensive work plan. While it will take a lot of our leadership staff’s time, we will have a stronger and more effective organization as a result.