I didn't want this blog to get political. Like a lot of teachers, I've built up a story that my opinion isn't wanted and that it's just better to keep my mouth shut. For a while, I did try to share my ideas freely, but when rumors started that some opinionated teachers were being threatened with their jobs despite having really high test scores, I decided it was time to change my tune. I love my kids and I need my job. I know there are educators at all levels (not just teachers) who are feeling this same way.
Two articles today had me feeling particularly guilty and saddened by this silence from educators:
- Diane Ravitch's "Arne Duncan to White Suburban Mom's"
- Jose Vilson's "Excuse Me Your Privilege is Showing"
Why does this happen? Sometimes I think it's just because we're teachers - we teach students to follow rules and fit in the box; why wouldn't we do the same thing? We want to support and praise our own school systems because they are OUR schools. Furthermore, we believe in our own power to change the lives we work with and to do right in our own sphere of influence (i.e. our classroom) and we know our schools really are doing a lot of amazing things.
When I wonder about the lack of honest dialogue in terms of both Ravitch's and Vilson's conversations, I also think about the plain fact that, at the end of the day, most teachers are simply tired. What teacher has the time to be a good teacher, have some semblance of a real life, be the type of spouse/parent/family they want to be, and to be an advocate, too? What teacher has time for school board meetings and letter writing on top of all we do for school on our own time and all the time we want to give our families? Unfortunately, what it comes down to for many I've known is two options: be silent or leave.
Think about all the phrases and mottos around fear. Fear is its own discourse in our society. Of course on an interpersonal level there's the fear of offending someone. But fear at an institutional level is even bigger. I teach in a "right to work" state. Coming from New York, the voicelessness of teachers here is astounding to me (let's not tackle this as a union issue though... that's a whole separate discussion). I didn't want this blog to get political, but the articles this morning made me cry inside for the lack of voice and honest discussion there is in education between educators within districts and across levels of administration, as well as in our national education forum as a whole. It's a tear all teachers shed at least once daily, I'm sure of it.
I am a "white teacher in a black school" (WTBS) and I also tutor in a very affluent (mostly white) neighborhood. As a teacher, neither dynamic makes me very happy. Seeing the disparity between the two makes me cringe. I see the impact of testing on both populations. I see how the lack of dialogue about race within urban districts makes the lack of dialogue about it in suburban settings even less of an issue. When you're a WTBS, you start to get a glimpse of what it is to learn to become aware of your own race. But then, no one ever talks about it - anywhere. Go figure.
On his blog, Vilson mentions that white privilege is divisive. Definitely - but privilege is power, and anyone in power can be divisive. Is this not what's led us to the Common Core? Let's think about this from the very top down. Our own black president championed the "Race to the Top" (which seems like a really sad pun in this context) and issues of poverty, racism, and class-ism are no more evident in political decisions of educational policy than they were in former presidential eras. And in my own district where many (if not most) of our school and school board leaders are not white, the discussion still is not had, and the rhetoric of American education policy seems to define how we run our schools. And yet, this rhetoric of education and testing is largely controlled by those outside of our schools and it's a rare day that anyone within the schools will take a stance in opposition to the standards and status quo of our profession. [Reminder: I know there are educators at all levels (not just teachers) who are feeling saddened by this. Please take a look at one Superintendent's blog as an example of someone with the courage (and power) to speak up: http://vcsd.neric.org/superintendent/superintendent.htm.]
Sure, there's a lot of personal experience that is behind my opinions and my rant. It's the white parents who move to cute urban neighborhood pockets but refuse to send their children to the neighborhood school - and, admittingly, my decision not to move to an urban neighborhood when I bought my own house. It's the middle school honors student who wrote me at the beginning of the year to say "i'm better teched by black teechers." It's all the news stories surrounding my school district and all of the power politics I've seen happen in the last seven years. And it's as simple as the sixth grade students who gasped when one of their peers shouted out "white" as one of my character traits in a mini-lesson. My response - "You're black, I'm white. Those are the facts. It's okay to say it like that. What's the big deal?"
But the big deal is that our district spends about the same per pupil as surrounding districts and that can not make up for the gap between the demographics of our urban district and others where economic and social factors are not major influences on the "second backpack" our children bring to school with them. My students already knew the connotations of speaking the words 'black' and 'white' - and they, too, had already begun to fear the discussion. And that is a big deal.
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