Black Lives Matter Day of Solidarity in SPS
Update: Sebrena Burr, the president of the Seattle County PTSA said the board unanimously supported the teachers’ action planned for Wednesday.
end of update
(I can't seem to get comment moderation on so I am asking for civility. If not, then I'll turn off the comments.)
The Seattle Teachers Association has been planning a Day of Solidarity on October 19th for African-American students in Seattle schools. As well, the teacher group, Social Equality Educators, is part of the planning for this day.
I support this day and I support the district's efforts to close the opportunity gap for all high-risk student groups.
However, this is may be a charged conversation but I am going to attempt to be clear about my concerns, not for the purpose of the day, but how it will play out.
Background for October 19th
The impetus for the actual day seems to have come from Hamilton International Middle School teacher, Sarah
I talked to Ms. Avery about the day and she said it was for two things: solidarity with John Muir Elementary and in support of Black Lives Matter in order to support black SPS students. She said teachers wanted to model for students about standing up for beliefs and especially fighting fear tactics.
Ms Avery said that many teachers were planning lessons around this effort for October 19th. It seems it will be a teacher decision what the lesson looks like.
She said she, along with other teachers are working for three "asks" of the district:
- de-tracking of programs. She they are "disproportionally offered" and that "testing doesn't go out for all families." She said it "feeds into the social separation of youth."
- restorative justice around discipline issues, especially disproportional discipline of black students
- ethnic studies to be a requirement for high school graduation.
The teachers are buying the shirts themselves or getting them thru SEA. I asked her if she thought perhaps that some teachers might not want to wear the t-shirt but may worry about the perception if they don't wear it. She said absolutely not.
She said that she hoped the outcome of the October 19th day is "a rising of awareness of the mvement to insure schools are, both on the ground and institutionally, promoting inclusion of all students and saying that racial equity is a priority in our schools."
The District's Initiative
On Friday, after 5 pm, the district sent out a press release about new campaign called #CloseTheGaps. It begins next week and they are asking for parent/public support. Here's a link to the new webpage for this effort. (Normally for something this important most government entities don't do it on a Friday after 5 pm.) From the district's website:
This work includes the unveiling of the district’s “Four P’s”: Positive Learning, Positive Beliefs, Positive Relationships, and Positive Partnerships. Each “P” represents many of the initiatives we are implementing including: My Brother’s Keeper, a mentorship program; RULER, a social-emotional curriculum; and Everyday Matters, an attendance program.The district has chosen to concentrate its efforts on African-American students but with the belief that what they learn about closing gaps for that group can be used for other high-risk groups like Native American, Hispanic and Pacific-Islander students. The Board had discussions about this tactic in the spring but said yes.
During our #CloseTheGaps kick-off week, Seattle Education Association is promoting October 19 as a day of solidarity to bring focus to racial equity and affirming the lives of our students – specifically our students of color.
In support of this focus, members are choosing to wear Black Lives Matter t-shirts, stickers or other symbols of their commitment to students in a coordinated effort. SEA is leading this effort and working to promote transformational conversations with staff, families and students on this issue.
My Concerns
After the John Muir incident, I had some questions for the district. Here are my questions and their reply:
Me: Who wrote this announcement (about the John Muir incident) at the SPS website? I ask because it doesn't sound like SPS Communications. I do mean the specific person who wrote it and who directed that person to write it.
SPS: Please attribute to Seattle Public Schools. It is our collective response to the event at John Muir.
I will say that, in tone, this announcement is uncharacteristic for SPS Communications. It was written in a more impassioned manner than you normally see from the district.
Me: Does the district have any comment on the t-shirts that some Muir teachers wore in support of Black Lives Matter?
SPS: The t-shirt design is
unique to John Muir Elementary. Over this past year, the school staff
has been learning together, comparing their data to other schools,
identifying practices used by our 12 outlier schools (schools closing
gaps for students of color) and in a staff meeting they decided to
create a t-shirt to represent their commitment to their students.
Me:
Are teachers allowed full discretion on any t-shirt they may wear to school (or, if not, what are the limits?).
SPS: We respect our
teachers' rights and desire to express themselves. Teachers have first
amendment rights in the classroom but this right may be limited by a
school district, especially if a shirt creates a disruption to the
educational environment or is profane.
I asked the district and Ms. Avery about other ways to show their support for African-American students. I asked the district:
Me: How does the district view Black Lives Matter group? Is it a political movement? Another African-American group?
SPS: As a district we are
united in our commitment to eliminating opportunity gaps for African
American students and other students of color.
Me: Does the District
believe that teachers wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirts is the only
way that teachers or SPS can "affirm black lives?"
SPS: Affirming
students happens every day in our classrooms and we are working to get
better at it. This year we are focused on four key strategies: positive
learning, positive beliefs, positive partnerships and positive
relationships. On Sept 1 we held the first district-wide professional
development day for all teachers in partnership with SEA. The focus was
on building positive student-educator relationships. This was also the
focus of the events at John Muir and Leshi Elementary.
I asked Ms. Avery if her group had considered any other slogan to support black students and she said no.
From reading their official webpage, they are striving for several things. Here's their mission statement:
Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.Also from their home page (bold theirs:)
Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all.
Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.So they do say they are a political group.
One concern is that teachers have their own political beliefs. I have to wonder if a teacher sees that the district is fine with teachers wearing shirts that promotes one political group that then other teachers will wear t-shirts that promote their own political beliefs. It's a sticky wicket for the district to put school communities in.
Another concern stems from what happened at John Muir. Of course, it is the right thing to do to stand up in solidarity with Muir. No school should ever receive threats for any reason.
But, from media coverage of that experience, it appears that not everyone has done their homework on Black Lives Matter. The general public may perceive the action on October 19th in the wrong way.
And, instead of seeing a district celebrating students in a racial group that has been marginalized and hurt by society, the public will focus only on who it appears to me that the district is aligning themselves with to do so. I especially worry about the tv coverage because tv stations tend to try to sensationalize stories.
For many in Seattle, the only real thing they may know about Black Lives Matter - beyond their name being probably one of the most famous Twitter hashtags ever created - is when the Seattle chapter interrupted the Bernie Sanders event. Again, the optics of that event did not play out well. So instead of people hearing what the BLM members were saying, the public only saw that thousands of people - many of them disabled who had come to hear Sanders because he was to speak on that topic - have their plans to listen to a presidential candidate derailed.
I worry those same kind of optics may visit the district on October 19th.
I note that Wikipedia explains that BLM has a very loose structure and that chapters are allowed to go their own way on their actions.
The loose structure of Black Lives Matter has contributed to confusion in the press and among activists, as actions or statements from chapters or individuals are sometimes attributed to "Black Lives Matter" as a whole.[31][32] Matt Pearce, writing for the Los Angeles Times, commented that "the words could be serving as a political rallying cry or referring to the activist organization. Or it could be the fuzzily applied label used to describe a wide range of protests and conversations focused on racial inequality."[33]
Indeed, the BLM website lists chapters but with these caveats:
- Please note that #BlackLivesMatter is a network predicated on Black self-determination, and BLM Chapters reserve the right to limit participation based on this principle.
- Please be aware that BLM Chapters have varying membership policies, and may or may not be accepting new members at this time. Also note that membership requirements vary by chapter.
- Lastly, expect some delay in response to your inquiry.
Unfortunately, it is at the same time as the Board meeting and I am unable to attend. From their press release (partial:)
Speakers:
DeShawn Jackson: Instructional Assistant, John Muir Elementary
Sarah Arvey: Teacher Hamilton International Middle School, advisor for Hamilton Against Racism
Jesse Hagopian: Teacher, Black Student Union advisor, Garfield High School, editor for Rethinking School magazine
Rita Green: Seattle NAACP education chair
Donte Felder: Mentor teacher, Orca K-8
Kshama Sawant: Seattle City Council Member
Jon Greenberg: Teacher, Center School High, antiracist educator who was reprimanded for his courageous conversation curriculum.
So readers, let us know what you, as parents, have been told about this day - what events are planned, is your child's teacher planning a Black Lives Matter lesson, etc.In the first action of its kind in the country, hundreds of teachers, counselor, instructional assistants, office staff, and other educators, will wear “Black Lives Matter” shirts to school on Wednesday, October 18th. At the time of this release, already over 700 shirts have been ordered by educators in Seattle.
It is urgent for educators to stand up against racism in our society, city and schools. The Seattle school district has grappled with institutionalized racism and remains a district that is segregated, has disproportionate discipline rates for students of color, and struggles to close the opportunity gap. It is imperative to see that educators continue to fight for the rights of all students and communities, especially those that have a long history disenfranchisement. “For Black lives to matter, they also have to matter at school,” says Jesse Hagopian, Garfield High School teacher and community organizer. “I’m proud of my educator colleagues across Seattle who voted unanimously at the union meeting to affirm our Black students who are confronted with a school-to-prison-pipeline, disproportionate discipline, a dearth of culturally relevant curriculum, and state violence.”
“We must be bold in addressing racism. If we meter our responses in catering to white fragility, we will always heel towards the status quo of white supremacy,” says Ian Golash, Chief Sealth High School teacher.As Mark Lilly, Instructional Assistant and leader of Bembe Olele Afro-Cuban Dance Company, states, “This is our opportunity to leverage the power of public education showing the world community that when faced with oppression, social justice, right action and compassion are the chosen response.”The message is more than words on a shirt. In addition to wearing the Black Lives Matter t-shirts, educators are doing teach-ins, presenting Black Lives Matter Curriculum, supporting student activism and leadership, and organizing with community members.
It will be an important and historic day in the history of Seattle Schools.
Comments
-M
*I wonder how many parents would be supportive if they knew threats were being launched at our schools and children".
I am angry at the people who threatened the John Muir school community and who are threatening our children today. Thye are completely out of line. I am not angry at the people planning a peaceful protest. If we followed your logic, we would never have had a civil rights movement in this country nor any other challenges to the prevailing viewpoint. -NP
MAPLEWOOD, N.J. — Few things are more awesome than listening to kids playing on the playground. There’s magic in that mix of laughter and exhausted breaths — giggle, pant, giggle.
Just the other Saturday at Maplewood’s Memorial Park, I was watching my 5-year-old playing with his friends from day care. The kids have just started kindergarten and are now split up among four schools. Some industrious mom had the idea to get them together again.
It was a great idea. It was also the moment when I saw the messy birth of my son’s otherness.
They were playing on one of those spinning things — you know, the one where kids learn about centrifugal force and as a bonus get crazy dizzy. They were having a blast.
“Only white people,” said a little girl.
I heard it, but I wasn’t quite sure that’s what I heard.
“Not you, you’re black,” said the girl, reaching out to touch my son. “You’re not white. Only white people can play.”
What to do? How to do it? What to say? How to say it?
I couldn’t escape the searing historical parallels of a little white girl telling a little black boy — my son — what he can and cannot do because of his skin color.
My instinct was to go over and drop science on her and all of the other little children.
But then my systems kicked in. My automatic scary-black-man recalibration systems. The infinitesimal adjustments that black men employ not only to succeed in school and at work, but also to help us keep it 100, stay woke, all while trying to make white folks feel comfortable enough to keep us around.
Whether it’s turning down your Kendrick Lamar when the white woman gets on the elevator or flashing those disarming smiles at white women you pass at night on the sidewalk, black men learn to present safeness.
Why do I always have to make white people feel comfortable at the expense of who I am and my mood and my music and my thoughts?
Walter Scott — and every other unarmed black man killed by police officers — is why.
To support a family is why.
If I scared the white people at the playground with my reaction, what would be the impact on our little family in Maplewood? Would we be on the next email thread for a play date? Would the other families talk about my son’s angry dad?
I made all these calculations in the five seconds after he was told he couldn’t play because he was black.
Then I noticed my son. When the little racist girl reached out to touch him, he moved out of the way and laughed. He kept right on playing.
-NP Part 1
How have you handled racist comments — whether it’s on the playground, at work or in the home?
The garbage that came out of that child’s mouth meant nothing to him. Yet. It marks the beginning of what is likely to be a gradual process. One day he’ll wonder why, when he plays with a certain group of friends, he is always the villain. Similar inquiries will follow, until he has his own system of recalibrations and adjustments.
I knew a moment like this would happen eventually. I just didn’t think it would happen at age 5 on the playground.
And what of the little girl? She, too, is a casualty in this — infected by racism before she can even spell the word.
It would be easy to dismiss the whole exchange as kids being kids. She’s young enough that she hasn’t developed the filters to catch what she’s being taught at home. There’s a direct line from what she’s learning to her mouth. I thought about all the time my son spent with this child in his day care class. What else had she expressed to him, or to the other students about him?
Besides the idea that, just by virtue of her complexion, she is more entitled to something as simple as spinning on the playground.
Who will she become when she grows up? Will she be a prosecutor, a manager at a tech firm, a politician? Systemic racism apparently begins at the playground.
I was still processing the incident while my son and his friends ran over to the slides.
-NP
“Who is that child?” I asked.
The dad told me the girl’s name and pointed out her mother. The mom was standing about a dozen feet away in a group of other moms talking about how the kids were adjusting to kindergarten.
I tried to imagine a productive confrontation, but couldn’t get beyond my opening line: “Excuse me, can we talk about the racist trash that just came out of your daughter’s mouth?”
I told the dad next to me what had happened. He didn’t know what to say, because honestly, who really does? He unfortunately did what a lot of white people do in these moments: He tried to explain it.
“Really?” he said. “That’s not her personality.”
In the end I did nothing.
I agonized over it, of course. My wife and I have since had several discussions about what we could have done, what should have been said, and to whom. At one point I decided that the thing to do would have been to bring the matter directly to the parent. But leaving the children out of it didn’t seem right.
I recalled a moment from my childhood in Hawaii. One of my best friends, Dominic, was white. He was from a big family and being at his house was like stepping into an ’80s sitcom. I was over there all the time. Dominic’s dad was my mom’s boss on the Air Force base.
But one day, when I asked my mother if I could go to Dominic’s, she said no. She said the same thing the next time I asked, and the next. After a few weeks, I gave up.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I heard the story. Dominic’s family was having a party. We kids were probably in front of the Nintendo or running around the yard. The parents were inside, talking about the New York Knicks’ full name, the Knickerbockers. “Their real name should be the New York Nigger-bockers,” Dominic’s mom said, with a laugh.
My mother, the only black person at the party, gathered her things, found me and told me it was time to go.
I don’t blame my mother for not explaining. But I would have benefited from knowing what had happened.
Two years later, my mother and I moved to Montgomery, Ala. I walked into the halls of Alabama’s public schools completely unprepared for the racial dynamics that would meet me there. It was an intense couple of years as I received a middle-schooler’s crash course in racial truths.
Sitting here today, with the string of black men dying on camera at the hands of government agents who are often not held accountable, and with a major presidential candidate who passively, if not wholeheartedly, accepts the admiration of the K.K.K. and other white supremacist groups, I must make a different decision from my mother.
My son has watched too many boys and men that look like him die before his eyes on television. We don’t shield him from those images.
“What happened, Daddy?”
I explain.
“What did he do wrong?”
His mother and I exchange looks. I try to answer. Best I can. He pauses, then he’s back to his Hot Wheels races.
-NP
outofcontrol
Instead I will interrupt the children as they play, or study, or swim in the pool. I will do this for three reasons.
First, the children being groomed to be racist need to learn that acting on their racism has consequences, the least of which is that they will be met with resistance. The children have to see that people will stand up to them and call out their ignorance.
Second, all the white children in earshot also need to see that resistance and be taught that standing by silently is an endorsement.
And most important, I have to model for my children ways for them to confront racism without going all scorched earth. They need to see from their parents how to speak to ignorance, wield their dignity and push back against individual and systematic efforts to define, limit and exclude them.
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During the walk home from the playground, my wife, my son and I talked about race while our 2-year-old daughter listened from her stroller.
NYT continued
My son nodded and said, “Yes, sir,” the way a 5-year-old does. It wasn’t our first conversation on the subject. My wife and I have been very deliberate in our attempt to introduce him to concepts of race and history. The goal is for him to be confident, keen, yet still open-minded about those around him — a goal many adults are still striving for.
It’s clear that someone in that little girl’s life is pursuing a different goal.
We don’t have a choice but to talk to our son about Ferguson, Eric Garner, workplace frictions, Baltimore, Charlotte, Alton Sterling and on and on. And yet I mourn each of those conversations. With each degree of awareness comes a corresponding loss — of silliness, of whimsy, of childhood.
Topher Sanders reports on racial inequality for ProPublica. -NP
Sorry you wasted your time discussing the difference between all lives matter and black lives matter. What ARE the selfish teachers thinking?
I hope you don't mind the long post - I was trying to reprint a recent article (link below) from the NYT which I hopes sheds some light on why the teachers are and SPS are doing what they are doing with BLM.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/opinion/sunday/only-white-people-said-the-little-girl.html?mabReward=CTM&src=rec&recp=19
Everything we do (or don't do) is a political act. We just don't recognize it. -NP
Here's the thing though... Removing service for gifted kids isn't putting out the fire. It's setting a fire in the house down the street in the name of equity.
Gifted kids, teens, and adults are also an at-risk population, with high rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide. They are frequent targets of bullying, which makes these problems worse. 2E kids have an even harder time.
Let's reach for equity by putting out the fire, raising people up, not by setting another fire, pulling more people down. A street with all the houses burning may be fair, but it's not good.
Keep trying. You just have to stop fixating on BLM and start looking at the bigger picture. Pro-Lifers consider fetuses to be people. Are there people in the classroom to support? Are there people missing from the classroom because of abortion?
As I said, every teacher shilling political opinions to children thinks they are right and their issue is a moral imperative. They also believe that they are so righteous and important that they are entitled to degrade education to serve their own personal propaganda campaign.
(I'm confused as to how pasting a NYT article into the comment section is the same thing as commenting, NP. Why use someone else's intellectual property instead of summarizing your points in your own words?)
What do you mean by this?
Removing service for gifted kids isn't putting out the fire. It's setting a fire in the house down the street in the name of equity.
Gifted kids, teens, and adults are also an at-risk population, with high rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide. They are frequent targets of bullying, which makes these problems worse. 2E kids have an even harder time. Let's reach for equity by putting out the fire, raising people up, not by setting another fire, pulling more people down.
ex-Hamiltonian
open ears
I am happy to use my own words - and have - but I also think that article was very well written and sums up a lot of the issues and experiences that many people have had and which are relevant for this discussion. BTW, I also quote Shakespeare, Einstein, Kant and other thinkers when appropriate - lots of people use outside sources to affirm or support a point of view. We see that a lot when disussing HCC and Cogat testing on this blog too. -NP
Est makes the point I made in the thread; I think this is a slippery slope for the district about what message appears on teachers or students t-shirts.
2cents
I'll put up another thread the day of the event for readers to give feedback on what they see at their schools.