It seems I know these people. Don't many of us feel that?
I've worshipped in Charleston.
All my life I've known the vibe of an A.M.E. Church on a Sunday morning. We call ourselves a "connectional" denomination, the "sons and daughters of Richard and Sarah Allen." I've leaned on that connection when traveling to different U.S. cities.
I'm just rambling here.
This post isn't intended to be demoninational-ist, if I may coin a phrase. I've just been feeling that connection today -- to my grandmother Gray, my great aunts, my Sunday School teacher ... the liberationist history of the A.M.E. church, my brothers and sisters and friends in Charleston.
Friday, June 19, 2015
Friday, March 27, 2015
Are Future Teachers Fooling Themselves?
The headline read: "College Students to Veteran Teachers: Quit Telling Us to Avoid Teaching." You will find the link to that story below. Here is my reply to the college students:
Good! This is exciting, and not unlike the idealism, energy, vision, and hopefulness of other generations of new (not necessarily young) teachers. These young adults are, however, preaching to the choir if they are aiming their resistance at working teachers. It is the mind and the vote of the general public they should be trying to influence.
The hypocrisy of boards and policy makers and the disrespect they have for the profession are way out of control, driving public education toward a crash and burn. These political bodies' negativity toward our profession implants feelings of powerlessness among educators and stirs misunderstanding and apathy among the public. If you, future teachers, are not taking that seriously enough, you, too will crash and burn sooner than you think.
Schools are workplaces. When the pedal hits the metal, teachers must navigate not only such regular nuisances as supplies distribution, equipment repair, and facilities maintenance, but they also must negotiate workplace politics and power games. They must maintain equilibrium amidst co-workers, including administrators, with varying degrees of competency levels. Sure, dedicated teachers of any age are most exhilarated by the actual teaching, the engagement with students, the witnessing of learning taking place! But these same teachers, no matter how hard they resist it, are worn down by bureaucracies and insensitive voters.
Young employees in any field are quick to judge and dismiss older workers -- so what's new? Stick to your advocacy for students, but let no one convince you that it is less important than advocating for yourself, your colleagues, and your profession. You will be a 30-year-old one day. You must earn a living -- an adult's salary, a livable wage. Loving teaching is never enough. The profession requires you to step all the way inside it, not with theory but with full application. Your workday never ends.
Will you want to sacrifice a fair and decent living at the same time? Teaching will try to pull a fast one on you, tell you that you are a special kind while compensating you with a minor fraction of what the textbook salesperson makes. That question is something you won't want to put far into the back of your mind.
"College Students to Veteran Teachers: Quit Telling Us to Avoid Teaching."
http://news.yahoo.com/college-students-veteran-educators-quit-telling-us-avoid-224350002.html?bcmt=comments-postbox?bcmt=1427457427834-8906cfab-9985-4bd7-ae59-d633173fb779&bcmt_s=u#mediacommentsugc_container
Good! This is exciting, and not unlike the idealism, energy, vision, and hopefulness of other generations of new (not necessarily young) teachers. These young adults are, however, preaching to the choir if they are aiming their resistance at working teachers. It is the mind and the vote of the general public they should be trying to influence.
The hypocrisy of boards and policy makers and the disrespect they have for the profession are way out of control, driving public education toward a crash and burn. These political bodies' negativity toward our profession implants feelings of powerlessness among educators and stirs misunderstanding and apathy among the public. If you, future teachers, are not taking that seriously enough, you, too will crash and burn sooner than you think.
Schools are workplaces. When the pedal hits the metal, teachers must navigate not only such regular nuisances as supplies distribution, equipment repair, and facilities maintenance, but they also must negotiate workplace politics and power games. They must maintain equilibrium amidst co-workers, including administrators, with varying degrees of competency levels. Sure, dedicated teachers of any age are most exhilarated by the actual teaching, the engagement with students, the witnessing of learning taking place! But these same teachers, no matter how hard they resist it, are worn down by bureaucracies and insensitive voters.
Young employees in any field are quick to judge and dismiss older workers -- so what's new? Stick to your advocacy for students, but let no one convince you that it is less important than advocating for yourself, your colleagues, and your profession. You will be a 30-year-old one day. You must earn a living -- an adult's salary, a livable wage. Loving teaching is never enough. The profession requires you to step all the way inside it, not with theory but with full application. Your workday never ends.
Will you want to sacrifice a fair and decent living at the same time? Teaching will try to pull a fast one on you, tell you that you are a special kind while compensating you with a minor fraction of what the textbook salesperson makes. That question is something you won't want to put far into the back of your mind.
"College Students to Veteran Teachers: Quit Telling Us to Avoid Teaching."
http://news.yahoo.com/college-students-veteran-educators-quit-telling-us-avoid-224350002.html?bcmt=comments-postbox?bcmt=1427457427834-8906cfab-9985-4bd7-ae59-d633173fb779&bcmt_s=u#mediacommentsugc_container
Sunday, March 1, 2015
"Empire," A Rock Around Our Necks
Last week, the Fox network show "Empire" continued to gain popularity, breaking its previous weeks' records. This is the headline I saw in an online magazine: "Empire’ Ratings Hit New Demo & Viewership Highs In Final Numbers – Update." (link below)
Just moments before coming across this story, I watched a Fox News pundit pumping viewers to tune in to his interview with Wisconsin's governor scott walker (lowercase intended). So, one minute I'm watching a Fox-head declare scott walker the forerunner for the Republican presidential candidacy, and a few minutes later I'm reading about Fox's big score with "Empire" -- at which point, I am scratching my head.
Taraji P. Henson, Terrence Howard, and Lee Daniel ("The Butler") must be over the moon! And who else ... who else, I wonder?
Why, Rupert Murdoch, of course!
When, oh, when will my people start putting our money where our mouths are? African Americans have a long, long haul ahead of us. It's a tiring thought, so tiring. We think we don't. We think we have arrived. Yet, we've set in motion our own future, with our laissez-faire engagement with government, politics, and power.
Here's to the radical thinkers on whose boldness and courage we will rely. I hear them on WPFW often. Years later we will build monuments to them, no doubt, celebrate their conscientious stature and brag about their heroism, about how courageous and prophetic they were. One group among us, the rich and famous whom we call our nobility, will be counting their money ... while Ferguson burns on.
I'm not alone in my concern. The link to a critical commentary of the show, by Boyce Watkins, also is below.
"Empire’ Ratings Hit New Demo & Viewership Highs In Final Numbers – Update"
http://deadline.com/2015/02/empire-ratings-rise-up-lee-daniels-danny-strong-fox-1201381970/
"Dr. Boyce Watkins: Why I Refuse to Support the Coonery of the Show 'Empire'" http://financialjuneteenth.com/dr-boyce-watkins-why-i-refuse-to-support-the-coonery-of-the-show-empire/
Just moments before coming across this story, I watched a Fox News pundit pumping viewers to tune in to his interview with Wisconsin's governor scott walker (lowercase intended). So, one minute I'm watching a Fox-head declare scott walker the forerunner for the Republican presidential candidacy, and a few minutes later I'm reading about Fox's big score with "Empire" -- at which point, I am scratching my head.
Taraji P. Henson, Terrence Howard, and Lee Daniel ("The Butler") must be over the moon! And who else ... who else, I wonder?
Why, Rupert Murdoch, of course!
When, oh, when will my people start putting our money where our mouths are? African Americans have a long, long haul ahead of us. It's a tiring thought, so tiring. We think we don't. We think we have arrived. Yet, we've set in motion our own future, with our laissez-faire engagement with government, politics, and power.
Here's to the radical thinkers on whose boldness and courage we will rely. I hear them on WPFW often. Years later we will build monuments to them, no doubt, celebrate their conscientious stature and brag about their heroism, about how courageous and prophetic they were. One group among us, the rich and famous whom we call our nobility, will be counting their money ... while Ferguson burns on.
I'm not alone in my concern. The link to a critical commentary of the show, by Boyce Watkins, also is below.
"Empire’ Ratings Hit New Demo & Viewership Highs In Final Numbers – Update"
http://deadline.com/2015/02/empire-ratings-rise-up-lee-daniels-danny-strong-fox-1201381970/
"Dr. Boyce Watkins: Why I Refuse to Support the Coonery of the Show 'Empire'" http://financialjuneteenth.com/dr-boyce-watkins-why-i-refuse-to-support-the-coonery-of-the-show-empire/
Thursday, January 15, 2015
King and the Dream: A Brief 11th-Grade Lesson
Following are three reflections that took up space
in my head today, the 86th birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. The first I posted to Facebook early this morning. Some folks
commented on the post, which prompted the second reflection. The third was screaming to get out during 2nd and 3rd periods with my 11th-graders.
(7 p.m.) I find myself wanting American blacks to stop looking to be entertained all the time. That's been sort of my understated mission as a teacher, to get students to start thinking for longer periods of time, to develop those thoughts, to begin to feel the spark of energy when original insights pop into their minds -- their own ideas! -- and when they ask a question no one has asked. My 9th-graders used to see me setting up the LCD projector and ask: "We watching a movie today?!" After a while, they came to know the answer: "Oh, that's right, Ms. Matthews shows docuMENtaries." I've wondered about it at times. But my students are never disappointed, whether they realize I see it or not. They discover every single time their capacity to learn something, to see something in a new way, to go, in their minds, beyond where they'd ever been. They feel good about themselves.
(8 p.m.) It was my honor today to show my students the entirety of the "I Have a Dream" speech. We watched excerpts of two other King addresses, but I started with the March on Washington. I wondered this morning if they'd ever heard it or if all they knew were the famous buzz words that project interracial nirvana. A couple of my students actually said, when I asked what they knew about the speech, that King's message was that he wanted black and white children to be able to play together. Alrighty then. It was this level of understanding that I wanted to dig into and elevate, if possible. Actually, I was certain that it was possible, once they saw King deliver the full speech and heard him in other speeches, one from 1967 and the "mountaintop" address. The students were watching and listening closely. They were enthralled. They saw King the human, King the "frustrated," as they said, King the "tired," King the "aggravated," King the "fed up," King the uncompromising. I just wanted them to leave school today knowing more of the whole picture, more of the complexity of the movement, of King, more of what had been at stake, that it was a living time, not just still pictures and monuments. I don't want them to hear "I have a dream" in the same way any more. I want them to see why it's still relevant. Why the necessity for civil rights advocacy still is pressing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)