Simple Requests

The simple requests are carefully printed on ornaments hung on trees around the Greater Houston area.

A young family about to have a baby is asking for newborn-sized clothes, diapers and, if possible, a crib mobile.

A 9-year-old girl in a suburb needs a warm coat and would love to “maybe have a bicycle.”

A 14-year-old boy asks for a new pair of blue jeans, a sweatshirt and, if possible, some art supplies. A teen mother would like a warm coat and tennis shoes that fit her, post-pregnancy.

An 89-year-old woman is asking for warm socks and a new bottle of hand lotion, while another man is hoping for an air humidifier and large-print crossword puzzle books.

These requests, which are typical of those distributed around the holidays by thousands of non-profit organizations nationwide, illustrate a harsh reality – that while this down economy has been trying for almost everyone, our youngest and oldest Americans continue to be the most vulnerable.

Pitching in to fill such individual requests is certainly important – not just during the holidays but throughout the year.

But bigger questions also beg to be answered: How do children and adults end up living in extreme poverty? What systemic changes do we need to see in order to ensure that fewer people are in need in the future? What actions can we take – professionally and personally – to ensure that some of these changes happen?

We'll Be Back Next Monday

We're taking the week off from blogging to spend the holiday with our families and reflect on all we are thankful for.

If you just can't wait until we return next Monday to read what we're writing, check our our collaborative blog project with Keith L. Brown.

As always, thanks for reading.

We'll be back next Monday.

The Teacher Project: Weekend Retreat Wrap-Up

We have spent the last few days reflecting on a two-day retreat that kicked off The Teacher Project.

This first-ever event, which was held in Southern California, brought together a group of dynamic teachers eager to explore their core beliefs and how those beliefs shape the work they do in classrooms, schools and communities.

Here are a few of the themes that surfaced during the retreat:

• Teachers are struggling to decide how to handle cases where the values and priorities of students’ neighborhoods and homes conflict with the values of the school. One teacher, for example, questioned what to do about students who refuse to take home books or notebooks because being viewed as too academically oriented can be dangerous, leading to bullying and more in their neighborhoods. She wondered whether compromise was appropriate, or whether that compromise would dilute the high expectations that all students, regardless of their backgrounds, need and deserve.
• Schools nationwide have seen their budgets stripped. And Southern California is among those hardest hit. Teachers are increasingly being pushed to do more and more with fewer resources. Teachers are struggling with how to maintain their morale when there are sometimes more than 60 students piled in a classroom and money for field trips, student competitions, assemblies and other activities are increasingly scarce.
• And finally, teachers are struggling with when and how to reflect on their teaching practices and beliefs. The teachers we met all have the best of intentions and work tirelessly to provide the best possible instruction for their students. But at times, they find are at risk of finding themselves on autopilot, struggling to balance teaching, grading, any extracurricular activities they oversee, prep time, and their personal lives.

The ideas and experiences each of the teachers shared were valuable, serving to advance our understanding of education and the challenges that we face. We look forward to sharing more of what we learned in the future.

We don’t view this first event as a one-time experience. It’s an exciting beginning – and the start of an exciting partnership with these and other teachers nationwide.

Plans are now underway to hold similar events – either in a retreat or one-day format – at schools in Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and other parts of Southern California.

Want to know more about The Teacher Project or eager to see a similar retreat held in your area? Email us at instituteforedandsocialjustice[at]gmail[dot]com and include The Teacher Project in your subject line.

What Does Real and Sustained School Improvement Look Like?

“Real and sustained improvement – the kind that begins to close the achievement gaps in a significant way and gives urban kids access to the same opportunities as their suburban peers – depends on building bridges that allow students to grasp the reward of hard work. It must be rooted in relationships throughout the process of change and in a recalibration of expectations that students have for themselves.”

Education writer Laura Pappano nails it in this featured commentary in Education Week.

Pappano, who is author of School Turnarounds: Urgent Hopes, Unfolding Stories, reminds us that in order to make true, lasting improvements in the lives of students and families, we need to look beyond test scores and graduation rates to the relationships that exists between schools and communities, as well as the relationships that exist between students and adults, including mentors from the business community.

Pappano points to at least one school, Cincinnati’s Taft Information Technology High School (formerly Taft High School) as an example of a mentoring and community partnership success story.

The long-time troubled high school partnered with Cincinnati Bell, making the partnership a key part of the school’s extensive turnaround efforts. The partnership has lead to a number of school programs designed to help connect students with teachers, coaches, business leaders and others.

Ultimately, the goal of the program is not just to help students boost their test scores, but to have the desire and focus needed to be successful both in school and in life.

And so far, there seems to be evidence that the turnaround is working. Over the past decade, the school’s graduation rate has risen from 25 percent to 95 percent. And in 2010, the percentage of 10^th graders scoring proficient or higher in math is up from 33 percent to 96 percent, and from 68 percent to 96 percent in reading.

The dramatic turnaround – one that is almost unheard of, particularly at the high school level – happened for a number of reasons. Some of the changes were organizational, while others involved efforts to focus more on academics and to minimize chaos.

But principal Anthony G. Smith says that partnerships are at the heart of his work – and an essential part of helping students from low-income neighborhoods, where generation after generation of families has lived in poverty – to develop a long-term vision. Students learn to plan for and work hard to attend college and to move into a career that meets their economic, social and emotional needs.

The story of Taft’s turnaround – particularly the emphasis on the need for partnerships and long-term efforts at transformation of students’ lives – is powerful. The school’s story – and that of other schools like it – desperately needs to be told.

The Teacher Project: Looking Ahead

We are less than 24 hours away from The Teacher Project, a two-day retreat we are hosting for teachers in Southern California.

This first-ever event is designed to help teachers explore their core beliefs and how those beliefs shape the work they do in classrooms, schools and communities.

We are looking forward to exploring a number of questions and ideas during the retreat. Some of these include:

• How can we, as educators interested in educational and social justice, ensure that the values we say we care about – like equity and equality – are truly reflected in the work that we do? Why do our actions sometimes not align with our core values? How can we improve?
• What does discrimination look like? What acts of discrimination have each of us experienced? How did that discrimination affect us? What steps can we take to ensure that we do not discriminate against others – either intentionally or unintentionally?
• There are many “isms” that can hinder our efforts to treat the students and families we serve equitably. What are some of the common isms that plague our society? How can we constantly strive to eliminate these “isms” from our own lives and work, even as society seems to strive to maintain and advance at least of some of them?
• We know that what students believe about themselves matters. How can we work to promote resiliency and a sense of personal responsibility in our students?
• And finally, what is the current political landscape in education? How can an understanding of this landscape help us to advance causes of educational and social justice?

We don’t view this first event as a one-time experience with this group of teachers.

Instead, we believe it will be the first of many Teacher Project retreats, and the beginning of an ongoing partnership with the teachers we will meet this weekend. In time, we plan to include some of the stories we hear at this and other retreats on this blog, as well as in our books, articles and others writings.

Want to learn more about The Teacher Project or eager to see a similar retreat held in your area? Email us at instituteforedandsocialjustice[at]gmail[dot]com and include The Teacher Project in your subject line.

This weekend is an exciting beginning.

A Look at an Unexpected "-Ism"

One of our biggest focuses at the Institute for Educational and Social Justice is pushing educators, non-profit leaders and others to challenge the “isms” they hold – knowingly or unknowingly.

These “isms” can take a number of forms, including racism, sexism, classism, sizeism and ageism.

Addressing our biases and how those may subtly or not-so-subtly affect our attitudes, behaviors and decisions on a day-to-day basis is difficult work, because it requires us to be brutally honest with ourselves about where we are, what we think and how we behave.

If we are truly honest, the work is difficult – in part because just as we think we have a check on one “ism,” we discover that another needs to be addressed.

Classism is the “ism” I probably struggle with the most – but my struggle doesn’t involve efforts to value or embrace people from low-income backgrounds.

Instead, I find myself guilty of a reverse classism, assuming that people from very high income backgrounds have all the resources that they need and don’t really need support.

But in recent weeks, I have been placed in a number of situations where I have been surrounded by people who are quite wealthy – and I am realizing that they, too, have needs that need to be addressed.

One young man I have met comes from a family that easily makes more than $3 million a year. His family owns more than one Jaguar and his house is probably worth 15 times what mine is.

His test scores are high but his grades and extracurricular activities are lackluster at best. But he will probably get into a fairly good college – in part because of his family’s money.

But this affluent young man experiences a poverty that my children do not know.

His parents frequently travel the world, going to places like India and Africa and Italy. But they always leave their son and his two older sisters behind. “I guess they wouldn’t have as much fun if they took us along,” he explains, seemingly without bitterness, adding that he and his sisters have never been out of the country.

He often finds himself without a ride because his parents have forgotten to pick him up. Calls and text messages go unreturned – and he seems unsurprised by any of it.

This young man doesn’t have many adults in his life who truly care – he says the adult he talks to most is actually a teacher. And that teacher probably doesn’t fully realize how important he is to this student.

This wealthy student also struggles a great deal with motivation. He wants to go to college “because that’s what you do, you know?” but he has a hard time even envisioning a major because he isn’t sure he will even be doing much paid work after graduation. “There’s already money, you know, set aside as long as I hold it together until I graduate.”

This student – whether we think it’s fair or not – will likely inherit a lot of money. And with that money will come a great deal of power, which can be used for good, or wasted, or even used for destruction.

Who is reaching these students? Should we, as leaders interested in educational and social justice, be concerned with this student’s needs? What would programs for these students look like? What misguided assumptions do we make about high-income students? How do we change?

Want to help improve the reading skills of the children of today - and tomorrow?

Want to help improve the reading skills of the children of today – and tomorrow?

Then take steps to strengthen the literacy skills of mothers and future mothers.

That is one conclusion that can be drawn from a study released by the National Institutes of Health and published in the most recent issue of “Demography.”

The new study, which was designed to help pinpoint which factors most affect children’s skill acquisition, included data collected during the 2000-01 school year from more than 2,300 Los Angeles children between the ages of 3 and 17.

Researchers found that mothers with higher reading scores were more likely to read to their own children regularly, to have child-friendly reading material in the home and to enjoy reading themselves. All of these behaviors have repeatedly been shown to help strengthen children’s reading skills.

So, what can advocates of educational and social justice, including educators, non-profit organization leaders, policy makers, early childhood advocates and others take away from this research?

That the reading skills of mothers matter – and that programs to strengthen mothers’ skills don’t just create a better foundation for the women receiving the support, but also for their children and, in time, maybe even their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

By working to establish and advocate for programs that improve the reading skills of mothers and future mothers, we as educational and social justice advocates have the potential to begin to close the achievement gap that exists between low-income and middle-class children, and to help people end cycles of poverty that often span several generations. And that, clearly, is no small achievement.

Psst! This Teacher Has a Secret

Last week, an elementary teacher tearfully confided to me that she has a credit card she keeps secret from her husband.

The teacher doesn’t use the secret credit card to add to her designer shoe collection, to hit the spa or even to by presents or to go out with friends.

Instead, she uses the plastic to pay for things like copying paper. And dry erase markers. And books like “Charlotte’s Web” and “Pig for President” and “Junie B. Jones and the Yucky, Blucky Fruitcake.”

The teacher, who has been in the field for about 10 years, says she first spent money out of pocket on her students back when she was still an eager to please first-year teacher. Back then, she told herself she would stop spending once she had a classroom library in order and a few backup resource materials for students working above or below grade level.

But in recent years, she says she has found herself spending more, as her cash-strapped district has been pushing her principal to spend less and less on supplies for teachers and their classrooms.

“I feel like we are being asked to do even more with less,” the teacher told me. “And I look at what my students might be missing and I hate to see it – to have them shortchanged. So I go out there and spend the money myself. And hope that in the end, my marriage isn’t what suffers.”

Later this month, the current lame duck Congress will return to Washington to consider several pieces of education legislation. Among them will be tax-related legislation, including whether to extend the so-called teacher tax deduction, which currently allows teachers to deduct up to $250 a year for school supplies. There has been some discussion, too, about upping the deduction to $500.

In the grand scheme of things, the extension or even expansion of the tax deduction would be a small gesture. But it might go a long way in helping teachers – and reducing a bit of the sting they currently feel when they open up their pocketbooks for their students.

An Honest Look at Our Responsibilities

“Teachers try to teach students and free their minds. But teachers can only show students the door. It is the student’s choice whether to walk through it.”

I was greeted by this quote a few days ago, just as I’d finished teaching a community college class that hadn’t gone particularly well.

The teacher education students in my last class of the day had been painfully quiet, staring at their cuticles or fumbling for imaginary items in their book bags when I asked them their thoughts on the day’s topic. I saw them reaching for their cell phones, staring at watches, and avoiding my glances.

“Yes!” I thought as I read the quote, all but giving myself a reassuring pat on the back. “All I can do is TEACH. It’s not my fault if those stubborn students of mine chose not to come through the door today.”

But the quote on the whiteboard – and my reaction – left me feeling unsettled in a way I couldn’t quite shake. As I went through the next couple of days, picking my own children up from school, grading papers, writing blog posts and doing laundry, I kept finding my mind returning to the quote – and to my reaction.

And finally, in a particularly honest and vulnerable moment one evening, I realized why I was so unnerved: Because the quote only tells part of the story – and really, it lets us teacher types off the hook far too easily.

Do students have to choose to walk through that door of decision – to take the steps needed to fully participate in their own education and to take responsibility for their own learning?

Absolutely.

But our responsibility as teachers also doesn’t stop when our students are standing in that doorway of decision, making what might be one of the most pivotal decisions of their lives.

We – as teachers who care deeply and who believe that the work that we do has the potential to transform lives in powerful ways – have to be right there, on the other side of the door of decision, enticing students and convincing them that what we are teaching matters, that we will support them while they are doing the work, and that many times along the way, they can even have a good time doing it.

That enticing often requires us to do things in new ways – something I didn’t quite do as well as I should have, honestly, on the day my students were sitting, biding their time until class was over.

What are we doing on the other side of that door, while our students are deciding whether to commit to their educations?

First, we make sure the door has been cracked open by developing personal relationships with the students – and letting them know a bit about us, too. And while they are trying to decide what to do next, we are on the other side of the door, with the students who are already engaged, discussing ideas that matter.

We are communicating in ways that are meaningful – and interesting -- maybe through music, through visual arts, through video clips, through literature, through humor, or through our own brutally honest stories and questions.

And at the same time, we also are reminding them that (guess what?) this whole learning thing isn’t just fun, it also has the potential to make their lives better – that they are securing a better life for themselves and for their families. We are reminding them that the children of college graduates often have better economic futures – that cycles of generational poverty and dysfunction truly can be broken through the power of transformative education.

Do some students, still, with all of that enticing and urging, choose not to cross through the door and commit to engaging in education and taking it seriously?

Yes.

But, if we have done our job well on the other side of the door, odds are good that one day – maybe not long from now – those same resistant students will finally choose to walk through the door and to do what they need to do to improve their lives, not just for themselves but for their families and future families.

And even if they don’t, we keep trying – because the work that we are doing matters that much.

The Teacher Project: Planning Update

We at the Institute for Educational and Social Justice are busily preparing for The Teacher Project, a two-day retreat we are hosting for teachers in Southern California.

The first-ever event is designed to help teachers explore their core beliefs and how those beliefs shape the work they do in classrooms, schools and communities.

We are looking forward to hearing the stories and ideas that the teachers who will be attending have to share.

We already know from some of the preliminary conversations that we have had with this year’s participants that we can expect to hear honest stories that are in some ways unique, but also universal, reminding us all why teaching and other helping professions matter.

We know that the group of teachers participating in this retreat will challenge us all to think about educational justice in new ways, while strengthening our understanding of the work of teaching and serving students of all backgrounds.

Our intent is that this will be the first of many Teacher Project retreats, including upcoming events in Georgia, Texas and Mississippi. And we plan, in time, to include some of the stories we hear at these retreats in books, articles and other writings on the work of educators striving for educational justice.

In doing this work, we hope to provide teachers with a stronger voice, so that they can have their ideas and experiences heard by a broader audience, including fellow educators, policy makers, administrators and others.

Want to learn more about The Teacher Project or eager to see a similar retreat held in your area? Email us at instituteforedandsocialjustice[at]gmail[dot]com and include The Teacher Project in your subject line.

Together, we can build a sense of hope and understanding through the power of story.