Happy 1 Year Blog Anniversary! Now on to today's blog.
With teachers under more pressure to do more with Covid restrictions and constant attempts to whitewash history and ban facts, there will likely be an exodus of talented educators and school leaders that are reluctantly walking away from the school house in this season. Sadly, kids not only will be returning to school in the coming weeks with new student faces but with more new teacher faces in a season where familiar faces are needed most. However, I wonder who asks our teachers about their wellness if they decide to leave. Some educators have retired early or pivoted to a new career because they just couldn’t take the trauma and stress any longer. ( Also, some teachers are suffering in silence at work for fear of backlash or loss of their livelihood which is a whole other toxic trauma.) But I wonder who checked in with them. Was there a community championing them and building them up? Obviously, no or I believe they would still be teaching. But I do think this is a learning moment for us to take stock of and ask the most unanswered question of the ages before we lose more teachers. How can I help you? Most times we tell people to call us if they need us or I am here for you just let me know what you need. Most times you get hit with the “I’m good” response knowing they are not good or no response at all. But the reality is that our society glorifies the DIY culture that esteems individual struggle and triumph and dismisses those who get help or support as weak or lazy. So as teachers that's why we trudge on with our work, never fully answering this question even for ourselves. Maybe we don’t answer because we don’t have an answer or for some of our super teachers, like me, who think only “I” can do it all ( I am working on this y’all) and don’t want to seem weak if someone else helps. So when the question comes, “How can I help you?” Heck, I don’t know. We just keep putting our heads down, making another bulletin board, grading more papers, calling parents, leading another after school club, and now Covid cleaning protocols and the million and one things that we must do because that’s just what teachers do. But where is there space for teachers to relinquish this cape and be well? I mean you may be “good” but are you “well”. In this season, good is not enough. I now boldly ask my fellow teachers a more specific question: How can I help you be well today? I know teachers have a lot on their plate and it is hard to think about what you need help with at work. But if you could get help being WELL at work, what would you need someone to help you do? Maybe it could be creating a bulletin board, or scheduling emails to parents, or making your class DOJO or website. But what could come off your plate that would help you be well today. People never see all the little things that teachers do that stretch well beyond pencils and paper but you do so today, answer the question. How can I help you be well today? So as we prepare to return to school this year, how can we, as a collective community, better support our newest educators and our returning veteran educators and school leaders that are working on the frontlines of this battle? I don’t have the sole answer to this question. Teachers, like you, do. Tell us. I know a lot of teachers are not used to being heard and listened to. I know in the past, I have not and it feels like why bother. But we need our educators to be well so that our beloved community can be as well. That is why Teach X is creating space for you to tell us as we pilot our mobile app in metro Atlanta starting August 2, 2021 on the Apple and Google Play Store where we can hear from our beloved teachers how our community can help. We need to know the answer to this singular question. How can we help you be well today? I don’t know if you ever felt like when someone asked you this question they really didn’t even care about the answer that came after it. But we do because our beloved community can’t be well unless you are. Day 1 of school is coming. So, how can we help? Frfr, we are here for you.
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It’s the last weeks of July and if you are a teacher in the South this means you feel the tug of Summer ending and the even greater pull restarting another school year. However, somehow, as this Summer comes to a close, I feel a deep soul-wrenching pain in my spirit that questions what comes next. For some teachers, they have not seen their classrooms in a year and a half, for some of our children they have not either. But I am starting to see and hear the same “Back to School” lingo from what seems like a bygone era about backpacks and new clothes that feels like it no longer fits what our kids and communities needs in this season. At the height of the pandemic, there were some grumblings of “not going back to normal, because normal did not work” but now I barely hear a whisper of this anymore. People are so concerned with WHAT their children will learn more than they are with WHO will teach them, and HOW they will be equipped physically and emotionally to do so.
For me the WHO will teach is a huge question that seems to be missing from the conversation. I mean the facts are this pandemic has hit everyone hard with over 600,000 deaths nationwide of which hundreds of them are teachers, school social workers, principals, coaches, school custodial workers, bus drivers and the list goes one. The sheer loss of life to the very foundation of learning alone should halt us in our footsteps as we consider “going back to school” when we should be considering how we “restore our souls”. Actually, this is the real task at hand for most of our teachers and school leaders this Fall is restoration and healing from so much loss. Because the reality is there have definitely been some winners and some losers as a result of the fallout of this pandemic. Some people could work from home and juggle work and home, while essential workers had to risk their lives and even die to preserve their own lives and that of those in their home. The truth is this pandemic did not negatively impact us in the same ways that the rallying cry “ We are all in this together” would have us believe. The truth is historically marginalized, underserved people have and will continue to suffer more post-pandemic than any others. More specifically, unequivocally I believe this means poor Black people, children and communities have been hurt the most, yet with the least amount of infrastructure and people to support them. So WHO will teach this beloved community will need to expand greatly as we think about the depths of trauma and pre-existing inequities that led us to this moment. I believe WHO is You! Are you ready to teach this beloved community? Then there's the question of HOW will we physically and emotionally prepare our beloved community of young people to learn. We cannot just bring them in for Universal screeners and tests to gauge learning loss. We need to create intentional space where we can recognize what has been lost and celebrate all that they already are and will be. We must create space for an epistemology of self to transpire in and beyond our classrooms. So much of school is forcing random knowledge and facts into beings and not enough time spent on the beings knowing who they are first for this knowledge to have purpose and deeper meaning for their lives. How will we gather differently as we return to school in person? Will students still sit in desks in rows or join togethers outside in urban gardens and learn wisdom from the trees and Mother Earth? How will we gather? Will we learn from indigenous tribes in remote and physical spaces about their culture and people? Will we gather in healing circles to hear oral storytellers share their wisdom in a park? It is something significant in the ways that we gather to learn and who we learn from that I believe are almost more important than WHAT we learn. Most of our formal education in this country is constructed on WHAT we learn so we fight over it in City Halls and courts. But the new question as we return back to school this school year must not be WHAT but be about WHO will we let teach our beloved community and HOW. Teach X is looking to build this beloved community where WHO and HOW we learn is from the community around us. We know we have everyone we need to build our beloved community. We just need you to show up. You have gifts and talents that our next generation needs to see and hear about. We will create a renewed space in and beyond our schools for healing and restoration but teachers cannot do it alone. They need you. Come join our conversation this evening at 6PM and learn about how you can join our beloved community. RSVP at bit.ly/underexposedtx. In a few weeks, I will have to return back to school, but I don't want to go back to normal. I want to go forward toward hope, love and a renewed beloved community for the future. Please join me. As most celebrated our nation’s independence and liberty, too many Black folks know all too well of the myth of freedom that was sold to them. Now some of us Black folks so desperately want the myth to come true, and some of us just want to drink the kool-aid and eat some good BBQ, but the reality is our true liberation won’t come until we begin to intentionally build the beloved and liberated community we hope to live and thrive in. Freedom is not about a day of fireworks, but the collective work and actions of a people willing to break the chains of oppression toward a more just world. Thankfully, this past week I was able to see a small glimpse of what this work and action could look like during a week-long Collaborative Redesign Studio Workshop.
During the design studio experience, a collective of 100 unique educators and discipline-specific experts joined forces to redesign WHAT and HOW our children come into knowing… knowing who they are, knowing how they exist in the world, and knowing where and how they belong in it. In one conversation, we discussed de-centering traditional power structures and systems (elected officials, government) as the sole vehicle of civic engagement toward group-based leadership models and communal power which resonated with the most radical push to defund the police and invest in the people. I don’t know if we are ready for this yet, but this was powerful work for me because for the first time there was celebration of difference and space created to center marginalized stories, voices and people where the old curriculum check the boxes, neutralized rich cultures and diasporas and made no room for restoration and healing. Each day, as I sat on Zoom calls working with phenomenal thought leaders from all over the world, I didn’t just hear the cliche buzzwords that flow in DEI conversations. I started to hear a new language emerge that pushed us closer to learning that truly liberates and heals. WOAHHH! We spoke of the enduring power for young learners in identity, community, autonomy, agency, and alternative narratives that would stretch beyond our own world view and transcend new worlds of knowing and being that were anti-racist and truly multi-cultural for future generations. As a Black Educator and a Teacher of Teachers, this really challenged my own views of what is the measure of quality learning experiences. As the central question on my blog asks, “ Are we there yet?” my new question is “Where is there?”. I now believe “there”must include more than cognitive and skill development. Our aim must be higher, where we strive toward education that liberates and heals. If we expect to build this beloved community of people and move past the myth and glitz of symbolic independence and freedom fairytales, then we must embrace learning experiences for the next generation that center their voices in ways that are rooted in identity, healing and restoration. I know this because far too many Black and Dark bodies disproportionately fill up our prisons, over represented in our special education or remediation classes, at higher health risk with lower life expectancies than their white counterparts and the list goes on. This is the vestiges of America’s continued bondage of Black and Dark people in this country that we never healed from the trauma. She has not let us go or in the words of W.E.B Dubois, “Black people stood but a moment in the sun…and then back toward slavery”. So how do we get back in the sun? Black and Dark people have been underexposed to their own histories and narratives that center discourse of restoration and healing. There is liberation in these narratives and exposure to them. So WHO is sharing these new and alternative narratives. If the history books erased those stories and academic learning purports to be agnostic of them, then we need the beloved community to show up. We need the beloved community ready to share these alternative narratives, share their time and share their love. We must forsake a world of “I” and “me” for one that is inclusive of “we” and “us”. Teach X is working to bring together this beloved community and our first step is hosting a Virtual Collective Conversation: Underexposed where we come together to understand our collective power on July 19, 2021 at 6PM. We also are launching our Underexposed Speaker Series where we will match teachers with members of our beloved community who want to virtually share their stories with our youth. We want to share our collective success and alternative narratives of victory that our history books don’t have. If you are ready for this next level of liberatory education, then we need you to join us and RSVP at bit.ly/underexposedtx because teachers can’t do this work alone…they need the entire beloved community to show up so that the 4th of July truly means freedom for ALL. |
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October 2021
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