Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

 

Why LAUSD workers’ historic joint strike is ‘decades in the making’

Ryan Fonseca, Los Angeles Times

 

Workers who feed, transport, teach, heal and clean up after Los Angeles students kicked off a historic three-day strike Tuesday, shutting down the state’s largest school system as they rally for higher wages and better working conditions. The work stoppage was called by Local 99 of Service Employees International Union, which represents about 30,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, special education assistants and others. Roughly 35,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles joined their fellow district workers in an act of solidarity. 

 

LAUSD strike: School closures may harm students’ progress – but also be a teachable moment

Linh Tat, Los Angeles Daily News

 

For Service Employees International Union Local 99 member Paola Fonseca, staging a strike this week to draw attention to the plight of some of the lowest-paid employees in the Los Angeles Unified School District is an action worth standing up for. At the same time, she’s concerned that three days of school closures is hurting students with special needs – including her son, a 6-year-old with autism who struggles to cope when their normal routines are disrupted. And not being in school means her son, who is nonverbal, is not getting the speech services he needs.

 

‘La Lucha Sigue’: Chicano Teachers Now and Then [Audio]

Victoria Estrada and Elizabeth Loewenthal Torres, Latino USA

 

In the late 1990s, Nadine and Patsy Córdova made history in Vaughn, a small town in central New Mexico. They had been teaching at the local junior and senior high school for over 17 years when they were suspended for refusing to stop teaching Chicano History to their students. The Córdova sisters had learned about the Chicano movement as adults. They read about the struggles Mexican Americans faced — and the fight for labor rights, land and a political identity in the U.S. during the 1960s and early 1970s. The movement changed how Patsy and Nadine thought about themselves and their history. And they wanted to share that with their students. “To me, I see knowing your history and being proud of your ancestors is like your suit of armor,” Nadine says.

 

Language, Culture, and Power

 

My Indigenous School in Los Angeles Affirmed My Identity and Changed My Life

Salma Perez, Teen Vogue

 

I’m still in college, but I’m a part of a team of writers working on an upcoming Amazon series that is loosely based on my school experience — a learning environment that affirmed my identity as an Indigenous Zapoteca, Mixteca with family roots in Oaxaca, Mexico. Every student should have this kind of affirming Indigenous-based education. Yet this is not happening in schools across the country. In my home state of California, where the Department of Education promotes curricula that reflect Native American culture, teachers have assigned homework on offensive Native American imagery, and one even made headlines for wearing a fake headdress.

 

‘Like a living scrapbook’: ‘My Powerful Hair’ is a celebration of Native culture [AUDIO]

Elizabeth Blair, NPR

 

My Powerful Hair is a new picture book that turns a painful truth about racism into a celebration of Native culture. When Carole Lindstrom was a little girl growing up in Bellevue, Nebraska, she really wanted long hair. She would put the blanket she had as a baby on her head and, “pretend I had long hair, you know, swing it around,” she laughs. She couldn’t understand why her mother wouldn’t let her. 

 

A Chicago Suburb Stopped Ticketing Students. But It Won’t Stop Pursuing a 3-Year-Old Case Over Missing AirPods

Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica

 

In the three years since Amara Harris was ticketed for theft over a pair of missing AirPods at her high school, she has graduated, earned an associate degree and moved from Naperville, Illinois, to Atlanta to attend Spelman College. Meanwhile, a statewide reckoning over the harm caused by ticketing students has Illinois lawmakers considering a bill that would outlaw the practice. Naperville police have not ticketed any students this school year. But the city of Naperville is still committed to prosecuting Harris, who was 17 when she was ticketed for a municipal ordinance violation, and her case is headed toward a jury trial, an extraordinarily rare outcome for such a low-level civil infraction.

 

Whole Children and Strong Communities

 

‘Listen to Us.’ What These 12 Kids Want Adults to Know.

New York Times

 

Those complicated years from seventh to ninth grade are both a time of rapid change for many kids and a subject of enduring bewilderment for many adults. From concerns about social media to studies about mental health to the effects of Covid school closures and beyond, the lives of tweens are a topic of much fascination and worry. But tweens themselves are often absent from the discussion. We invited 12 kids ages 11 to 14 to tell us about how things look from their vantage. Over a couple of hours, the participants in this focus group, who live in states across the country, shared their views on school, family, recreation and their goals.

 

Universal Free School Lunch Is an Absolute No-Brainer

Matt Bruenig, Jacobin

 

For a hundred eighty days each year, fifty million kids file into a hundred thousand public schools and receive free education that costs $800 billion per year. Around half of these kids get to their school using a free bus service that costs $30 billion per year. At school, these kids receive free bathrooms, free playgrounds, and free access to gyms, textbooks, and computer equipment. If they play sports, they often receive free uniforms and free access to weight rooms and other sports equipment. Around 90 percent of kids use the free schooling service, with the remaining 10 percent opting for a private religious school or a private nonreligious school. Public school attendance is more common among kids from lower and middle income families, but the vast majority of upper income families also attend public schools.

 

A surprising remedy for teens in mental health crises

Anya Kamanetz, Hechinger Report

 

Last spring, Jamie Gorman had a panic attack at the mall. The then-high school sophomore was with a group of friends at Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, when she began to feel overwhelmed. Her fingers were tingling. She couldn’t catch her breath. She felt shaky and dizzy.

Her teenage friends sprang into action.v“They were like, ‘Jamie, sit down.’ ‘Jamie, give me your phone — unlock it,’” Gorman recalled in a recent interview at her high school.“They immediately called my dad so he could talk to me. They found a water bottle for me. They sat with me; they were just there for me.” She said her friends were “very comforting because they were very calm and they were like, okay, we know what to do.”

 

Access, Assessment, Advancement

 

What Will It Take to Build a Sustainable Early Care and Education System in the US?

Emily Tate Sullivan, EdSurge

 

What will it take to build a sustainable early care and education system in the United States? That was the question I posed to leaders from the field who came together on March 8 — coincidentally, International Women’s Day — to weigh in on the issue, sharing solutions they’re seeing that seem promising, innovative and scalable. The setting for our conversation was a featured panel at the SXSW EDU Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas. 

 

Dreams Derailed:  The Post-DACA Generation Faces Steep Barriers to College in the South

Marcela Rodrigues, Chronicle of Higher Education

 

During his junior year in high school, Steven was asked by a guidance counselor to list his top three colleges. Like many ambitious high-schoolers in South Carolina, his first choice was a no-brainer: Clemson University. He grew up watching football games with his family and had envisioned himself going there since he was a little kid. “Clemson has always been a huge part of my life,” he says. As a freshman in high school, Steven visited the campus, about 45 minutes away from home, for the Men of Color National Summit, a two-day event designed for young African American and Hispanic men. It encouraged him to dream big and further solidified his conviction that he would apply to Clemson.

 

What prompted a New England college to offer New College students a chance to transfer?

Michael Braun, WGCU

 

New College of Florida was once seen as an institution of free-thinking students, independent-minded faculty and a place where diversity, equity and inclusion were given campus aspects.That all changed after Gov. Ron DeSantis began making a series of moves that critics called a conservative overhaul of the small, traditionally progressive college with about 800 students. The changes began when DeSantis appointed six new trustees in January. The new officials immediately and radically transformed the state’s public honors college.

 

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

 

Segregated schools, not ‘divisive concepts,’ are what divide us

Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Richmond Times-Dispatch

 

In late summer 2022, I wrote an op-ed for these pages describing a Chesterfield County history textbook’s omission of enslavement. The author outlined “plantation life” in romanticized terms with “Negro servant” replacing direct reference to a race-based system of slavery on forced labor camp sites. That textbook, released in 1981, was written by Bettie Weaver, a local white historian and former elementary school teacher. Her name has resurfaced in recent months as an example of a public school educator who inspired Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Chesterfield also operates a public school named after Bettie Weaver. It’s situated in the western part of the county and serves a student body that is 90% white in a school system that is 44% white. Though too rarely the subject of education reform conversations, a web of discriminatory actions created and maintains the segregation of Bettie Weaver Elementary. 

 

Supreme Court unanimously rules for deaf student in education case

Jessica Gresko, Associated Press

 

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday for a deaf student who sued his public school system for providing an inadequate education. The case is significant for other disabled students who allege they were failed by school officials. The case the justices ruled in involves Miguel Luna Perez, who attended public school in Sturgis, Michigan. Perez’s lawyers told the court that for 12 years the school system neglected the boy and lied to his parents about the progress he was making, permanently stunting his ability to communicate. 

 

Chronic Absenteeism Post-Pandemic:  Let’s Not Make This Our “New Normal”

Kevin Gee, Heather J. Hough, Belen Chavez, PACE

 

Chronic absenteeism (when a student misses 10 percent or more of instructional days during the school year for any reason) has spiked by an alarming degree, increasing more than twofold statewide, from 14% in 2020–21 to 30% in 2021–22. This increased absenteeism during 2021–22 is, of course, not entirely surprising. When students returned to school after a year of pandemic-induced virtual learning in 2020–21, they were encouraged to stay home if they had any symptoms, and many students had to miss school to quarantine after an exposure to COVID-19. Even though the pandemic is largely behind us at this point, early warning signs show that we now face challenges with attendance that could persist into the long term; although data for the current school year will not be released at the state level until fall 2023, locally released data show that the patterns this year may be as worrisome as last. How do we urgently move the needle on our high rate of chronic absenteeism so that it does not become the new normal in our state?

 

Democracy and the Public Interest

 

Covid changed parents’ view of schools — and ignited the education culture wars

Hannah Natanson, Washington Post

 

It was a school board meeting, but not one of the shouting matches the nation has come to know over the past three years. No parents yelled about masking, library books or critical race theory. On the agenda: door signage and school security officer pensions. Tonight, there was no time allotted for public comment, meaning nobody in the audience was allowed to speak.Nonetheless, nearly every chair was filled. On a frigid Tuesday in early March, a dozen adults sat split by an aisle into two camps: To the left were members of Support Public Education in Mentor, three of them clad in red T-shirts bearing the left-leaning group’s name. To the right were those affiliated with Concerned Mentor Taxpayers, which trends Christian and conservative. One man wore a camouflage baseball cap and a bracelet patterned with an American flag.

 

GOP lawmakers aim to reshape education with Texas Parental Bill of Rights

Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News

 

Glennda Hardin awoke before sunrise and drove an hour from Temple to the state Capitol, her prepared speech folded neatly in her handbag. Hardin, a 73-year-old retired teacher, had never done anything like this before, she said. But once she’d heard what Republican legislators had planned for the state’s education system, she knew she had to come speak her mind. All that money — meant for public schools like the ones she taught at for three decades — going to pay for private school tuition. “I really believe the future of our schools is at stake,” Hardin said. 

 

Censoring History Education Goes Hand in Hand with Democratic Backsliding

Boechat Machado and Ruben Zeeman, History News Network

 

On January 12, 2023, the Department of Education in Florida labeled a draft Advanced Placement course on African American Studies “woke indoctrination” and rejected it for including readings from, among others, historians Robin D.G. Kelly and Nell Irvin Painter. The Department’s decision fit within the broader political vision of the governor (and former history teacher) Ron DeSantis, as well as a nation-wide pattern of attempts to restrict the teaching of gender and race in United States history. Florida’s policies were quickly linked to similar ones in backsliding democracies in Europe, such as Hungary, Poland and Turkey. Data from the Network of Concerned Historians for 2020–2023 suggest a correlation between attempts to censor history education and the global backsliding of democracy, with India, Brazil and the Philippines being among the most grave examples.

 

Other News of Note

 

My ‘Spring’ quilt is a patchwork of history, memory and hope

By Avis Collins Robinson, Washington Post

 

Abstraction in visual art is built from color, line, form and perspective. It also grows out of an artist’s lived experience. My experience as a Black woman in America is precious to me, because it is the sum of the lives and struggles of my ancestors — men and women who refused to be defeated, no matter how hard America tried. Sometimes this history is clearly legible, in jagged lines, sharp angles or dissonant colors. Sometimes it is subtle, like a whisper. When I visualize springtime, I see reawakened lawns, tender new foliage and the sunlit sky. I grew up outside Washington, so my mind’s eye sees the white and pink explosion of cherry blossoms around the Tidal Basin and the Washington Monument. But I also see the stabs of pain and injustice that the hopeful season has brought to this city. In my quilt called “Spring,” good overcomes evil (and love defies death).