It’s What I Like About You (A Meme For Schools)

by Jose on March 11, 2010 · 0 comments

in life

The Romantics

In my personal journey for growth, I’ve found that the dearth of positivity amongst involved adults can turn any school, well-meaning or otherwise, into a dumping ground of negative soot. In such an environment, it only makes sense that kids suffer. While I don’t participate in too much negative banter nor do I like simply listing problems that exist if not accompanied by some form of solution, I find it’s the responsibility of all adult parties involved to make sure that the soot stays out of the walls of their buildings.

Here are some #eduthingsIlike I like:

- I like schools that aren’t split apart when architecturally it makes no sense.

- I like schools that do the most with what they’ve been given.

- I like schools that look to find ways to work with a child and develop them as whole children before castigating them as special ed or throwing them out as quickly as possible.

- I like elementary schools that teach their students strong rituals and routines before they get to middle school.

- I like middle schools that assume responsibility for making sure they know high school is the real bridge to adulthood, not the phase they’re in at that point.

- I like schools that empower teachers to become proactive leaders.

- I like schools where the sense of urgency is mediated by careful and intentional planning.

- I like schools that teach the whole child.

- I like schools that balance the academic with the socio-emotional.

- I like schools that speak in three languages: the language of the pedagogy, the language of the community, and the language of the students.

- I also like schools that show students the bridge to success in this country without losing a sense of identity.

- I like schools with active parent involvement and after-school programs.

- I like teachers who buy into a larger vision for the school, working towards the students and their needs first.

- I like teachers who balance their discussion of “What the kids don’t know” with “What the kids do know.”

- I like teachers who want to know more than the 180 or so days of instruction inside their classroom, extending themselves and their voices in other arenas.

- I like teachers who are well-versed in politics but see themselves as change agents without deference to educrats.

-  I like when pedagogues talk about building personal responsibility only after they talk about the factors that lead to current (and often underperforming) conditions.

- I love pedagogues who care. And care a lot.

- I love kids, even when they make me want to hold a piece of chalk the wrong way and run it right off a clean chalkboard.

- I love kids who come ready to learn, breakfast in stomach, mind in heart.

- I love kids who, even when they’re not ready, they’re willing to get ready if given a chance.

- I like when we talk about things we are, and not what we’re not.

Mr. V, who is unfettered and unafraid of honesty as a means of activism …

p.s. – Thanks, @tonnet.

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Excellence Is My Presence, Never Tense, Never Hesitant

by Jose on March 9, 2010 · 1 comment

in life

Notorious BIG, Biggie, 1994

As we commemorate the passing of Christopher “Biggie” Wallace 13 years ago, we must also remember a big reason we consider him one of the greatest rappers of all time: his delivery. It wasn’t so much the diversity of flows and rhythms within rhymes and from song to song; it was the crisp and commanding delivery of each line. Like a Black Russian, his songs were at once smooth and potent, sweet and demanding. Along with the actual lyrics and subject matter, his rather introspective lyrics spoke to the pathos of the ghetto and the mentality of newly successful ghetto boys.

I bring this up because Dan Meyer did me a huge favor this past weekend at TEDxNYED: he succinctly and precisely described my blog in a way I’d never heard. While I have a hard time completely recanting what he said, he did mention that my blog serves a mix of my education work and my policy / activist work. On the one end, I’ll interact with education heavies readily, particularly on Twitter. On the other end, I’ll interact with people edunerds have never heard of, and they tend to be the people no one’s ever heard before.

And the one thing everyone seems to agree upon: I can actually write.

Sometimes, these posts get people from divergent occupations to have heated arguments in the comments section, but mostly, the conversations become a beautiful harmony of concerned individuals. That’s where I believe this blog must officially go. I never find myself in any particular lane heavily, because the traffic often gets too dense in one for me to really own it. I’m not very ed-techy, or ed-policy heavy. I have strong convictions about education leadership, but I don’t want people judging whether I can discuss the latest Obama policy when I’m supposed to have a particular focus. I don’t engage in gossip anymore, but every so often, I find myself intertwining entertainment with education, but not in a DetentionSlip sorta way. (I’m not a fan of the BS that streams out of that blog).

That’s often where I find myself looking to Biggie for guidance. One of his greatest quotes was “If I was working at McDonald’s, I’d probably be rappin’ about burgers.” In other words, his current life made up the bulk of his work. Even if they existed in hyperbole and braggadocio, he still managed to impress us time and again with the clever precision and urgent presence. It’s as if everytime he got on the mic, no matter what the subject, what he had to say was the most important thing anyone had to hear over the 3:30 he had you for.

This blog, I hope, has the same intonation.

Jose, on brawl nights, performs like Mike. Anyone: Tyson, Jordan, Jackson, Action …

p.s. – Are you ready for Black-Latino Ed Week here? 2 weeks and counting …

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No More Heroes

by Jose on March 8, 2010 · 2 comments

in life

Superman Dies

Last week, the whole world found out that Guru a.k.a. Keith Elam of the world-renown hip-hop duo Gang Starr had (ostensibly) died of a recent heart attack he suffered the day before. Entertainment bloggers reported it. Wikipedia reported it. Celebrities who are usually in the know said it. Then, I typed up a dedication to the man, thinking these three had become relatively credible sources.

Ten minutes later, the news of his demise was squashed.

I was crushed. Hurt. Distraught. A bit angry, especially after my apology and subsequent redaction.

Then, happy the man was still alive.

His music is a big reason I made it through college to begin with. Songs like “Royalty” and “Moment of Truth” infused awesome street symphonies with super-tight poetry in ways no one’s mimicked since. He isn’t superlyrical or completely braggadocious, but his street tales and messages of peace and reflection carried me through some tough times and even some awesome times. I never had the fortune of picking up his albums early in my youth, but as I got older, I recognized Preemo (DJ Premier) and Guru’s melodies from a mile away.

It also made me think of the people I valued as heroes, people whose names sparked chatter in their respective fields, whose work made people quiver with excitement, whose passion put them just a notch above everyone else I looked up to. During college, I met many of these folks and gathered many more heroes along the way, learning more about myself as a person through their works and my reflections upon those. Whether it was education, activism, writing / poetry, or just life as a whole, I sought these figures actively as a source of the proverbial light.

Meeting them in limited spaces gave me and others the impression that they’re somehow on another level of “avatar” than those of us acolytes. In many ways, that still holds true: when one is still learning and finding their guide in life, one needs those role models to help guide their personas and spirits.

As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve become acutely aware of my heroes’ faults. Starting from my extensive research of the long history of Muhammad Ali’s womanizing and Malcolm X before he became we semi-deify now, my ever-expanding knowledge began to deconstruct the images I had of them, and as I got older and saw my more current heroes more regularly, I saw the griminess, the discontent, the shiftiness, and the inexplicable. I also found myself at a loss for words at the indirectness and secret society rules many of them played by.

In a fit of poetic rage, I metaphorically killed every single one from top to bottom, in rhyme and meter. Like those movies where the one guy finds out his boss / government has been deceiving him the whole time and decides to abandon their rules and go guerrilla.

Except that Guru almost died.

And then it took me back to a discussion our African-American Studies department at Syracuse University had about leaders like MLK Jr., wondering whether his less savory acts devalued what he did as one of the greatest civil rights leaders in the world. One of the younger professors in the panel argued that, because he had these blemishes, he was more closely reached. Before, the MLK standard was so hard to reach for him but now, in a backwards sort of logic, he now felt better about getting to that level.

In my current position, I look at those who I consider role models and that I certainly consider myself a fan of, and have to remind myself that, for all their inner divinity, they are human. They’re every bit as emotional, insecure, wavering, and contradictory as I am. That’s what makes them possible.

Why not pray for peace with them while they’re still on Earth and not when they’re six feet under or ashes spread across a plot of land?

Everyone is on a path that’s asymptotic to 100%. That’s why I can’t blame them. They’re somewhere down the road from where I am.

Jose, who shouldn’t be this popular, you’re far too kind …

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Short Notes: 14 Things I Learned from #TEDxNYED 2010

by Jose on March 7, 2010 · 4 comments

in life

TEDxNYED, Apples

This past Saturday, I had the fortune of attending the TEDxNYED conference, an independently run conference based on the TED conferences where they speak on an idea for a good 18-20 minutes about whatever topic they like. While some critics have come out in full force against the latest TED conference, wondering whether these events actually promote ideas for others or if they’re invite-only silos for information, people like me enjoyed the conference for simple reasons:

  • We never met any of these people before.
  • We actually understood the idea of this event.

I’ve learned tons of stuff. Here are 14:

Andy Carvin taught me about the potential of openness and allowing people to hack your stuff in the name of crisis prevention building. There’s something thoroughly revolutionary about letting people have all this information with no restriction in the name of mobilization.

Michael Wesch taught me that, when we think that we’re the creators of new media, the new media actually controls us. “Thus, we’re living in a razor’s edge” where the Internet can engender openness or it can be a system of control. Also, we have to take children from becoming “knowledgeable” to “knowledge-able” (the learned to the learner, a process of constant learning).

Henry Jenkins taught me about the idea of using popular culture to promote unrelated ideas, i.e. using Avatar the Last Airbender to discuss issues of race in Hollywood remakes, for instance.

David Wiley taught me that we should transform our definitions of education from an exclusive one to an inclusive one. Education should be defined as a relationship of openness and sharing, and successful teachers are those that do the most sharing with the most students (knowledge-wise).

Neeru Khosla taught us that textbooks need not be costly nor outdated. We can innovate in huge ways by just allowing us to throw out our convictions of what a textbook should be and using the right tools now to make this happen. And best of all, we can do this all for free.

Lawrence Lessig taught me that conservatives can teach liberals a few great things about being free. At least true conservatives anyways. (I don’t know if I took him up for this lesson, but I’d love to do more research on this).

Jay Rosen taught me about the idea of finding compensation through other methods than money. Sometimes, motivation and a “gift economy” is enough to spread the work around.

Jeff Jarvis taught me that the standard lecture need not be. We’re constantly puncturing holes in the one-way structure of current teaching with social networks and tech use in the classroom. Thus, the learning itself needs to be participatory for it to work well. (And of course, he reinforces his theorem by using the one-way model of lecturing. Hilarity ensues.)

Chris Abani, who TEDxNYED showed through video, taught me that the narrative of a people is just as important as looking at the geography. In other words, when we listen to the stories of a people, it matters less that you can identify their country on a map, for instance.

George Siemens taught me that networks, and not individuals, solve large problems. When we’re connected, we’re better educated as a whole. Fragmentation is easy to do, but tying it all back together is the hard part.

Dan Cohen taught me that the new millennium has a lot to teach us about the new order of information. Sometimes, even when chaos looks disorganized, it can actually provide the precision and order we need. (Think: 3.1415926535 …)

Amy Bruckman taught me that it’s important to help theory catch up with practice, and in that vein, value our students’ agency.

Dan Meyer, who I’ve discussed at length on this blog, taught me to encourage student intuition and be less helpful. Not that I didn’t learn that from his blog, but he does this so much more effectively in person.

Chris Lehmann, who I’ve also developed a good acquaintance with, taught me that children should never be the implied object of their own learning, so we’re teaching kids the subject we’re teaching them, not strictly teaching the subject.

The speeches varied from impassioned to collected. From mind-tickling to mind-blowing. And yet, all of them had this great idea and simply wanted to share it with everyone. It went off so seamlessly that it seemed less like a self-agrandizing conference and more of a meeting of the minds.

Now, if we can include the people who might never make it to these on purpose …

Jose, who wants to do one himself …

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The Question Is: Are You Part of the Conspiracy?

by Jose on March 5, 2010 · 9 comments

in life

Pedro Noguera

Reading through the plethora of feedback given not only to this blog, but the rest of the blogs out there, I noticed a big part of the Teach for America event missing in all of our posts. For the purposes of this post, I’m glad we did since I’ve mulled it over so many times, it’s made me stop dead in my tracks twice since Wednesday.

Dr. Pedro Noguera made good mention of the schools-to-prisons funnel system, highlighting how so many schools are structured like prisons and how people have looked at 3rd – 4th grade test scores to determine the need for more prisons. My biggest takeaway in his rant was the following:

“I’ve been to prisons before, speaking in front of the inmates with guards all around the premises, and I’ve said, ‘There is a conspiracy to keep you in prison, and there are people whose jobs and income depend on keeping you here. There are policymakers planning to build more prisons right now, and whole towns in upstate New York that rely upon their prisons for jobs and economic development of those towns. There are corporations that run prisons for profit, taking advantage of the low wages prisoners receive for the work they do. Even the guards in this room understand their jobs depend on you being here. But my question to you is: are you part of the conspiracy?’”

The whole room paused. Most people in the audience had never read Noguera’s work , but even those of us who did stood silent while he struck that question. What’s often missing in the questions about responsibility is whether or not we’ve actually addressed that conspiracy. How do we play into the very stereotypes and limits set for us? How do we build bridges that address the needs of communities of color from a perspective of self-empowerment?

For that matter, when do the high-brow people in our communities stop talking down to those communities and integrate them into their work? Those of us who’ve had an opportunity to get enlightened act more like the Illuminati than illuminated: privileged and exclusive versus humbled and inclusive, as if the work we do gives us a certain holier-than-thou-art status instead of making us de facto servants for others.

And does that make us, those of us with Internet access who can read at a high school level or above with connections and a certain level of income, part of the conspiracy too? Let me not ruffle any feathers, though.

Mr. Vilson, who doesn’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but he is, so that’s how it comes out …

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Dear John: Where I Disagree With Legend

by Jose on March 3, 2010 · 14 comments

in life

John Legend

Dear John Legend,

Last night at the Avery Hall in Lincoln Center (NYC), you and Common headlined an awesome town hall between some of the brightest and influential Black / Latino men in education. The line-up read like a starting roster for a hypothetical NYC Black educator panel: David Banks of the Eagle Academy as moderator, followed by Dr. Pedro Noguera, Common, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Ruben Diaz Jr., and Eric Snow. On paper, the roster was dynamic and possibly influential enough to break some ground on the topic of the moment: why the system has failed men of color in education. While I don’t expect much for Teach for America, I know plenty of educators from that system that have done good things for their children.

Having said that, you, my friend, did not bring your A game.

You brought a set of talking points akin to the wonks that, in changing public education, have silenced the voices of the most underprivileged. Your assertion that students who don’t do well on the standardized state tests are not ready for the real world conflict with real life, where no one asks you in the job force to fill out a bunch of bubbles to do the best job possible. Your case study about that one school that did so well with passing the test doesn’t say much about how they’ll do in the future nor does it coincide with the reality of education as a whole, where charter schools only make up 5% of NYC public schools. Your vision of the perfect school and how that aligns to the educrat movement sound more like a page out of a war stratagem than public school reform, with your talk of “getting rid of teachers.”

Nevermind that the policies of charter schools directly influence public schools in the area. For one, charter schools have more choice as to who gets in, and who leaves. Public schools have more paperwork in that respect. Charter schools thusly don’t house as many ELLs or children with special needs as public schools do. Plus, where do they go when they’re not deemed fit to attend this prestigious school? Public school, of course. Worse still is that the correlation between the amount of charter schools popping up and the amount of Black and Latino children in the neighborhood in which they arrive is pretty high.

A part of me wants to understand, too. Men of color do not exist monolithically. The depth and breadth of opinion within this demographic might make outside observers blush. We have so many routes by which to attack the issue of Black men that the one path we should all choose gets distorted by various interests and beliefs. That much, I believe. Even my attendance to an event sponsored by an organization I don’t fully support shows the complexity of education right now. Plus, not many in the audience (excluding me) expected you to know much about the plight of Black men in education outside of the banalities of men of color failing.

There, your opinion failed. Unfortunately, you were Soulja Boy in the middle of a catalogue battle between Jay-Z and Lupe Fiasco. A recent Golden Gloves championship winner discussing boxing with Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. That’s why, no matter how talented a musician you are, people could see through the distortions and false-ttos. Upon entering the Empire City, please note that, while the house is owned by people who readily accept what you say as fact, the neighborhood is guarded by watchmen who’ll boo you the minute you get it wrong.

Take that weak stuff outta here.

Jose, who doesn’t do personal attacks. This is purely professional …

p.s. – Part 2 tomorrow (and some takeaways) …

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What We’re Definitely Talking About

by Jose on March 1, 2010 · 1 comment

in life

Jay-Z in concert

I hate being Joel Klein’s messenger.

I’m not directly that, but today, at a common prep meeting, I found myself having to blunt the rather acute message that sometime this week, NYC teachers would receive teacher evaluative reports. From my vague understanding, the reports yield a summative (and opaque) view of a teachers’ success in academic achievement as they pertain to the New York State tests over the last four years. This year’s focus is on English / Language Arts and Math teachers, it seems, and this nugget comes a week after Joel Klein told every educator possible that this report should help determine whether teachers get tenure and / or (implicitly) their capacity for joining one’s staff during the Open Market Process in the summer.

When I met with teachers, I found myself annoyed, not simply at the varied (but typical) responses to this news, but moreso at the men and women who decided that giving such a report 8 weeks before our statewide ELA test and 9 weeks before our math test was the best idea ever.

What we’re talking about here is a failure to communicate.
We’re talking about how obtuse such an instrument is.
We’re talking about how quickly we’ve shifted from calling the principals “CEOs” of their school, but creating malcontent and depleted morale in their schools at such a critical time of the school year.
What we’re talking about is the children. Not just as your little punchline, but as a regular part of our study.
We’re talking about how best to pick apart an exam that was just renormed, and that no one has any idea about except its date.
We’re talking about unequal pay and unequal press in the news.
We’re talking about upgrading pedagogy.
A few of us are talking about lawyers and what happened in the past, but most of us are thinking forward and not just to the weekend.
A few of us only talk about parents, not most of us talk about making them an integral part of the educational process, even when some may not understand how to go about that.

This is only a small selection of the things we discuss on a daily basis, but now much of this gets supplanted by having to achieve a magical number. The teachers who have low-achieving students (and for purposes of this essay, I’m using standardized testing measures to discuss achievement. I rarely associate those two words) will already feel condemned because, no matter what the truth says, they’ll always feel they’ll start out at a disadvantage. Those who have the higher achieving students won’t get credit for moving students up, especially because the gap between good and great is so narrow.

And this is what we have to talk about now. Joel Klein’s quantified the unquantifiable. The corporations and educrats smile along. The people in the front lines fall one by one.

Jose, who’s talking about progress and he ain’t lookin’ back …

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Short Notes: We Facin’ The Storm, Homie, We Ridin’ It Out

by Jose on February 28, 2010 · 0 comments

in life

Talib Kweli at Rock the Bells

A few links:

Talib Kweli’s “NY Weather Report” off the album Eardrum rings true now as it did with such quotes as

“Revelation is first and Armageddon is after
Tsunamis and hurricanes, natural disasters …”

and

“I send this out to my people facin’ the storm, homey we ridin’ it out
You inspire what I’m writin’ about …”

In the song, Talib Kweli takes us through a virtual state of the world, at least the one around him. That’s probably the beauty of rap: the ability to expound and lyrically. With an artist like Talib, he’s able to integrate his real core beliefs over a great beat in ways that others can’t.

Also notice the couplets I pulled out. In a strange turn of events, I was listening to the song right about when the unfortunate news of the 8.8 earthquake hit Chile, and caused panic all across the Pacific. The power of this dynamic voice to relate things that happened 3 years ago (the song came out in 2007) says lots about how we as a culture have become more global. Rap, when used effectively, becomes the oral tradition and record for the culture under its influence.

One of the side effects of empires like the United States and other “Western” countries becoming more global is the alertness and sensitivity we have towards other nations and their struggle, as we see some common threads in the needs within their governments and others. The interconnectedness one feels when the reports come out from those countries essentially holds us together. The same feeling we got through the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina penetrated us through the tragedies of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Becoming global and humanitarian doesn’t just mean knowing where the countries are, or their dates of “independence,” but also their struggles and the themes and ideas behind those struggles. Also, are there glimmers of hope in these places? Do we still hold imperial biases against these countries, castigating them to the “Third World” that makes no sense if we’re still on the same planet?

This is the energy that moves us. We just gotta feel it.

Jose, who is still developing this ideal himself …

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Black History Month: The Importance of Arturo Schomburg and Why I’m So Steadfast on Quisqueya

by Jose on February 26, 2010 · 0 comments

in life

Arturo Schomburg by Marcano García at Taller Borinquen

A few weeks ago, a few people asked me why I helped create the now annual event Quisqueya, a celebration of Afro-Latino history throughout the Americas at Syracuse University. Honestly, it had a tinge of selfishness: by then, I helped run a series of workshops dedicated to understanding the relationships between Blacks and Latinos at a time when others kept seeing schisms. Plus, my Dominican-Haitian background spurred me to explore that in a more open forum, i.e. a celebration where I could subliminally prove that schism false. It’s also the most obvious representation of Blacks and Latinos on the same “field”, whereas other lands in the Americas aren’t known for this dual identity, even with the plethora of races occupying Brazil, Peru, Colombia, or Mexico, for instance.

To wit, as the education chair of La LUCHA at the time, I never got asked why it made sense to have such an event; it was obvious how much unity such an event would bring on a campus where the split even existed within organization of mutual interest. The questions of whether I should lead a Latino organization enraged me at the start of my tenure, but instead of taking a reactionary stance against the critics, most of whom never confronted me personally, I decided to take to the streets, finding ways to build bridges in spaces where I didn’t even know I could fit in.

As with any of these experiences, I learned something critical to my formation: the idea of Quisqueya.

“Quisqueya” is a word I’d known so commonly because Dominicans often referred to their part of the island as such. As it turns out, while La LUCHA and the Haitian American Student Association sought funding for Hispaniola, the original name of the aforementioned event, one of the members of the committee pulled us aside and asked us to change the name of the program to Quisqueya. Whereas Hispaniola is a name placed upon the island by people who never originated from there, Quisqueya (or Kiskeya, or “mother earth”) was a name the Tainos used to designate for the entire island, before the countries occupying the island split it into the current countries they are now. That made more sense for the purposes of the event, so we kept it.

This serendipitous lesson on Quisqueya planted the seed for me to go to an event at the Arturo Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at Harlem. It’s the first time I’d ever been to the museum, and the first time I’d ever heard about him. Naturally, I was annoyed for a bit because, even after I’d met so many  intelligent men and women in Syracuse U, no one ever told me about this man.

I think it was Howard Dodson Jr., head of the Schomburg Center, who said it best when he mentioned that Arturo Alfonso Schomburg’s history was often ignored and ostracized when it came to Black history. He alluded to the fact that his contributions to Black history were only recognized later on in his career, even with the many allies he had. Thus, it was almost ironic to see that the primary center for Black history is under his name. Once equipped with knowledge, Schomburg found purpose for his work when others didn’t, or didn’t think he was the one who should do it. As a Puerto-Rican immigrant (an Afro-Borinquen at that), he had tons of battles, primarily for identity and membership.

For me, these were the most important contributions to history as a whole: he not only validated Black history, documenting and preserving the important parts of a history still not regularly integrated into our society, but he also validated Afro-Latinos as an essential part of Latino and African Diaspora history, because, while he may not have had the voice, he certainly had the knowledge, proof positive that history shouldn’t simply pass us by.

By being proactive in one’s history, you eventually become an integral part of that.

Jose, who should always write like this when we have snow days …

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For Reasons Beyond Me

by Jose on February 24, 2010 · 1 comment

in life

“For Reasons Beyond Me” by me (first, and a very rough, draft)

You’re not in my dreams anymore,
Self-felicitating figment of  my imagination,
Meet me at my torso
Talk to me real slow
Partition the convo like so
Tell me all your perfect flaws
Before we take a little pause
Work on in this little buzz
Drink up quick because
The cosmopolitan in you had to leave so quick

You’re not that far from me
Skin-tracing muse of many renderings
See me for the temporary
Ask for me the unnecessary
Our chemistry incendiary
Our night follows like this
That intimacy we missed
Take advantage of the kiss
Let your passions insist
The blue moon won’t stay out too long

You’re not worthy of the hurt
Self-healing woman of another’s embrace
Salute me with no byes
Exude your familiar highs
While to each other our whys lived lies
It was a myriad of expressions
Limited to alcohol-tinted lusty confessions
A little release to cut apart the tensions
Nothing more than an innocent and ephemeral digression
The rum and coke left me too readily

You deserved a chance at love
And a man who could consecrate all of the above …

Jose, who just made up this form …

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