Today’s Pass The Chalk post features reflections on family from father and daughter corps members Leila (San Antonio '10) and Scott Graham (San Antonio '11) in honor of National Family Week.
As we enter Thanksgiving week and make our holiday preparations, I find myself reflecting on family and my many blessings. As I reflect, I realize that it’s almost impossible for me to think of family without conjuring up images of the children I teach at Page Middle School in San Antonio, Texas.
“My kids” at Page are my extended family whom I love. After our day together in the classroom, I coach many of them in one sport or another—just as I coached my biological kids in years gone by.
Photo by Liz via WikiCommons
Lakota Mowrer taught in the 2006 South Dakota corps.
Lakota people have a saying: wicoicage sakowin kin un wicakagapi. It means “building for the seventh generation.” As a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, my personal journey has been deeply rooted in challenging injustices affecting young generations of Native Americans.
I saw how historic injustices in public policy and practice had created huge disparities in my own community. Public education policies touted as the “great equalizer” were implemented as forced assimilation, removing native children from their homes and placing them in boarding schools charged with “civilizing the Indian.”
Native American Initiative video by Teach For America
The new education commissioner in Austin, Texas—Michael Williams—is implementing a new school rating system that will focus on rating schools across four indicators rather than rating them based solely on students' performance on standardized tests. According to Williams, this will be a more effective measure of schools' “progress in closing the gap for minority and economically disadvantaged students.” It’s interesting, in my opinion, that in a state that is “60 percent black and brown,” Williams is still classifying African Americans and Hispanics as minorities.
Virginia’s State Board of Education has joined Florida in implementing controversial race-based standards and goals in its schools. In math, for example, the board “set an acceptable passing rate at 82 percent for Asian students, 68 percent for whites, 52 percent for Latinos, 45 percent for blacks and 33 percent for kids with disabilities.” The news was received with a firestorm of criticism and its proponents are being accused of lowering expectations and going “back to the era of segregation and Jim Crow.” Many critics of the new policy, including the research group Education Trust, assert that this will only serve to deepen the achievement gap between white and minority groups.
Photo by The US National Archives via WikiCommons
This week Pass The Chalk features posts from contributors who learn, teach and work in Native communties in honor of Native American Heritage Month. Morandi Hurst is a 2011 corps member and currently teaches 4th-8th grade literacy and social studies at Spring Creek School in South Dakota.
There are days when I think every problem in my classroom would be solved if I were Lakota. I would have the authority to teach the Lakota concept of mitakuye oyasin, which means that we are all related, as a means of reducing bullying. I would be able to speak to my students about the reality that they can attend college, but also the struggles they will inevitably face in leaving their families and the reservation. I could solve problems from the classroom inside a sweat lodge.
When I was accepted into Teach For America, I was confident in my abilities to fit in within my community and incorporate Lakota culture in the classroom. I had a solid background in the history of the area. I grew up on a buffalo ranch in western South Dakota, on the border of the Pine Ridge Reservation, and studied Lakota history extensively throughout college. I brought with me a wealth of knowledge from my previous reservation experiences and my academic studies.
So during my first year, I built my classroom around Lakota culture. The rules we operated by were the Lakota virtues of respect, bravery, perseverance, and generosity. We studied “Leaders of the Week” who were frequently Lakotas who had overcome challenges they faced growing up on reservations across the state. We celebrated our own student “Leader of the Week,” Wicasa Itancan, named after the Lakota idea of a civil leader, someone who is higher ranking than a warrior, and one of the most respected individuals of the tribe.
Photo courtesy of Morandi Hurst
This week Pass The Chalk features posts from contributors who learn, teach and work in Native communties in honor of Native American Heritage Month. Tracie Michelle Benally is a senior at Crownpoint High School in New Mexico.
PB&J cookies and Bikram Yoga on the Navajo Reservation are about as easy to find as a dancing, Vietnamese, Teach For America corps member now working for Bridge International Academies in Kenya. Finding such a woman is rare—in fact, it’s about a one in a million chance.
She exists. Her name is Ms. Dang.
I met her when I was a sophomore at Crownpoint High School in New Mexico. I was fifteen and uninspired—as far as I knew, educational success just wasn’t possible for me. I wasn’t expected to graduate high school or leave my community; unemployment hovered around fifty percent on my reservation and the drop-out rate was increasing. The odds of failing at attaining higher education were greater than succeeding, so trying seemed useless.
Her class, Geometry, was my first period. She greeted me with a fist bump and said something like, “GeoMonsters wahoooo!” When class began she referred to a schedule that looked like, “Greet Students—1 min. Intro—2 mins.”
I gave her two weeks.
Photo courtesy of Tracie Benally
This week Pass The Chalk features posts from contributors who learn, teach and work in Native communties in honor of Native American Heritage Month.
Hau Mitakuyapi, Anpetu waste. Robert Cook emaciyapi yelo, Oglala Lakota hemaca yelo. Na iyuha cante wasteya nape ciyuzapi yelo. (Good Day relatives, my name is Robert Cook, I am from the Oglala Lakota Nation and I shake your hand with a good heart.)
Each year since 1990, the sitting President of the United States issues an official Proclamation declaring November Native American Heritage Month. American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians are the indigenous people of the United States. In fact, archeological evidence shows inhabitants living in this country for over 50,000 years. My own Lakota ancestry has oral stories that place our origin in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, the heart of the Great Sioux Nation where we continue to live and honor our cultural identity.
Photo courtesy Turn685 via Wikimedia Commons
Josh Sparks taught in the 2008 New Mexico corps.
I am Appalachian, born and raised. More particularly, I am central Appalachian- I grew up in Jackson, KY, the seat of Breathitt County, which is located in the foothills of the Central Appalachian Mountains. Growing up, I spent my summers hiking in the lush green hills behind my house, spending time with my grandparents and learning about their generation (and mainly the things I take for granted), and at the city pool where my friends and I did our best to annoy the lifeguards every day (later, I would become one; karma’s definitely not fun). During the school year, I surrounded myself with friends who were dedicated to their studies and their futures. We spent hours in tutoring studying for pre-calculus and re-writing our drafts for English class. And we spent many evenings drafting and practicing our legislative proposals for our state’s Youth Assembly (yeah, I was a dork). All in all, I loved my small town Appalachian life.
Photo courtesy of Brandon Goins via Wkimedia Commons
Robert Cook is managing director of Teach For America’s Native Achievement Initiative.
Since the days of Christopher Columbus, American Indian tribes have long fought to defend their traditional home lands, resources and families. As a result of these battles, many tribes were forced off their lands, and relocated, or rather confined, to reservations where they endured poverty, racism, and attempts to erase their traditional cultures.
Languages were particularly targeted in the government’s efforts to change the American Indians’ ways of life. This attempt to “Kill the Indian to Save the Man” was largely accomplished through federal sanctioned land allotments, termination, relocation programs all of which failed to achieve full assimilation to the dominant culture.
Additionally, beginning in the late 1800s, Indian children were forbidden to speak their own languages and were punished in government—and church—supported boarding schools if they did speak their language or practiced their cultural ways. Most American Indians were not legally considered citizens of the United States until 1924. Even then, some states refused to let American Indians vote until as late as the 1950s.
Shaun Murphy is the manager of Veterans recruitment, overseeing Teach For America’s You Served for America, Now Teach For America initiative. He was a 2009 Teach For America corps member in Delaware.
Today is a day of remembrance. Every Veterans Day we celebrate the service of the men and women of the armed forces. As a veteran myself, I can attest to the fact that for us, service is a life-long endeavor. It doesn’t end when your tour of duty does. As a former Staff Sergeant in the United States Army and an alumnus of Teach For America, I want to particularly recognize Veterans who continue their service to our country as educators across the United States.
Teach For America and the communities we serve understand first-hand the value of Veterans and the impact we can have in classrooms. So many of the qualities that make strong teachers in low-income classrooms are the same as those instilled through military service: discipline, resiliency, cultural sensitivity, and high expectations, to name a few. The same authority, control and perseverance that make them heroes on the battlefield also make Veterans effective leaders in the classroom. And Veterans can uniquely relate to the challenges that students of military families face.
Photo courtesy of Shaun Murphy
Five links that made us think this week:
Now that the election is over, the real work begins. Election results show that voters are still deeply divided over education issues. Proposals to introduce merit pay and limit teacher’s rights to collectively bargain were rejected in Idaho, while Arizona, Missouri, and South Dakota all rejected tax increase proposals that would benefit public education. On the flip side, charter school supporters won a major victory in Washington state, where voters finally approved a ballot initiative to allow charter schools.
Shakespeare famously said, A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I'm not sure critical race theorist Dr. Camika Royal would agree with him. In a provocative op-ed for Good, Dr. Royal argues that “the cross-racial comparison” inherent in the term “achievement gap” is problematic because it “blames the historically marginalized, under-served victims of poor schooling and holds whiteness and wealth as models of excellence.” She challenges ed reform organizations (including her alma mater, Teach For America) to “watch their mouth” and avoid using the “inflammatory term.” Definitely worth a read.
According to a newly-released census, the number of people pursuing higher education in America has increased in the last few years, due in part to the economic recession and the challenges in finding a job. The study shows that “a third of the nation’s 25- to 29-year-olds have earned at least a bachelor’s degree.” Not only has the number of college graduates gone up, but the general belief that a higher education is important has also gone up. Despite this favorable trend, the U.S. is no longer the world leader in education attainment, falling behind many European countries.
Photo by Tomwsulcer via WikiCommons
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