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T train

3/11/2015

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By Imrul Mazid 
Engine, engine, letter T,
on the New York transit
“free,”
if these pigs go off the track,
stick em up,
stick em up,
stick em up!


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Ferguson & Michael Brown: My Opinion

3/11/2015

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By Monica Chavez
Oakland High School, 9th grade 
We all know what happened in Ferguson, Missouri with Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson. We know that Michael Brown was a young teenager who was going to attend college but sadly died before he could attend. We also know that Darren Wilson didn’t get indicted for Brown’s shooting. Now that’s the problem: the fact that the officer was not even taken to court to stand trial for the killing. The people want Michael Brown back. The people want to see justice served. Communities in Ferguson, Oakland, New York City, and other places are getting together to make a change. We see protests all around the country. There are many different opinions on this situation, but I will be discussing my opinion about this tremendous event.

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Anything But American

3/11/2015

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By Britany Borens
Oakland High School, 9th grade
Please don’t call me African American. Call me Black. I am proud to be Black, but I’m not proud to belong to a nation that won’t give me the same rights as others. I’m no longer proud to be American. I mean, how could I be proud of a nation that takes enjoyment in the slaughtering of colored people, more often Black people.

Don’t get me wrong- being American is great: freedom of speech, a better than most education system and the power to become whatever you like. These things and so much more are things that are great about America, however we also have many disadvantages and the most unacceptable being that white lives matter more than colored lives. There’s examples of that all the time you just have to really look. Society says we as Americans are all equal until a teen is shot down and we have clear evidence against the murderer but because he is white he’s given a slap on the wrist, because he is white we are trying to justify the murder and give a reason as to why he deserved the die (such as he smokes weed he deserves to die) this happens all the time.

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Responding and Restructuring: Turning Schools into Allies

3/11/2015

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By Kena Hazelwood-Carter & Jordan Karr

UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education, School Psychology Program
In the midst of the anguished cries of “Justice for Michael Brown!”, “Justice for Eric Garner!”, “I can’t breathe”, and “#BlackLivesMatter” it is important for educators to take a step back and formulate an informed, modulated, and community centered response that addresses not only the outrage but also the needs of children who see peers, parents, and neighbors targeted by those who pledge to keep them safe (NAACP, 2014).  These children can be stopped and frisked anywhere.  The very streets leading to their homes, schools, friends’ houses, and churches are not benign; the current social justice movements are simply putting voice to this fact.  We as educators, counselors, administrators, and support staff must not ignore this reality.  While our training prepares us to support the traditional educational scope and sequence, our training rarely includes how to navigate the much more tumultuous waters of societal unrest.  We must go beyond the traditional bounds of our jobs and equip ourselves to become allies to these children.

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Further Notes on Teaching in the time of #Ferguson*

1/16/2015

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By Edwin Mayorga
Swarthmore College

Ferguson was where this semester began. 

When non-indictment news from Ferguson began streaming in, I found myself searching. Searching for answers, searching for justice. I have been inspired by the various collections of resources that have been assembled through by educators who have sought to support others as we work through this tragedy (resources below).  But having just moved with my family to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, I have thought about what it has meant to be teaching in the time of Ferguson.

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Beyond Police Violence: A Conversation on Antiblackness, #BlackLivesMatter, #WeChargeGenocide and the Challenge to Educators  

1/16/2015

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By Connie Wun, PhD (University of Illionis, Chicago) and Damien Sojoyner, PhD (Scripps College) 

Picture

The following is an excerpt of an ongoing dialogue between two scholars, Damien Sojoyner and Connie Wun, whose work closely examines the interlock of antiblackness, “violence,” schools, and prisons. It is situated within the current period—one that has focused on the police violence that has occurred across the nation, particularly in Ferguson, Cleveland, New York, Sanford, Chicago, Oakland, Detroit and Los Angeles. At the same time, this conversation situates the deaths of Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Dominique Franklin, Jr., Rekia Boyd, Oscar Grant, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and Ezell Ford as a part of a civil society that is foundationally antiblack. We also understand that these are only a few of the names of people who have been murdered by police and with impunity. Police murders of Black people, we contend, are characteristic of a structure that also includes “slow and gradual state violence” against Blacks. The latter takes the form of school closures in predominantly Black neighborhoods, gentrification and displacement of Black communities, mass incarceration and their effects, poor health care, hypersurveillance of Black bodies at large, and racial microaggressions across multiple social spaces. We understand that the important political actions concerning “Black Lives Matter”[1] exists alongside “We Charge Genocide”[2] and “Black Power Matters”[3] campaigns. We recognize that police violence against Black people is a part of a society that is organized around ‘antiblackness’ and call for educators, researchers, and scholars to respond accordingly. 


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hang

1/15/2015

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By maisha quint

hang


as in opposite of crawl:
hands dragging knees
that bleed but instead
legs dangle
after head.
as in limp
from a rope
that swings
back and forth.
as in strung up
like lights
blaze brilliant
in the night.
as in opposite of crawl:
hands dragging knees
that bleed
but alive.


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Individual to Institutional: Learning About Structural Racism in a Classroom Shaped by Structural Racism

1/15/2015

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By Laura Winnick 
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education, Multicultural Urban Secondary English Program 

After I returned from Thanksgiving break, I was surprised to learn that my Coordinating Teacher (C.T.) had changed our three-week unit from a discussion about the Of Mice and Men trial to a discussion and dialogue about the events in Ferguson. 

The essential question of the unit – mostly planned by my C.T. – asked: How has Ferguson affected our communities and where do we go from here? The core content depended on articles that my C.T. had seen widely shared through social media. Students read a New York Times informational report and several opinion pieces, viewed images and video from the protests, and read Facebook posts by a variety of people defending their opinions on whether protesting was effective. Grades were based primarily on their spoken opinions on this topic, through philosophical chairs and Socratic seminar exercises. 

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Law, Education, and Race: Reflections from a First-Semester Professor

1/15/2015

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By Rebecca Tarlau, Visiting Professor of educational leadership and societal change
Soka University of America

I just finished my first semester as a Visiting Professor in a new masters program in Educational Leadership and Societal Change at Soka University of America, in South Orange County. The transition from being a graduate student to being a professor poses new challenges, both in terms of the work and in embracing a new identity as a professor. However, the biggest challenge I faced this semester was being detached from my colleagues at UC Berkeley, whom I had grown to trust and with whom I engaged in both political discussions and actions to intervene in the world. 

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There are No Toys in Jail

1/13/2015

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By Jennifer Bradley, Visiting Professor
Swarthmore College 

When I taught preschool in West Baltimore in the 1990s, the oft-quoted crime statistics of the city predicted that seven out of every ten black males would end up in the criminal justice system by the time they were adults. I have no idea if this was an accurate statistic, but it’s one I heard all the time. All of the children I taught were African-American. 

The neighborhood struggled with poverty, crime, under-resourced schools and health care systems, and limited opportunities. But it was also brimming with promise.

The families were vibrant. They loved their little boys with a passion. They watched over their play, the friends that they made, and their early education. They showed up for parent conferences, read the books I sent home for their children, and worked hard to give them a head start.

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Race and Violence Should Be a School-Wide Subject*

1/13/2015

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By Travis Bristol, Research and Policy Fellow
Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education

With the grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson (a white police officer) in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown (an unarmed black man), teachers and  schools continue to grapple with how to talk about race and violence with their students. And while black-on-black crime is deeply troubling, we know, as Professor Michael Eric Dyson recently reminded us, "Black people who kill black people go to jail. White people who are policemen who kill black people do not go to jail."

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    Additional Resources for Further Dialogue

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