Charlottesville's Teachers' call to action.

In Maya Angelou's Inaugural Poem "On The Pulse of Morning", we find these words:
"For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream." (1/20/93)

The Day, can't break new until we lift up our eyes, and view this back to school year as something more than another same old, same old, go along to get along school year. 
We must face history's wrenching pain, realizing this is not only about after Charlottesville, but about after: slavery, Columbus,  wars on labor, women, immigrants, and people of diverse faiths.  
After Charlottesville, back to school should be, America's invitation to study hatred in America.
After Charlottesville, back to school should be, our invitation to talk about culturally relevant curriculum.
After Charlottesville, back to school must become the undoing of defining education success as higher standardized test scores.
After Charlotteville, history should be faced with enough courage to not be lived again.

Valerie Strauss's August 13, The Answer Sheet column we find: "The first thing teachers should do when school year begins, is talk about hatred in America. Here’s help." Valerie Strauss is asking teachers to make sure that going back to school this year is different. This is a must read for every educator in America.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/08/13/the-first-thing-teachers-should-do-when-school-starts-is-talk-about-hatred-in-america-heres-help/?utm_term=.7c0222b7a3f3

Let us start:

Perhaps the best place to begin is to reject education reform policies rooted in high-stakes testing, and sanitized curriculum of academic resistance.  I have lived sanitized curricula, resisted it, and learned to teach against it.

Before Charlottesville:
A little over twenty years ago before I became a university professor I taught Native American Tohono O'odham and Pasqual Yaqui Upward Bound students. Many were struggling in their individual Tucson high schools. Schools where the history books and English books did not tell their story.  Instead the text books there denied 500 years of broken treaties, lies, and atrocities against their people.

What many considered academic failure in the lives of Native American students, I came to view as resistance to a curriculum that did not see them, or value their history. At the time, being a young doctoral student, I discovered that academic failure in oppressed communities is well documented in the research in public education. "Resistance theory proposes that students actively or passively resist learning as a way of responding to the oppressive school system.  Resistance theories demonstrate how individuals negotiate and struggle with structures and create meanings of their own from these interactions.” (Bernal & Ramp; Solorzano, 2001, p. 315).

I also discovered in the literature,  Liverpool England (Home to The Beatles) had young people resist similar schooling.  Their so-called academic failure reflected not a lack of intelligence, but a resistance from a public-school system that viewed their parents, the work of their fathers and mothers, and their way of living as undesirable.

I recognized it in my own urban schooling.  Our teachers often told us "You kids live in the ghetto, and school is your ticket out". But, that ghetto was our home; our parents and families were not broken.  They were our working class heroes.
We found liberation from the oppression of public education, blasting out of radios in our kitchens and cars, on the records playing in our living rooms, and Ghetto Blasters on our street corners. In between War's "Wild Rodriquez", The Temptations "Poppa was a Rolling Stone", George Clinton's "Tear the Roof of Sucker" we found the Clash's "This is England". By the time, we found Bob Marley "Trench Town Rock" we were fully immersed in our liberation of resistance. While we did not find our stories in school, we were finding our stories, lives, and views of the world validated in the music calling us from the radio waves coming from outside our neighborhoods and even from across the Atlantic.

 
I never found academic failure, but then again, I wasn't looking or it.  I was searching searching for academic success. On the journey, I found  academic resistance not failure in my Native American students in Tucson, AZ.  Something well documented in the literature of resistance theory.   Through my Tucson students, I was able to see it in my own school experiences.  I was taught by some of my teachers to "get out" as soon as I could;  not to stay and improve the very streets I grew up on. To this day I  often go back to the streets of my boyhood home, but I don't feel "at home".   I lost something beautiful, a future possibility of making a better life right there in the hood that to this day defines me. A great deal of urban education in improvised commuities is about getting out not staying in. What I failed to see was getting out meant losing some of me. 

Dr. Yetta Goodman took this young urban doctoral student under her wing  at the University of Arizona. More than anyone else,  she made sure I earned my Ph.D.  She once called me "Our Ghetto Doc Jesse".  It was  Yetta  who taught me to use my past in order to build my future. I learned that my past was the fire that could see me home. I would use that fire, and the music of my liberation to feed my research; I would come to understand that much of the academic failure in oppressed communities is in fact academic resistance. Dr. Goodman in taking me under her wing, defines what is best in American Higher Education. The mentoring of one generation of researchers to another. 

For my dissertation "Creating A Transactional Classroom" I had been given the go ahead to shift the focus of readings in my Native American Upward Bound classes from the Classics of Western Culture,  that I had studied in high school, to the readings of Native American culture.  This was not  a simplistic decision.   There is a strong belief among many that a greater focus on the "cannon" of Western Culture helps prepare Native Students for the kinds of reading and writing they will encounter in college. This is true for some educators in all diverse communities. I would examine that belief with the director of the Upward Bound Program, Dr. Angie Listo. She is a member of the Tohono O'odham nation, and like me, she saw her own education in the Literature of Resistance Theory. After deep discussions, research, and reflection, we made the shift.   My dissertation documents the   successful academic journey of these Upward Bound students.   Their success grew out of a change of curricula, one that focuses on culturally relevant teaching.

Where to go after Charlotteville:
American history is not mono-cultural, or mono-lingual.  

It is one of the most diverse histories in the world.   
American history should be the telling of powerful truths, that when faced with courage, will produce the best symphony of diversity ever heard! 
We have within our reach the ability to come to know ourselves like no other people before. When curriculum is culturally, racially, economically, and linguistically irrelevant to learners ~ it fractures hope.
It injures the individual.
It breaks learners. 
Academic Resistance becomes survival.
Schools become the planting ground for dissent.
  
President Trump needs to know what Makes America Great is not boastful, but the humbling of a public school experience where we come to know each other, come to face our past, and come together as Americans.  What makes America great is not pitting one against the other, but finding what brings us together. We can be a great people if we face history's wrenching pain with dignity, respect, and honor.  

I find truth and hope in Maya Angelou's poem: "On The Pulse of Morning,"  
Live a memory never forgotten, I still hear her reciting

"Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope --
Good morning."
 
I pray for the Angels of Justice like Heather Heyer who gave their all.  For the 19 who were injured, for Charlottesville, and for America.   With Peace, Love, and Understanding.
I promise this back to school year will be different in my classes,
I shall be more,
Do more, and
Live the life that Maya Angelou begs us all to live:
Good morning New School Year,
Good Morning America,

If you would like to listen to the tune that inspired my  walk in these New Hampshire Woods this morning...it’s The Clash "This is England".  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5vAn3Fe1TA

Whose America?
Our America!
Jesse The Walking Man Turner