At 70 I know better...

 

We hear a great deal about teachers not being explicit enough, systematic enough, not keep fidelity to their scripted programs...  Policymakers, legislators, and CEOs of commercial learning programs promise that explicit systematic teaching guarantees learning.  Well they never knew my Momma.

When I was a boy, on a cool summer evening in Hoboken, Mom and the neighbors would sit on folding chairs outside our apartment building. I was safe there, we were all safe there. These women came from different places, had different faiths, but they were united by motherhood, and folding chairs... We lived two blocks from the train station, and the ferries. The world passed their chairs each evening ~ as their children played.

Mom would say hello to people passing, these women didn't judge each other or anyone else for that matter. "Hello" did not require you to have the same faith, the same skin color, the same language, or birthplace.

Here I am at 70, and I have well learned from them. No, not from their explicit instruction, but from their actions. She loved to ask me what I'd learnt at school each day, I would say 3 + 3 is 6, the moon is not a planet. She would say that is interesting son, but what did you learn? You can find out lots of things in books Mom. She liked that, remember that one! She was a believer of "We don't always learn what is taught; and often learn from what is not taught."

Listen, honestly, I am not against teaching explicitly. But we all know, there are lessons not listed on the lesson plan, and whoa do they matter! I doubt that I remember any of my teacher's lesson objectives, BUT their unwritten objectives, those are the ones that matter most...
Be kind,
Be respectful,
Try your best,
Remember to take turns,
Listen,
Wash your hands,
Share,
Be your best self,
Open the door for others.

Today, at 70, those lessons are etched into the very fabric of me.

My teachers taught me these, no teacher ever wrote them into their lesson plans.

These wonderful women sitting on their folding chairs, taught me these same lessons ~ without ever stating them.

Were they explicit? Let me just say, they lived their lessons in the authentic context of real world instruction. They never had to explain them, they lived them.

I learned from the best,
Dr. Jesse P. Turner
Professor Emeritus of Literacy, Elementary, and Early Childhood Education
Mom's "Golden Boy"


If you like to listen to the tune, that inspired my morning walk, it was Crosby, Stills, and Nash 'Teach your children" 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQOaUnSmJr8

Sending Out A Walking Man SOS

 

I met author Diane Ravitch in 2010 (in person) while she was speaking at Yale University.  After the event I asked her if there was a possibility that she might speak at the 2011 Save Our Schools Rally... I was being bold and shooting for the moon!  She did speak at the rally, and I have been following her ever since. 

In her 2020  book Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools, Ratvitch identifies me "as one of the David's, Fighting to Save Public Education" (pg: 61)

A vast amount of my ground resistance struggle is scattered across many different mediums of  social medial.  Finally, some 15 years later I now find myself  pulling those examples of my resistance altogether in once place!

This fight is far from over. I am still in the thick of being "A David"  slinging stones at the status quo who seek to dismantle our public school system. 

I still dream of a movement that occupies our court houses, legislative offices, governor mansions, and the United States Department of Education. 

I'm looking for some help/feedback ~  with this new website I am in the midst of building to bring all my stones together; one home to evoke a call to all Davids/Divadas ~ hurlings their stones. A place to remind the world that the Fight to Save our Public Schools is Our Good Fight. This is not my struggle this is Our Struggle. 

Here is the link to my "hub of sling shots" https://childrenaremorethantestscores.com Be easy on me... it is, as they say in social media "a work in progress". Please take a look, and feel free to comment and make content suggestions.  Most importantly, let me know about your resistance efforts. Maybe one day, we can all build a hub for all us Davids and Dividas. So if you have some time check my website and email me some suggestions as well. turnerj@ccsu.edu

We can't win this fight alone.  We will win it together! When we fight we win. 

Still Slinging Stones...

Dr. Jesse P. Turner (AKA The Walking Man)     

If you like to listen to the song that inspired my morning walk today, it is Barry Lane's Jesse Turner is a Walking Man > https://barrylane.bandcamp.com/track/jesse-turner-the-walkin-man < 

 

Teachers can be heroes

 

Teachers can be heroes

Dear President Trump ~ you can't stop this teacher!

This is what happens when Mrs. Stansfield is your very first Black, Language Arts teacher...

She prepares you to be the change you dream is possible. She links everything you read to freedom, and the world around you.  You don’t merely comprehend; she has you dig much deeper.  You see beyond surface facts, simple responses. You come to see literature as the doorway to liberation and freedom.  She made you brave, made you unafraid, and she gave you the courage to reimagine the world as it could be.  How could we read Victor Hugo, Maya Angelou, Charles Dickens, James Baldwin, and Beowulf without knowing William Wilberforce, Marcus Garvey, Cesar Chavez, Jose Marte, MLK, Jim Crow, and JFK’s Camelot.  

This current administration see teachers like Mrs. Stansfield as a threat to tyrannical  dreams. I still remember her clearly asking us, "Why is it that we need to read? Why do you need to write?" As all good poor kids (high school students) we replied "to get a good job, to go to college, to succeed". We were playing right into her hands.  "Hmmm so you read and write to be good little worker bees".  She then proceeded to walk to the chalkboard and wrote a James Baldwin quote: 

“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” 

She then asked us if he sounded like some good little worker bee?  Readers/writers can be worker bees, or they can be like Cesar Chavez  challenging an unjust world. Imagine reading the library books James Baldwin reads.  The Gallo Grape company would want JB to read all about being a better farm worker bee.  She told us we were going to be reading his heroes; and we read all about William Wilberforce decades long struggle to end the slave trade.  

As a highschool sophmore I didn't knew these guys... but she changed that, and connected her heroes to everything we read.  In the 70's Jersey City NJ Ghetto Teachers, were not restricted to teaching poor kids just the facts, and dates.  They were free to go beyond that box. Control was not the goal.  Education to those teachers was about liberation!

Pedagogical Compliance with the status quo was the last thing on the minds of our teachers. 

Decades later as a graduate student, I came to recognize Mrs. Stansfield pedagogy in Paulo Freire's writing. “The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.”  

Mrs. Stansfield empowered her students to understand that reading can really change your world.  She also taught me and my classmates that we could be heroes.  

I am the books I read. 

I can be a hero, because I had teacher heroes.  

Books were our liberators. 

To quote Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop "Books are mirrors, windows, and sliding doors to our world. Pathways to ourselves, others, and humanity".  

My teachers were "old school" teaching outside the box!                                                               
Dr. Jesse P. Turner
Unafraid to follow in the footsteps of my heroes

If you like to listen to the tune that inspired my morning walk today, it is David Bowie "Heroes" link: htts://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFHC6t13hi0