An Educators Personal Reflection - on Trayvon Martin and those who sadly followed

An Educators Personal Reflection -  on Trayvon Martin...  and those who sadly followed 

for Broward's Equity Liasons

In order to understand the Framework of Building Culturally Responsive Schools we must first build, an understanding of the numbers and the data.  This is essential.

This, however, often ruffles some feathers.  I think this is the biggest hurdle we must overcome.  The numbers and the comparative date tell a story.  This can’t be denied.  I’m happy Broward is painting it and doing something about it.

Often individuals are so unaware of the issues that affect people of color and people in poverty.

Analyzing our own biases is a difficult endeavor.  Most people believe they are NOT racist.  Even if they know they are, they do not believe racism affects the progress of people of color as much as it does.  They also are unaware of just how racist they are.  Exploring this is our charge and helping others explore this within themselves is what I think this course is about.

I’m personally involved in the national dialogue about this very issue through my membership in two very powerful online teacher advocacy groups, over 100,00 strong.  In these groups the issue of race and racism and how it affects education has been ardently discussed.  But nothing prepared me for the turn of events and the intensification of this dialogue after Trayvon Martin, and those who quickly and sadly followed, racially charging America, our classrooms and our homes in ways none of us were expecting..

Everyone was talking for more than a year… still are talking… about Police Brutality and a Black Man’s fate in the hands of the law, and how this affects the students we teach, either directly, or through their parents, who often feel the sting of institutionalized racism.

During this time, EVERYONE’S emotions were heightened, EVERYONE’S!!

I was an online administrator for one of the groups, servicing 70,000 members at the time.  Because of this, I was involved in many of the “backroom discussions” among administrators deciding which comments were appropriate to advance the discussion and which ones were going to have to be deleted because they did not represent the culturally responsive and racially sensitive social justice stand of the group.  These very unique and privileged experiences and insights from being a behind the scenes administrator dealing with what sometimes became UGLY RACISM are what led me to become so much more passionate about the issues of race that affect us all.

What I realized through these insights is I found that often, even the most well-meaning individual can have trouble expressing themselves about race in just the right way.  And what is the right way?  I quickly found out there is NO RIGHT WAY!!  Chances are no matter how you feel or what you believe or how well you explain yourself when it comes to issues of race… someone will be offended!  Is that a bad thing?  I say no!  I think it is just part of the process.  That is why our online course is called  “Courageous Conversations About Race.”  It takes courage to share your feelings, knowing someone will most probably be offended.  I believe the reason for this is because there is no “RIGHT ANSWER!”   We are all affected by our race, our culture, our family upbringing. We all can only analyze what we believe “reality” to be through the prism of our own understanding.  And… that understanding is absolutely colored by our culture and race.

So.. if we have a multiplicity of ethnicities in Broward… which we do… if we have hundreds of languages and thousands of unique cultural morays represented among us… how can we possibly have a RIGHT solution for every one?  We can’t!  And…. All of that ethnicity and “culturality” (new word) comes into play long before we even touch on the meanings and plurality of race among each of those cultures and ethnic groups.  

We are mostly all intermingled and co-combined and have been for thousands of years, so what is race, really?  And why do we have to be talking about it so much right now, especially if it offends people? 

The answer to that is that if we don’t allow people to get offended, how can we grow?  It is by understanding our differences that we realize our sameness.  It is by posing the tough questions and having the awkward discussions that we learn and grow and can possibly become sensitive to the realities others experience. 

These are realities the rest of us do not even know exist.  I have to mention my book, Voices in the Hall, Amazon, because it was by understanding that the reality my students experienced every day was a reality I was totally blind about… BLIND…! that I KNEW I had to write this book to give them a VOICE, or be their VOICE. 

As an educator I could not afford to be blind about the harsh troubled world my students inhabited.  Coming from an in-tact middle class Cuban nuclear family… how in the world was I ever to understand that when I said something as benign as, “Take home your reading log and have your parent sign it,” that I was insulting and assaulting students in my class on very deep and penetrating levels.  I did not know it!!   But by THEM reading their journals to ME about their lives… I learned! 

I learned that it was arrogant of me to expect them to have a home or a parent, or anyone at home for that matter, to sign anything… much less a reading log to be signed NIGHTLY!

I learned that asking some kids to have something signed was a nearly impossible feat since some of them went home to no supervision at all.  Just who did I think would be signing?

Reading my students’ journals taught me that I DIDN’T HAVE A CLUE!  It taught me that what I thought was the world, wasn’t.  It taught me that it was arrogant of me to think I knew anything at all.  Quite frankly, I realized I KNEW NOTHING!

Finding out you know nothing is a tough lesson to learn when you have already been teaching over a decade.  Finding out most of my colleagues also know nothing was another striking awakening.  All this time all us teachers ran around thinking we knew “stuff,” and we were ALL wrong.  We were arrogant in believing we knew something.  This epiphany brought me to my knees!  My students taught me the greatest lesson of my life.  They taught me to expect the unexpected, to understand that which seems impossible to understand and to love unconditionally!  They changed my life, influenced my teaching practice forevermore, and made me a different kind of person and thinker.  I am so grateful to them.

I think these misunderstandings we have about one another is what these courses are about and what the Equity Liason position is meant to help bridge.  We will be the leaders who now know HOW to talk about these tough issues.  We will make it okay to have the conversations no one wants to have.  We will know how to have these conversations.  We will know we might get pushback, but it is only through the pushback that the learning occurs.

In my online position as an admin the Trayvon Martin story and how to deal with the racial disparity among us became an important issue we dealt with as administrators.  It became quite clear to me that white people became very insulted when the possibility of IMPLICIT OR EXPLICIT RACISIM was mentioned. Frankly, they often didn’t know the difference, and some also didn’t understand about white entitlement.  This conversation made us develop guidelines and policy about who we were going to be going forward and how we were going to discuss race.  There were disagreements and dissentions, arguments and misunderstandings as the 63 national administrators worked to resolve the differences we saw brewing in the over 70,000 member group.  It was an eye-opening experience and led me to the passion I now have in discussing the topic of race and institutionalized racism.

I’ve now learned more quantitatively what exactly EXPLICIT bias is and how IMPLICIT bias can be so misunderstood and ignored.  Many are so BLIND to it.  There really is no way to bring us together in an awareness other than talking about it.  We have to pull up our sleeves and say the unspeakable.  We have to hurt people’s feelings.  We have to know the facts and the data and know how to explain why they are important and how they affect education… each school… each child… our communities.

Until we are able to do this, we will remain BLIND.  Thinking as I once did that I “knew stuff” when in reality, I knew nothing.

Helping people who do not believe they are racist to understand that they are is challenging.  Helping a society understand what institutionalized racism is and how it has affected America for hundreds of years, and does today… this minute… is a hurdle we all must be ready to jump so that we can get to the other side and hopefully UNDERSTAND one another and how race and culture and the placement of our birth, be it fortunate or unfortunate, affects everything.

We have to have these Courageous Conversations About Race and I for one am ready to learn as much as I can and apply all the awakenings and learnings to my position in the union, as an equity liason with the district, and as a leader in my community.