Settling in

I’ve decided to shift to a weekly post about my co-teaching at East. Posting after every session made me more impatient than I need to be. I was feeling a bit demoralized going into Thursday’s class because I thought the students didn’t seem to be connecting what we are doing in terms of justice work to their own lives. I worried that we were making critical literacy just another “thing” they had to do or that we were re-oppressing in unintended ways.

But … then we had class. The teachers shifted our plans around a bit so that there was more of a focus on Romeo and Juliet. They also suggested moving the desks from a circle to small groups of three. Since they know this class better, I figured what the heck. Truth is, just because it’s a circle doesn’t mean more authentic classroom discourse. And, some kids talk more in a small group than in a full circle. It was good for me to remember that we need flexibility in all we do and that changing the desk organization to different formations for different purposes is a good idea. We planned to look through some youth profile data from Rochester, hoping this would help them connect some of the larger issues we were talking about and the social issues in Romeo and Juliet (teen suicide and gang violence) to what we see in Rochester. We ran out of time though so will have to do that work next week.

We showed TURF FEINZ RIPRichD Dancing in the Rain Oakland Street from YAK FILMS and the kids really seemed to like it. They were a little surprised to know that these dancers are doing a political action to take back the streets of Oakland, but it prompted them to put together that all the social actions we’ve been showing them and talking about are “trying to make a point.” Yes! Then one young man said, “this stuff makes me angry” and another said, “I feel sad.” Yes! Yes! These comments led to a discussion about how to take those feelings to actions that would lead to change. Exhale.

Taking baby steps and checking my impatience.

Wishing for the big picture

Day three went pretty well. There was a flurry of planning between the four of us right up to the last minute. My colleagues wanted to spend the majority of the time on Romeo and Juliet so we needed to re-arrange things. The last minute rush is because of how hard it is to find time to plan together. The teachers get to see each other all day and find moments to share ideas as they adjust our lessons for each class. We shared a wish to have a solid length of time to plan the big picture of what we are doing together.

The mini-lesson built on recent anti-immigration sentiment. Students were pretty vocal about their feelings about unfair it was. I tried to connect their feelings to how Native American might feel, but it seemed to go nowhere. We connected this hatred to the hatred between families in the play. I'm still not sure they see the connections, but just because I don't see it doesn't mean they don't. It could all come together later anyway.

We spent over 40 minutes doing a dramatic reading of the end of Act I. It's truly amazing to watch teachers with deep content knowledge work. They basically have the play memorized so when they perform it, the words flow out seamlessly. They do character voices too. Students take turns at playing either Romeo or Juliet. Watching Dicaprio's version on film brings it all together.

Praxis is a bitch

Praxis is a bitch. Reflection and action. Reflecting on day two, I am kicking myself. I talked too much. The more I saw some students start to shift in their seats or look around, the more I talked. It was a rabbit hole. Typical rookie mistake. My co-teaching colleagues were amazingly gentle in telling me about it later. I sent an email in the afternoon to say that I had been worried ever since class. Their responses were kind, but to the point – just the way colleagues should treat each other. I am so grateful for how much they are teaching me.

Re-reading my first post about this experience, I am also struck by how much it sounds like I think I’m saving the day. This could not be further from the truth! Let’s be clear. I am not the first university professor to return to the classroom to teach. Carole Lee, Deborah Appelman, and Mollie Blackburn come to mind immediately. By letting me co-teach with them, these teachers are giving me an incredible gift. The relationships we are developing and the trust we have are sacred to me. Combined, they have 30+ years teaching at this school. We all bring something important to this work. We are not so much seeking a “balance” as we are trying to construct something new that uses all our expertise in the endeavor. Thinking about today though, I feel like I’ve been a bulldozer. Not to mention that I am just teaching one class every other day. They have 3 or 4 more classes, plus collaborative planning time, support, family group, meetings, after school clubs and who knows what else. I’m a bit like a grandparent. I get to come in for the fun stuff and then go home. I was so stressed about this morning that I went home to take a nap, for goodness sake! I am fully aware of my privilege in this situation.

I did get some interesting feedback about my first posting on Monday that surprised me. In no way did I mean to say that everything was terrible before I came in!! True that I noticed a few kids were more engaged than I had seen before, but it is not the case that they were never engaged or that they were only engaged that day because of me. I know that, as a school, we are still working on having teachers use and post plans following the Understanding by Design framework. But, there are teachers who have been doing it all along, including the three I am co-teaching with. I have said many times that there are amazingly dedicated and caring teachers at East. Please don’t read my thinking about what’s going on as forgetting that.

I thought about not posting anymore if what I write continues to get twisted. I’m simply not good at screening my thoughts, especially on my own blog. I hate workplace politics because it’s such a waste of time and it’s not about the kids. I am always in trouble for speaking out on issues I see as problematic. Like I said, I talk too much. Plus, critical literacy is all about exposing power and how it works to discipline. It also produces. So many of the problems we face in urban education are due to silencing. We just don’t talk about it. Whose interests does it serve to stay silent? Not the kids, that’s for sure.

First day co-teaching

Today was the first day of a long-term co-teaching gig I am doing at East with three teachers in whose classroom I've been observing as part of my ethnography. Over the past months of the ethnography I have shared ideas about my observations and given them some critical literacy references to read. They've been really receptive and we came up with a plan to co-teach. I couldn't be more excited.

I felt like I had been doing a lot of "telling" people about things we need to do. Changing the teaching culture at East is going to take way more time than I thought. I have always been a person who tries to walk like she talks, so ... "showing" seemed a good option. Planning with these three very busy teachers has been great. I decided to use the unit and lesson plan formats that East is asking teachers to use (but they aren't). Planning templates are based on Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design. I am determined to show that we can develop critical literacy projects and still meet any demands the school or the state requires (the template has a space for Common Core standards). It wasn't actually that hard to do and I didn't feel like I compromised any critical literacy principals to write the unit plan.

Basically, we want students to understand that literacy can be used to make changes, that literacy has "designs" on us (thank you Hilary Janks), and that they have power to change injustices they experience. The teachers have helped me understand the 9th grade mindset so I can figure out how to plan. I have been trying to have the teachers see that we can work alongside the students in ways that all of us are changed. I'm impressed with their willingness to take risks. Once students figure out what social justice issue they want to address, we will form groups around different ideas, do some research on the issues, develop social actions, and carry them out. We'll document what they do any way the students want. For example, we could produce a YouTube video, write a letter to the editor or an oped piece, have a flash mob, or who knows what else. I'm planning on developing a website where students' projects will be posted.

The cool thing is that we are weaving all this together with the text the teachers need to use as part of the 9th grade curriculum - Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It turns out there are a ton of justice issues in the play that we can connect to what our students deal with: perceived lack of power of youth, commodification of women as property, teen suicide, discrimination, violence. We'll see how this one goes.

I wanted to also add in some National Writing Project stuff so we opened with a writing reflection. We used Beyoncé's Formation video. They wrote their impressions and we talked about who they thought was her audience, what her purpose was, and what social issues they thought she was focusing on. They were on it. They worked in groups to name justice issues they deal with in their own lives. It took a minute to get them started, but once they got going it was awesome. Even some students who I have seen with their heads down or sitting and doing nothing were engaged the whole 72 minutes. I felt like it went really well. I wondered how the teachers felt about things being much more loose than they usually have it, but they seemed to go with the flow.

The best part ... I asked two young men with whom I have been developing a relationship how I did. They said, "Oh 85-90%."  I'll take that!!

Day two on Wednesday. We're planning on starting with Suli Breaks's spoken word poetry video "I will not let an exam result decide my fate" for writing reflection.

If you have any ideas for critically oriented things to show, read, or listen to for reflections, please let me know.

Wow, how time flies

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted. The work at East has been wonderful, so so so busy, scary, and heartbreaking. I will never be the same again. So much so that I am already worried about going back to Warner once my sabbatical is over. More on that in another post.

To say that we (the UR) underestimated the problems we would face is an incredible understatement. The longer we were there, the more dysfunction we found. To be clear, this dysfunction is not unique to East; it's endemic in urban schools. It is also crucial to say that we have truly amazing teachers, administrators, and staff at East. And the students are fantastic. These are systemic problems: overwhelming bureaucratic practices, deficit views of students and their families, and a "that's just the way we've always done it" mindset. I can't list everything we found because it's too depressing. In spite of all this, this is soul-filling work and great things happen everyday.

The good news is that a leadership change resulted in Marlene Blocker, formerly the lower school principal, taking charge of the building. She is keeping us breathless with meaningful changes that are dealing with low hanging fruit and with long term issues. I am excited to see what she does next.

One thing in particular has stopped me in my tracks.

As my relationships with students, teachers, and administrators at East deepen, I have come to believe that we have forgotten to address basic human needs for love and hope. We have underestimated the levels of trauma our students come to us with and the impact learning about and working with those traumas has on our teachers and administrators.  Several teachers have told me they have no hope or that hope is for suckers. We just have to get better at dealing with the social and emotional foundations of what it means to be human and what humans need to thrive.

I know that “trauma” has been so overused as to become trite these days, but that does not mean that real trauma has not happened. I know that my own experiences with my oldest son Eric and my youngest son Marcus have traumatized me and have traumatized my family. Eric was suicidal. Watching as he was mental health arrested and hearing him scream how much he hated me while this was happening, listening on the phone while Eric was running from police dogs through Highland Park, seeing Marcus at 10 years old being dragged by four armed security personnel at Johns Hopkins to a padded room where he was given a forced Haldol injection, having to pull over on the expressway because Marcus was so violent I couldn’t safely drive, and watching Marcus walk into an adult courtroom in handcuffs haunt me. None of these traumatizing experiences compare to what our students go through, but they have made me realize trauma is real. I am not the only one with similar experiences. Each one of us has traumatic experiences we deal with every day – loss of a family member, family member mental illness, divorce, children with disabilities, and many other experiences of grief and loss.

Rape, physical abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, witnessing violence, committing violence, daily microaggressions, homelessness, miscarriages, having the power cut off, hunger, incarceration, police brutality, bullying, fleeing war torn homelands … are all experiences students have shared with me. People estimate that 70% of our young women have experienced sexual abuse and 40% of our young men. This on top of all the other factors I just named. Chronic, complex trauma - everyday. This is unacceptable.

Teachers have shared losing students they deeply care about to murder, sexual abuse, prison, or drugs. Teaching is an act of love. But when you love students who are traumatized, that trauma also traumatizes you. And our teachers and students face a society that ignores them, except when scores come out, then they are blamed for the failures of that same society. To be clear, “they” are not blaming suburban teachers and students, they are blaming us.

We have only scratched the surface of what’s wrong in urban public education. East is but one example of profound sickness and neglect. As we dig deeper into systems at East to find dysfunction, put out daily fires that seek to overwhelm us, recoil in shock at roadblocks and an uncaring public, we can’t just respond with old practices of increased policing, stricter mandates, or forcing compliance. I think we need to step back, breath, and remember we are human beings who care deeply about the people we work with and about transforming urban public education so that our students can go forward into productive futures. And then take action. 

I know people will say, “There goes Joanne on another soapbox.” Fine. Dismiss me. But it’s not about me. It’s about our students and what’s going to help them develop into authentic, caring, and productive human beings. What I’m saying is we can’t forget the human for the “student.”

Three weeks later

We are three weeks into the new East. And what a time it has been. I continue to say that people underestimate how much work it is to open and run a school. Everyone is working so hard, some are working 12-18 hours days. Some are working themselves sick. This will not be sustainable, but most say it is worth it to see how well the students are responding.

Certainly, there have been struggles. I am struck that so many of the students do not believe they can be successful. They have been told for so many years, by so many people that they are failures. Some students are resisting the help we are offering. At least they did in the first week or so. I think most are beginning to trust. One young man I have been developing a relationship with said he was seeing whether the teachers were worth it. Did they really mean this? He said he was giving them 2 weeks. Now that he has seen what they are about, he's prepared to kick in and step up his game. Some students were reluctant to fully participate in family group. But, even the most reluctant student has begun to share in peace circles. For the adults, it's the favorite part of their day. All adults have family group, including the Superintendent.

People who come to visit notice a palpable change to the tone of the building. First of all, it's clean. The college banners and inspirational quotes on posters help to contribute to the new feeling. Everyone still comments on our first day greeting. The UR put together a wonderful short YouTube video that nicely captures what that first day was like. I was surprised they used my spontaneous "Ooh, a bus!" exclamation, but people seem to like it. Check it out here:

Restorative practices as our discipline policy is working well, even when there have been skirmishes. It's a lot more work, but we have been keeping kids in class and in school. There have been 6 suspensions but, in those cases, there was unacceptable violence. Teachers are still adjusting to not being able to put kids out of class except as a last resort. Administrators are working hard on this, but sometimes they are not immediately available when there is an issue. We have been surprised at the level of disrespect some students have shown, and this has lead to a realization that we underestimated how bad the culture has been at East. Students were not respected and so they did not respect. Lots of f-bombs. Even experienced urban educators have been surprised. No one is giving up though, and slowly some of these behaviors are diminishing as students begin to trust us. We still have a long way to go however.

Over and over I see how it really is about developing relationships. We, or maybe just I, have underestimated the needs of our students. Poverty, trauma, food insecurity, homelessness, depression ... seems to have left them thinking they are not worth caring about. It can overwhelm even the most motivated student. This is a significant culture change we are addressing.

All in all, it's been an exciting three weeks. I am having a blast. Hanging with students in the lunchroom, chatting with them on their way to the buses and in the halls is soul-filling. I am so grateful for sabbatical that gives me the time to be in the building full time and for the thinking time for research. I got a Spencer grant to support the work which is also pretty cool.

Day one

Just settled in my office after greeting both upper and lower schools kids as they got off the bus. The lower school kids came first. Staff, Warner faculty and staff, and community volunteers were lined up to greet them. Three teachers brought out drums to play. Someone brought bubbles. There were several press outlets filming and doing interviews. It was funny because the first bus arrived and we all started cheering and clapping and 6 kids got off. But they kept coming. The lower school kids were surprised to see so many people, and seemed a bit shy. We all moved over to the upper school entrance to greet the 10-12th graders. It was soul-filling to see big smiles on teenagers who were trying not to smile. Two young ladies were refusing to go through the greeting. "You act like we haven't been here before. This is unnecessary. There isn't anything different." Little do they know. Shaun Nelms went to talk to them and, a few minutes later, they went down the line. I caught a smile on one of them. I even saw the young man who works at Wegmans who swore he wasn't coming to school on the first day. Loved it! Here are some pics. I will update with our attendance numbers when I get them.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the big day. First day of school for students at the new East. I am excited and nervous. We set a goal of 95% attendance on day one and have worked hard to get to that. But will we? RCSD only had 77% attendance on day one last week; that is 1 in 4 students didn't go to school. Yikes! Please let us reach our goal!

Hundreds of people working hundreds of hours the past two months to get ready. The new custodial team has had to deal with a decade of no building maintenance to get the building clean and ready. The work has been incredible. Teachers have been participating in professional learning all summer: curriculum writing, restorative practices, new support model for students with disabilities and struggling students, new code of conduct and dress code...and on and on, all while trying to get their classrooms ready. We didn't get the building "back" from the construction company until mid-August. Did I mention there was a major building revitalization project going on all summer?!

Today, the day before school opens and Labor Day, the building was abuzz. I went in to set my office up. Music was playing all over, people were talking and laughing. All the hall bulletin boards are done and display cases cleaned and updated. I couldn't help but smile and feel hopeful.

Tomorrow morning at 6:45 am staff, University of Rochester faculty and staff, alumni, and community folks will be lined up at each entrance to clap, cheer, and high-five students as they get off the buses. The cheerleaders taught all staff a cheer last week. They will be there too, leading us in the cheer. Purple will be the color of the day.

I'm sure I won't sleep tonight. 

Making the shift

I am on sabbatical next year and can't wait to get started. A whole year to focus on just one full time job - our work at East High school. I will spend most of the time doing research, but will also continue in a leadership role focusing on family and community engagement. This will be no small thing. I also have a ton of ideas of things to do with kids. I will have to remember to say no to some things. I know already that I'm going to want to do too much.

I have definitely made the switch from Warner to East in my head. I still have chair duties until August 25 by my gaze is elsewhere. I'm entering such a different world. Not that I haven't been in schools my whole career; it's just the details that have to go into getting East ready to open by September 8th are totally overwhelming. From mission development to ordering pencils and everything in between.

Some things are just plain shocking. What is considered "normal" in urban schools is just never even possible in most suburban settings. Do we have a parent handbook? No. Do kids know their schedules before the first day? No. Do teachers know what they will be teaching, do they know their room, do they have class lists? No. No. No. Do we have a map of the school to give to new parents? No. How have we gotten to a place where urban teachers, administrators, students, and families are treated with such disrespect?

Again I ask, why aren't people more pissed off?!

Big day tomorrow

Over 400 emails went out Wednesday to invite teachers to East and to let others know they will not be asked back. These are amazing times with high emotions. First news coverage on the hiring: http://video-static.clipsyndicate.com/zStorage/syndicaster2/268/2015/04/30/22/24/5542ab7fc999.mp4?co_id=1125

Tomorrow will be the first time returning and new teachers will gather at East to begin to build our new community. Big day. 

Moving forward at East High School

Well, it's official. The University of Rochester has been approved as the EPO for East High School! What a long road it has been. Renegotiating all four union contracts, fine tuning and negotiating the budget and contract with the district ... all while making sure we recruit students and set up the application process for teachers, administrators, and staff. Whew. Well worth it though.

One great thing was being able to announce who we hired as the Deputy Superintendent - Dr. Shaun Nelms. His experience from the classroom to central office and his dedication to transforming education in urban settings made him the perfect choice. Seems like many people will apply to work at East because Shaun will be there. Remember that we will, in effect, be our own school district. Steve Uebbing will be the Superintendent and Shaun the Deputy. We will report directly to the school board. This will afford us the space to transform teaching and learning free from some of the district's restrictions. Of course, we have state requirements around testing and Common Core, but we plan to exceed them in meaningful ways.

If you are interested in working at East, start with this webpage: UREast All in All the Time.
You can also find the new teacher and administration union contracts there and the full EPO proposal so you'll know what we are planning.

As I keep saying, we are going to make history. 

Book review

My publisher (Routledge) sent me a link to a good review of my Radical equality in education book. Always nice to learn that someone likes your work.

Making history: Walking the walk

Well, we actually did it. We submitted our proposal to the Rochester City School Board on time. Shortly thereafter, they unanimously approved the full proposal and the budget! Can I get an "amen"?! We are currently awaiting approval from NYSED.

Here is the link to the proposal, the budget, and all appendices: http://www.warner.rochester.edu/researchprojects/projects/EastHigh

We have included all our meeting minutes and all collected documents in the interest of full disclosure and transparency. Take a look at let me know what you think in the comments.

It took me a while to post this information. One, I was busy working on the proposal for the past six months and; two, I needed a breather. I have spent the two weeks of "break" focusing on sleep and knitting. Now I am gearing up to start what Steve calls "the hard part". The hard part?! Geez. Running a high school ... what was I thinking?

All joking aside, I am really proud of what we have done. We worked our butts off the past six months meeting with over 1500 people to get input on what they want to see at the new East. We were able to talk to every student in attendance on September 22, well over 1300 youth. They were amazing. You can find the analysis of the data we gathered at the link above in one of the many appendices.

We are in the final stages of interviewing candidates for what we have called the Deputy EPO Director. This person will be right under Steve Uebbing as the Superintendent. Basically, we will be our own district and report directly to the Rochester City School Board. This way, we shed a lot of the bureaucracy of central office. A key to what makes our project unique is that we renegotiated contracts with all four unions: Rochester Teachers Association (teachers' union), BENTE (staff union), RAPP (paraprofessionals union), and ASAR (administrators union). These new contracts will make all the difference as we move to implementation (provided NYSED approves our proposal). All staff, everyone, will have to apply to work at East. This way, we can ensure that everyone is "all in, all the time" - our catch phrase. Only people who are inspired by the proposal and agree to the new contracts will end up working with us.

We are making history ... stay tuned.