Search

It was Black History Month. I was working with children and youth in an after-school program in the Clarksdale housing projects in Louisville, Ky. Spike Lee's film Malcolm X had just been released. I sat around a table with a group of teenagers discussing Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X and James Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America.

Mention school desegregation, and most people envision the Little Rock Nine—not the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). But Tucson is exactly where the battle for desegregation is being fought today.

One teacher considers how to talk with students about the idea of the American Dream.

“I hate Jews.” That was the sentence, uttered coldly and dripping with vile undertones, from the mouth of a sixth-grader that nearly caused me to let a very powerful teachable moment slip through my fingers. Almost.

Thanks to technology, the world is virtually at our fingertips. Global awareness has new meaning for the teachers. According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, our students need to go beyond understanding global issues and be able to learn from and work with “individuals representing diverse cultures, religions and lifestyles in a spirit of mutual respect and open dialogue in personal, work and community contexts.” Using the “new and improved” nonfiction books on the market today is one way to get our students to this understanding.

Like many of us, I sometimes overuse the word “need.” I have a tendency to say that I need the new iPhone or I need a pedicure, even though those are clearly things that I want, rather than need. My greatest lesson on distinguishing between a want and a need came with my first-grade class when I was a new teacher. Volunteers from the business community came to teach for a day through the Junior Achievement program. As a new teacher, I was overwhelmed and relieved not to be responsible for lesson plans for the day. I was nervous, however, about how an idealistic businessperson would deal with 20 extremely needy first-graders living in one of the most violent parts of Oakland, Calif.

A student pleads with me at the beginning of class to bring an electronic reader to class? “I’m almost finished reading my book and I want to finish it, but it’s on my (electronic reader name), the students says. “Please? I’m at a really good part.” At first, this appears to be every language arts teacher’s dream; students begging to continue reading things they’ve read on their own time for fun. But, then come the problems.

Whenever I go into an unfamiliar school, I look closely to see what the walls tell me. I’m not just looking at signage—although that is important—but everything on the walls. A school’s “cultural ecology” is mirrored on its walls. Of course, some physical features of a school come with the territory, but the important question is, “what have they done with the place?” It starts with the halls. A building that is several decades old may feature clinical tile walls, harsh fluorescents and windowless hallways. Some buildings in that age range look like prisons, with bare, gleaming walls. Others of similar vintage shimmer with colorful student art, invite the viewer to explore ideas through posted classroom projects, or offer information for upcoming games, plays, elections, charity drives or concerts.

All over the nation people strive to answer Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous invocation: “What are you doing for others?” Many engage in projects to make their community a better place to live. My students at Life Academy in California have answered the call to service in several ways. First, they showed up on campus during a school holiday to beautify the school grounds, paint a mural, clean out an old storage room, build benches and tend to a garden. Second, they launched a 74-day fast “Season of Peace Building.” Students signed up to fast on certain days, in a kind of relay, to highlight the time from MLK day to Cesar Chavez day.