It's Time To "Get Uncomfortable"

“Get uncomfortable, challenge your own perceptions to find clarity, be fearless, be kind, meet someone new.”

Those words were spoken by Mandy Manning, newly elected National Teacher of the Year. More on her below...

Time to focus on the little stuff

In a recent NY Times interview, Joan Baez said of her own activism, "I don't think we can think in big terms now, or we'll just get under the covers and never get out. The little stuff almost becomes more important right now, because you have a chance at it. The world we are living in is being made horrible and is going to need every little victory—that your family and friends feel some kind of support, some kind of goodness." 

It was like she was reading my mind.

With the advent of the current administration regime, education activism has become much more than fighting against vouchers, charter schools and standardized testing. It now also includes gun violence, immigration rights, racism, LGBTQ rights, women's rights, an education secretary who is a religious zealot, and the overall fight for the survival of our democracy. As our nation veers toward a Constitutional crisis, I want to focus—as Joan says—on "the little stuff"—our students, because that's where this all started. 

Time to challenge perceptions

In a recent open letter to Betsy DeVos on the current national wave of teacher strikes, I included some pictures of the horrendous conditions in which children in the wealthiest nation on earth are expected to learn. Far too many of our students also live in these—or worse—conditions. In another post, I called out the current keepers of the ideals of this once great nation for abandoning her most precious resource: our future, our children. The wealthiest nation in the history of humanity has turned its back on its children because tax cuts for the wealthy are supposed to magically cure our nation's ills. 

These posts are but drops of water in the vast ocean of education activists who, for more than a decade, have been challenging our nation's leaders on their failed and profit-driven education policies. But every drop combines to create great waves that batter the established shoreline—right on up to the White House—like this one last week:

On Wednesday, EdWeek reported that, at the State Teachers of the Year meeting with Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, National Teacher of the Year, Mandy Manning, staged a silent protest. She "wore several buttons on her dress, including one that said Trans Equality Now, one for the Women's March, and one of a rainbow-colored apple." She also presented him with letters written by her students. 

Manning said on a press call that the pins were meant to convey her message of support for all of her populations of students. "[Our students] are wanted; they are loved; they are enough; they matter," she said. 

Manning teaches newly arrived immigrant and refugee students in Washington state. She told Education Week that she had her students write letters to the White House to share their stories—from bureaucratic red tape splitting up families to being told to "go back to Africa." 

She was prohibited by Trump from giving her speech, which focused on the plight of her students, but later gave it on CNN's Van Jones Show:

 


Thank you, Mandy, for being a powerful voice for all your students, especially those whose voices have been silenced for far too long. I look forward to your advocacy this coming year.

The other State Teachers of the Year sparred with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over a host of issues including vouchers, school funding and the current wave of teacher strikes, to which DeVos responded with her tired script about teacher protests being "at the expense of kids and their opportunity to go to school and learn."

Montana's Teacher of the Year, Melissa Romano told reporters, "For her to say at the ‘expense of children’ was a very profound moment and one I’ll remember forever, because that is so far from what is happening."

Time to name names

Among the most moving memorials I have ever seen are the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC, the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, and the placards outside the late Senator Frank Lautenberg's DC office that listed the names and pictures of all our brave service men and women killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They remind us not only of profound events, but forever memorialize the individual human beings whose lives were ended by man's inhumanity to man. 

For far too many children in this country their home life is as horrendous as—or worse than—the conditions in their schools. It's easy for anyone (myself included) on either side of the education fight to speak of these children in terms of statistics and/or generalizations. Sometimes we need to. But we also need to give a name to these statistics. We need to hear their stories in all their heartbreaking detail, we need to confront our own fears, admit our misconceptions, and, as Mandy said, "get uncomfortable" with the reality they face, because that is what really matters.  

To that end, going forward I will be devoting much of this blog to telling your stories of individual students and the education professionals who are their greatest champions. The series will be called "Educating 'Reformers'". As always, student and teacher privacy and confidentiality are my number one concerns. Unless I have written permission from teachers and students, all names and locations will be changed.

If you have a story you would like to share, please contact me at mcorfield610@gmail.com.

The Battle of Charlottesville: The Battle for America's Soul

Flower Power, 1967, photographed by Bernie Boston on October 21, 1967,
while he was sitting on the wall of the Mall Entrance of the Pentagon

I was raised on God, news and newspapers, and there was a daily ritual for all of them. If I wanted to watch television, I had to watch what the adults were watching, twice a day: the news. There wasn't just one paper in our house, there were three. Oh how I wished The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had comics. Pray, read, watch, talk: politics and religion. And yes, our holiday dinner tables were battle grounds.

I was eight when this picture was taken. With two older sisters, the anti-war movement and the civil unrest of the 1960's was imprinted on me as they clashed with my Republican father and grandparents who tried to feed us a steady diet of, "Blacks and Jews are destroying the world" and "Kids today are slovenly, lazy, cowardly drug addicts." The civil unrest of the new generation had shaken heir post WWII, comfortably numb lifestyle to its core.  

In many ways, things haven't changed.

Like many of you, I was shaken to my core yesterday. Glued to the television and Twitter, my anger and anxiety ratcheted up in direct correlation to the unfolding events in Charlottesville. How could this be happening? Nazi flags? Torches? Chants of "blood and soil"? Armed protesters? David Duke vowing, "We are determined to take our country back" (from whom?) Violence! Is this the start of a Civil War? This is not my country! Then, Trump's vapid, vacuous response sent me over the edge:

But my friend Mel, a young woman wise beyond her years, brought me back down to earth:

She is right. Sadly, this is my America; it always has been. I don't like to think about that, but that's the problem: I must. We all must because, as Mel reminded me, the United States of America is a country founded on prejudice, slavery, bigotry hatred and fear. "Veni, vidi, vici", was "How the West Was Won". And until we confront the effects of that head-on, re-write the history books, change the curriculums, come out of our dark corners and speak the truth, things will never change. 

But, that doesn't mean that we don't stand up to hatred and bigotry. Far from it. 

These symbols have no place in our country (neither does a president who refuses to denounce them), except maybe in an educational setting. Millions of people died under their oppressive regimes, and millions more gave their lives to end them. If these people think this country would be better off if these flags flew over the White House, I suggest they move to one of these lovely places.

Photographer unknown

Neither do these:

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Notice what it says at the bottom of the banner: "Screw the Klan..." Read the signs in the background: "Make Racists Afraid Again". A banner that said, "Fuck Fascists" was prominently featured in video clips of the clashes. While the majority of the peaceful protesters were peaceful, these sentiments are not. As Ghandi said, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."  

I don't claim to offer any solutions to this mess. No matter how bad things get, humans always have the gift of hope. And I do hope the elected officials in DC will work this out. 

Naive, eh? Yes and no. I alone can't solve these problems, but here's what I can do: stand up for my beliefs in a non-violent way. Violence will only beget violence. That picture at the top of this post may be cliché, but non-violent protest was at the core of Dr. King's dream. 

By last nite I was emotionally drained. People I spoke to were, too. But, the collective unconscious was humming because by the time I woke up this morning, there were already two peaceful protest events scheduled in my area for today. I will definitely be at one of them.

What will you do today? Tomorrow? In the coming weeks and months? Will you turn off your TV? Pretend none of this is happening? Or will you try to make a difference in your part of the world? If there are no events scheduled in your area, start one. Stand on a street corner with a candle and tell passers-by why you're there. Get more people to join you. Write letters to the editor. Volunteer. Educate. Activate. Motivate. Speak out. Make an appointment with your state and federal representatives and demand they denounce this hatred and bigotry. 

Be the change you want to see in the world.

But whatever you do, do it peacefully. Remember, when you point your finger at someone, there are always three pointing back at you. What will they be pointing to?