Failure IS an Option...

My last post of 2013 was an introduction to my educational journey. After a few more recent dust ups on social media, my credentialing still being challenged, and other personal attacks being aimed in my direction, let me aim back and set the record straight.  I completely understand that in this microwave era, many folk have already made up their minds about my positionality to respond to the inequities in public education, education policy, and my intellect all together. However, if you are someone willing to listen to truth and complexity, here we go...

As I left the Public Relations agency and entered the world of formal education, I came to the profession with trepidation.  My grades never reflected my “true abilities.” This was a term I saw all too often on report cards all through middle school, high school, and if there had been a place for them to have made the comment, in college too.  I have always been a cerebral person who tries to think from multiple angles.  What that means is that while I can write with precision, that precision becomes less impactful when given multiple choices via test or through short answer responses.  Further, the more personal my relationship was with my teachers and professors, the more they understood that I my poor outcomes on testing demonstrating “text anxiety” and not “laziness,” or lack of intellect.  

In retrospect, some 25 years later, seeing the pervasive and disparate numbers of black boys in special education, remediation, suspensions and the like, I wonder if I too would have fallen “victim” and become a negative statistic rather than a positive one?  If I had attended public school for more than a year in high school and two in grade school, would I have succeeded in all the arenas I have entered?  Would I have been exposed to the same opportunities?  Would I have the same friends who have been there for decades to pick me up and motive me towards success?  Of course I cannot definitively say, but one can wonder...

When I started teaching Service Learning (called Community Learning) at Lab, I was “going home.” 

Having been a student there for four years, I was, by no means a lifer as so many of my friends were, but I did feel a sense of home that had been absent from many of my professional endeavors.  My position gave me the best of both worlds at Lab.  I was able to explore the city with students who had been out of the country abroad, but had hardly scratched the surface of their own city.  Because of my status as an alum, which I never wore on my sleeve, but was quickly found out nonetheless, I was able to connect with the day to day milieu that so many students experience in independent school settings – test, homework, community service (both religious and “required” from school), extra-curricular activities, travel, college expectations and pressures, and of course being a high school teen. This meant that I "understood" them and expected their excuses and challenges before they even were uttered.

At the beginning, some of those sophomores who entered my “classroom” (i.e. the Van that carried about 25-40% of the students to and from their service site) thought I was nothing more than a glorified bus driver.  That sentiment quickly vanished when they realized that in most instances (hospitals being one area where I did not), I volunteered right alongside them, modeling how to work with the various populations of ‘other;’ Latino grade school kids in Pilsen, Senior citizens in Woodlawn and Uptown, and Black youth from the Cabrini Green Housing complex on the near north side, just to name a few of my favorite sites.  In each of these areas, for the duration of my tenure I not only modeled, but taught, mentored, comforted and educated bilaterally – meaning those we were serving had preconceived notions of our students, and of course our students had preconceived notions of where we were volunteering.  One of the best ways I acclimated many of the students not just to the volunteer site, was through immersing them into the community, oftentimes through food, but also various cultural events.  This, as I found out later, was the epitome of John Dewey’s philosophy of “learning by doing.” Thus whenever someone ask me about my number of years “in the classroom,” I always include my years at Lab because the community and van were my classroom and I affected intellectual change deeply in those students who entered this domain as much as any book or test about community would have, even more so. 

After a point, as I was approaching 30, I realized that as much as I loved (and still do) this position, it was time to take my knowledge from Capitol Hill and the communities of Chicago to my desired career goal, law school.

As the new century approached, I applied to many law schools on the west coast.  I was rejected from most, in part based on my poor LSAT score, and was wait listed at one, in northern California. Rather than wait to find out if a spot opened, I took a crazy chance and went up to the Bay Area to meet with the admissions folk and a few professors face to face.  After a few weeks of pounding the pavement in the Bay Area, nothing worked out.  Not only did I not get into law school, I couldn’t even find a job in the area.  In retrospect, perhaps then I should have looked at entering the classroom as a substitute teacher then, but it was not on my radar at that time.

Rather than come back to Chicago, I flew down to Los Angeles, a place where I had gone to college and still had a few contacts and friends.  I came to LA LA Land at exactly the wrong time.  There was a transit strike going on, and of course, here I was without a car.  Again, I persisted and tried to make things work for a few weeks, but eventually returned home to Chicago.  Broke, embarrassed, and a failure.

Part III coming soon…

Black is the New Black

So it’s Black history month. I want to focus on two documentaries which had their premieres on PBS this month – American Promise and The Prep School Negro. I had the fortune of seeing both documentaries in Philadelphia before they hit PBS.  I saw American Promise in the theater this past November, after being unable to find it showing ANYWHERE in the state of Arizona (which is another blog post all together).  I saw The Prep School Negro in an earlier incarnation with the director at an event sponsored by the Arts Sanctuary.  I highly recommend both films, not just to Black folk trying to raise sons, but to every educator who thinks they understand their students, think they are “progressive,” think that they are being genuine when they present the false concept of being “color blind” or living in a “post racial America.”

The film American Promise centers on the lives of two young Black boys, Idris and Seun who attend the prestigious Dalton School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  At the end of their eighth grade year Seun transfers to a predominantly Black charter school while Idris continues to matriculate through Dalton to graduation.  The film is directed by Idris’ parents who are not afraid to show all their warts in the film.  Some have criticized them for being “helicopter parents” or for being “tiger parents.” I find judging parenting styles extremely problematic, especially when they are positively looking out for the best interest of their child.  

In The Prep School Negro, Andre Robert Lee reflects on his experiences at another prestigious independent school, Germantown Friends (GFS) in Philadelphia.  Unlike Idris and Seun, Andre received a scholarship to attend the school through a special fund created by the school to increase minority enrollment.  Another difference is that Andre attended GFS just for high school, thus accelerating his need for acclimation into a different world.  Rather than growing up around diversity (i.e. White folk), and high academic

expectations, Andre grew up in what he describes at the “ghetto” in Philadelphia.  Ironically in the film, he seemed to be ostracized more at home than at GFS, where he seems to outwardly adjust quickly.

I want to explore three common themes from these two films. Early in American Promise, one of the administrators at Dalton expressed that both Idris and Seun were bright, sensitive and curious. They also expressed that the school promotes a sense of self-esteem and nurturing a “voice” in each child.  One of the critiques of urban public schools is that they mirror the prison system and prepare students not for a world in which they are allowed to be “independent thinkers” but rather “cogs in the machine.”  Is this intentional?  Is it structural/institutional?  Perhaps. Imagine if urban public schools truly sought to explore and nurture the inner “voice” in each student.  What would that look like?  How would their experiences be different?

Another commonality is that all three of these students experience explicitly what Du Bois called “double consciousness” – a sense of living in two worlds, one Black and one White.  What has always been problematic to me is the definitions of these two worlds.  I doubt Du Bois would argue that living in a “Black” world would consist of loose fitting pants, speaking in a particular slang, and listening to hip-hop.  In fact, those very descriptors are problematic to not just Black folk, but many Whites as well. Ironically many teens of varying ethnicities, genders and races have co-opted that particular self-representation.  Do we, as Black people, define Blackness as a checklist of characteristics and exclude people like a bouncer at a velvet rope if certain folk don’t fit?  Or do we allow for a diversity of perspectives, opinions, musical taste, clothing options (which include cardigans which were discussed in American Promise in a funny scene between Idris and Seun)?  Identity, regardless of what age, gender or race/ethnicity is a tenuous, difficult process which should not ever be broken down into its most simplistic parts.  It should be allowed to be messy, confusing and public.

Finally, what do these three “gain” from going to Dalton and GFS?  Have they discovered a key to unlock racism?  Do they know how to navigate the world as it is a bit better?  Can they code switch a bit more effectively?  Were these the desired goals of their parents when they sent their children off into this “new world?” In my own experiences in Independent schools I can attest that the “cultural disconnect” articulated in both films is real. I think it takes a strong individual to be able to be rejected from their “home community” (as I have been for decades) and at the same time not feel completely adopted by their “new community.”  I call it being without a “home.”  This is a confusing paradox.  On one hand I appreciate my ability to be able to relate to and interact with those in tuxedos and gowns at night while working in partnership with the community during the day, but there is still a certain...longing to completely belong? What gets consistently challenged, by, myself most importantly but others as well, is which "me" is the authentic self? While there are some physical markers which indicate a particular race, gender and the like, once children who grow up in Independent schools and other types of mixed environments enter a world in which they are supposed to perform race in a particular way, they are oftentimes at odds, internally and externally.

In the end, what is the real purpose of education?  To achieve intellectual proficiency, social integration, identity development, or conformity?