A Strong Sense of Peace and a Bit of Relief

Today my friend Jahana Hayes of Connecticut was named the 2016 National Teacher of the Year. If you’re disappointed on my behalf, you shouldn’t be. I am happy for her and think she will be an ideal ambassador for the profession. From the moment I met her and the other two finalists in San Antonio, Daniel, and Shawn, I’ve had peace about the process. I knew that no matter who was selected, the profession would be well represented. They’re amazing pedagogues and even better people.

I have been so blessed this past year. I’ve had at least ten once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and my amazingly supportive wife has been side-by-side with me, every step along the way. I mean come on….

Went to the Women’s World Cup in Vancouver

Took my dad to the US Open

Traveled in Hong Kong and taught in Chengdu, China

Hosted the President of China in my classroom

Named 2016 Washington State Teacher of the Year

Addressed the Washington State House and State Board of Education on teacher quality and the impact of chronic under-funding

Traveled to Oakland, Denver, New Orleans, and Washington DC to speak and advocate about ed policy issues

Wrote a blog post, discussing the cruel reality of education inequity, that earned 1,000,000 clicks and was republished in several major news outlets

Threw out the first pitch at a Mariner's game

Invited to speak at Harvard Graduate School of Education

….And next week I will shake hands with the first black President of the United States, in the Oval Office, in the final year of his presidency

I feel guilty even typing all that. I am not sad; I am not disappointed and you shouldn’t be sad for me either. I am reminded of an old gospel song, called I Won’t Complain. When I was young, Reverend Banks would belt it out whenever the opportunity arose. It is permanently in my head. When I close my eyes, I can see him getting choked up and reaching for his handkerchief to wipe his brow and tears:

God's been so good to me,

The Lord has been so good to me,

More than this old world,

Or you could ever be.

The Lord has been so good to me,

And He dried my tears away,

And He turn all my midnights into days,

So I'll say thank you Lord,

I just say thank you Lord,

I'll just say thank you Lord,

I won't complain.

Next year I am going to be right where I belong and I couldn't be happier. I love standing in front of a class and seeing them start to drift and then switching up the lesson with an anecdote or a provocative question that sets the room ablaze. I love everything about the job (except the pay, meetings and grading) and will continue to be a blunt advocate for my students and the profession, in Washington State and beyond.

The National Teacher of the Year is released from their classroom for a full year and tours the country, speaking at various events to "stakeholders." Honestly, that idea has made me queasy from the moment it was explained to me.

I am good where I am at.

My place is on the Eastside of Tacoma. My place is at Lincoln High School. My place is in room #306. My place is wearing a cardigan, rapping with my kids about Iron Triangles, federalism and the enumerated powers of Congress. My place is helping kids fill out FAFSAs and challenging them to be better people and work harder. 

Onward.

A Syllabus for Students When Dealing with Law Enforcement

I have a complicated relationship with law enforcement...

When I was a kid, growing up in Tacoma, I was often stopped and harassed by law enforcement while riding bikes with my friends. It got to the point where I started to carry the receipt for the bike my parents gave me, because police stopped me and accused me of stealing it so often.

In my sophomore year, I was riding with a white female friend. We were driving through Fircrest, a suburban town that abuts Tacoma. An officer pulled my friend over and whispered “are you okay?” as if I had kidnapped her and her mom’s VW Vanagon. She flipped TF out, on my behalf. It was my first conscious experience with ally-ship.

When I was 15 years-old, while standing on the bus stop by myself, after watching that terrible George Clooney  Batman Movie. I was rushed, thrown to the ground, and had a gun pointed in my face by an officer because, like countless other black men "I matched the description..."

To this day, as a now 36 year-old, I get pulled over multiple times per year.

On the other hand, I have always loved the idea of police work. My favorite TV genre, by far, is the police procedural. I have an older brother who is an officer in Seattle. When I was in high school one my mentors was our SRO. He saw potential in me that I didn’t see--he constantly gave me life advice and kept tabs on me. To this day, whenever he sees me with my wife, he stops and tells embarrassing stories about how big of a dork I was in high school.

In 2004, I heavily considered applying to the Washington State Patrol, rather than going into teaching. I often think about the similarities between teaching and law enforcement. When I watch videos of law enforcement using force, I often think about the de-escalation skills that are essential in both careers. Teachers who can’t de-escalate conflict, set kids off, have chaotic classrooms and suffer frequent discipline issues. Officers who can’t de-escalate, tend to use force with more frequency and receive the most community complaints. The best teachers I know, value and immerse themselves in the communities they serve--much like how community policing has been one of the most effective reforms within law enforcement over the last 30 years. 

There are good teachers and bad teachers; there are good police and bad police. Students know they have a bad teacher after a few days of class and can change their schedules or otherwise find ways to cope. But they won’t know they’ve encountered a bad officer until it’s far, far too late. Because of this, when teaching civil liberties, I do a workshop for my students on their rights when dealing with law enforcement, particularly the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments. This workshop is the most important lesson I teach each year. I offer this handout that I created for my students here for your feedback, additions, contributions and if you’re so inclined, sharing.

A Syllabus for Students When Dealing with Law Enforcement

The stakes are high for my students. Whenever I give a talk about teaching, I talk about the lack of predictability and danger that children of color and those in poverty face, on a daily basis. Never is that lack of predictability more dangerous than when it comes to encounters with those who are sworn to protect them. I know that no amount of “respectability” can keep people of color safe in America; Sandra Bland, Henry Louis Gates and James Blake have taught us so, but my hope is that I can increase the odds for my students and yours.

What We Know: Our students’ ability to achieve is only limited by our own investment in their success

Each year in Washington State the Regional Teachers of the Year are asked to contribute a piece of writing that is published in a book called Seed to Apple. What follows is my contribution from this year. It is a story about the work we do at Lincoln High School and what quality educators do at low-income schools all over the nation. I encourage you to check out some of the other entries by my fellow Washington State educators.

There are ten former students of Lincoln High School currently in jail for murder or manslaughter.

This isn’t their story. But their story and that number animate the work we do. It is the fuel that drives our staff. The stakes in a high-poverty schools are life and death. We know this. The kids we don’t reach will be lost to incarceration, unemployment, shortened life expectancy, and a lifetime of poverty. We know this. Vice President Joe Biden once said, “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” I can tell you that society doesn’t value our students. We know this. 

They live in segregated housing on tattered and pothole filled roads. We’ve closed their elementary schools, local libraries, and Boys & Girls Club. We’ve cutback service hours and bus routes that serve their neighborhoods. They live in a food desert. My students are invisible. Tacoma, the City of Destiny, is infamous for its “grit” and often is mocked for its ramshackle appearance, but its future rests in the hands of my staff. We are planting seeds. We know this.

Our staff supports our students and our alumni academically, emotionally, and economically. Schools are the barometers of the health of our communities. Throughout my seven years at Lincoln, I have watched as families struggle and fall further behind. As a staff, we fill an ever widening gap between what the state provides and what our families need. We stock our desk and filing cabinet drawers with food. We run food drives to collect food to feed families over winter break. We buy and collect ties and dress clothes for job interviews. 

We pay for SATs when students have exhausted their fee waivers. We pool money to get people’s lights turned on after being shut-off or to prevent evictions. We buy textbooks for alumni at Evergreen. We buy linen for alumni from CWU. We send winter clothes to alumni at UW. We help when the paperwork from the financial aid office appears to be written in Vulgate Latin. We hire alumni on break from college to do yard. We shed tears. We sacrifice time with our own families. We celebrate our students’ successes.

In recent years our graduation rate has risen by 22%. We have sent an increasing number of kids off to higher education. But “sending them off” is not enough. We tell ourselves a lie when we treat the education of a young mind as some sort of transaction that ends at the end of school day, school year, or even graduation. The role of a Lincoln teacher extends into life and adulthood of our students. We continue to fertilize and till. Our students often don’t have uncles or aunts who are college graduates. They have us. 

Last fall during planning with the senior team, a few of us hatched an idea to support our graduates in college and inspire our current students. We batted around the idea of road trip; an Alumni Support Tour. The plan was to visit over two dozen recent grads in colleges east of the mountains. Nearly all these students were first generation college students and the majority were students of color. We had been getting calls and emails from students who were struggling to adjust and debating coming home. In late September, I sat on the phone for nearly an hour telling a homesick alumna that she owed it to herself to stay at Whitworth.

“You will hate yourself if you quit.”

“It doesn’t matter how they look at you, we both know you are smart enough.”

“I know there are no other black students, we talked about this before you left. This is how it will be.”

As I hung up the phone with her the road trip went from an idea to a necessity. 

In October, Mrs. Teague-Bowling, Ms. Bockus, and I piled into my Kia Soul and hit the road to visit the Lincoln Class of 2014 at Central Washington, Washington State University, Gonzaga, and Whitworth College. Along the way we asked why we hadn’t done this before. We wondered how the kids were holding up with the workload. Had we prepared them? We were curious about who might be struggling. But, most importantly, we questioned: why isn’t this kind of support the norm?

We stayed in a Super 8 in Ellensburg and a HoJo in North Spokane. We met our charges at each of their campuses and brought them pizza or burgers. Older Lincoln Alumni showed up as well. “I am so proud of you.” Tears were shed. “We did this, together.” Hugs were exchanged. We visited dining halls, toured campuses, and heard familiar tales of adjustment. They shared their syllabi and dorm rooms with us. We shared our pride and joy with them. They thanked us and talked about how prepared they felt for college and life. 

These were the three best days of my career. We drove over 650 miles, visited four campuses, and broke bread with nearly 30 alumni. Over three days we were able to see our harvest.

Teaching is more like farming than many of the other careers it gets compared to. Lincoln is a massive farm with nearly 1,500 seeds in the ground. Some have nutrient rich soil. Others are in shallow, sandy dirt and require more attention. At Lincoln 80% of our seeds live in poverty. That just means they need more fertilizer, more careful watering, and more attention from us, the farmers.

Too often when we talk about students in poverty, my students, we approach them from a deficit--we awfulize students in poverty--we talk about them as if they are incapable of learning.

They aren’t inferior, they’re poor.

They are literate, but the ways in which they are literate aren’t measurable by our assessments. There’s an academic vocabulary gap, not an intelligence gap. With love and support they’re capable of reaching the same highs as all other students. My students are worth the investment that I make in them as their teacher, and they are worth the investment we ought to make in them as a society.

We know this.