State Teacher of the Year Washington Week or the Life and Times of a Gov Nerd in “the other Washington.”

Last week I joined my fellow State Teachers of the Year in DC for Washington Week: we met the leader of the free world, 44th President of the United States, and pretty darn handsome man, Barack Obama. We also met six-term senator, one of my favorite living rhetoricians, Vice President of the United States, “Uncle” Joe Biden and his (possibly more impressive) wife Dr. Jill Biden. We also met the Human Reset Button, the walking embodiment of bureaucratic tone change, Secretary of Education, Dr. John King.

Secret Service check heading into the Biden Residence.

On side trips, my wife and I visited the Ford Theater, where the namesake of my school, Abraham Lincoln, was shot by treasonous Confederate (those terms are admittedly redundant), John Wilkes Booth and Arlington National Cemetery. And last week at the invitation of CCSSO, I gave a policy talk on recruiting and retaining effective teachers of color, to members of the Whitehouse Staff and employees from the Department of Education.

In short fam, we had a helluva week in DC.

Policy Briefing to Whitehouse staff and employees of the Department of Education.

A Bit of a Whirlwind: Each year the 56... 55 (North Dakota just had a baby) State and territorial (DOD, Guam, Marianas Islands, Virgin Islands American Samoa and DC) teachers of the year gather in DC for Washington Week. It is intended to be a celebration of the profession. But recently, it has morphed into something more. The event is turning into a forum, where policymakers and ed groups seek input from practitioners from around the nation (and its territories).

This year we were provided an opportunity to give (often very frank) feedback to several ed organizations (NWEA, Pearson, ETS, Microsoft Education) on their policy platforms and upcoming initiatives in sessions called “Educator Perspective Breakouts.” I often talk about the need to include effective teacher voice in education policy formulation, I applaud those orgs specifically for listening to our collective points-of-view around PD, evaluation and assessment and seeking to create an ongoing dialogue around their work and ours. I don’t think we shifted the trajectory of their already laid plans, but we were invited to a conversation (a start) and we will see where that leads in the longterm.

In the East Room with 2016 Alaska Teacher of the Year, Amy Jo Meiners.

While we were in DC some of the SToYs talked about how they’ve received pushback from colleagues when they’ve raised issues of teacher quality and effectiveness. But, I think Shawn Sheehan, fellow NToY Finalist, and candidate for Oklahoma State Senate, nailed it, and for the sake of my kids I unapologetically co-sign: “those who can’t, definitely shouldn’t teach.” It really is that simple. The work is too important to believe otherwise.

Back to Home and My Reality: Upon returning to the real Washington, I felt physically exhausted, but pedagogically inspired. Within 12 hours of landing, I was back at Lincoln leading our final AP Exam review session to a standing-room crowd of Abes, in preparation for today’s AP Government & Politics exam.

Somewhere over flyover country, masquerading as Jupiter.

Within 24 hour hours, Audrey, Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, was proposing a collaborative story telling project to the SToYs. In the same timeframe, Talya from Maine was writing about her experiences in DC. Within 36 hours, I had started house hunting on Redfin, looking to recruit frustrated SToYs from states where they don’t feel as supported to work, teach and live in Tacoma.

DC was surreal at times, but it reminded me of the immediacy of the work we do here at Lincoln and in the South Sound with Teachers United. This work matters: Teachers are loved. Teachers aren’t appreciated. This work is draining. This work is energizing. This work often seems impossible. This work is always essential.

These are the contradictions we live with. 

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.

What Teaching in China Reminded me about Being Black in America

For most of my life travel was something that other people did, other people who didn’t look like me. This isn’t a ‘hood movie--my family wasn’t poor or starving--but we didn’t have “oh, let’s go to Europe or Mazatlan money” like many of my white (read: non-black) friends in high school and college always seemed to have. For most of my life I told myself that traveling was stupid, a waste of money and time. I told myself a lie--a lie I needed to hear at the time--a lie that I told myself until I finished school and could afford to realize the truth.

I got my first passport at the age of 27. That summer, with two friends, I booked the cheapest int’l flight we could find and ended up traveling along the Caribbean Coast of Colombia for a month--I was hooked.

When I travel I feel accepted: I have found that as a black American abroad I am accepted and welcomed in ways and places that I simply am not here. My Spanish is decent and I can pass for a Panamanian, Dominicano or Colombiano in a crowded market. When I travel, especially in Latin America, I often feel more comfortable than I feel here at home. If you aren’t black or a part of some other group on the margins in American society, I can’t describe to you what it’s like to walk into a room, restaurant, cafe or an office building and feel despised, but it’s a feeling I am very familiar with.

When I travel I read and think more: My favorite saying from Mark Twain is about travel and prejudice. He said, “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime.” I love this corner of Earth, but I love getting away from it too. Since 2007, I have traveled internationally each summer after school gets out. As I travel I can see from abroad the light that creeps between gaps in American myth and reality. I don’t take it for granted because I remember what it was like before. 

My father has encouraged me to travel, saying that a black man who travels exposes himself to the lies that America feeds him about itself and himself. When I travel I read more, often nearly a dozen books per trip. Some of the most transformative experiences I have had with literature were from reading while traveling: Gatsby while battling seasickness in the San Blas Archipelago, falling out of love with Phillip Roth's writing while on a bus in Guatemala, reading Human Smoke (the pacifist case against World War II) while in the Dominican Republic.

When I am away from home I have time to read and process the gravity of texts in a way that just isn’t practical when I am home. I specifically remember sitting in a cafe in Spain with my wife in 2013 with tears in my eyes as I read aloud from Ta-Nehisi Coates’, How Can We Toughen Our Children Without Frightening Them? It was his second dispatch from his travels in Paris and he was describing his fears for and over his son. These were the seeds of Between the World and Me and in hindsight, I was realizing everything the #BlackLivesMatter movement is now teaching the nation. We are not safe. We are not loved.

One simply does not have these moments in the comfort of home. One does not have these moments while mowing the lawn.

My travel has evolved: I now travel with my amazing wife. She grew up overseas and is a polyglot. She may slip Tagalog into her Spanish and vice versa, but making that mistake means you have access to both in your brain. The last two summers, rather than just traveling, we have taught. This summer we ventured to Chengdu in China’s Sichuan Province for our second summer of learning in the city of 14 million. We were originally invited to China in 2014 to teach “American style” student leadership, college preparation & transition, and we have spent roughly eight weeks teaching and learning there over the last two summers.

Like most Americans, China fascinates me. It’s simultaneously very familiar and completely distant. When I was a kid, it was just a place in the textbooks and fantasy. My mental image was basically infinite people in karate shoes riding bicycles through massive, nearly car-less cities. I specifically remember in ninth grade when Mr. Wolfrom showed us a slideshow of the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang in Xi’an. The idea that I would visit them (as I did last summer) was unimaginable. I remember when we learned about the looming handover of Hong Kong and how distant it seemed. He might as well have been talking about the handover of Jupiter’s Moon Titan to some Intergalactic Federation, yet we spent a week walking the streets of Kowloon this summer. 

Now I have a sense of intimacy with this place of mystery. The Chinese people are among the most hospitable I have ever encountered. This year we stayed with a generous host family, both parents employees of a Chinese telcom. My favorite person in all the nation was my Chinese grandmother or nainai who didn’t understand a word I said, but insisted on stuffing me full of some of the most delicious food I have ever tasted. And I found, even in China, an acceptance that I often find lacking here at home. When I walk the streets in China the children point at me and say “lowai” which translates loosely as “old outsider” or “foreigner”. I love this. Every time it happens, I reply “ni hao, xiao peng you” (hello, little friend). I love it when they call me laowai, because it’s the same term they call my wife in the streets. The don’t say “look, a black” they say “look, a foreigner”, to both of us. It’s equality. I can’t put it into words, but it is extremely satisfying to know that (for once) I am getting treated equally.

Our nǎinai in Chengdu: I never understood a single word she said, but she'd be an amazing partner for charades. 

Travel provokes reflection: One of our last night’s in China, I sat with my host family watching the coverage of the Samuel Dubose shooting on CCTV, China’s state-run media. My host asked me what I thought about the situation. I couldn’t even reply. It created a dissonance that just made my jaw ache.

Travel puts the contradictions of American life, in stark contrast: from slave owning-liberty loving-founders to a black President who has spent five and a half years running from racial politics. America’s unwillingness to reckon with race is criminal. Yet, there is nowhere else in the world where people who look like me fare as well as they do in the US. I’m not trying to move to Norway nor Namibia anytime soon. There is no black President in the offing anywhere in Western Europe and if black America were a nation it’d be among the 20 wealthiest in the world (with an earned income hovering around $1 trillion). But, at the same time, armed white vigilantes are allowed to patrol the streets of Saint Louis while unarmed blacks live under a curfew in their own neighborhoods. We live in a nation where the army gives rural police departments APCs, but unarmed blacks are shot at a near daily clip because officers “fear for their lives”.

Travel is the ultimate #staywoke. Being away from America makes me love and appreciate everything I have back home and exposes me to her shortcomings at the same time. We all know that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I'd add to that the words of James Baldwin: "I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."