Trump: My Glass is Half-Empty

If your Twitter handle begins with “Deplorable” this post probably isn’t for you. If you believe that Confederate iconography represents some mythical, noble, lost-cause heritage, rather than a treasonous, white-supremacist misadventure, you should press Ctrl+W. If you are willing to explain away the rise in racial and religious attacks, especially those targeting students, in the post-election period, please, for both of us, move along.

My parents came from Jim Crow Mississippi and Arkansas. I know the tales of their youth. I am reminded of these stories as I read the news today. The president-elect of the United States has stated his desire to deport the relatives of many of my students. In the post-election period, his supporters have suggested, because of their religion, registering many of my students in a national database. Before the election, the president-elect said that half of my students deserve to have their bodies violated, if it suits a powerful man’s whim. During a debate, the president-elect said to a quarter of my students, that the path to racial reconciliation in America was through “stop & frisk” and more aggressive law enforcement in black communities. This is opposite of progress.

This isn’t a partisan take. I have voted Republican before. I voted for two Republicans this fall. The Trump administration, his proposed policies, his juvenile temperament, all represent an existential threat to the America that I love—and that I served for six years.

I spent the last two weeks trying to get my head around election night. It fits the historical pattern, but it’s still disconcerting. Every major period of racial progress in America has begat a reactionary retrenchment: Reconstruction saw the rise of the Klan in the South; Johnson’s War on Poverty, Civil Rights Act, and Voting Rights Act preceded Nixon’s landslide victory via the Southern Strategy and dog whistles; now, the first black President, first black First Lady and first two black Attorneys General will be replaced by Donald, Melania, and Jeff Sessions respectively.

The nomination of Jeff Sessions is especially emblematic of the regression that the Trump Administration represents. In 1986, Sessions was nominated for the federal bench by President Reagan, but he was deemed too racist then to be confirmed by the Senate. In the interim, the voters of Alabama have elected him to the US Senate (several times) and he is now a confirmation vote away from becoming the chief law enforcement officer of the nation. I thought we were better than this.

I used my role as 2016 Washington State Teacher of the Year to talk about uncomfortable truths and realities for students of color and students in poverty all over my state. The election hits even closer to home. Many of my students are deeply concerned: Will he deport my mother? My brother has ongoing health issues; will we lose our health care? Will he deny me the right to marry another woman? Will he make me register, since I am a Muslim? These are a few of the questions I have fielded over the last two weeks. Will he? Will he? Will he?

In my government class, we often talk about how the most consequential presidencies are the result of one party rule. Republican rule, Lincoln through Grant, led to three Constitutional Amendments (13-15). Democratic rule gave us The New Deal, Glass-Steagall, AFDC (welfare), and Social Security. Again, Democratic rule, under Johnson brought us the Civil Rights Era. We have handed to Donald J. Trump—the only person ever elected to the presidency without prior governing or military experience—unified government, a Supreme Court nomination, and nearly enough state legislatures under control of his party to amend the US Constitution and cement his policies into our most revered document for generations. We have slept walked into a full blown renegotiation of the social contract—a New New Deal or the Old Deal—if you will.

I can’t look my students in the eye, lie to them and say it’s all going to be okay. I don’t know that it will. We live in dangerous times, particularly for communities of color and those on the economic margins of our nation. In his book “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning” Chris Hedges described the descent into ethnic cleansing and genocide in post-Soviet Yugoslavia. Data from exit polling shows us we have entered an unprecedented era of tribal voting. Trump won the white vote by larger margins than Ronald Reagan—Ronald-effing-Reagan. The president-elect has a white-nationalist leader working as his senior adviser. Brietbart and Fox News could serve as Eastern Bloc style quasi-state news agencies. Neo-Nazis and leaders of the Klan have heralded his election. The attacks and violence we have seen across the nation echo the early pages of Hedges’ book. I’m not suggesting we are headed down that path to Milosevic, but it is now a non-zero probability.

I have no time for your pleas to “wait and see.” You can keep your false equivalence arguments. I have no interest in any of it. We have entered an age of uncertainty. The sole check on Trump’s authority are the Federal Courts and Congressional Republicans. That thought should send a shiver down your spine.

Throughout US history, teachers (especially black teachers) led struggles for justice: guiding freedman in the transition from the agrarian to the industrial after Emancipation, leading and modeling democratic citizenship in protests during the civil rights movement. My teaching license literally says “Humanities Teacher.” I will not sit idly by while the very humanity of my students is questioned and renegotiated. This is the work ahead.

We must lead.

30 Americans: Having Difficult Conversations through Art

The lowest grade I earned in college was in an art appreciation class. Don’t laugh. It was an evening class; I was a working student. I loved the class, but one evening when the lights went out for the slideshow, my lights went out too. Three weeks later, I bombed the final because I apparently slept through a lecture on Cubism and was helpless on the essay I was supposed to write on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. I’m still bitter.

As an adult, I’ve grown to  love art and the museum experience. I worked at the Museum of Glass in graduate school. When my spouse I travel we always hit the local museum. I see art as a worthwhile distraction and museums as a sanctum--places to pause and to ponder.

Context matters. Recently, after getting strong recs from several friends, I went to the Tacoma Art Museum to see their 30 Americans Exhibit. In 2015, TAM (rightfully) caught holy hell from the black and progressive communities in Tacoma. TAM curated and hosted a reflection on the history of HIV/AIDS in the US that largely excluded the voices and the experiences of black Americans and artists. Like many social, economic, and health issues communities of color are disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS. Their exclusion drew loud, sustained, public (and IMO justified) protests.

There was “die-in” protest, charges the museum was "erasing black people," and several articles in local media outlets called out the museum’s curatorial practices. Christopher Paul Jordan, a local artist and one of my favorite minds in our community was blistering in his criticism. He told the News Tribune “AIDS has absolutely affected art history within black communities. This is beyond negligent. They’re not concerned with (black) stories. … This is not individual racism. It’s about a system within the museum that’s developed a white normativity. It’s a reflection not just of the museum but of Tacoma itself.”

This apparently provoked some introspection at TAM and one result of that introspection is the public programming around 30 Americans. 30 Americans is an exhibition of 30 black artists. To accompany it, TAM is hosting moderated panel discussions, a documentary film screening, a poetry slam, and several “free days” where people can experience the exhibit. The exhibit also has an interactive area where community members can leave their thoughts on pieces or review the feedback of others.

For this exhibit, TAM also reached out to the “old-guard civil rights community” (a conversation for a different day) and created an advisory committee to help with community promotion and engagement. This is a step in the right direction. When I worked at the Museum of Glass in the early aughts, I was often the only person of color--and rarely ever saw another black face--at museum events. A decade & change later, when I walk into the MoG and TAM, it feels much the same way.  Though this exhibit suggests progress, it’s clear that TAM (and the Tacoma museum community writ-large) have a ways to go.

The exhibit itself. I am not an art critic and I’m not going to play one here. That said, here are some pieces that gave me pause or provoked an especially strong emotional response.

Duck, Duck, Noose is the centerpiece of the exhibition and the first thing you see when cresting the ramp from the main lobby. It’s a lot to take in... especially, when seen in juxtaposition to Glenn Ligon’s America, whose glowing presence on the north wall looms ominously over it.

I enjoyed both of these pieces, but appreciate even more what they are saying in concert. America’s racial history is complicated. My mother is from Arkansas; my father was from Mississippi. Their stories and why they left are in my bones. Most people, black and white, would rather not discuss it. But the historical influence of the Klan, particularly here in the Northwest is undeniable. Oregon was founded as a whites-only "racial utopia," the Klan marched through the streets of Bellingham well into the twentieth century, and don’t get me started on the white supremacist movement in Northern Idaho. This is our history. This is our inheritance. This is who we are.

Branded Head speaks to my Olympia, anti-corporate, No Logos, twenty-five year-old self, and I think I would use it as my point of entry in introducing my students to the exhibit. Brand loyalty has always perplexed me, particularly the devotion to shoe companies among the non-athletic. Branded Head is muted and understated. But, it also stayed with me throughout my time in the gallery. This is the reproduction in the section in the gallery set aside for community engagement. You can see my scribbles.

Sleep. When I visited his exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, earlier this year, Kehinde Wiley immediately became my favorite living painter. Period. His specialty is reframing classic and classically styled paintings by replacing the subjects with black youth. He works on a massive scale. Sleep measures 132” x 300.” Wiley’s work represents a pointed critique of our absence from the art world--the core of last year’s protests--I rarely see people who look me in museums, unless we're working. Wiley’s work is jarring in how bluntly he points out the marginalization of blackness, while simultaneously mocking the odd composition and poses of many classic portraits. Sleep isn’t my favorite Wiley piece, but I think it is very representative of his work and aesthetic.

I have my issues with 30 Americans and you likely will as well. But, that’s talk for tea or cocktails. Its public programming is TAM’s attempt to respond to critics and engage the community. I’m listening, not satisfied, but I'm listening.

Check out the exhibit now through January 15, 2017. If you’ve visited already, I welcome your thoughts and comments below.

What We Owe the Next Generation of Teachers

I was a fairly mediocre teacher when I first started. Sometimes I look back on my first few years and wonder why my students didn’t walk out on me. My old slides look atrocious; my handouts were too wordy; my instruction was completely teacher centered: me talking, me explaining, me doing some weird dance.

There were some long, sad, doubt-filled nights my first few years of teaching. I thought frequently about moving into law. For the first several years of my career, every spring, I would thumb through an LSAT prep book and browse law school catalogues. It wasn’t until my seventh year that I didn’t get that “ritual spring itch.” That’s when I knew I had hit my stride.

I am now eleven years in and I think I have things kind of figured out. In my classroom my students do most of the talking and a fair amount of the teaching. They tweet articles from the National Review and the Atlantic to me and to each other in the evenings. I have waves of students in college and they almost always report they felt prepared. I have sharpened my craft. I have grown and progressed.

But I wonder what might have been for me and for others in the career field? Roughly half of the teachers who started this fall will be gone from the career field in five years. Nearly ten percent will bounce before the year is up. For many of them, that’s for the best. Teaching isn’t for them or they aren’t especially good at communicating complex ideas or building relationships with students and their colleagues. But also in that 50% are some phenomenal educators who will never get a chance to hit their stride.

Teaching is hard. The early parts of our career are harder. Being a new teacher in a high-need school, without the appropriate supports is the hardest. It breaks strong, smart people, but it’s the most important work imaginable.

We know from research and I tell audiences every opportunity that I get that the number one in-school factor impacting student achievement is the effectiveness of the teacher in the classroom. The constant turnover of teachers, particularly at high-poverty schools, creates a revolving door that robs our neediest students. Year after year, they have earnest, good hearted, but green teachers who are still sorting things out. Our neediest students deserve our best; instead far too often they get whoever is available.

For the sake of their students, we owe new teachers meaningful supports:

• We owe our teacher candidates intentional placements with effective mentor teachers.
• We owe our new teachers effective, successful mentors who can support them in their professional growth.
• We owe our new teachers meaningful and timely feedback that gives them specific areas for improvement and growth.
• We owe our new teachers a salary commensurate with the gravity of their work.
• We owe our new teachers assignments that set them up for success—rather than failure.

I’m the teacher I am today largely because I stuck it out and learned from my early career failures and missteps. Too many who enter our ranks depart too soon. We owe them better, better preparation, better mentors, and better support.

This post originally appeared on the US Department of Education Homeroom Blog.