Dear (White) Teachers

Michael Brown via Daily Mail

I did not know that Michael Brown.
Chances are pretty good you did not either.
But the name evokes strong emotions.

His color evokes strong responses.
Ferguson's description as an "inner-ring suburb" with a "somewhat transient" black population allows readers to quietly judge a town they never knew existed until the past week--ah, but it's OK, we know that kind of town, and those kind of people.

His size evokes adrenaline.
But you rarely read that Michael Brown was a "large man" without "black" slipped in as well.

Well, the rational abstract mind points out, those are descriptors, nothing more.
Yet we hear it over and over again--because it is effective, over and over again.

Every time you read it, your amygdala, the wordless part of your brain, flashes raw fear and anger.
We read the news to fire that amygdala, to feel like we're part of something, to feel like we're part of anything.




Michael Brown's killing was a public act by a public official working under the authority of a publicly-run department in a public space. Please read that carefully.

If you have been paying attention, you are not surprised. 

Eric Garner. 
John Crawford. 
Ezell Ford. 
Dante Parker.

All less than a month ago.
And yet we will act shocked when the next name rolls through our newsfeed.

Those of us who teach in public schools, who earn our living using public dollars, are obligated as civil servants, and more importantly, as human beings, to carry the discussion of what it means to be public. For us to be people.

Credit: Jessica Pierce

I teach young adults in a public space. Their space. My space. Our space.
Race has been criminalized in our public spaces.
Has been for a long, long time.
That's our problem.

I have long lost hope that I can much change private discourse of folks of privilege, though I bark enough that some conversations get shorted when I'm around. But silencing private conversations will not change a damn thing, despite the ooh-goody-goody dopamine dose of self-righteousness you might feel.

Let's talk about our roles as public teachers in public spaces publicly.
Let's remind our students (and ourselves) that the public belongs to all of us.
Let's remember that abstractions, as powerful as they are, are not real.

I'm not looking for a Kumbaya fest--if you're all about the neurochemical surges of joy, we got Xanax for that. No, it's time we dug into that amygdala and stare at the beast that makes us who we are.

And really, you need to stop asking POC what "they" think.

Don't tread on me (or the commons)

I am not inherently opposed to charter schools. 
I am opposed to outsiders narrowing public spaces in my community.
Call me provincial, parochial, or even a local yokel.
We lost much of the commons years ago.I'm fighting hard for what's left.

"If it were up to local municipalities, it would essentially kill charter schools." 

Christopher Cerf, Acting Commissioner of NJ

The commons still exist. We still have community spaces, shared by all, that define who we are. We breathe the same air. We drink the same water--at least those of us who avoid the bottled nonsense.

I clam a tidal flat owned by no one, shared by all. Tidal flats are gifts of nature, of god, of grace. I did not earn it. I limit my haul to what I can reasonably share with my clan before the next low tide.

Public education still belongs, tenuously, to local communities. I pay thousands of dollars a year to support our school system, as do my neighbors. Our board of education meets every two weeks, people who live in town, people who I meet on the street. We work together to create a public school district. It's hard work, and it's not cheap.

Democracy has a price.

***

I just got back from the Bloomfield High Spring Choir Concert. The exuberant young voices brought tears to my eyes (shhh....don't tell anyone). The concert was free.

I've taught 1st generation Haitians and Ecuadorans and Chinese and Dominican Republicans and Filipinos and Albanians and Greeks and Costa Ricans and Viet Namese and British and Bosnians in the few years I've been here.

Imagine a small tidal flat separated into fiefdoms--this flag on the north end, this flag on the south, you get whatever (and only whatever) clams under your flag.

It wouldn't work.

There's a move in a nearby town to set up a Mandarin charter school. About a hundred schools in the States cater to Turkish culture. Folks want to set up a school, well, no law against it, and I have no beef with them. Folks want to spend public money to make them run, though, and now we have a problem.

A very big problem.

***

Anyone who believes the point of school is to improve the workforce available for private business fails to grasp the concept of the commons. Anyone who believes the point of school is to make kids ready for college and the global economy fails to grasp the concept of the commons.

Without a commons, there is no real community, and maybe we're there already. If you know more about the American Idol judges than you do the family across the street, you're a bigger threat to our republic than some ragged Taliban fighter protecting some poppy seeds in a land you cannot pronounce.

He's not likely to plant a flag on my mudflats, our mudflats. But you might.
And I'm going to spend what's left of this lifetime making sure you don't.

Flag photo from USA FlagSupply.com site.
On Monday the Georgia Supreme Court "struck down a law empowering a special statewide commission to approve...charter schools." Go Georgia!