Writing in Public

This is a blog for CO301D in which I will document all of my progress within the class.

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Supporting Undocumented Students

In an effort to earn my teacher as ally badge, I am not only looking into how to support LGBTQ+ students, but also how to support undocumented students. I feel now more than ever, visible allies are necessary in the classroom for undocumented students. With the current administration, even going to school can feel daunting. With a simple google search of “how to support undocumented students”, I found a few things worth noting from this website: http://www.e4fc.org/images/E4FC_EducatorTop10.pdf:

1. Create a safe space: What this means in a classroom is too long to try to put into a blog post, but when it comes to undocumented students, there are a few things that we can do to make the classroom a safe space. This includes not forcing students to self-identify as undocumented, and not placing that label explicitly on them. Doing so can put them at risk in your classroom. Another part of this is making yourself a visible ally. Using posters, stickers, whatever it is, make sure your students know that you are on their side.

2. Build agency and power: This can look a lot of different ways - empowering students goes a long way, and it a very important part of being a teacher. Some ways this can look is encouraging the students to start a club focusing on immigration issues, and supporting that club as their teacher, or educating students about how marginalized groups have fought for equal rights in the past. Knowing your history is immeasurable when it comes to finding the strength to fight for your rights.

3. Connect students to undocumented community leaders and role models: Representation is important, and having someone to look up to that shares your identity is priceless. I think that in order to accomplish this one, you have to educate yourself (which is number one when it comes to supporting any student groups). You have to be aware of the strides being made in your community and who is leading those movements.

Overall, I would say that this is a good starting resource for any teacher looking to support undocumented students.

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English Teacher as Ally

I believe that as an English teacher, I am at a particularly privileged point to support students and to be an ally to students in my classroom. Literature is powerful, and I believe that the support that can come to students through reading good, inclusive texts, is priceless. In order to understand what I can specifically do to support students in my classroom, I looked at International Literacy Association. I found their website to be extremely useful, but here are three takeaways:

Cultivate Inclusive Classroom Libraries: It is important for us to give our students literature that reflects who they are -  representation is a literal lifesaver.

Use Digital Documentary Short: Students can create small documentaries on a social issue of their choosing

Use YA novels that reflect not only the identities but the experiences of LGBTQ Students: Not only having their identities represented, but also the experiences of people their own age is really important.

Basically, having inclusive literature accessible and visible in the classroom can do wonders for your students. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again - visibility is a lifesaver.

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Supporting Students Outside of the Classroom

I have looked at two places that support students outside of the classroom, and have pulled some important aspects of their work out to share.

http://publicallies.org/

“Public Allies is a national movement committed to advancing social justice and equity by engaging and activating the leadership of all young people.” Their mission is: “To create a just and equitable society and the diverse leadership to sustain it.” Public Allies works to awaken the leadership capabilities within all of their students, showing them that they have the power to make a change and an impact. They are ran on six core values: Integrity, Diversity & Inclusion, Focus on Assets, Collaboration, Continuous Learning, and Innovation.They work on lifting up students with marginalized identities, in order to empower them to fight for social change and pursue activism. I think this is a wonderful. I think that one really undervalued approach to getting students to be motivated is to awaken their confidence and help them to embrace their identities. This can be really hard for people with marginalized identities. There can be a lot of shame that accompanies them, and encouraging them to see the power in those identities is priceless.

https://www.youthvoices.live/

“This is a youth-powered social network that was started in 2003 by a group of teachers from local sites of the National Writing Project.” Their mission is: “We are a site for conversations. We invite youth of all ages to voice their thoughts about their passions, to explain things they understand well, to wonder about things they have just begun to understand, and to share discussion posts with other young people using as many different genres and media as they can imagine!” Their approach to supporting student learning is by giving students a platform to voice their opinions, their needs, wants, and interests. This is a wonderful resource. They welcome all viewpoints, and this is a great place for students to publish if they are particularly interested in any topic, and want a forum where they can reach others of their age.

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Supporting LGBTQ+ Students

For my teacher as ally badge, I am focusing on supporting LGBTQ+ students in the classroom. With a quick google search of “supporting LGBTQ students”, I have compiled a list of resources as well as a quick 5 takeaways so that I can easily compress what all the sites say, as well as pass on the information to other teachers. LGBTQ+ visibility and rights have been on the rise, or at least were prior to our current administration, but that doesn’t mean that our students don’t need our support and allyship. Many students do not feel safe at school, those kids could be sitting in your classroom, needing your assistance. The resources that I found will hopefully help with a starting place and an answer to the question, “well, how?”

GLSEN is a great resource overall for all things LGBTQ youth. They have an article called “Safe Space Kit”, where they outline some things that can be done to support LGBTQ students. Some of the takeaways from this article are echoed across all of the resources I pulled. They remind teachers to be aware of the issues taking place in school - know where students feel comfortable or safe, and where they feel very unsafe. Know how the student body is acting towards certain groups of students. The article says to be aware of what is happening at school - but also what it happening statewide or country-wide. Showing a sense of awareness can go a long way. This article also want teachers to actively assess their own beliefs. Where are your biases? How does that affect your students? If you find that you have some bias, and your personal beliefs are situated in opposition to any of the identities that your students hold, it is important to drop them at the door, and be able to recognize that they are your student and they deserve safety and respect.

Another resource I found came from the Cult of Pedagogy website an artcile titled “LGBTQ Students”. This article said a lot of the same things that the GLSEN article did. Another takeaway would be the importance of educating yourself. Knowing and using terminology accurately is so, so important. Not only because then you show your students that you are an ally, but also so you can respect them and be accurate when speaking to them. Another thing that they highlight is teaching inclusively. So, not just teaching texts written by and about and for white, cis-heterosexual people.

Both articles highlighted the importance of supporting students who are coming out. This GLSEN article “Coming Out” is a good resource for students that are coming out. It is also a good read for teachers to try and understand what that student is going through.

This Teach for America article holds within itself a lot of resources for supporting LGBTQ students in a tumultuous time.

Overall, when supporting LGBTQ students, it is imporant to educate yourself, understand your own biases, be aware of what is happening at your school, be a visible ally, and have resources and support for students who come out to you. As a member of the LGBTQ community, I can say that if any of my teachers had shown these qualities, my High School experience would have been a lot better.

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Dear Ms. Grindle

Dear Sharon Grindle,

I’ve had you for two classes in my college career thus far, and I wish to have many more. The day after the election, when I walked into your class, I wanted to be anywhere but there. I had spent the morning crying, and if I’m being honest, the night before a little tipsy. There are no words I could use to articulate the feeling of dread, of hopelessness that stuck with me that day, and beyond. But sitting through the lecture you gave - telling us about some tyrant hundreds of years ago, and hearing the way you did not shy away from the parallels between this person and the one that was just elected, gave me hope. That day at the end of class, holding back tears, you told us that your class was not a place for hate. That you would fight for us. That you are a safe place. From that day on you wore a safety pin on your backpack, and that small gesture meant more to me than you could ever imagine.

So thank you. For taking that stand. For supporting your students. For being a teacher ally to me and many other.

Hope to see you soon,

Briana Jara

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What is a Teacher Ally

In order to try to find out just what makes a teacher ally, I interviewed with my friends and asked them about a teacher that made a positive impact on their life. I wanted to know who it was, why they chose them, and what their lasting impression was. They all provided one example, and definitely helped me to get closer to a definition of what it means to be a teacher ally.

The first person I talked to was Michelle, one of my best friends, and she talked about Andrew Goreham, a social studies teacher from Northglenn High School. She said that she experienced serious health concerns in high school, specifically in her senior year, and having a teacher like Goreham who was very supportive and accommodated in a multitude of ways, definitely insured her graduation. While she was talking, her eyes lit up, and she laughed throughout - remembering running stories and tidbits he would share with the class.

The second person I talked to was Michelle’s partner, Shea. Shea talked about a middle school English teacher, Mr. Figurin. They said that Figurin loved English so much that he made learning it fun: integrating songs and rhymes. More than that, he let them eat lunch in his room everyday. They said that they were a very depressed and lonely student, so to have a teacher that allowed for them to seek refuge in his room, helped them get through high school. I found the same thing to be true when watching them talk - their eyes lit up. But in this case they also teared up. When I asked them why, they said that they didn’t know how they would’ve made it through high school without Mr. Figurin. I think that speaks volumes. The way that this teacher reached out to a student in need, in such a simple way, made such a huge impact.

The last person I talked to was Christian. They told me all about an English teacher they had, Mrs. Moncada. They said she wasn’t a teacher they enjoyed while they had her, but once they didn’t have her anymore they realized just how big of an impact she made on them. When watching them talk, I saw both Michelle and Shea’s reactions in them. They laughed and they teared up. But all across the board, the look in their eyes said more about the teacher than any words ever could.

What I learned about being a teacher ally from this, is that it can look a multitude of ways. It could be giving a student going through a hard time health wise some slack and giving them appropriate accommodations. It could be inviting a student to eat lunch with you. It could be buying the spiral notebooks that students need for the class and giving them to students who can’t afford it.

No matter how it looks - teachers are important, and the impact that they leave on a student could last a lifetime. And not only because they teach.

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50 Great Teachers

I’ve been going through NPR’s “50 great teachers” series (link here), trying to better understand what it means to be a teacher ally, and a lot of these teachers are just too amazing not to share! I want to share just three of the teachers highlighted, and how what they do/did relates to my growing understanding of what it means to be a teacher ally.

Ali Shalalha: Ali turned a school where only 12% of the seniors at Beit Jann Comprehensive School passed the exams that are qualifiers for higher education into one where every one of the seniors passed. That is phenomenal. While doing so, he cracked down on negative behaviors (cheating), got his car vandalized, and built community. Ali is quoted saying, “"To be a man of education… you can make good community and be better than what we have."

Rodney Carey: Carey works at a school where the focus is helping young people earn their high school equivalency. Carey goes above and beyond to help his students he “gives out his phone number” and gives students in need a ride home. He really wants to see these students (the majority being headed down the “wrong path”) another option, a way out. Giving students a positive option in life is the role of a teacher, and Carey embodies that and more.

Thomas Whaley: Whaley is a second-grade teacher in New York, one that works on uplifting ELL students. ELL students often have lower self-esteems, and think that they will achieve less than their peers, Whaley wants to combat that, and he has been doing a great job. Whaley creates a classroom culture where students aren’t afraid to fail and the sense of community makes the classroom feel safe. The work he is doing here is priceless; these students are lucky to have him as their teacher.

Being a teacher ally means having the best for your students in mind. I hope to be half the ally that these three wonderful teachers are.

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Morning Pages 4/27

“..Something strikes you when you move to America and travel around the world: Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one. Doesn’t matter where you go. You’d think it would be otherwise, but it isn’t. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts.” - Ken Robinson  

Based off of my personal experience attending a STEM school, I can accurately say that the arts are being squashed out by STEM subjects. Students were not influenced to take a music, art, or drama class. Students were expected to be taking high (and when I say high I mean Calc 3 [which I did take in HS]) levels of math and science, but were advised to stay away from the arts. I had a counselor actually tell me once that my time would be better spent in an engineering class rather than a drama class. Stupid me, I listened to him. I took engineering classes all four years, and was (in my opinion) subtly brainwashed to think that I wanted to be an engineer. Even though, I hate math, and to be doing engineering for the rest of my life would be miserable. For those of you that have never take Calc 3, AP Physics, Advanced Coding, and a capstone engineering class in which your entire grade rests on one thing that you build, I can promise you that it is miserable. I would have much rather spent my time taking an extra English class, or a drama class, but all of the teachers and advisors were paid off to tell us to pursue engineering. 

I feel that my arts education was severely lacking. I mean I took one class that could be considered and “art” class, even though students needed to take 2 “art” classes in order to graduate. My school bent that rule; if you were in engineering, you didn’t have to take any “art” classes. Which, in my blunt opinion, is bull shit. On top of that, when I started school there, our drama program was one of the best ones in CO, and our drama teacher was highly sought after. But after we were converted into a STEM school, our “art” teacher was fired so that we could hire a retired NASA engineer. After that, our drama department was so terrible, they might as well have done away with it. 

Students benefit highly from “art”, and it is very sad that it is not valued as such.

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Morning Pages 4/18

“I was asked to share my story, my concerns, and my beliefs about education. No one outside my family had ever asked me about my outlook on education. I realized I had a voice – an authentic, small but strong voice with a valuable perspective on students’ needs. Somehow I understood how to paint a picture with words, a picture that pulls people into my world with students.” (Crabtree). Both the Ally and Advocate badges inspire different reactions within each of us, but we all have a unique voice to share these reactions. How can you act as a leader within your current community? Your future community/schooling system? Think of the ways you can use your voice to share your thoughts and inspire change within all aspects of life as well as the education system. What will you do?

In the future, acting as a leader in my community/school will entail things such as being a part of the teacher union, attending school board meetings, and constantly bombarding my representatives. It sucks that the people that have the power to change the state of our education system are the ones that have never spent a day teaching, and maybe never spent a day in public schools. In order for us to ensure they are truly representing their constituents, we need to make our voices so loud that they will not be able to ignore us. Within my current community, I am already making headway on the whole being a leader thing. I facilitate a group called BPPQ (bi-, pan-, poly-, queer), I am a part of a social justice group called (name in progress). In this group I facilitate dialogue across differences and attempt to allow people on “opposing” sides to see the other side. Through this group, I am improving my leadership skills while also educating the community and attempting to improve the equity in our community.  

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School Choice

“And she called for the rejection of an “us versus them mentality” when it comes to investing in programs, like charter schools and school vouchers, to which President Trump has proposed giving part of a $1.4 billion funding increase in the fiscal year that begins in October.”

To start my commentary of this quote on http://www.ewa.org/latest-news/betsy-devos-calls-more-school-choice-saying-money-isnt-answer regarding Betsy DeVos, I will address the “us versus them” mentality that she spoke of. Claiming that providing support to the schools, and the students that need it, creates a divide, creates a sort of “othering” principle is absurd. The divide is already there, recognizing this, and doing something to try and bridge it, doesn’t pin anyone against the other, it is however, an attempt to provide students the same quality education, sometimes some schools/students simply need more support than others. Going off of that, broadly speaking, charter schools are already way above public schools in most areas, including funding. They do not need more federal funding. Period. More importantly, funding should not be stripped from public schools and high needs schools that are in desperate need of funding. 

The title of the article is “Betsy DeVos Calls For More School Choice, Saying Money Isn’t the Answer”. As someone who went to a school that was extremely underfunded and in some serious need of a revamping- for infrastructure and resources, I would say that money isn’t the answer, but it sure does help a lot. It isn’t even like all of the schools in my district were as in need as us, there was a school 1.5 miles north of us that was the complete opposite of us. They had the good teachers, the ones that put in a lot of effort, they had technology in every classroom, which seems like a little thing, but it’s actually huge, they had newer books and better science classes. All of these things may seem like small issues, but piled on top of one another, and then amplified by the fact that the school was literally falling apart, they make a huge difference. 

You know what would have helped us get on the level of that school up north? Money. That wouldn’t have solved all the problems, but it would’ve helped a lot. 

So, personally, I feel that defunding public schools and funneling money into charter schools and vouchers will help the ones that don’t need the help, and screw the ones that do. 

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Reform Agendas

For this post, I will be looking at two contrasting websites and trying to identify their reform agenda. 

First Website: http://educationnext.org/

In this website’s “About Us” section, they say that they are a journal that recognizes that serious change is needed in education, but that they don’t have any programs, methods, or ideologies that they endorse/support. They say that they are a fact-based resource and nothing more. They want to inform the reader about issues that face education today, but not have any real “solutions” to those problems. The logo for the site is just their name “Education Next” but education is in black and next is in red and italicized. This works with their purpose in that it is simple and not leaning to one side or the other. However, the red lettering could lead the reader to believe that this is a partisan sight, leaning right. The background of the site is just white, which plays into the neutral tone really well. I like this site for getting cold, hard, facts, but that isn’t usually what I look for when I am looking for a site on reform. I want to be educated, while also having some “solutions” proposed. 

Second Website: https://edtrust.org/

In this website’s “About Us” section, the first thing that the website’s visitor sees is “Fierce advocates for the high academic achievement of all students– particularly those of color or living in poverty.” I think that this sums up what they are working towards really well. This also is a huge divider between this site and the previous one. This one clearly says that they are working for a particular group of students, maybe even the ones that need it the most. This website serves to inform, but it goes beyond just facts and figures, it gets into what to do and how to do something to best support certain students. The logo is a scholar with their cap on with their arms in the air in between two students. This plays into their purpose really well. The action that they are doing is the universal sign for triumph. The teacher expressing triumph between the students leads the reader to believe that what is on the website can help them be successful teacher advocates. 

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Tools, Tips, Methods

I need to compile a list of tools, tips, and methods, that will help me in forming my advocacy action plan.

Story telling:

The way to shape the public narrative, which is the means by which an issue comes to be understood in a community, a narrative that draws upon the story elements we know so well: plot, characters, setting and morals.

More than just one teacher, but a lot of them together

Story of Self: 

We begin with our personal stories and identify the values that inform our understanding.

Story of Us:

Talk with like-minded people and identify the values we hold in common. Doing this places our individual stories into a larger context and allows for others to become a part of them.

Story of now:

Where our stories lead us in order to make change this makes us ask the question of what to do with the collective knowledge. Collective efforts of a community can make a lot of change, and they take some pressure off of one individual.

Identifying and Framing:

We begin to narrow our focus from a general concern to a specific issue and figure out what public misunderstandings allow for this concern to persist. We need to have one issue in mind and then we frame it. The way things are framed has everything to do with how we derive “solutions” to these problems.

Taking action:

Move from “I wish I could” to a specific path to create change and to do this, we create an action plan.

Make sure you are asking yourself these questions:

What should we think about as we create action plans?

What is my framed issue?

Who am I trying to reach with that message?  (decision makers? those who might influence decision makers?)  What action do I want them to take as a result of my work?

What results am I seeking?  What are the short term, intermediate, and long term results that might occur along the way.

What tactics will help me achieve those results?

(Sources: https://everydayadvocacy.org/core-idea-1-storytelling-as-advocacy-2/; https://everydayadvocacy.org/core-idea-2-identifying-and-framing-an-issue-3/; https://everydayadvocacy.org/core-idea-3-taking-action/)

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Meeting the Expert

For my badge, we had to meet with an expert to talk through what teacher advocacy is to them, and run by what we are thinking about for our advocacy action plan. The person that we met with has been in education for the majority of her life, and she had a lot of helpful things to say. When asked about the ways in which she practices teacher advocacy, she told us that in small ways, she does it everyday. Expanding on that, she told us that the biggest issue facing public education today has to do with the image that public education has, and the role that teachers have in shaping that image. Currently, people look down on public education, on teachers, and on the quality of the education. In order to change that, teachers need to change their mentalities. She said that she does this as often as possible, and it is as easy as holding conversations with family members, friends, colleagues, about teaching. It is important that you relay to them that you enjoy what you do, and that public education isn’t this terrible thing that people need to fear. For me, this was the most memorable part of the meeting because it is important to know that being a teacher advocate doesn’t have to be through big political gestures, sometimes talking positively about the profession you love is enough.

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Teacher Advocacy

What would being a young teacher leader/advocate entail/look like?

Teacher advocacy can look like a lot of different things depending on what you are advocating for. However, there are some things that happen across the board.

1. Waking up super early to prepare and collaborate.

2. Collaborating with colleagues. 

3. Connecting: online, in person, colleagues, parents, students.

4. Sharing stories authentically. This can look like blogging (such as like this), tweeting, lecturing, chatting, etc.

5. Collaborating with teachers online.

6. Being a union member.

7. Making connections. 

8. Sharing experiences. 

Did I mention how important connecting, collaborating, and sharing are? In order to get those done, we must have a certain mindset. This entails realizing that your voice matters, being passionate about your job, and taking back our stories. By that, I mean that people outside of the profession take it upon themselves to tell those stories, to determine where our schools succeed and fail, and what to do about it. We don’t want that to be the case... teachers need to stand up and to be the ones making and influencing key decisions. 

Can young teachers be leaders and advocates?

Heck yes! They can and they should. They... no... we are the future of the profession and we need to make it what it needs to be. We need to recognize the flaws in the educational system and do something about them. I feel young teachers are at an advantage in that area, sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is necessary. We all know something needs to be done about the educational systems in America, it’s time young teachers stand up and be that change.

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Morning Pages 03/28

Today’s prompt asks me to think about why I chose the teacher as advocate badge, why this is meaningful to me, and what it will teach me how to do and be as a teacher. I chose the teacher as advocate badge. This badge will teach me how to be able to stand up for my students, colleagues, and myself, to enact change. Also, I love government, I love the workings of it, and have gone back and forth between going to law school or not. Having the tools that the teacher as advocate badge will give me, will allow for me to teach and still have a voice in politics. By this I mean, changing policies is, in our country, the biggest way to get the change that we need to see. This badge will allow me to create a solution to a problem, and I am very excited for that.

This is meaningful to me for a number of reasons. I went to a high school where if the teachers didn’t stand up for us, as a school and as students, we probably would have been shut down. More than that, the teachers that I had were some of the most caring people that I had ever met. I want to work at a high needs school, and that means working with some of the students that need the most support, and honestly, most of them won’t be receiving it at home, for whatever reason. Those kids need their teachers to be there to advocate for them, in a multitude of ways, and I will do just that. 

Wanting to do something and having the tools and knowledge necessary are two very different things. I know that I want to be able to stand up for people who may not have a voice, or add another voice to a movement that has thousands, but this badge will teach me how to do just that.  

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Leadership Assessment Results

In order to “level up” in my Teacher as Advocate badge I had to take the Leadership Compass Self-Assessment. The questions, and results, are split into four categories: North-Action, East-Vision, South-Empathy, West-Analytical. For me, before I even began checking the boxes next to the characteristics that applied to me, I knew that the Empathy one was going to be the one with the most results. I am very empathetic, and it is exhausting. I checked ten of the boxes under the empathy category. The rest of my results however, are interesting to me. I checked exactly seven boxes in the remaining three categories. I would like to think that this shows a bit of balance, but the fact that I scored higher in empathy probably undermines that. 

What does this reveal about the kind of teacher leader/advocate that I will be? One driven highly by emotion. I know that I will put the well-being of my students above all, which is a double ended sword. This is where the other results come in. Because the rest of them were all the same score, and I know that even though I am a person that is driven by emotion, particularly the emotions of others, I am also highly analytical and practical. I think that I will need to balance out all four of them eventually, but I also do not want to undervalue the importance of emotion. Especially while advocating for change. 

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On to the next!

Well, badge number one is over, and boy, was it stressful. Not only was the project in and of itself stressful, but it overlapped with some poorly timed personal stuff, which made it hard to finish. But the project is over now! And it is now time for badge number two! For which, I have chosen Teacher as Advocate. 

Why did you choose this one?

Well, I chose teacher as advocate because I already try to be an advocate (for myself, for individuals, for groups) and I feel that it is something that I will most definitely take into my teaching. For me, choosing this one comes from the distinction between “ally” and “advocate”. Let me preface this by saying I am in no way bashing on “ally”, allies are important. However, for me, I believe I am better put to use as an “advocate”.

Well what’s the difference?

Both are vitally important, but there is a difference. An ally is someone who is supportive of a cause, community, person, etc. They stand behind that person and say “I am here for you, support you, and affirm you”. An advocate takes that one step further. They take action to change policies, to change attitudes, to create change. They say “I am here for you, support you, and affirm you, and I will fight for your rights. I will do something to make a change.”

Putting this into some sort of context I will use allies and advocates of the LGBTQ+ community as examples. 

An ally of the LGBTQ+ community would be a person like my roommate; she is completely supportive, is eager to learn about my community, she stands behind me and says “Yas queen love who you want” (quite literally).

An advocate of the LGBTQ+ community would be a person like my coworker; she is constantly fighting for change, tabling for visibility, calling senators to try and sway their vote, and organizing events.

Both are super vital; in my head, one is more personal (ally) and one is more political (advocate).

Like I said, both are very important. 

I chose advocate because I want to influence policy to improve schooling for everyone. And I am very excited to start this badge.