A Little Child Shall Lead Them

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

-Anne Frank, age 15, March 26, 1944

I love this quote. I found it in Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama and it captures what I most believe about the world and about the beauty of young folks.

On my trip through the south I was blown away by the number of young children and students who put their lives on the line for equity. From the first graders like Leandrew Wiggins, who was one of the Memphis 13 to integrate city schools in 1961, to the thousands of Birmingham youth who were blasted by high-powered fire hoses, attacked by police dogs, and jailed as they marched for their basic human and civil rights, these young folks recognized that something very real was very wrong with society and they took action to change that.

Many of them lost their lives. We often hear about the four little girls – Cynthia Wesley, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, and Carole Robertson – who were murdered on September 15, 1963 at 10:22 am when a bomb planted by a klansman in Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church exploded. Three of them of were 14-years old and one was 11, the ages of my middle school students in the Bronx. They could have been my kids.

We rarely hear about two young black boys who were also killed that day. Virgil Ware, a 13-year old, was shot and killed by a white teenager while riding on the handle bars of his brother’s bike and Johnny Robinson, a 16-year old, was shot in the back by white Birmingham police officer Jack Parker.

I also think about the Freedom Riders, young college students from diverse racial background who came from all over the country to help integrate interstate buses and show solidarity with their black brothers and sisters. They were beaten, killed, set on fire, and attacked because they believed in integration. Would I have been so brave? Would I have left UC Berkeley, like many Freedom Riders did, to head south and make history?

There’s something incredibly powerful about young folks. The way they think. The way they commit. The way they engage. Their deep belief that anything is possible. As I reflect on how I’ll share this journey with my students I think a lot about what issues and injustices my kids feel most strongly about. Are there things that they would be willing to be beaten for? Attacked for? Die for?  Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that they are part of a structured system that sets them and their families up – again and again – for failure.

In Martin Luther King’s eulogy for the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing he said, “They have something to say to each of us in their death…They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.”

It’s more than 50 years later and we’re still dealing with systemic structures that oppress people of color and economically poor people in our country. This month 50-year old Walter Scott was shot in the back by white South Carolina police office Michael Slager. How much longer will white men in uniform think that it’s OK to kill black men and boys? 50-year old Walter Scott is 16-year old Johnny Robinson.

How are we as educators encouraging our youth to speak up against injustice? Are we helping them develop the skills to organize against racist, sexist, classist, and homophobic systems and structures? How are we supporting them to become critical thinkers, consumers, and challengers of the status quo?

During the civil rights era, segregation and second-class citizenship were the status quo.

Today, on the surface, our status quo looks a lot different but segregation and second-class citizenship are alive and well. I see it everyday in my school and community in the south Bronx. From high-asthma rates as a result of environmental racism to living in one of the poorest congressional districts in the nation, my students and families are treated like second-class citizens day in and day out. 

So where do we start?

I look to my kids – with all of their adolescent quirks, their connections, and their digital tools – to lead us in not waiting a single moment before starting to improve the world. I look to my colleagues, families, and community to help develop strategies and methods for supporting our kids in changing the status quo so that it’s one where we're dismantling the system that Dr. King spoke about, instead of perpetuating it.

I look to the youth who more than 50 years ago risked and sacrificed their lives for freedom, equity, and the basic right to be treated as a human being. Their courage, intellect, and strength humble me and remind me that if they could do it then, my kids and I can do it, and then some, now. If we don’t know where we’ve been, we won’t know where we’re going. Infinite gratitude and thanks for those who have come before us.

Add These to Your "Places to Go Before I Die" List

I’ve just returned from seven days in the south – a place I have a strange fascination with. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Los Angeles and would recognize the stark differences between my hometown and Wilmington, North Carolina – my dad’s hometown – when I spent summers there as a kid with my grandparents. Maybe it’s because I didn’t experience the overt racism that I heard was so present in the south. Maybe it’s because I wanted to be more closely connected to the histories and experiences of my ancestors.

Whatever the reason, I decided that this year I’d spend my spring break taking a solo road trip across four southern states to visit places important to the U.S. civil rights movement. I flew into Little Rock, Arkansas, rented a car, and over the course of a week made my way east to Montgomery, Alabama. I wanted each day to be meaningful but also relaxing. It was spring break after all and as a middle school teacher in April, you know that I needed some chill time. I tried to find that balance. Below you can see the powerful places I visited each day.

As you can imagine I learned a ton on this journey and had so many takeaways. Over the course of the next few days I’ll share some of my reflections from this impactful trip in separate blog posts. The first will be on the power of youth to lead, the second will examine the role of the arts in the movement, and the third will focus on the numerous untold and untaught histories I encountered on this journey.

Every single person in the United States – and the world! – should put this journey on their  “Places to Go Before I Die” list. It’s strange and saddening to say that many of our elders - from diverse backgrounds, races, and religions - put their lives on the line so that we would have the freedom to take this type of journey. Some of us – youth and elders - are still dying today. While we’ve come a long way as a nation we still have a very long way to go.

My Daily Gratitude

For the length of 2014 I wrote a daily gratitude on an index card and hung it on my wall. It was a way to remind myself of the many blessings I encountered everyday. On December 31, 2014 I read through every single one of those 365 index cards and reflected on my year, my struggles, my triumphs, and my incredible community.

The process was so beneficial for me that I decided to continue it for 2015 and spice it up a bit. Since the beginning of my return to the classroom didn’t go as smoothly as I anticipated I decided that every day for the rest of this school year I’d tweet something I was grateful for in relation to my work as a teacher and learner. I started on our first day back, January 5, 2015 and kept it up throughout the month. A few of my highlights are below but you can check out the entire feed on my Twitter page @GenevieveDeBose. I think I tagged most of them with #bk2thept (the hashtag shortened version of my blog title “Back to the Point”) so you can follow that too.

Teachers, when days are tough or lessons don’t go quite as you planned how do you stay grounded in the beauty and importance of your work? Please share in the comments section below and know that I’m grateful for your thoughts.

Writing for an Authentic Audience

Last week my 7th grade students and I submitted an application for a $2500 grant to reduce the amount of trash and rats in our community of Hunts Point and Longwood in the Bronx. Citizens Committee for New York City is an incredible organization that awards Neighborhood Grants to groups of community members who want to improve something in their neighborhood. Their website says, “Through our Neighborhood Grants, Citizens Committee awards micro-grants of up to $3,000 to resident-led groups to work on community and school projects throughout the city. We prioritize groups based in low-income neighborhoods and Title I public schools. Recent awards have enabled neighbors to come together to make healthy food available in their communities, transform empty lots into community gardens, organize tenants to advocate for better housing conditions, and start school recycling drives.” I’m hopeful that we get the grant and inspired by my young adolescents who saw a need in their community and collectively cam together to brainstorm ways to fix it. As one of my students shared, “I shouldn’t have to walk past a dead cat on my way to school.”

Read a bit of our grant application below and let us know in the comments section what experience you’ve had with students and community-based projects. How do you create an authentic audience for your students and their writing?

AN EXCERPT FROM OUR APPLICATION

Please briefly describe your group’s purpose, history, and accomplishments (maximum: two short paragraphs).

We are a group of seventh graders who are scholar activists. We are all amazing students who are willing to help clean up our community because we are tired of seeing rats running and trash laying around. Our group name is Beauty of the Bronx and our purpose is to improve and beautify our neighborhoods of Hunts Point and Longwood. We don’t really have any history because we are new to this and this is something we have never done before. In our English Language Arts class we are completing a unit on scholar activism. One of our guiding questions is, “How can we improve our community?” So far we have learned about a number of scholar activists and how they have improved their communities. We don’t have a lot of accomplishments yet but are hopeful that with this grant we can accomplish a lot in Hunts Point and Longwood. 

Describe your project and its goals (maximum one page).

Beauty of the Bronx is a community-based effort to clean up the Hunts Point and Longwood communities of the Bronx. We plan to do a number of things to clean up the streets and decrease the rat population in our neighborhoods. Some of these things include:

• Holding community meetings to share information and solicit community input about best ways to reduce the amount of trash and number of rats in our communities.
• Holding fun and lively spring community clean up days where volunteers come together to clean up the streets of Hunts Point and Longwood.
• Increasing the number of trash cans in our community and working with the Sanitation Department to paint new and existing trash cans bright colors so they stand out and people are drawn to them.
• Creating and putting up colorful signs in the community to remind people to throw trash in cans and curb their dogs.
• Increasing the number of tree guards and flowers around trees so that people are less likely to throw their trash there.
• Creating posts with bags for people to use to clean up after their dogs poop on the ground.
• Going to local schools, bodegas, and community organizations to do teach-ins about the trash and rat problem in our neighborhood and share ways that people can become involved.

 Our goals are to 1) decrease the amount of trash thrown on the ground, 2) decrease the rat population, 3) increase the number of trash cans, 4) educate people about the dangers of trash and rats, and 5) encourage people to join our campaign.

Picking My Battles

I’ve been struggling with something lately. My students have this very strong aversion to any field trip experience that a) is connected to what we’re learning or b) involves work. It seems that they’re used to field trips that are “just for fun” and involve the movies or some sort of play space. When I told them about today’s trip to the Museum of the City of New York to explore the exhibit “Taking a Stand: Activism in New York City” more than a few students said, “Aw miss. I’m not coming that day. Museums are boring.”

A huge part of my work as a teacher is exposing my students to the world outside of their neighborhood and as an English Language Arts teacher I know that building my students’ background knowledge is key to them growing as readers, writers, listeners, and speakers. So you can see why I struggle with their reaction to our fieldwork experiences.

Today, of the 26 students in my first period class only 13 came. Many were absent – I think because they didn’t want to go on the trip – and five were at school but said they didn’t bring back their permission slips because they didn’t want to go. For some of them, I even called their families before we left and got permission from their parents but the students still made it clear they weren’t interested in participating.   

That’s when I decided to pause, reassess, and pick my battles. If a 7th grade student really doesn’t want to go on a fieldwork experience do I force them to go? One on hand, that’s my job as their teacher. By design, I am meant to help expose them to what’s beyond the Hunts Point and Longwood communities. On the other hand, why risk ruining the experience for the rest of my students by bringing along a group who has made it clear they don’t want to be there? (A little piece of me died when I typed that last sentence.) But this is what I’ve been processing and thinking through all year. When do I push kids? When do I let things slide? Is it OK to lower my expectations sometimes? Does every child need to have access to the same experience? Am I setting students up for failure by demanding that they do something they may not be ready for? Are they really “not ready” or just not interested? Are those two the same thing sometimes?

After a short discussion with my colleagues we decided not to engage in the battle. We gathered our thirteen students – only 50% of our first period class – and traveled to the museum. We learned a ton from a phenomenal museum educator named Maeve, made buttons about an issue we want to change, and even saw our Hunts Point community members highlighted in the exhibit for their work to revive the South Bronx in the 1970s. Don’t Move, Improve.

After the winter break, I’ll take my other two classes to the museum to explore the same exhibit. I’ll do all I can to encourage students to attend – reach out to their parents, share how much fun we’ll have, and enlist some positive peer pressure from those who went today. A recent conversation with my principal – after he observed one of my afternoon lessons derail – reminded me that change takes time. I may not get all of my students to want to go to the museum this time around but I’m hopeful that by the end of the school year their aversion to fieldwork will shift towards enthusiasm.