The Power of the Arts: Where did they go?

“No artist can sit in an ivory tower, discussing the problems of the day, and come up with a solution on a piece of paper. The artist has to be down on the ground; he has to hear the sounds of the people, the cries of the people, the sufferings of the people, the laughter of the people – the dark side and the bright side of our lives.”

- Emory Douglas, Black Panther Party Minister of Culture

I am an artist. I always have been although I didn’t label myself as such until I became an adult. I’m not professionally trained in any medium but I love to have my hands and feet and voice and body in any and all kinds of creative expression. I’ll never forget my tenth grade English teacher’s class where for some reason I could never get above a B on a paper but during an oral presentation unit when I transformed myself into Nikki Giovanni and stood in front of my peers to share some of her poetry and stories from her life, I received one of the highest grades in the class. There’s something about performing, about creating, about expressing that just feels right in my body and my soul.

Before my Civil Rights spring break journey even started I decided that I would sketch my way through the south. In each city I’d spend some time drawing places or people who were crucial to the civil rights movement. Creating art calms me. It makes me feel at home. It grounds me. I wanted to create that same environment on my journey.

Throughout the week I was reminded again and again how crucial the arts were to the movement. The Freedom Songs. Posters from the Black Panther Party’s Minister of Culture Emory Douglas. Quilters from Gee’s Bend. Ernest C. Withers, a Memphis photographer, who documented much of the movement. The countless present day murals I encountered in every city I visited depicting key messages and people from this crucial time.

The arts were alive and vital to the movement. They are just as alive and vital to today’s movements. Some of the pieces created around Trayvon Martin’s death and the #BlackLivesMatter movement have inspired me and reminded me how important it is that we connect to and express ourselves in a variety of ways - so that each and every one of us can contribute, express, and be part of creating change in our communities.

It got me thinking about the slow removal of the arts from our country’s schools. Many of our kids don’t have access to dance, music, theater, and visual arts. Many decision-makers in education see ceramics as less valuable than English Language Arts. They think that mathematics is more important than West African dance and drumming. I couldn’t disagree more.

I went to a music academy for high school where I took piano, marching band, and music theory alongside AP Comparative Politics, Calculus, and Physical Education. My peers performed in musical theater and jazz ensemble and had their visual artwork displayed throughout school hallways and across the city. The arts allowed me to find and become my full self. They helped me figure out who I was as a learner, how I best process information, what it means for me to truly know and master a skill or new content. I wouldn’t have done that if instead of piano I took a double block of mathematics – something that my 7th graders and many students in low-income, high-need schools experience.

Sketching my way through the south helped me better understand the history, the story, and the struggle of those involved in the civil rights movement. Spending 90 minutes in the balcony of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church to draw a stained glass window that was gifted to the church from the people of Wales after the bombing allowed me to gain a deeper appreciation for the humanity and support and love felt around the world for African Americans during this time. That gift, that expression, should be available to all – not just kids in affluent areas whose parents can donate and fundraise enough to hire an art teacher when district funds get cut.

Sketching my way through the south reminded me that as a teacher I need to advocate for the revival of arts classes during the day for students in public schools and that in the mean time I need to better integrate the arts into my 7th grade English Language Arts classroom. I’m grateful for the reminder but bothered by the fact that I even need it.

As artists, we play a vital role in creating change in our communities. As educators, we do the same. How do we best organize and advocate for the reintegration of the arts in our schools? How do we generate a nationwide appreciation for the arts? If we don’t we’re destined to have an entire generation of kids who are less compassionate, less expressive, and less connected to their communities.

Just like Emory Douglas said that no artist can sit in an ivory tower, discuss the problems of the day, and come up with solutions on a piece of paper, no education policy maker should be able to either. Those of us on the ground know our kids, their laughter, their cries, and their struggles. We also know their desire to be engaged, to love learning, and to discover and explore their whole selves while at school. Let’s bring the arts back into their lives so that they may be happy and engaged critical thinkers and creators.

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.