Teachers Unite Newsletter, December 2006

Kindergarten Standards

K.H.4: Grow theories/ ideas in response to a story or informational text.
K.M.2 Compare the length of two objects by representing each length with string or a paper strip.

These are two of the standards my students are supposed to meet by the end of the school year. There are no standards about learning how to solve conflicts using words, not hands (or feet or teeth or chairs); no expectations about learning how to make and be a friend; nothing about learning your body well enough to know where it ends and someone else’s begins, to say nothing of knowing how to ask to go to the bathroom before it’s an emergency. These are all critical parts of learning how to function in society, yet since there aren’t any standards for them, I’m not expected to spend any time teaching them.

There are schools where these things form the bulk of the curriculum, where feelings are talked about on a daily basis, where a six-year-old can say without prompting, “She hurt my feelings, so I wanted to make her feel as bad as I did. But that didn’t make me feel better and it didn’t solve the problem; it made the problem bigger.” Unfortunately, most of us don’t teach in those places. I don’t teach in one of those schools anymore, yet I manage to live with myself. How? While teaching standards, I slip in lessons about conflict resolution and social justice. I usually do my best teaching around read-alouds. There are many fantastic children’s books out there that deal with exactly the kinds of things I want my students to know, and the conversations that come out of these stories are invaluable.

“Farmer Brown has a problem. His cows like to type.” So begins Doreen Cronin’s Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type. I purposefully used this book last year during the MTA strike. The story is ostensibly about cows on a farm. Farmer Brown’s cows have found an old typewriter in the barn, and they type on it. One day, Farmer Brown wakes up to find a note: “Dear Farmer Brown, The barn is very cold at night. We’d like some electric blankets. Sincerely, The Cows.” So begins a labor struggle wherein labor wants better working conditions (electric blankets), and management is befuddled. Farmer Brown refuses, and the cows go on strike. “Sorry. We’re closed. No milk today,” graces the barn door. Soon, the hens get involved, and the cows negotiate on their behalf. The illustration shows several glaring hens, one of whom has a sign in her beak: “Closed. No milk. No eggs.” Farmer Brown is furious, and demands milk and eggs. He enlists Duck, a neutral party, to carry his ultimatum to the cows. After an emergency meeting, the cows suggest an agreement: they’ll exchange their typewriter for electric blankets. Farmer Brown decides this is a good deal; he leaves electric blankets outside the barn door, and waits for Duck to bring him the typewriter. Unfortunately for him, he is outsmarted, and the next day, instead of the typewriter, he receives a note. “Dear Farmer Brown. The pond is quite boring. We’d like a diving board. Sincerely, The Ducks.” The last page simply shows a duck diving off a plank.

It’s easy to cover standards such as “locate the title and name of the author of a book;” or “connect the information in text to life experiences,” as well as others, when reading this book. “Ultimatum” is a pretty great word for kindergarteners, and it’s surprisingly useful (“I’m giving you an ultimatum; if you keep running, you will have to take a break”). What I’m focusing on is the lesson within the book, the lesson that workers need to have safe and comfortable working conditions. We discuss what a strike is and why people (or cows) might go on strike. We even talk about what would be fair, and what Farmer Brown should do. During the MTA strike, we discussed why the bus drivers and train conductors were not working, and how there were lots of other people that make the system work that also were not working. Kids had questions about why someone wouldn’t treat workers fairly. We even somehow got into a long discussion about eating meat that comes from cows (!). If my supervisor had been there, he might not have noticed that we were doing anything other than “talking about books with peers and adults.” But I know, and the children know, that it was what we are talking about, not just that we are talking, that is important.

Kindergarten children aren’t ready to understand all the complexities of labor negotiations. However, they are developmentally able to think about what is fair and not fair. They didn’t make connections beyond knowing that the “strike” in the book was the same as the “strike” they were hearing about, but that’s okay. What I want to do is to plant the seeds of thinking about justice, so that, one day, maybe they’ll be the ones leading the strike, or, even better, be the management that treats workers so well, there will be no need to strike.

Laleña Garcia, a graduate of Yale University and Bank Street College of Education, teaches kindergarten in a charter school in Brooklyn, NY, where she doesn’t have to hide her passion for conflict resolution and social justice.

Black and Latino/a Teachers Strongly Encouraged to Apply

Veteran Black educator, activist and native Brooklynite, Sam Anderson, was recently asked five questions dealing with New York City's crisis of diminishing numbers of Black and Latino teachers as the student population becomes increasingly more Black and Latino.

Teachers Unite: How have the demographics of New York City's public school population, among teachers and students, changed since you've been involved in education?

Sam Anderson: Over the past 40 years New York City's public schools have gone from being comprised of predominantly white students to one that is now predominantly Black, Latino and Asian students.

However, when we look at the racial breakdown of the teaching and administrative staff, they are still overwhelmingly white to the point that nearly 80% of the teachers are white. All we have to do is look at the Department of Education's own data. More specifically, when we look at the sixteen year record of the racial breakdown of new hires, we see the re-enforcement of white teacher dominance clearly built into the DOE's personnel structure. Below are the data from the DOE about new hires (this was not easy to come by. But thanks to the persistent work of an Amsterdam News journalist, it is now in the public light).

------------------------------
Ethnicity of New Hires* by School Year: 1990-91 through 2005-06

School Year: Ethnicity
Amer. Indian Asian Black Hisp White Unknown
1990-91 0.3% 3.2% 16.0% 11.9% 49.5% 19.1%
1991-92 0.1% 3.2% 16.0% 15.3% 58.4% 6.9%
1992-93 0.3% 2.9% 17.9% 15.1% 59.6% 4.2%
1993-94 0.4% 3.1% 18.4% 13.9% 59.6% 4.5%
1994-95 0.3% 3.2% 23.4% 18.4% 53.9% 0.8%
1995-96 0.3% 3.1% 22.9% 18.4% 54.1% 1.3%
1996-97 0.3% 3.4% 19.0% 14.4% 60.3% 2.6%
1997-98 0.4% 3.8% 20.1% 15.3% 56.7% 3.7%
1998-99 0.2% 3.8% 22.1% 15.2% 57.5% 1.1%
1999-00 0.2% 4.4% 24.8% 16.4% 53.8% 0.5%
2000-01 0.2% 4.2% 25.5% 16.3% 53.3% 0.4%
2001-02 0.2% 4.9% 27.2% 14.3% 53.3% 0.2%
2002-03 0.2% 5.6% 20.1% 12.7% 61.1% 0.3%
2003-04 0.2% 7.2% 16.7% 10.6% 65.0% 0.3%
2004-05 0.2% 8.3% 16.0% 11.1% 63.3% 1.2%
2005-06 0.3% 7.2% 14.5% 11.7% 65.0% 1.3%
2006-07*0.3% 6.1% 14.1% 11.7% 65.5% 2.3%

*New Hires includes teachers who were hired between 8/25 through 10/31
of each year.
** Data on the 2006-07 New Hires is current as of 8.22.2006
--------------------------------

Today's DOE new hires are more skewed towards white teachers than 10 years ago! This is clearly a reflection of the mindset of the top DOE officials who surround themselves in Tweed with white professionals and Black & Latino supportive staff (from security to low-mid level administrative staff). In addition, this high level staff is dominated by non-educators... from Klein on down to the mid-level corporate-like structures overseeing the actual nuts and bolts of the schooling process.

TU: How does the racial makeup of the teacher population impact on the education of children of color?

SA: There has been numerous studies and books written about the importance of the racial and nationality makeup of the teachers to the transference of the desire to learn as well as the quality of teaching and learning that will go on in a school. It is the normalcy of racism that we are trying to neutralize as well as, therefore, the normalcy of internalizing self-hating racist ideas about ones self. Well-trained teachers of color working with children of color with a curriculum that also includes their culture, their people's contribution to the development of the world have proven that they can boost the intellectual quality of children of color.

There is, within this, the importance of a teacher to understand the verbal and visual (body) language of a child. Way too often, white teachers don't have a clue about this or grossly mis-interpret stuff in the negative... and wind up further alienating the child of color from the educational experience.

In addition, Black/Latino parents will be more receptive to and open to critical suggestions from teachers of color than a white teacher (who is seen as just another social worker trying to pry into and define their family life).

TU: What do you view as the most significant reasons for the falling numbers of teachers of color in NYC public schools?

SA: The current Bloomberg-Klein approach to teacher recruitment is to hire "far and white." That is, go outside of New York City and emphasize recruiting white teachers over Black/Latino teachers. They have spent tens of millions of dollars making teaching in NYC schools a palatable and hip thing for white folks to do.

We know this to be the case by just looking at the stats of new hires during Bloomberg's reign: from 61% up to 65% for white new hires while Black new hires went from 20.1% down to 14.1%... while the student population increased to be well over 85% students of color! This can only be called negative affirmative action (or affirmative action for mainly white women...who constitute the bulk of new hires).

I have been suggesting that the DOE REVERSE their recruitment practices and focus on a ten-year plan to bring Black/Latino/Asian teachers up to match the racial demographics of the city's school children. By reversal I mean setting up a structure that encourages Black/Latino community folk to return to school and trains them to become teachers. Have tuition free programs within the CUNY-SUNY system where residents of NYC can go through college and become teachers. Take that $50 million plus teacher recruitment money and set up a highly publicized campaign to get men and women from our 250 neighborhoods to join this new army of teachers. Incentives, besides free tuition can be that the DOE pay 50% of the rent while going to college and 100% of the rent for the first three years of teaching; free tuition for the children of the teachers as long as they are teaching in NYC schools.

The private teaching institutions- Bank St., Columbia University’s Teachers College, New York University, etc. would be encouraged to join this effort through the city fully subsidizing 50-100 students enrolled in the Community Teachers Program if they are accepted to these institutions.

TU: Are there, or has there ever been, support systems for recruiting, supporting and retaining teachers of color?

SA: There are currently no overt support systems for supporting and retaining teachers of color. If the DOE says they do have something, then it should be a blatant embarrassment for them when we look at their combined Black new hire and RETENTION records: There is a DIMINISHING presence of Black/Latino teachers in NYC schools.

Klein has used a lame excuse as to why there are so few Black/Latino new hires: they are not interested in teaching and can get a better salary and endure less stress in the corporate world. Obviously, this "excuse" can be used upon potential white teachers also. But the current recruitment campaign lures young white teachers with enticing incentives and slick ads.

TU: What else do you think needs to happen for there to be more teachers of color in our system?

SA: This transformation cannot happen under mayoral control of the city’s schools... and especially under the current Bloomberg-Klein education fiefdom. They will stall and stall ‘til term limits move Bloomberg and his administration out in 2008-09. Hence, what I am proposing is something to fight for under a new mayor AND within the fight to stop the permanent setup of mayoral control over public education.

 
For the past 40 years, Sam Anderson has been a mathematics professor and a student of Black history teaching in both fields at several of the New York metro area colleges and universities. He is currently finishing up teaching a course on Education Reform and Human Rights at New York University's Gallatin School as well as teaching a popular Black History course for union retirees at AFSCME's DC37. He is active in Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence (BNYEE), The Independent Commission on Public Education (ICOPE) and the State of Black Education (SOBE). He also sits on the Boards of the Malcolm X Museum and the Brecht Forum and is currently working with NYC radical math educators on convening a national Math and Social Justice conference set for April 2007.

What's New with Teachers Unite

Since the last online newsletter was posted, Teachers Unite received a grant from Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, kicked-off STMs (Sunday Teacher Motivators a.k.a. Shit, Tomorrow’s Monday), and started building a library of social justice pedagogical resources thanks in part to a donation from Rethinking Schools. These new beginnings point toward the development of a full-time center that supports New York City public school educators committed to fighting for social justice.

The members of this organization will set the direction of its programs. If you’re a public school teachers who cares about grassroots activism and progressive pedagogy, please contact info@teachersunite.net with your ideas, questions, needs and concerns. In the meantime, Teachers Unite provides a virtual center for educators to network and exchange supportive resources. The new online “Bulletin Board” features curricular resources that promote social justice, job postings for educational programs seeking progressive teachers, and events of interest for the social justice education community. Please visit this new link and post any resources you’d like to share.

In this abbreviated holiday issue of the Teachers Unite newsletter, you’ll find an interview with veteran education activist Sam Anderson addressing the shameful hiring trend of a school system in critical need of Black and Latino/a teachers. And thanks to Lalena Garcia, no one can say Kindergarten aged children can’t engage in critical discussions about equity and justice in our society; read her piece about addressing the issue of workers’ rights with young students.

Of course, if you’re proud of your students’ work that examines social and political inequities, engages the community and demonstrates student leadership as young activists, please brag about it by submitting a story to the Teachers Unite newsletter. Write to sally@teachersunite.net and pitch your idea.

Have a very happy holiday season!

In solidarity,

Sally Lee
Executive Director