Are you a do-gooder liberal bigot?

The Philadelphia Student Union exists to build the power of young people to demand a high quality education in the Philadelphia public school system. We are a youth led organization and we make positive changes in the short term by learning how to organize to build power. We also work toward becoming life-long learners and leaders who can bring diverse groups of people together to address the problems that our communities face.

Hiram Rivera is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Student Union.  Hiram Rivera is a native of New Haven, CT, a father, an activist, and an organizer. He started his career in youth organizing as a coordinator at Youth Right’s Media in New Haven, training Black and Latino students in video production and campaign organizing around Education & Juvenile Justice issues. He most recently served as Youth Organizing Coordinator at the Urban Youth Collaborative in New York City, where he provided strategic and technical support to the community organizations that make up the UYC, as well as coordinating the city-wide campaigns to reform the NYC public school system.

Hiram Rivera posted this on Facebook today, June 9, 2017:

I attended what will probably be my last school district hosted meeting of my PSU career earlier this week. A meeting of principals, district staff, and advocacy orgs to discuss school discipline and the Code of Conduct. What ensued for almost 2 hours was a marathon venting session by elementary school principals and district staff where they very angrily complained about not being able to suspend and remove kindergartners from class, how they were victimized by the hordes of "knife totting" 3rd graders, how "those kids'" lacked positive role models at home, how "those" parents are just as "violent" as their children and "don't know how to conduct themselves inside institutions and buildings." How the real problem is that "their parents", said in the most soft spoken empathetic tone one would use when describing a helpless creature you can't save, lack "morals" and "values" and are therefore unable to pass those on to their children.
As my time at PSU comes to close I left the district, probably for the last time, reminded that our children go to schools run by people who hate them, and hate their families. By do-gooder liberal bigots and the Black faces who hold their water in the name of being an example of how you too can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The school district of Philadelphia and a good number of its principals are wicked, wicked people who see our children as godless savages who are inherently helpless and dangerous, and have no problem expressing that openly if you ever have time to sit through one of their internal meetings.
There is no reforming that.
"They send us to school to learn how to be so disgusting. We send our children to places of learning operated by men (and women) who hate us and hate the truth. Burn it."- George Jackson, Soledad Brother

Out of Wonder by Kwame Alexander

Powerhouse poet Alexander, along with friends Colderley and Wentworth, offers a culturally rich collection of poetic tributes that extends the legacies of poets from around the globe.

With mixed-media illustrations by Caldecott honoree Holmes that are just as vibrant as the words and stories that accompany them, the anthology brings readers through a time- and world-traveling adventure of the poetic imagination. Eras, places, and cultures represented include ancient times, 20th-century, contemporary, Japan, Uganda, African-American, Native American, Latino, and white, too. This cross-cultural exploration embraces the timeless power of poetry, as Alexander’s preface makes clear, “to reach inside of you, to ignite something in you, and to change you in ways you never imagined.” The tributes to such legendary poets as Rumi, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou both serve as homage, transparent in their honest gratitude for their inspiration and wisdom, and emulate their distinctive styles. “Snapshots,” Colderley’s poem celebrating Nikki Giovanni, reads in part, “poetry is…barbecue…cotton candy…purple skin beets from Daddy’s garden… / blues…the Birdland jazz club…Sunday morning gospel…chasing justice…freedom…,” capturing Giovanni’s subject matter and stylized punctuation use. This book is sure to be an educator’s lucky charm for a survey-of-poetry unit and is also a perfect entryway for families to wonder and explore together. Brief notes introduce the three sections, and thumbnail biographies of the poets celebrated are appended.

A magnificent exploration of the poetic imagination. - Kirkus Review

Make Me! Understanding and Engaging Student Resistance in School

In the book Dr. Toshalis explores student resistance through a variety of perspectives, drawing on four domains of inquiry: theoretical, psychological, political, and pedagogical, to argue that oppositional behaviors can be not only instructive but also productive. Toshalis says, “The focus of teachers’ efforts should not be about managing adolescents but about learning how to read their behavior and respond to it in develop-mentally productive, culturally responsive, and democratically enriching ways.” Toshalis hopes educators will use this book as a resource to address pervasive classroom challenges in ways that enhance student agency, motivation, engagement, and academic achievement.

Engaging Resistance

Helping educators build responsive
and rigorous learning communities
using research-proven practices
grounded in the struggle for equity.

The field of education is anything but static. Reform efforts abound, as do the inevitable controversies that swirl around them. How to locate oneself and position one's work in such a dynamic context is a primary challenge for today's educators. 

But as much as things change in our districts, schools, and classrooms, many of our thorniest problems remain the same. Disproportionate disciplinary outcomes, inequitable achievement results, alarming graduation/pushout/dropout rates, increasing segregation, insufficient college and career readiness, rampant poverty, institutionalized racism, and many more issues show us how far we have to go to realize the potential of our schools. To address such trends and successfully navigate the shifting terrain on which good teaching and learning occurs, educators need to be responsive: culturally, politically, ethically, professionally, interpersonally, and locally. 

Dr. Toshalis is committed to supporting educator responsiveness and to cultivating forms of accountability that bolster teacher professionalism rather than deplete it. 

• Culturally responsive classroom discipline: Equity, safety, productivity—and fun!
• Counter-intuitive teaching: Using student opposition to enhance motivation
• Transforming adolescents: The role of possibility and imagination in our work with youth
• Interpretive gaps: The differences between teacher & student perspectives, and why they matter
• Motivation and engagement: The how and the what of good teaching
• Reaching the organizer within: Self-regulation and the struggling learner
• Making things happen: Risk-taking and resistance in adolescents
• Disproportionate disciplinary outcomes: Roots of the problem & low-hanging fruit
• Meaning-making, not just note-taking: Busy-work and student (mis)behavior
• What kind of classroom manager are you? An inventory and improvement plan
• The teacher's checklist for an engaging classroom
• Quick strategies for collegial engagement and continuous improvement
• Teaching through questioning: Asking your way to deeper learning 
• I win, you lose: The toxicity of praise
• Self-esteem is a dead end, but self-efficacy rocks!
• Responding to anger in the classroom: Taking the heat, not the bait
• White women's tears and White men's facts: Overcoming barriers to racial equity
• "You're picking on me because I'm Black": Engaging racialized accusations
• The whiteness of behavioral norms and turn-taking in classroom talk
• Racial identity formation and students' need to resist school
• The teaching myths that drive inequity, pushout, and underachievement
• How we provoke student resistance through "common sense" practices
• Building a classroom management plan anchored in equity and research
• Adolescent cognitive development and the brain-based classroom
• Avoidance and self-handicapping: Making your classroom an unsafe space for intentional failure
• Skipping class: How to recognize and remove the classism that may be infecting school practices
• Feeling known and understood: The social-emotional factors that shape student engagement
• Assimilation isn't good for kids (or teachers): Prioritizing authenticity in classrooms and schools
• Dangerous dignity: Student who resist to survive and what you can do to help them
• Not taking student resistance personally (even when it is)

Defining, Developing, and Supporting Effective Teachers in Urban Schools

Gangstas, Wankstas, and Ridas

The idea that hope alone will transform the world, and action undertaken in that kind of naïveté, is an excellent route to hopelessness, pessimism, and fatalism. But the attempt to do without hope, in the struggle to improve the world, as if that struggle could be reduced to calculated acts alone, or a purely scientific approach, is a frivolous illusion. (Freire, 1997, p. 8)

At the end of the day, effective teaching depends most heavily on one thing: deep and caring relationships. Herb Kohl (1995) describes “willed not learning” as the phenomenon by which students try not to learn from teachers who don’t authentically care about them. The adage “students don’t care what you know until they know that you care” is supported by numerous studies of effective educators (Akom, 2003; Delpit, 1995; Duncan-Andrade, 2007; Ladson-Billings, 1994). To provide the “authentic care” (Valenzuela, 1999) that students require from us as a precondition for learning from us, we must connect our indignation over all forms of oppression with an audacious hope that we can act to change them. Hokey hope would have us believe this change will not cost us anything. This kind of false hope is mendacious; it never acknowledges pain. Audacious hope stares down the painful path; and despite the overwhelming odds against us making it down that path to change, we make the journey again and again. There is no other choice. Acceptance of this fact allows us to find the courage and the commitment to cajole our students to join us on that journey. This makes us better people as it makes us better teachers, and it models for our students that the painful path is the hopeful path.

-- Jeff Duncan-Andrade

This might be something to talk about...

Protesters at Minneapolis school board meeting force action on discipline policy and staff decisions

"...One place that children can interact with stories on a regular basis is the library..."

The Importance of Diversity in Library Programs and Material Collections for Children

"...Children encounter diversity on a regular basis in their interactions with others at home, in school, or around their neighborhood. As our nation continues to diversify, it is essential that children learn to understand the important role of their culture and the cultures of other people in creating an overall global culture respectful of differences. One way that children learn about the world around them and other cultures is through the social messages found in stories. Stories help children understand how society perceives their culture as well as the cultures of their classmates, teachers, caregivers, and others, thereby influencing their social and identity development. Stories can be found in traditional print materials for children or in newer digital formats. Regardless of the format for delivering a story’s message, children are greatly influenced by the stories they encounter. One place that children can interact with stories on a regular basis is the library..."

Written for the Association for Library Service to Children by Jamie Campbell Naidoo, PhD

25 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity with Students

How do we get students to consider perspectives different from their own? How do we get them to challenge their own biases and prejudices? If, as Atticus Finch famously said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” how do we get our students to do that?

25 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity with Students