Class Without the Kyriarchy

I got all the students back in the condition they left. No injuries and no life altering winter breaks!

Two colleagues asked me for advice on behavior management? I feel like such an imposter.

I am championing challenge math for a student who needs it and more support for other students who also need it (I mean normal teacher stuff, right?).

We are FINALLY bringing back a music integration unit!!

We are in process for scheduling a field trip to a mosque and a church!

It seems like there is a plan in place to cover parental leave of my team member!

I'm making progress on report cards.

I'm mostly on top of email.

Ok, that was a long drought. There were still wins though. For this week

Great curriculum development with the team

I think I had a good start on my new leadership role

Most of the class is done with the post assessment for realistic fiction

I have a plan for parent teacher conference prep

I am actually paid up for the conference I'm presenting at

I did SO MUCH grading

Book Title: Grounded: A Novel

Author: Aisha Saeed, Huda Al-Marashi, Jamilah Tompkins-Bigelow, S.K. Ali

Reading Level: 701 Lexile

Length: 272 pgs

Summary: Feek and his sister Ruqi, Hanna, Sami, and Nora are stuck in Zora Neal Hurston Airport (fictional) on the way back from a Muslim conference. The kids are not connected and struggling with their own challenges: Feek wants to rap with his father instead of babysitting his kid sister. Hanna wants to rescue Snickerdoodle, a cat who went missing a week ago in the airport as well as avoid talking to her dad about his possible remarriage. Sami wants to make it to his Karate competition, and show everyone how brave he is. Nora wants to celebrate her birthday the way her Congresswoman mom promised.

Brought together by Hanna's determination and all of their compassion (and sometimes other motivations) to help find Snickerdoodle, the four kids come together. They become friends and support each other in seeing themselves in new ways and asking for what they need from their adults! And yes, they find the cat.

Tags: immigration, bullying, friendship, speaking up, grief/loss, parent remarriage, girl main character, boy main character, sibling relationships, parenting siblings, Islam, parental expectations, parent/child fight, supportive adults, racism, ageism, animal rights activism, anxiety, children on social media,

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Setting: South (?) United States

Recommended For: fans of friendship books (a la Babysitter's Club and Smile), social justice, talking about family expectations, folks with siblings, athletes, folks who kind of want to be superheroes

Book Title: Front Desk

Author: Kelly Yang

Reading Level: Lexile 640

Length: 304 pgs

Summary: Mia Tang and her family live in a motel they run. However it's not their motel, so even though her parents work nonstop, most of the money they make goes to Mr. Yao. To make things worse 1) Mia pretends to have a totally different life at school 2) Mr. Yao's son Jason is the only other Asian person in her class 3) Mia's mom just wants her to focus on math and she loves to write.

Mia thinks her writing can take her family away from the motel and all their problems, but that also means loosing the community of motel residents and her new friend Lupe. Ultimately, Mia finds a creative and powerful solution to care for her family and community.

Tags: immigration, undocumented immigration, bullying, friendship, speaking up, grief/loss, girl main character, church, working class, school, parental expectations, parent/child fight, supportive adults, racism, Chinese American, police racism

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Setting: Anaheim area, CA, USA

Recommended For: Fans of historical fiction, social justice, discussing race relations, talking about family expectations

Prompt and mostly positive parent contacts!

Guest speaker program is nearly full!

Clear communication with my students on behavior when not appropriate

I read the letters they wrote me and AWWWWW. I need to write back.

I got students copies of their schedule

Students are taking leadership in arranging class jobs (and volunteer positions)

I've done lots of grading

Really enjoyed problem solving with a colleague on giving feedback

So tired but I know there are some wins in here:

I stood up for myself and explained to the boss why I think we shouldn't hang my country's flag in my classroom.

The math specialist somehow convinced everyone she should push into my math class, which is the largest, even though my students are "advanced".

No one cried (I mean students, though teachers didn't either) in class this week!

We may have figured out a way to give my grade leadership opportunities in the school!

All/key students have chosen to follow directions rather than talk to the principal about why they're refusing to do work.

I'm collaborating/organizing with my colleagues as we work on accreditation.

Tried to update math unit, even though it didn't work out.

I'm planning ahead for Teach Central America Week and Banned Books Week!

At least some of the class is super excited about the geography games.

So many good things!

I started wearing my pronoun buttons because there are several they/them students in my class and I want them to know there are proud queer adults

It is so amazing to come into the year knowing the name of almost every one of my students. I LOVE THIS.

I have so many younger siblings. I have now taught all the siblings in MOAR families! Though there are a few where I didn't get the last sibling and that is sad.

My former students/former parents tell their peers that I'm an awesome/fun/all the happy things teacher. I never thought of this as a goal but it feels so good to have A Reputation as a teacher people want.

I drafted a doc of grade wide norms so that the millions of teachers of 4th grade can all be on the same page (literally? Is it literal if it's virtual?) about things like what students can do during lunch and what fidgets are allowed and how we write down homework at the end of the day. Admin has distributed it to the whole elementary school to encourage each grade to do this (which was low key my goal).

I've already graded and returned work.

I've shared my summer work and colleagues gave me props.

A teacher of one of my students from last year came to me for advice. I'm happy to advise and so happy to do more to support this student.

My main takeaway from this article is that I am very far away from the political opinions of most (White?) teachers. Like most of these teachers, I didn't know that undocumented students were entitled to public schooling, but I sure as hell wouldn't report any students I thought or knew were undocumented. Or their families.

Questions

I'm not sure at this time.

To Do

This article focuses on a group of Black teachers at a Southern school, and how they apply pedagogies of resistance. The athors focus on resistance in three ways: authenticity and vulnerability, building anti-racism into the curriculum, fostering self-advocacy among the students.

I deeply appreciate the article's historical grounding and discussion of how Brown V Board deeply hurt Black teachers (and in lots of ways Black communities). I wish we could go back in time and keep all those educators in the field. The smarts, the experience, and the wisdom of those Black educators would bring tremendous benefit to education. God, I mean a bunch of them are still alive.

The other part of this article that felt very valuable was the discussion of the special (double?) burden dealt with by Black teachers. They have to negotiate being a minority amongst teachers (i.e. the racism) and also support their own students (of color) in dealing with racism and other oppression. Yipes that's a lot of extra emotional labor.

Questions

Is there a way to tap the wisdom of the Black teachers disenfranchised after integration?

I love the commitment to self-advocacy for students; I think all students need it. My question is: since my students are mostly privileged, do they need a sense of other advocacy? Minority advocacy? Solidarity? I don't know what the right term is there and I need to ponder how to develop it.

To Do

At lot of this article feels self evident to me. Students need some sort of down time to connect with each other. They need the connection to be able to collaborate well, take risks and grow. Joy is a key part of the connections students make with each other and the teacher. Sometimes the joy doesn't seem to go anywhere, but it still benefits student learning.

Questions

I'm not sure I have any at this time.

To Do

To me this article emphasizes the importance of down time, which is supposed to be anathema to a well run classroom. I want to have that down time though. I think to do it I need build in a transition routine that gives students a chance to have that down time and come out of it.

This matches my school. There is a shallow curriculum where race is concerned. We are not all on the same page in terms of understandings of race and power. I try to talk to my students about the historical weight of words (the N word, the R word, more). I don't feel very good at talking to them about power.

If I was teaching about the US there would be natural inroads for it. I just need to find ways to use the natural inroads about country relationships. That's what I'm working toward now.

Questions

How can I emphasize the agency of BIPOC people?

To Do

I love the idea of backstitching in a lesson. Thinking about the articles I've read, it may be more of an anti-colonial lesson format. Students definitely benefit from circling back to the ideas. I typically discuss bias, stereotypes, and prejudice with my students, but not discrimination and privilege. It would help me and them to add discrimination and privilege to the discussion.

Questions

Given that we have discussions about stereotypes at the beginning of the year, when am I integrating discussions about power and privilege?

This seems like the right structure for math. Do I already backstitch in math? If not, how can i?

To Do

Something about the format/methodology of this article speaks to me. The minority centered and collaborative nature of it, perhaps?

I want students to have complicated understandings of history and develop a critical lens for reading the world. I want to better understand and teach post-colonial history.

I do my best to teach about other countries from their first person voices. I'm thinking about how to teach about country relations grounded in a historical knowledge of colonialism.

Questions

Is there more I can do to teach post colonially? Teach them why we learn this way, I guess.

Isn't patriotism a poison pill? How can I teach 9 year olds to be proud of a country that has made so many mistakes?

To Do

I found this article very generative. While I'm not a librarian, having a diverse library and integrating diverse books into my curriculum is one of my special interests. I am jazzed about the book recommendations and happy to see that there are some I do not know!

I talk with my team a lot about books as doors and mirrors, but the reference to books as sliding glass doors from Bishop 1990 felt new to me. I often feel like my students struggle with the books I get them as windows because they lack the cultural context. I think books like Any Day With You or The First Rule of Punk are awesome, but students will engage with them as a read aloud, but not engage independently (those texts have been given back to me as "not my thing"). Maybe the books weren't the students' thing or maybe it was too unfamiliar.

Questions:

I wonder how I can use the racial literacy development model described by Sealy-Ruiz. If I understand this article it's for teacher educators to use with pre-service teachers. But, how can I help my students critically reflect on their identities or biases? How can I help them analyze power? Such big questions.

Can I some how build this power analysis into teaching the students about countries of the world? Are they old enough/do they have enough context to think about who has power and who doesn't? As well as what that might mean?

To Do:

Use the one observation (how can I explain that?!), one connection, one question one surprise

Develop discussion questions that model rethinking personal bias.

Get more of these books:

This article made me think about how teacher preparation programs often doubly fail teachers of color. Since the majority of folks in the program are white, it seems sensible for a teacher preparation program to help these white future teachers confront their whiteness and privilege. However, that doesn't support teachers of color in the program. White (future) teachers definitely need to think about the role that race and other personal identities impact their teaching and the lives of their students. I agree with the author that it doesn't make sense for everyone in a teacher program to do that, because BIPOC folks don't have that privilege to deconstruct.

I love the author's use of Bondy et al.'s social justice framework, centering "ways to transform injustice rather than just minimizing it". That seems like something every teacher should learn and learn how to APPLY.

To Do:

Think more about this. Yes this is a disgustingly vague to do.

Questions: A critical part of culturally responsive teaching, and thus social justice teaching, is affirming students' ways of knowing and valuing their culture. How can I do that and activate their prior knowledge without crossing the line into pushing them to overshare?

I was hoping this would have something I could bring to school to think about the grief my community is holding from the Oct 7th Israel attacks. I really feel like my community hasn't expressed this grief in a productive way and it's leading to a shit ton of dysfunction, violence and death. I didn't get anything for that in this article. I did get a reminder of how hard the pandemic was and a reminder of how much my privilege isolated me from the worst of the pandemic. This was a really well written first person narrative and analysis.

To do:

Find the book We Want to Do More than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom

Questions I have: