I'm on our local school board!

[Fluke a Snooker]

I have been appointed to our local school board, where we assist teachers and other educators in our district (two middle schools, one high school) determine their curriculum. This is a great moment, as we get to go over the book lists and start replacing outdated books and help our teachers with their lesson plans. My main focus will be on the two middle schools' social justice classes, and ensuring that all the students will be cognizant of social justice policies that will be necessary for them to advance to high school with non-biased, non-oppressive agendas.

To that end, I'll be sharing some of our process with you, and hope we can share with other educators and learn how to get our students to think for themselves, especially as history is happening on a daily basis that will transform our country away from its racist founding principles and toward a global, inclusive society.

[bobbieinok]

1. Great idea about sharing

PLEASE title each new post in a way that we will recognize it's the next part of the conversation.

[Fluke a Snooker]

2. Not sure what you mean by titling new posts

In any case, I'm preparing a lesson plan for our teachers about the recent atrocities in Charlottesville. This will be painful, as the classes are 40% white and 60% others, but will have to be done in a way that will allow all students to understand their own need to learn this material without criticizing others in the class. I only have a week to do this, so I won't be posting too much.

[blueinredohio]

4. It's nice to know some children will be taught against racism

When Obama was elected and gave his speech about staying in school kids in northwest Ohio were not allowed to watch. But we are 3/4 republican.

[Fluke a Snooker]

5. My first success: We used Colin Kaepernick's courageous action to facilitate a class decision!

We have introduced many concepts to our middle school teachers to incorporated into their school curriculum, including a priority on participation in active social justice programs. One of my projects was to introduce the ability for students to make their decision on their own adherence to patriotism via the "Pledge of Alegiance." The materials I presented involved the protests that were started by NFL Quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other sports members, mostly of color, were enough so that teachers were able to show the systematic racial oppression this country has brought about many of its citizens. To that end, we used this lesson to allow the students, as a live exercise, to vote on whether or not they should recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Not one student voted in favor of retaining this hypocritical practice! This opened the eyes to a lot of students, particularly to their awareness of race relations in class, and we will be using this learning experience to explore how destructive constructs like fossil fuel reliance, capitalism, and undemocratic voting practices can be alleviated in the future.