Thousands Protest in CA!!

The folks at Youth Noise, who we've covered recently, did a great job organizing student groups all over California last week. In protest of Gov. Schwarzenegger's decision to cut $5 Billion from CA public schools' budgets students, teachers, parents, and community members spoke out on April 18th.

They even managed to get some media coverage (imagine! The media portaying a group of non-violent youth being civically engaged and advocating for things that matter to them...it's almost as if they are thinking, breathing citizens to whom we ought to direct resources should we want to preserve democracy...hmm!)

From KTVU in San Francisco:

“I feel like the state doesn’t realize how important education is,” said sophomore Lina Lin.

Kristy Morrison, an English teacher at Galileo, has been working to help organize Friday’s protest for the last month.

“Classes are already overcrowded,” she said, “and it’s going to get worse.”

Morrison said that students need to show adults that they can be active, in a nonviolent way, and that they are serious.

“Every wonderful thing this country—women’s right to vote, civil rights—everything happened with day to day people,” she said. “No politician made this happen.”

Morrison, who is tenured, said she works nearly 80 hours weekly, but nonetheless joined the list of teachers statewide who last week received pink slips from the their school.

“It’s discouraging and insulting and a big problem,” she said, “when people with such an education like myself that work this hard are not acknowledged are the first to go when the state is in a financial crisis.”

And, from the Redlands Daily Facts:

According to senior Sarah Fiske-Phillips and her brother Jacob, a sophomore, more than 50 letters were written by students to inform Schwarzenegger about how cuts in arts and physical education will affect school experiences at Grove.

"More people need to know what's going on," Sarah said. "We've been told that the governor probably won't even read our letters. But I think it adds more pressure."

"I hope it starts a chain reaction to inspire others to write a letter."

Alright Sarah Fiske-Phillips! Raising awareness, putting pressure on elected officials and refusing to quit - these students are making all the right moves. I hope she's right, and we start to see more and more student-driven organizing in the days to come.

What Do You Bring to the Table?

The Roaming Roaster has a sprained ankle, and therefore did not get to blog yesterday. However, before the tragic ankle accident, Education Action! managed to host a little community gathering one evening this week and the details are worth sharing. Be warned: I am heavily medicated.


We invited a bunch of people to our headquarters for an informal conversation. Teachers, community activists, school committee members, CBO employees, and administrators were all asked to bring some food to share as well as ideas for collaboration. All told, about fifteen people came, which was a perfect size. We had a few glasses of wine, ate some snacks, and had a long conversation about what each of us contributes to the cause of public education, and how we might use one another to strengthen our efforts. All agreed that another event of this type ought to happen, and another after that, and so on. It seems that a conversation between people working toward common goals is a precious rarity - and it shouldn't be. Here's how you can make the same thing happen in your own community:


1. Don't overdo it

If you try to plan some grand event, you'll get stressed out and may abandon it. You'll be surprised how refreshing it is to just have an informal conversation with people who care about the things you do - this is far more likely to lead to real, on-the-ground action than a huge impersonal lecture hall. The goal is conversation, not national media.


2. Invite a wide range of people

Inviting only people you know is not a recipe for learning new strategies and making new partnerships. Use the network that you have to reach beyond your typical circle, and make sure to invite a few more than you'd like to have because people will cancel. This is the basis of grassroots organizing - they will tell their friends, and they will tell their friends, and they will tell their friends...

3. Feed them

It's always a good idea to put out some food. It brings people together, and you don't want to talk politics hungry. Plus it's a great way to deal with that first awkward twenty minutes. People can just stand around the brie and build community with their mouths full.

4. STRUCTURE!

You need to prevent a griping session or the dreaded awkward silence. This is the most important factor - you have to choose a discussion leader and provide talking points. This discussion leader must be firm, and able to curb conversation-dominators without sounding rude. Some people choose to pass around a ball or something, and only allow talking when a person is holding the ball. It might sound juvenile, but believe me: people need this.

5. Follow up

Email people right after the event and encourage continued conversation. Share everyone's contact information, and schedule a follow up meeting for the next month. Once your group develops a bit of synergy, you can start creating concrete goals to accomplish in between meetings.

So vacuum the family room, stick some toothpicks into a few pigs-in-a-blanket, and become a community organizer. It starts with conversation...something we have less and less of these days.

Youth Making Noise

I am always encouraged by groups like this. Youth Noise, an online network of young people, is just one example of a great group of civically engaged activists fighting for the causes that are important to them. Youth Noise is

...an international youth civic engagement organization. Using a multi-media participatory web site, we provide a platform built on networked technologies that invite youth around the world to bring their unique perspectives and creative visions to solve problems they define as critical to their lives and communities. Through a collaborative online environment, youth share ideas, convert ideas into action and scale actions to build and activate movements. We have established a global network of young people built upon a foundation of trust, authenticity and relevance; young people now leverage this network and the platform we have built to actively participate in bettering their world.

And they seem to be making plenty of noise indeed. In California on April 18th over 10,000 young people at over 25 schools will organize rallies in support of public education. They are protesting the coming cuts to the 2009 California public school budget. Some schools will host open mic rallies while others will display art work while others will take to the streets. Find out how you can participate here.

Make noise they should! Since the Bush administration came into office, money has been directed steadily away from education and into the military. In fact, over the course of his administration, the bushies have INCREASED military spending by 30% while education has faced small increases or cuts, all the while being asked to comply with new mandates. The 2009 budget is no different than years' past - the military will see a 5% increase and education gets to watch the No Child Left Behind funding rise to almost what it was two years ago...yay.
Our national priorities are incredibly screwed up. With just the money we have spent in Iraq, never mind the rest of the gargantuan military budget, we could have had...

...21,510,598 full four-year scholarships to public universities...

...or sent 58,770,981 children to head-start...

...or hired 7,689,734 new public school teachers.

That's Seven Million Six Hundred Eighty Nine Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Four school teachers!

(Or we could have had 7,689,733 new school teachers and doubled my salary...)

Anyway, the point is, wherever we put our resources, that's what we care about. We say we care about our kids and our future, but we don't. We care about power and money and "defending" a country increasingly filled with idiots. You go, California kids. Be as noisy as possible.

Believe to Achieve

The Roaming Roaster along with the rest of Education Action! trekked out to Albany, New York, this weekend for the Annual Believe to Achieve Conference. A project of the National Urban Alliance, this conference was billed as "The Most Important Educational Experience of 2008." Since this is obviously the most important educational blog in the country, and Education Action! is the most important activist network in the country, it was pretty much mandatory that we attend.



The goal of the conference was noble: give educators the tools to close the achievement gap one classroom, or one district, at a time AND reaffirm that education is a fundamental civil right. Our goal: meet as many passionate activists as possible and get them working on educational justice in their home communities. It seemed, on paper, that OUR goal and NUA's goals were going to dovetail nicely in gorgeous downtown Albany. We piled into the EdAction Mobile at 8 p.m. Friday night, bound for Achievement.



Saturday morning, very early, we entered the Crowne Plaza's lobby. A small crowd milled about. Everyone was sort of swaying in place, waiting for what we did not know. The whole scene had an underwater quality. The concierge informed us that everyone was waiting for a shuttle to the convention center, where the conference was ACTUALLY being held. Lugging our collection of recruitment materials, promotional materials, information, and general whatnot, we waited outside amid the flotsam and jetsam. We piled in the van. It took us approximately seven feet North to the convention center. We piled out. These things always have a funny way of making us realize what our students must feel like when we create inefficient systems for them to operate within.



The convention center is the weirdest building on earth. It is HUGE. Absolutely huge. The hallways are wide enough for three Hummers and a horse drawn carriage. Everything echos. Sporadically, in random corners, modern art appears, the sort of art that makes you wonder what distinguishes "art" from "nice try buddy." We walk through this building a longer distance than we traveled in the van, arriving at last in the center where registration tables are assembled.



The registration tables look like tic tacs sitting in a swimming pool. This place is a rough venue to generate conversation and build community. But we hang on to our optimism. This is the Most Important Place To Go All Year, remember?!



Fast forward. It is lunch time. Three people have passed our table. They did not stop. Those little golf cart things carrying maintenance workers and security guards whiz by like tumbleweed. This. Place. Is. Empty. We decide to split up the table-watching duties, and two of us head to a breakout session.



My session is concerned with reframing the idea of underachievement. The primary take away: it's all in our attitude. If we expect our students to underachieve, they will do just that. We find what we're looking for, every time. So, if we look for success, if we expect it, we'll get it. This is an important message. Too often, I sit in staff meetings addressing each student according to weaknesses. This is the language we speak: failures, risks of failures, weaknesses, challenges, etc. We almost never speak in positives.



At one point, the presenter asked us to share with our neighbors some positive words we felt described urban "underachievers." I am flanked by administrators. They are very encouraged to hear that I teach the homeless/teen parent/court involved population, which they had experience doing earlier in their careers. So we start thinking about generalizations, of the positive nature, that we can make about our students, past or present. I say, "Resourceful" which makes everyone nod. They say, "Persistent." One woman is writing down all of our suggestions, as was directed by our facilitator. I say, "Passionate." They cock their heads. Really? Passionate? They don't write it down, and move right along in the conversation.



When we come back together as a group, the four most common responses are put up on the powerpoint Family Feud style. Our group had written down all four. Passionate was not up there. My neighbors are very satisfied with themselves. They got the right answers.



That pretty much sums up my review of the conference right there. We want to address the achievement gap, and we do a lot of rephrasing terminology, looking at the results of expensive research projects, and fighting a system riddled with racism and sexism and classism and greed. We want our schools to be equitable and excellent and the education they provide to be a guaranteed civil right. But, when it comes down to it, we are up against ourselves. We are up against our own expectations for our schools and our students. We are up against administrators that don't think "passionate" is a valid adjective to describe a group of students. We are up against a culture that values getting answers more than really thinking about questions.



All weekend, we spoke to about six passionate advocates for change. Since then, we've been in contact with one of them. I want to say to these people: attending a conference for a weekend isn't making change. Writing one email to an activist organization about how much you believe in the cause and then never following up on it isn't making change. Getting the same answers as everyone else in your workshop on closing the achievement gap isn't making change. It's as if the standardized testing mentality, that many of us agree is detrimental to schools, has been ingrained into the minds of these well meaning educators. Reform efforts seem to fall into the same "just skim the surface and move on" trap as test-prep obsessed curricula. There seems to be this idea that never using the word "Underachiever" again is all one needs to do to eliminate underachievement. It's a valid step, sure, but creating an educational system that provides an equal education for all races and social classes is going to take more than vocabulary.


Get out there and DO something, people!