On our professional development day (Monday, February 16th), we were asked as a staff to jigsaw the book The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children by Glo Ladson-Billings. The book is a little old and from 1994. I read it years ago but didn’t remember much about it. When I read about educating African-American students these days I tend to keep going back to Alfred Tatum. But, I guess writing about this touchy subject was not as popular back then as it is today. Glo Ladson-Billings must have been before her time. I tried to use “the Google” and find out more about her. I came up empty handed.
Ladson-Billings challenges the reader to envision intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms. We must not be colorblind anymore. We must be a culturally relevant teacher. Why? Well, we must be this way because quality education still remains to be an elusive dream for most African-American children. This dates back to slavery and all the way up to almost present day. If you don’t believe me, feel free to recall the Jim Crow laws for one.
The book by Ladson-Billings is a mixture of scholarship and storytelling and is every bit as relevant today as it was in 1994. Eight exemplary teachers and their unique styles and methods are explored through the research done by Ladson-Billings. One teacher is as hard-as-nails with her direct reading instruction while another teacher is as free flowing as a hippie. They got the same results. How could that be possible? It had nothing to do with the curriculum. It’s how you treat students and what you expect out of them that makes the difference. If you assume (which you all know happens when we assume) that you will have lazy students, that’s what you will get! You have to set the bar high and teach them to be the best they can be. Do we really want to have a bunch of idiots in our communities in the future? I sure hope not!
I’m sure we’ve all had that one student who we have tried everything with and we finally throw in the towel and think, “Fine. Let them flunk. I don’t care.” Deep down we know that’s not what we want. We put our hearts and souls (and even our pocketbooks) into students and we are so hurt when we get nothing in return. How do we create more teachers who won’t throw in the towel? How do we get them to care? How do we get them to be a dreamkeeper of those students’ dreams?
All students need and deserve exemplary teachers. This does not always happen. I have been in the same school for nine years now and I can think of dozens of teachers who did not and still don’t make any attempt to connect to students who were not the same shade of white as them. How can you not want to improve the lives of all children? How is it possible to have human beings in our country walking around still to this day not willing to help students make connections with their communities, nation and globally? Why can’t we act as a family in the classroom instead of a cattle herder?
With our new President in office, I hope we can blur the lines even more while respecting and celebrating one another’s cultures. I must say that I do fear for those who still will not accept that there isn’t one superior race over another. I hurt for the children that they are teaching and the people they must encounter.
I recently went on a trip and was criticized for having a People magazine with Obama on the cover. I heard the “n-word” and other racist comments. I would like to say that I wasn’t raised that way….but I can’t. I am my own person with my own values and beliefs and no, I will not be moving to Canada just because our President isn’t white! I am 32 and hate confrontation. This, however, was worth confronting. I kept my cool but had a hard time not telling people what bigots they were and will always be with that attitude. What if they were the ones who were not white? What if they were the ones who were sent to the office for just opening their mouths just once? What if people followed them around a store because they are always “suspicious” looking? Who would help them? What would their dreams be? Who would they ask to be their dreamkeepers?
I don’t have any answers to this problem that stretches as far back as the birth of our country. No, I take that back. I do! I think we should respect each other and the cultures of everyone else. We also need to dream and dream big for those who have lost sight of dreaming for themselves and above all, be a dreamkeeper for as many as you can along the way.
1 Comment
February 22, 2009 at 2:50 pm
President Obama said we, as a nation, need to confront and discuss racism with each other. He suggested we are afraid to talk to people of color (and they to us) about racial issues. The time to do this is now.