More Than Just Surviving

This week public school teachers and students returned to school after a high-profile strike that many of you probably heard at least little bit about. Everyone knows the teachers were fighting for a pay raise, and almost everyone agrees that they deserve(d) one. Before the strike, OUSD teachers were the lowest paid in the Bay Area—a difference of tens of thousands of dollars per year in salary. But here’s the thing—even after winning an 11% raise over a few years, OUSD teachers will STILL be the lowest paid in the Bay Area. TheIR new salaries will still leave many of them unable to afford to live in the city where they work, where the average rent for a one bedroom apartment is almost $3,000 per month.

Showing cross country solidarity while at the 17th Annual Alumni of Color Conference at Harvard Graduate School of Education

I’m writing about this not to rain on anyone’s parade, but to suggest that we have to do more. We have to fight for more because we want to do more than just survive.

Some reading this will ask if enough will ever be enough. They will say that unions are the problem, quality is not about money, and other such ideas that I’m not going to demolish in this particular blog post. If you think it’s time to celebrate and head to back to business, I want you to consider few things.

First, the #OaklandTeacherStrike was about a lot more than teacher pay. In fact, that’s exactly why students and families were virtually unanimous in their support of teachers. During the week-long strike, fewer than 5% of students attended school. Many parents came together to form Solidarity Schools, where students could go instead of crossing the picket lines. The strike was also about stopping school closures, reducing class sizes, increasing support staff such as counselors and nurses, and challenging the unchecked expansion of charter schools in Oakland. 

On Sunday, OUSD teachers converged on the Paramount Theater to cast their votes for or against the Tentative Agreement reached between the district and union leadership. Before the vote was even cast, journalists and politicians across the country were celebrating the historic agreement as an across-the-board win. But what you might not have read in those articles is that fewer than two thirds of the teachers actually voted "yes" in support of the new contract. You also may have missed what happened on social media after news of the vote outcome was announced.* So many students were expressing feelings of anger, betrayal and frustration—feeling that their teachers "sold out." That’s because while the salary increase is significant and clear cut, many other aspects of the new contract are quite weak. For example, class sizes may be reduced by only 1 or 2 students in many cases, still leaving many teachers with more students than desks. 

The contract also does not change the fact the district plans to close up to 24 schools, the vast majority of which lie in low income Black and Brown neighborhoods of Oakland. Many people agree that OUSD is operating “too many” schools based on the number of students it’s serving. We certainly don’t all agree on what is causing this low enrollment, and whether charter schools are a systemic threat, a systemic solution, or both. What I do know is that closing a school is incredibly painful and harmful to the community and families that it serves. Just last year I visited my neighborhood school in East Oakland as I look forward to having children of my own (nobody’s pregnant). I met the principal, got a little tour, and started envisioning what it might be like to be a parent in that school community. And then I read last month that the school would be closing. Destabilizing to say the least, and I don’t even have kids at the school. While I see the logic of consolidating to reduce overhead cost, there's one question I can find no logical or respectable answer to: "How is it possible that we simultaneously have critical levels of under-enrollment AND overflowing classrooms? Let me know if you have an answer.

Throughout the strike and leading up to the vote, I was deliberately agnostic about whether to support the Tentative Agreement, either publicly or privately. For one, I’m not a public school teacher or member of the union. Primarily, I just wanted to support the teachers, students. But it's important for people to understand that many students, and many of OUSD teachers opposed the new contract. Why? Because they want to do more than just survive.

Survival is critical, but living in survival mode can be crippling to the development of a human being  or the progress of a community. Today in 2019, so many marginalized communities are being pushed to survival mode that actual systemic progress has become a secondary priority… and that is not an accident. When Black History Month rolled around this year, I was already feeling exhausted with fighting White supremacy this year! Yes, my ancestors are rolling their eyes, but the feeling of fatigue is real and can be debilitating. This BHM, I hardly posted, didn’t work much on the #28StoriesProject. My observance was limited to staying Black, leading a high school field trip to the Western Addition, and reading two very good books.**

Honey, Hush! An Anthology of African American Women's Humor - Edited by Daryl Cumber Dance

Trials, Tribulations and Celebrations: African-American Perspectives on Health, Illness, Aging and Loss - Edited by Marian Gray Secundy

I did not in any way give myself a pass, but did need to gather some strength for the work ahead. The motto for this year—better yet, the battlecry—is “more than just surviving.” This theme is borrowed directly from title of Dr. Bettina Love’s newly released book, We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom. This summer, when we reconvene for the 3rd Annual 2020 Conference in Oakland, Dr. Love will be back as our Warrior in Residence. This year’s theme is “More Than Just Surviving.”

I’m excited to once again bring Dr. Love into conversation with high school students of Oakland and the greater Bay Area. The Conference will be a space for them to define what it means and looks like to break out of survival mode, to build the communities and world that they really want to live in. 

We also know that our youth cannot do this work alone—they need us to support, lead, and in some cases follow them. If you are an adult, one of the ways you can support is by helping a student get to 2020 Conference this summer.

Today we are kicking off our fundraising campaign for the 3rd Annual 2020 Conference, and I ask that you help us make this happen. We welcome and depend on contributions of any amount, but I want to encourage you to go big this time. Please consider making an online donation today… 

Thank you for reading, thank you for supporting, and thank you for not settling for survival.

Pura Vida,

Drew

As a special thank you and kick in the butt, we have a special gift for every person that makes a donation of $100 or more before Monday, March 11th… 

an autographed copy of 

We Want to Do More Than Survive!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE ONLINE TODAY

If you live in the Bay Area, please consider joining us as we host a book signing and conversation with Dr. Bettina Love at Marcus Books in Oakland, the nation’s oldest Black-owned bookstore.

Sunday, March 10th

2pm - 4pm

Marcus Books Oakland

3900 MLK Jr Way

Oakland, CA

Dr. Bettina Love

w/ USF Professor Dr. Farima Pour-Khorshid

* I have a pretty strict policy of not following my students, or other minors on social media, mostly because I don't want to know. But we stay very connected with them for the "work" via our organization's social media accounts, so we really get a window into the world of high school instagram, for better or for worse. (instagram: @youtheducation4success; twitter: @YES4org, Facebook: @YES4

** The first book (Honey, Hush) was recommended by the good peoples at Marcus Books. I inherited the second book (Trials Tribulations and Celebrations) from my grandmother, via my mom. The inside is signed by the editor with a special message to the late Vera Foster.

Affirmative Action

This time next week I will be back in the classroom after a semester away. The truth is, I’ve always loved education and working with young people a lot more than I’ve loved school. That’s why I spend so much time doing my work “off campus.” I won’t be headed back to a full load—I’ll just be teaching one class: “Education Now.” I’ve taught this class a few times before, and each time it’s a little different. As I pulled together the syllabus, I’m considering what to prioritize—what to information emphasize, which questions to pose, and which conversations to instigate. 

One thing that is always on the menu is a discussion about affirmative action, starting with what it is, and what it is not. It never ceases to blow my mind—and frustrate the hell out of me—how deeply misunderstood and misrepresented this concept has always been. One thing I always try to help my students appreciate is that affirmative action is not any specific policy—it’s more like a guiding recommendation. So when someone gives a passionate speech about why they are for or against affirmative action, I ask them to clarify what it is that they’re talking about, and then we take it from there. I won’t be using this post to try to break this all down—if you want to know more, I highly recommend the book, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the first Half Century of Brown v Board of Education, by Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. This post is not really about education policy or segregation—it’s just inspired by the concept of affirmative action.

People either love making new year’s resolutions, vow to never do it, or don’t really care. I can’t really say which group I fall in, but I took like to use the new year as an excuse to run an audit on how things are going. I’m not big no resolving to stop doing stuff. My most gratifying resolutions have come when I’ve committed to continuing to do something… or when I resolve to turn an occasional practice into an actual habit. The best resolution I ever made was to read 52 books that year. The first year I went for it (2010), I fell two books short, but was proud of the effort and enjoyed the ride. Since then, I’ve hit the mark every year, even if it means disappearing for a week or two at some point to get caught up.

In August 2017 I decided to focus my reading for the month on theme of Black August. By the end of the month, I felt well-schooled and started reflecting more on the choices I make about what I read and what I don’t read. I wouldn’t say it’s random or deliberate, but I try to read all types of books. I tended to think that I was covering all the bases pretty well. But then I question crawled into my head that I couldn’t shake. How often do I read books written by women.  I assumed the answer would be plenty—maybe a little less than books written by men, but not too out of proportion. After considering the question for a while, I decided to get an actual answer. I was embarrassed. The numbers were not pretty. I estimated that for every book written by a women, I read more than four written by men. My first reaction was to say, “OK, I will try to read more books written by women.” But for some reason, the idea of affirmative action popped into my head—probably because I had recently been arguing about it with someone. Somehow I knew that trying to read more books by women was just not going to do it. I knew that my good intentions or consciousness of the problem would not actually correct the imbalance, at least not in my lifetime. So I thought, what if I just stop reading books by men for a while. The idea felt extreme or radical at first. What about all the great works, current and classic, that I would be missing out of, just because they were written by men?! But then it just started to sound like the only plan that made practical sense. Stop the bleeding! Moratorium on dude-writers.

So, is January 2019 and I haven’t read a book written by a man since August 2017. And it’s been lovely. I read so many things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And I’ve read about familiar topics, but from different perspectives. It’s not exactly like there aren’t enough parts of my life where I get the opinions and perspective of men. All those great works that I’m missing out on… they will still be there when the moratorium ends. I have no clue when that will be. The sad thing is that this “extreme” policy still hasn’t been enough to bring my bookshelf into full equilibrium. It's been struggle... like that time in New Orleans when I asked the bookshop proprietor to recommend some plays written by women. His response: "There really aren't any." (!) But I’m enjoying it and I’m gonna keep going for now.

Before I sign off, I want to share with you some of my favorites from 2018. There are always too many to pick from, so I’ve decided to limit my recommendations to non-fiction. Please don’t get the impression that I only read books about the depressing state of the world today. This is just a snapshot of some recent books written by women that have helped me understand what’s going on, and what we might do about it. 

Last year I had my students in "Education Now" read Chapter One from this book as their first assignment. I got to meet Professor Levinson at HGSE during a book talk with a small group of students. It makes an extremely compelling case for why we need civic education and engagement curriculum in our schools.

Kelly Knight shares her findings, reflections and experiences from spending time with women who live in San Francisco's single room occupancy hotels. The title gives more than a hint about what they are struggling through, but the book goes deeper and broader to help explain the systemic nature of things.

The title of this book by makes it sound like a kooky conspiracy, but it is anything but that. Meticulously researched and well-written by Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean , this is a critical read for anyone that cares about national politics in our country. I learned a lot, and had never fully appreciated the connection between think tanks and privately funded "research" on policy. 

The badassery of Dr. Love is becoming a recurring topic in this blog. This book won't be released until February 19th this year, but I was luck to get an advanced copy from her. I will be writing more about this one in an upcoming post, so stay tuned for that!

This book is straight up scary and there's not other way for me to describe it. MIT Professor Andrea Louise Campbell shares the story of how a tragic car accident has changed the lives sister-in-law and their family. You can argue and debate about healthcare in this country all you want. There is nothing like studying an issue at the individual level—how does stuff all play out for a single person, or family? The answer is frightening, but we all need to fully understand how unsafe and insecure we are in this country. 

I hope you can all make more time for the things you love this year, whether it's reading books, fighting the power or playing pinochle. Let's make it a great one.

Pura Vida,

Drew

PS: Please do NOT watch the "State of the Union" address on January 29th. Do anything instead. Thanks.