Daily Mix It Up Lunch Yields Big Shares
My small school has no cafeteria. Students bring their own lunches and eat in the classroom with their teachers. When I first learned about this set-up, I had mixed emotions. I didn’t get a break for lunch like most teachers, but on the other hand, my middle school students didn’t have to face the awkwardness and social segregation of a large school cafeteria.
At first, I didn’t think that I needed to be “on” during lunch, since it is technically a free time for students. However, I was surprised to learn that even in a classroom with fewer students, social segregation and alienation happens. I witnessed the entire class crowd around a table, just to avoid one or two other students who sat by themselves on the other side of the room. At other times I heard students refer to a table as the “cool” one and another as the “loser” table. There were only three tables.
After a few weeks of witnessing this painful social experiment, I implemented a new classroom rule. Every day at lunch, we would put all the tables together and everyone—including me—would sit around the big table. Students could sit wherever they wanted at the table, but this way, no one was excluded from the group at large.
Initially, there was a lot of grumbling at the new guidelines. Some students experienced a loss of power or independence. But gradually, the complaining stopped. Students who didn’t usually talk to each other during free time started to share conversations. Sometimes another student or I would initiate a topic for the whole group, a movie perhaps, or what they had on the walls in their bedrooms. These group discussions were awkward at first, but soon became more organic.
Often, the topic of our conversation would turn towards food. Students occasionally requested to bring something for others to taste. This started a new tradition: weekly food sharing. A student volunteer would bring something to school, a dish or a dessert or a drink, anything as long as they could share.
One student was excited to share her father’s famous yakisoba noodles. Another student, who was lactose intolerant, brought in chocolate soy milk for people to try. In other settings, I have seen middle school students make disparaging remarks about their classmate’s food, but not during these lunches. Students were careful to thank the sharer, even if they declined the offering. Many students tried a food they had never tried before and some cooked a family recipe with their parents for the first time.
Communal eating gave us the opportunity to practice social graces: passing food around, complimenting the chef and saying “please” and “thank you.” Students learned to ask about and respect each other’s food allergies. They also gained knowledge about their classmate’s lives and cultures by tasting each other’s food and practicing open-mindedness. Even though it probably still feels like downtime to the students, I now consider lunch as an important part of my middle school curriculum.
Anderson is a middle school humanities and interdisciplinary studies teacher in Oregon.
Taking Steps to Close the Digital Divide
I noticed a trend several years ago. A sixth-grader tagged along with me into the school. She wanted to use a computer. “My printer is broken,” she explained. “Can I come in with you and print my assignment?” A few days later, it happened again. Only this time, another student needed to edit an essay on a word-processor.
As more children asked to use the lab before school—sometimes several per day—I began arriving 20 minutes early to open the lab. I let students know that it was available for them. Now years later, students still sign in to the computer lab nearly every day. Sometimes it’s as few as five students, often it’s 15 or 20. What they all needed then, and still need today, is access to reliable technology tools. The early-morning computer time is busy and focused as children attend to schoolwork and use digital resources that help them learn.
I’ve realized that at least some of these children are victims of the digital divide. Students at schools everywhere, mine included, experience homework-related technology difficulties because they do not have robust computers at home. In fact, there are still children who do not own one. I do not ask them why students use the morning computer program, but in conversation, one may mention a broken printer. Another might describe how a computer stopped working just before a homework assignment was finished. At other times, an assignment requires a student to complete research on a library database, but Internet access at home is not fast or dependable enough to complete the job.
Most of us take ubiquitous digital access and technology tools for granted. We search on the Web, freely print copies and quickly type letters, lesson plans or assignments. Yet hardship and poverty exist in places we may not notice. We cannot forget about families without the means to purchase speedy Internet access, four-color toner cartridges or state-of-the-art computing. Encouraging extra access at school may make a significant difference in the quality of a child’s work.
At our school, any student in fourth through eighth grade is welcome to drop in to our early-morning computer sessions. Online research opportunities and printing are available as needed. Students can also ask for assistance or use digital learning tools such as Google Earth or MIT’s Scratch programming. A group of regular attendees arrives each morning. Other children work on specific projects for a few days and may not return for a while. No one is singled out, and no explanations are required to sign in to the lab.
Our morning computer program is a small step, one that helps to increase access, ensures equity and builds connections that can help to bridge the digital divide.
Weston is a middle school technology teacher in Washington, D.C.
Larry Doby Hits One for History
It was Black History Month. I was working with children and youth in an after-school program in the Clarksdale housing projects in Louisville, Ky. Spike Lee's film Malcolm X had just been released. I sat around a table with a group of teenagers discussing Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X and James Cone’s Martin & Malcolm & America.
One student was not impressed.
"What do you have against Martin and Malcolm?" I asked my student.
"I got nothing against them,” he said. “It's just that we've been learning about MLK since kindergarten and all people are talking about now is Malcolm. I just want to learn about someone in black history that I've never heard about before."
I wanted to encourage his enthusiasm to learn. So I made an assignment:
"Let's go out and look for people, places and things we didn't know about black history and come back and share what we learned next week."
As a result of my search, I discovered a story from baseball history.
It was Oct. 9, 1948. Cleveland Municipal Stadium held 81,897 people to watch Game 4 of the World Series between the Cleveland Indians of the American League and the Boston Braves of the National League. More people were at that game than at any other game in the history of the World Series up to that time. The Indians held a shaky 2-1 lead in the best of seven series.
In the bottom of the fourth inning, with two outs, the Indians were clinging to a 1-0 lead. Larry Doby, 24, of the Indians dug into the batter’s box at home plate to face Braves’ pitcher Johnny Sain.
Doby threw right and batted left. His arcing swing was a beautiful thing that helped him hit .301 with 14 home runs in 121 games during the season. He had hit .396 over the last 20 games. That helped his team beat out the Boston Red Sox and make it to the championship series.
Larry Doby was a black man—the first in the American League.
The great Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 when he played for the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers.
On the second pitch, Sain wound up and threw the ball toward home plate. Doby swung his bat and, “crack!” The ball took off toward right center field. The crowd let out a mighty roar as the ball sailed 420 feet into the stands for a home run. It was the decisive run in a 2-1 win for the Indians. That victory put them ahead 3 games to 1 in the series. They clinched the series with a win in Game 6 in Boston.
The next day, a picture of Doby and pitcher Steve Gromek hugging tightly and grinning cheek to cheek was broadcast over the three major networks and published in the country’s newspapers. It was a revolutionary picture that illustrated one way white supremacy and racism could be overcome.
There are so many people and events to learn about and share with our students. Celebrating the accomplishments of a diverse group of people gives us peace in our individuality, builds respect for those unlike us, develops wisdom to discern human values and offers courage to act upon them.
My student from Kentucky rewarded my initial effort.
"Now this is what I'm talking about," he said. “I never heard of Larry Doby. Wow, what was it like to be second? Usually, we overlook second place, don't we? But we found him."
We did, indeed.
It’s one of the many lessons my students helped teach me. Had it not been for the challenge of my student, my outlook might have remained limited. Thanks to him, I've been looking, finding and sharing ever since.
Barton is an elementary school teacher in South Carolina.
Zombies Brought Spirit Back to Pep Rally
The high school where I work was looking to find its school spirit. I wanted to get all students involved, but only a handful were active participants. When I was the activities director, I was frequently regaled with stories of past football games, bleachers packed to the hilt with cheering students, faces painted in blue and white. Pep assemblies were held nearly every week and students wouldn’t dream of missing one. I was never sure if these stories were tinted with the amber-colored lenses of nostalgia or if this Hollywood version of high school was accurate. All I knew was that the student body of my time was more racially and economically diverse than the student body of the past and that our school was working to redefine its identity. Somehow that translated to a lack of pep in the rallies.
I have always had a love-hate relationship with pep assemblies. My leadership students would plan them for weeks, often putting off homework and sleep. They wrote scripts, planned activities and then rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed. On assembly days, I was a nervous wreck. I wanted their hard work to pay off with the enthusiasm of the student body. We were frequently disappointed.
I can admit with hindsight that my leadership students were planning for only a small percentage of our actual students. We stuck to the time-honored tradition of planning pep assemblies to honor athletes and popular students. We wondered why many of our students either sat in the back of the bleachers with headphones plugged in, or opted out of the assemblies altogether.
I’m pleased to say our new activities director is much more savvy than me. She’s discovered the secret to engaging students during assemblies: zombies. She had leadership students ask others in their classes what they would like to see at the next assembly, and it turns out it was zombies. Who knew? Perhaps the fact that it was around Halloween had something to do with it, but being the glass-half-full types that they are, the leadership students ran with it.
It turns out the zombie-themed assembly was the key to bringing students together. Before the assembly, there was a zombie face-painting booth. The activities director had raided the thrift store T-shirt bin to purchase hundreds of shirts that students could “zombie-fy.” The excitement among the student body was palpable.
Each segment of the assembly tied directly to the zombie theme, and students were awarded for their participation. The big hit, however, was the teacher flash-mob dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” It was wonderful to see our diverse and somewhat disjointed student body cheering as one for their teachers.
I hope that we can continue this momentum of bringing students (and staff) together. All it took was listening to students and forgetting, for a moment, that we are Spartans, and coming together as zombies instead.
Fear is a high school dean of students in Oregon.
Join Tucson’s Fight for Desegregation
Mention school desegregation, and most people envision the Little Rock Nine—not the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). But Tucson is exactly where the battle for desegregation is being fought today.
Hundreds of students walked out of Tucson area schools this month protesting the dissolution of the Mexican American Studies (MAS) program in concordance with state law HB 2281, the latest in a 30-year series of maneuvers by opponents to avoid the desegregation order issued in Roy Fisher, et al., and Maria Mendoza, et al. v. Tucson.
In 1978, plaintiffs Mendoza and Fisher were told that TUSD would be required to remedy the ill effects of past segregation within the district. They could not have known that their fight for equality was only just beginning. What was initially presented as a five-year desegregation plan stretched into 30 years. In 2009 TUSD was granted unified status and released from court supervision despite the court finding it had “failed to act in good faith in its ongoing operation of the District under the Settlement Agreement.”
TUSD began operating under its Post-Unitary Status Plan, which promised that the district’s MAS program would be expanded. TUSD did support the existing MAS program, but it failed to follow through on its promise of expansion. Because TUSD also abandoned other important policies outlined in the plan, the court revoked the district’s unified status in 2011, saying it had failed to act in good-faith compliance with the order to integrate schools-yet again.
Now, only months later, the MAS program is being completely dismantled under a state law clearly meant to overturn what has been accomplished and thwart an inclusive educational environment. What the district should be doing is expanding MAS to become an integrated curriculum rather than a single course available to only a small percentage of students, thus providing a quality education to all students with a curriculum that recognizes their cultures.
The challenges ahead are large, but Tucson educators and students aren’t backing down. You can help them in their struggle. Teacher Activist Groups (TAG) is reaching out to educators nationwide and calling for a month of solidarity teach-ins in support of Tucson’s MAS program.
Beginning today (when Tucson schools mustcomply with HB 2281), educators are invited to show their support of Tucson’s ongoing fight against discrimination by teaching lessons from and about thebanned MAS program. Sample lesson plans from the MAS curriculum-as well as creative ideas andresources for exploring this issue with students-can be found on the No History is Illegal website.
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus’ refusal to admit African-American students to Little Rock Central High School had far greater implications than the fate of nine students. The refusal of TUSD to honor its 1978 agreement to desegregate will have consequences as far reaching. As Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Pettway is associate editor at Teaching Tolerance.
Question the American Dream
America is a place where hard work will move you ahead. Here, you can go further than your parents did and provide your children with more than you had. Few people believe in this dream more ardently than my students. The American dream is what has sustained them through nine difficult years in Philadelphia’s public schools. They arrive at my school with some pride to have been admitted to small, safe, selective school in the heart of Philadelphia’s historical district. They take subways and ride buses (sometimes for more than an hour) out of their neighborhoods and into bustling center city. And they arrive with their grit, a fierce determination to get the grades, no matter the cost. They have their hearts set on college because in America, college is the gateway to the middle class. They have an enduring faith in America and in the transformative power of education.
I, too, believe in education’s power to transform. My education helped me grow into a critical thinker, a passionate citizen, a person who hopes to change the world. And I became a teacher because I wanted to continue to be a part of that process, both for my students and for myself.
But lately, I’ve been noticing the cracks in the American dream.
As The New York Times reported in “Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs” there is less economic mobility in the United States than in Canada and some European countries. According to the article, only one-third of people born in the bottom fifth of America’s economic ladder (including my students) will rise into the middle and upper classes. Studies also show that a college degree is likely to be an elusive goal for my students.
A recent study tracked a group of Philadelphia ninth-graders for a decade and found that only 10 percent of them had graduated from college. Other statistics, like America’s high rate of incarceration (disproportionately high among the poor and among African Americans) and high level of income disparity, contribute to the idea that poverty is not something that can be dusted off with education and hard work. What these statistics suggest is that American poverty is a trap and that our system for leveling the playing field—education—is largely broken.
I know some of my colleagues would advise me to ignore the statistics and teach my students to keep believing in the dream. And I acknowledge that my students’ grit and tenacity should not be trifled with. Their perseverance is awesome, and further studies have shown that it is the most important factor in college success for disadvantaged students. I am hesitant to do anything that might disturb it.
On the other hand, I’m worried. How can I encourage my students to chase the American dream while I watch it crumble? This splintered country is the world that my students are inheriting. And my role as their teacher is not only to shepherd the precious few into the middle class but to teach them all to critically assess the world and find ways to improve it. But talking to students about class, about the cracks in the American dream, can be a difficult undertaking. As author and civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander points out in her interview with Rethinking Schools, “We have to be willing to take some risks. In my experience, there is a lot of hesitancy to approach these issues in the classroom out of fear that students will become emotional or angry, or that the information will reinforce their sense of futility about their own lives and experience.”
I am keenly aware of these fears. I also believe that these risks are worth taking. I want to find ways to engage my students in important conversations about poverty, inequality and the American dream. Like all teaching for social justice, it will require a careful balance between investigating the problem and envisioning possible solutions. Teaching Tolerance offers some good places to start with resources like Visualizing School Equity and A Historical Primer on Economic (In)Equality.
Melville is high school English, Spanish and drama teacher in Pennsylvania.
Don’t Miss a Chance to Shift Hate Rhetoric
“I hate Jews.”
That was the sentence, uttered coldly and dripping with vile undertones, from the mouth of a sixth-grader that nearly caused me to let a very powerful teachable moment slip through my fingers.
Almost.
When Jason said that, I had barely begun the introduction to my lesson and I was completely caught off guard. I asked, “Why?” He let go of a barrage of hateful stereotypes and conspiracies. I was stung by the venom of his words and reacted. I sent him out of class. I sent him to the office where I expected him to be disciplined and punished.
After he was gone, I took a deep breath and faced the rest of my class ready to begin my lesson. I looked at the giant “Pyramid of Hate” on my bulletin board. It illustrates how hate can progress from prejudiced attitudes all the way to genocide. And suddenly I thought, “What have you done?"
I realized that, more than anything else, Jason needed to be in my classroom, present and participating in this particular lesson. I called the office and asked that Jason be sent back to my class.
Jason returned with his armor on: scowl in place, arms crossed against his chest in defensive mode, eyes expectant and waiting. I said, “I’m sorry. I am glad you came back.” And I proceeded with the lesson.
We named and discussed the levels of hate on the pyramid. My students offered examples and actions from history or their own experiences, and I placed them into the appropriate level.
Next, I showed an episode of the television show Seventh Heaven that depicts several levels of the pyramid of hate. This episode explores the effects of hateful words, discriminatory behaviors, prejudicial attitudes and even genocide. A young girl shouts, “I hate you” to her mother in a moment of anger. Two high school girls mock another girl for being too perfect. A Holocaust survivor speaks to a class that includes a student whose father is a Holocaust denier. This one-hour program does an excellent job of illustrating the ways in which acts of hate can hurt people.
After we watched the video I asked my students to write a response that used the pyramid of hate to explain the layers or levels of hate in the video. They sat furiously writing, explaining how Ruthie had a prejudiced attitude towards her mother, and how Lucy and Mary had committed acts of prejudice against Joanne, and how Mrs. Kerjesz described genocide when she recounted her experiences of the Holocaust.
Jason handed me his paper without making eye contact or uttering a word. Reading it, I saw that he had been paying attention and had achieved the objectives of the lesson. He was able to explain the pyramid and provide examples from the video. However, it was at the very bottom of the paper in very tiny writing where I found the evidence of the greatest lesson learned. There he had written, “I’m sorry. I don’t even know any Jews.”
I am very grateful for having had the opportunity to correct a mistake that I had made because if I hadn’t, both Jason and I would have missed out on a valuable lesson that day.
Spain is a middle school language arts teacher in New Jersey.
Tech Links Build Better Global Citizens
Thanks to technology, the world is virtually at our fingertips. Global awareness has new meaning for the teachers. According to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, our students need to go beyond understanding global issues and be able to learn from and work with “individuals representing diverse cultures, religions and lifestyles in a spirit of mutual respect and open dialogue in personal, work and community contexts.” Using the “new and improved” nonfiction books on the market today is one way to get our students to this understanding.
Teachers and students are looking for a much broader perspective and the engaging capacity of nonfiction texts. Nonfiction, also known by the less negative moniker of informational text, has increased both in quantity and quality. The new nonfiction has become more reader-friendly with engaging prose, stunning high-quality photos and illustrations and an increased emphasis on accuracy. We, as educators, need to make these books available to our students as well as teach them strategies to read them. You can find some of these strategies on the Reading Rockets website, which features articles and resources to help you find and evaluate books appropriate for your students, as well as nonfiction-text reading strategies.
Another great resource for strategies and book recommendations comes from Primarysource.org. I attended a workshop hosted by Primary Source, and learned about the rich resources and opportunities for teaching understanding that can come from offering our students informational texts and primary sources.
For example, the DK UNICEF series Children Just Like Me by Barnabas Kindersley can start your children thinking about other cultures in a new way. Enhanced with beautiful photos of kids, their homes, schools and family life, the books underscore the basic needs and rights of all the world’s young people. Children will discover how their peers in other parts of the world live in a way that is engaging, visually appealing and without cultural bias. This series also has books that focus on education, celebrations, everyday life, etc. Although this series targets elementary school students, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone of any age who would not enjoy perusing the captivating stories on these pages. These books are readily available through any online bookstore. Primary Source is a site full of online resources, lesson plans and teaching strategies to help students read these informational texts.
Teaching our students to understand the basic needs and rights that we all have in common, as well as the diverse culture, religions and lifestyles of others, using the new and improved informational texts available is a great first step in making our children better global citizens. Global communication has put the world at their fingertips, it is up to us to prepare our students to work and play in their global world.
Wozniak is director of curriculum and technology and a former middle school robotics teacher in New Jersey.
For the Want of a Home
Editor’s Note: This month, Teaching Tolerance launched a new series of lessons called Issues of Poverty. This week’s featured lesson can be found here.
Like many of us, I sometimes overuse the word “need.” I have a tendency to say that I need the new iPhone or I need a pedicure, even though those are clearly things that I want, rather than need.
My greatest lesson on distinguishing between a want and a need came with my first-grade class when I was a new teacher. Volunteers from the business community came to teach for a day through the Junior Achievement program. As a new teacher, I was overwhelmed and relieved not to be responsible for lesson plans for the day. I was nervous, however, about how an idealistic businessperson would deal with 20 extremely needy first-graders living in one of the most violent parts of Oakland, Calif.
The woman who came was clearly unnerved to be in this neighborhood but collected herself quickly and taught in an enthusiastic and respectful manner. She went over the official Junior Achievement curriculum, which included basic map skills and identifying the different essential parts of a city. Then she got to “Needs versus Wants.”
I don’t remember exactly how it fit into the lesson as a whole, but I can still picture the images she used: cut-outs of an ice cream cone, roller skates, a house, a plate of food, a T-shirt, etc. The class was supposed to vote on whether each item was a “need” or a “want.” The picture was then taped to a board under the appropriate column. Some of the items were clear. Everyone agreed that while roller skates and bicycles were nice to have, they were definitely not necessities. Those items went on the “wants” side of the board. Others required some explanation. Ice cream was supposed to be a want, as it’s a treat, but the plate of food represented food as a whole, which goes with the “needs.”
Our volunteer was happy with all the discussion and eventual decisions, until the kids got to the picture of the house. The class collectively decided it was a want. The guest teacher looked confused and then clarified that this image included apartments too. The kids were still not sold: “That’s a want,” They said. The woman looked at her notes and clarified that it was supposed to be a need. “People need homes.”
A 6-year old saw her confusion and explained: “My uncle don’t have a home. And he’s still alive.” Other kids started jumping in:
“My friend lives in a shelter, she don’t have a home.”
“Some of my family members are homeless.”
“My mama used to live on the street but when she had kids she moved to my auntie’s house.”
One after another, at least half the class shared their anecdotes about homelessness and they all agreed: Homes are a “want.”
This clearly did not fit with my guest’s script. These kids were young enough that most of them were not fully aware how the economy and homelessness were connected. While they didn’t like it, for them, this was a normal part of life. Homes were in the “wants” category.
The guest teacher talked to me after school and began to cry. She said that she had never thought about this kind of poverty in the Bay Area. She pointed out that none of the students “looked homeless.” They were all clean with nice clothes. She was also confused why I didn’t correct them – she thought they should know that homes were a need. I didn’t. I thought the kids had a point.
Harris is a teacher, tutor and volunteer in California.
How Gadgets Teach Kids They are Poor
Editor’s Note: This month, Teaching Tolerance launched a new series of lessons called Issues of Poverty. This week’s featured lesson can be found here.
A student pleads with me at the beginning of class to bring an electronic reader to class?
“I’m almost finished reading my book and I want to finish it, but it’s on my (electronic reader name), the students says. “Please? I’m at a really good part.”
At first, this appears to be every language arts teacher’s dream; students begging to continue reading things they’ve read on their own time for fun.
But, then come the problems.
Our school policy forbids electronics outside of lockers while classes are in session. We’d have to monitor use. Are students actually reading or playing games and instant messaging on their electronic gadget? And perhaps the most challenging: How does allowing electronic readers widen socioeconomic differences in a public school setting?
Author Jeff Sapp reflects on his school experiences in the article How School Taught Me I Was Poor. He recounts the myriad encounters he had that made him feel deficient as a child of a single-parent home growing up in poverty. “Over and over again in school I had been cued both verbally and non-verbally that I was poor. I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t have enough and what I had was the wrong thing,” Sapp writes.
So, when I’m asked if students can bring electronic readers to class, my hesitation is a reflection of Sapp’s experience. I think of Sapp and what caused him to become more and more isolated and ashamed. In one example, Sapp talked about the devastation he felt when a patriotic egg decorating project in third grade clearly displayed his poverty because his mother couldn’t afford extra materials for decorating, unlike other students who used lavish materials to decorate their eggs.
His simple, but carefully colored egg was enough of a difference to make Sapp feel “immense shame about my red, white and blue egg. And then I noticed my classmates’ response to my sad homemade flag. It was pity, pure and simple. It’s the first time I ever remember feeling shame.”
As a teacher, I don’t want the appearance of electronic readers to make a student in poverty feel ashamed. And how can avoid giving the impression that having an electronic reader is some kind of invisible extra credit?
We could have a classroom set of electronic readers to level the playing field. But then we must be mindful that students without regular access to these gadgets may not know how to navigate their use and must learn to do so in front of his or her peers. But perhaps there’s a place we can start, with designated gadget time.
It may not be as simple as deciding whether or not to let students bring their electronic readers from home, but whether or not we are willing to open ourselves to the reality of how we may be perpetuating feelings of shame and inferiority in our classrooms.
Timm is a middle school language arts teacher and creative workshop instructor in Iowa.
