The Jose Vilson: The Blog

At The End of the Day [The Letters Series]

2009-11-18T19:03:12-08:00

This week, I’m writing a few more letters to different people, whose names shall be removed from the post, but who nonetheless are amalgamations of real characters. I won’t be mincing words this week, and in these letters, I hope to address some issues I find in education as a whole through these letters. If need be, I’ll apologize later. Actually, I probably won’t.

Barack Obama at School

Dear Barack Obama,

It’s me again, hoping you’ll soon respond to my letters. As always, I have respect for you and what you’ve done thus far in office (most of the stuff anyways). At the very least, you’ve brought many issues into the national zeitgeist in ways only few have the power to do, particularly education. My letter comes on the heels of a Meet the Press interview with your Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in tow with Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich. As the video plays, I found myself shaking my head at almost every assertion these men made. While I expect a shallowness over educational issues from afternoon specials and morning wake-up shows, I still don’t expect that from men who have positioned themselves as “educational gurus.”

Very little about their collective histories build confidence in me or many others in their ability to understand the intricacies of the classroom, from the pedagogy and praxis of the everyday K-12 classroom and the management of an actual school because and despite restrictions from underfunded districts to the egregious practices of college loaners and their universities and the ultra-selectivity of the economically and / or racially underprivileged into post-graduate programs. Even if these individuals have tried to make a conscious effort to discuss the numbers behind their message, they sound more like they’ve dined at the corporate line table rather than actually having thorough conversations with people on the ground.

Let’s say we actually took the socialized system of public schools and turned them all over to private corporations and “non-profits.” When the next recession hits, as capitalism is prone to do, will we finally see a bailout then? Will the government have to step in and tell these “CEOs” to take paycuts but turn their backs when they take private trips to islands for professional development? Will our children have to shred all their papers and use the remaining documents for ticker tape, too? Will some of us teachers walk out with only socks and remaining curriculum in our suitcases? Or will we have a situation akin to Major League Baseball where we’ll hire “scabs” like proferred by Teach for America in lieu of qualified teachers with masters and / or years of experience in their profession?

A big part of me gets it, too. The one thing that most people seem to agree upon is that student achievement trumps everything else when it comes to education. However, the ends doesn’t always justify the ends, especially if the ends depend on unsustainable means. When I heard “Teachers have to come into a classroom and believe that they’re going to be ready and disciplined,” it says to me that we have yet to understand the conditions in which our children grow up and how so few actually make it out of the same system we come out of. When I heard “If the schools are failing, we just won’t give them money,” it sounds like it’s a problem that’s already been happening and it’ll continue promulgating the difference between the haves and the have-nots (for that matter, the halved or the halved-not).

To wit, in New York, we had plenty of schools who received the highest rating possible from the NYC Department of Education’s grading system, an A. By plenty, I mean 77.6%. Conversely, we only had 2 schools who received an F. Now, looking at the metrics, one might think NYC has done rather well, and deserves the monies from the Race to the Top fund. At a second glance, we see just how these numbers have manipulated so many of us. Our overcrowded, underfunded, parted, and soulless edifices can’t compare to the gloss Bloomberg’s coated over his office.

But maybe asking those three to visit a very low-performing school, even with Secret Service in tow, would mess up their shine. At the end of the day, as in the beginning, sunshine doesn’t gleam on brick and mortar. Yet the new glass ones aren’t so transparent either …

Mr. Vilson, who wants nothing more than Obama to read …

G-d Takes Care of All [The Letters Series]

2009-11-17T20:06:27-08:00

P.S. – As a special note regarding this particular note: any immature or ridiculous comments concerning my relationships with my students will get rebuked. There’s a reason I left my last blogging environment, so let’s not take it there. Thanks.

Man's Heart

Dear Student,

Tonight, I probably had one of my most humbling moments when your parent told me that the reason why you even came to school was me. At first, it took me aback because I’m always shy when it comes to these sorts of compliments. Your parent told me stories about how you gush when talking about me in school, how you show your father your math grades online after they start doubting your excellence, how you get embarrassed when you get low grades in his class, how, when you moved, you begged to stay in the school you were in because of me.

When I first thought about becoming a teacher, I knew I wouldn’t be perfect, but I tried my absolute best. Even to this day, I don’t have it as great as I’d like. You’re the good student, too. You’re one of the students I’ve relied on so thoroughly, one who actually does what’s asked without being submissive. You’ve grown so much academically and personally, and I believe in everything you do from here on out. I’ve spent more than the 45-90 minutes most teachers have spent with you because we’ve hung around after school, sometimes during lunch, on trips to the Old and New Stadium, through exam after exam.

Each instance gave me a chance to love what I do, and thus give so much of myself as the student body. While so many of us teachers believe in full detachment, and I see the value in that, when one teaches with all they’ve got, it’s HARD to not care at least a little bit. You need more than just the academic development. Much of your personal development comes from understanding that your teachers care about you, and the more your teachers care (with variation about how your teachers show that love), the more you respond in kind.

Your heartbreaks, your pain, your greatest moments, your aches, and your griefs, I’ve heard them all.

Even the time when I thought you’d move. I heard. I responded that I’d think about adopting you for a year just to keep you here. I was totally kidding and never told your mom, but in my heart-of-hearts, I totally believed I’d consider it. Hearing today that your mom heard about that and that’s why she opted to keep you in the school says a lot about my relationship with you. You could come to me for anything within my reach, and I’d make it happen.

I don’t always get to say this aloud but thank you for you. Thank you for allowing me into your life and letting me bring you more than just math. Thank you for the pride you take in this journey we’re taking until June. Thank you for being part of my G-d …

Mr. V, who had a hard time writing this without choking up …

No Hammocks, No Papers [The Letters Series]

2009-11-16T17:57:44-08:00

Wimpy Asks for a Bailout

Dear Mr. Sleep-a-Lot,

In the smaller scheme of things, you really don’t matter as far as my work with the math department or my work with my kids. You come briskly in and briskly out, saluting the strangers in our school while the rest of us consider ourselves family, dysfunctional and all. There’s a sense that you don’t want to be here, and I fully understand. When the principal makes his presence felt around you, you’re quick to pat him on the back, tell him you’re working hard for him, and should he need anything, you’ll take care of it. When asked to come through on this promise, you fall. Flat. Hard. With no remorse.

Good luck with that.

First, I gotta say I’m annoyed with your lack of care for our students. You let them pretty much run all over you, and you almost purposefully ignore the hard work the prior teacher left up on the board just so you wouldn’t have to collect the residual class work from the students. You call them all types of names without actually knowing who they are, and call in others to help solve your discipline problems. You sit in the hallway desk reading the paper, never minding the students fighting right across from you or the loud sounds coming from the boys’ bathroom right next to you.

People throughout the district know all about your incompetence, and yet, you’re so happy to deliver your [lack of] instruction to our students who need this so desperately. It’s even worse because you have a similar background to the students we teach, so your employment under the school system is as much a swindle of your culture as it is of the area’s taxpayers’ hard-earned money. You’ve learned every trick in the book when it comes to keeping yourself afloat, and I can’t imagine you ever having been a competent teacher on any level.

The worst part is: you’re the teacher who makes veteran teachers look like the problem in education.

The ratio of excellent vets to people like you could be 234850298345 to 1, but because of you and your inability to adhere to some semblance of educational pedagogy, those other great teachers have to constantly prove their worth when they always had worth in my eyes. You’re the reason the edu-deformers have attacked the union so thoroughly. You’re the reason why some people in the new teacher programs chastised newbies who followed the veterans and create schisms between staff members. You’re the reason why edubloggers always have to go on the offensive when it comes to their own pedagogy. You’re the reason why The Simpsons had to make Mrs. Krabappel. Frankly, you’re the reason why the conversations about tenure and salary differentials exist anyways.

If it was up to me, we’d raise the years needed for tenure to 5-6 years, the average time for a teacher to leave or stay. I’d probably lower the length it takes to give a teacher “due process” to 2 years. I’d probably ask for clearer definitions of competency since 90% of all teachers in this country get satisfactory ratings throughout the year (which either means we have a lot more competence teachers than the edu-deformers admit to or the people who administer these ratings don’t always know how to measure teacher effectiveness, a discussion for another time). I’d increase the amount each school gets in their budget so they’re less tempted to cut out highly competent vets who can then mentor younger students, producing more whole school communities rather than the current schema.

Lastly, I’d have a “no hammocks, no papers” rule. Just for people like you.

I’m not saying you’re not human, and that you don’t have a family to feed, your own issues to take care of, or your life to sustain. You could have been an ambitious and idealistic teacher who fell by the wayside from a system that still fails to support teachers enough for true teacher retention.

Yet, teachers fuel the schools’ bodies, and the weakest blood vessel can disrupt the whole body of work.

No administrator would give you a U rating because you’re either too nice or they don’t want to go through a 3-year process to dismiss you thoroughly. No union member will actively fight for you because in the national scheme of things, you’re making us look bad. No student will vouch for you because you read the paper before, during, and after class.

While you’re in tune with what’s going on in the world outside of school, you’ve completely missed the boat on transforming the world inside the school for those who need it most …

Jose, who’s as pro-union as they come, but recognizes the need for change …

p.s. – In related news, check this post by Larry Ferlazzo on the myth of “teachers coming from the lowest third of graduating classes” …

Short Notes: Day and Age (and My Radio Show Appearance)

2009-11-15T16:26:29-08:00

Sammy Sosa: Before

A few links:

Long overdue shout-out to the latest edition of Education Carnival courtesy of I’m A Dreamer. [ImADreamer]
Mom101’s response to the LA Times’ article about mommy bloggers is the best I’ve ever read regarding blogger relationships with marketers. [Mom101]
Want a really cool poster to use in class detailing the difference between Left and Right ideology? Got it for you right here. [Flickr]
On True/Slant, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone fame discusses how Goldman Sachs’ representative Brian Griffiths’ misappropriated JESUS CHRIST to deliver the company message of greed and globalization. [True/Slant]
Girls can’t do computer science? Says who? [Geek Feminism]
Gizmodo gives us a look into Internet times and costs across the world. The US isn’t doing well at all. [Gizmodo]
Nezua kills it on the YouTube, discussing the “post-raciality” of today’s world, where it’s not really post-racial at all. [The Unapologetic Mexican]

On Friday, I was blessed to be a guest on Rise Up Radio, a program on WBAI Radio, New York City’s awesome radio station on 99.5FM. (Those of you who didn’t get to hear me on Rise Up Radio on WBAI can download the hour-long show here.) On the show, I discussed child sex acts, the 25 Chicago children arrested for their food fight, health care and the Stupak amendment, and Sammy Sosa’s skin bleaching.

While we really went into these topics, I failed to make a few points important to the topic of Sammy Sosa and why it hurt the Black and Latino community when we saw Sammy look so ghastly.

Rafael Trujillo, the most famous ruler of Dominican Republic to date, advocated for white supremacy and changed the whole dynamic of race in a country with a huge African ancestry to a country where most of the darker-skinned people believe they’re “Indian-colored” even when their facial features say differently, differentiating themselves from “Blacks” (read: Haitians, who were slaughtered under Trujillo’s rule). Thus, Sammy Sosa’s color change resuscitates the ideology that pervaded the Trujillo era.
This kind of stuff happened in America often, most notably with Rita Hayworth who changed her whole name, electrocuted her hairline to push it up and straight, lightened her whole skin tone entirely, and made a few other alterations to become acceptable to Hollywood … and became very successful in the process. This is the first time I’d ever known that an Afro-Latino ever went through this process, at least for non-medical reasons. We question, then, why Sammy would do that since he was already successful … at least until recently.
Raquel Cepeda is mulling some of these topics herself on her blog. Check it out.

This week, I’ll be discussing my stance on a variety of educational topics. Please check it out. Let me know what you’re thinking.

Jose, who likes his skin color a lot …

A New Moon (My First Kiss)

2009-11-12T19:28:46-08:00

Full Moon

It’s been a long time since I’ve shared any work from the Acentos workshops on Sunday. I didn’t share this at the workshop because I got shy. Yes, I have that emotion in my arsenal. Follow:

My first kiss was the sweetest “Shut the F*k Up” I’d ever gotten from the first of many curvy, sassy, infuriating, mostly-older women I’d ever met liplocked with this brotha with no way of experiencing anything like this until he traveled physically and mentally to places he never thought possible like his mother’s place of ancestry at a time when night meant white rice, prayer, a faint scent of Johnny Walker, and a new moon chillin’ with Antony Santos and a gang of friends pushing him too far to a lady six years his senior chasing him until he submitted to her will 10 years after his first Christmas where he got his first gift which made him want that gift over and over like a new moon rising right over his house …

Jose, who was reminded tonight that he was a poet, too …

A Clear Message to America’s Disadvantaged Children

2009-11-11T17:37:50-08:00

Baby Dolls Locked Up

This morning, The New York Times reported that 25 Chicago children were arrested (ARRESTED) for a middle school food fight. At first, I wanted to scream at my Mac. I couldn’t believe that we have another story worth reporting that just gets brushed under the rug, for some fortunate activist to try and dig up through the dense pages of the Times. Then I found myself reclining in my seat a bit, contemplating on the totality of this message and how it’s really more synecdochic in how it represents the overt and covert messages sent across schools and about our students.

For instance, a few days ago, I was on the train, on my way to another poetry workshop, when I saw a Black boy and his grandmother, knowing the sorts of interactions I’d see. He’d try to open his toy and his grandmother would tell him no. She’d finally give in. She’d give him the toy. He’d drop the toy from playing with it. I’d pass it to him. He’d get slapped. She just keeps shaking her head at him, sending him negative messages, well after he’d already dropped the toy and put it away. He’d want to nap. He reaches out to his grandmother. She continues shaking her head. She’s pinching his cheeks, visibly annoying him even after there was no positive conversation between the admonishing and the positive vibe. He starts napping anyways, tired of the stares and head shakes. She finally gives in to the rest that he wants … 11 stops after he asked her.

Messages like these get sent throughout our young boys and girls about their humanity. They get it from their families, their schools, their environments, and their world. While it’s been well-documented how different children get treated, one really would have to work with children or observe from the lens of one who does to truly see how these little interactions build callous, indifferent, and fatalistic children who don’t believe in fairness and justice since the system has denied this justice to them for so long. It’s disheartening to see even those who do work as teachers, social workers, child advocates, counselors, and babysitters still see Black and Latino children as undeserving of love and care, or even just a little encouragement in the actual form of encouragement. (GASP!)

I look back at that lunch incident, and anywhere we turn on children’s TV, from Spongebob and Bratz to Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide and Zoey 101, we see food fights only punished by a simple slap-of-the-wrist and / or simply part of the comedy. We never see a wagon pull up to the back of the school, and a chain gang of kids just following in one for another. Then again, these shows don’t take place in Chicago, IL. They take place in streets with a name of a tree, an animal, or just the word “Main.”

Thus, it’s important for us to arrest these children who, even having matriculated in good charter schools and trying to do better for themselves, start simple things like food fights. America is preparing them for their futures. Some children’s futures are bright as the sun, shining down on them. Some might call these futures “locked up.” These children’s lives will learn the definition of locked-up a whole lot differently: emotionally and politically.

Mr. V, who honestly wonders what you think about the criminalization of our children …

p.s. – There is a different way. There just is.

MiBodega Presents: Jose Vilson on Latino in America

2009-11-09T17:31:09-08:00

Take Notes with Jose L. Vilson

Ladies and gents,

Let me introduce you to the first time I’ve ever done a real video blog. It might also give some of you educators a taste for how I teach. I’m sure a lot of you will get the pseudo-spoof, but I also did my best to contribute something important to the conversation about Soledad O’Brien’s Latino in America, the CNN special I discussed not too long ago. Here is my first vlog. What do you think?

Yeah, I thought so, too. Thanks.

Jose. Just Jose.

Dennis Kucinich on Why He Voted No to Health Care Pt. 2

2009-11-08T17:54:21-08:00

Dennis Kucinich, Man of the Hour

After reading this beautiful piece of work by Dennis Kucinich on why he voted ‘no’ to the House Bill on Health Care Reform, I went to his website and caught this little statement on his website as well:

Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement:

“Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for war? The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive. People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on Main Street.

“Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively little money to build things in the US. The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional $50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trillions for war and Wall Street, billions for insurance companies… When we were promised change, we weren’t thinking that we give a dollar and get back two cents.”

No word on whether anyone objected to Kucinich’s assertions. They’re certainly in line with my own.

Jose, who would have voted for Dennis Kucinich if not for Barack Obama …

Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez: Even The Maligned Get Realigned

2009-11-08T17:01:34-08:00

Alex Rodriguez, 2009 Champion

Much of the last 5-6 years of my New York Yankee fandom has been spent on defending the Yankees’ decision for trading for, and eventually resigning Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez. I’ve had so many heated battled with Red Sox fans and fellow Yankee fans about the merits of getting one of the greatest players of this generation (and possibly of all time) for arguably the greatest sports franchise in the world. The vaingloriousness of New York demands such a matchup. Plus, until Game 4 of the 2004 American League Championship Series vs. the Comeback Red Sox, there was no question about how great an acquisition this became.

Of course, no one talks about Mariano Rivera’s 2 blown saves because it had to be the new guy’s fault. Everyone on that team was a “true blue Yankee” with pinstripes in their veins, whether they were acquisitions or from the farm system … unless their name was Alex, and these definitions often made Yankee fans the laughing stock of baseball, even with the gaudy 26 championships at that point. While it’s hard to pity a man who’s making 400 times more money than I am, I couldn’t help but think about how this Dominican overachiever resembles and reflects so many people within our society.

Our society has countless stories of people who succeeded tremendously on an individual level, but never got the respect they deserved simply because the factors and societies around them couldn’t legitimize their work and put it in its proper perspective. So you can only imagine my excitement when Alex Rodriguez won his first championship, fingers to his eyes, in the embrace of Mr. Perfect, Derek Jeter. After all the hard work, the sports psychoanalysis, the drama, the steroids, the surgery, the criticism from all angles, he not only became a champion, but he contributed in a major way to ensuring that his team won, in a league where his secret name was “The Freezer” … for making his teams worse for playing on them. (An unfair comparison if you ask me.)

Finally, a chance for people to see him for what he is, blemishes and all. Oh right, and a championship ring to go along with that.

Jose, who hates to say he told you so, but … I don’t hate to tell you.

p.s. – 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009 were his best years … A-Rod is odd.

The Proverbial Godfather to My Students

2009-11-05T19:53:18-08:00

Yankee Stadium Gang

This morning, I had a strange choice to make. Ever since the Yankees made the playoffs, I made a quasi-promise to myself that, should the New York Yankees win the championship, I’d take my students to the parade. While not educationally sound, I’ve been building that bridge from Inwood to South Bronx for my students since their 6th grade year. For their big class trip in 6th grade, I took them to the old Yankee Stadium a few months removed from when the owners closers its doors. For their 7th grade year, I took them to the new Yankee Stadium as well. Thus, it would have been fitting for me to bring them to their first Yankee parade.

My real reason for bringing them to the stadiums has less to do with my fervor for the Yankees; Citi Field would have done fine (Shea? Not so much.) It’s knowing that I continue to give them an experience that they may not otherwise get as children, exposing them to things within their area that otherwise people deny them. For instance, as my then 6th grade students and I rode the D train to 161st and River Ave., my students admitted to me that they’d never been to Yankee Stadium. They may never have known what the big deal was about unless I personally took them, at a cost that was well within their price range (free).

What’s more, I knew they’d at least get the feeling that, for at least a moment, the whole world was theirs. So this morning, almost completely out of my mind since I’d slept about 4 hours, I had to make a critical decision: do the kids go or do they not? Then I realized at a ticker tape parade of this magnitude, they’d feel more cramped and antsy than open and free. Plus, the risks associated with thousands of eccentric New Yorkers cheering on 25 baseball guys make me a little nervous.

Best believe that, before the year is done, I’ll have something that’ll complete their career at my middle school. Even if they don’t remember me, they’ll at least remember the time when, for a second, they walked in the steps of world championships …

Mr. V, who loves the vibe of NYC right about now …

The Jose Vilson: The Blog

At The End of the Day [The Letters Series]

You May Also Be Interested In

G-d Takes Care of All [The Letters Series]

You May Also Be Interested In

No Hammocks, No Papers [The Letters Series]

You May Also Be Interested In

Short Notes: Day and Age (and My Radio Show Appearance)

You May Also Be Interested In

A New Moon (My First Kiss)

You May Also Be Interested In

A Clear Message to America’s Disadvantaged Children

You May Also Be Interested In

MiBodega Presents: Jose Vilson on Latino in America

You May Also Be Interested In

Dennis Kucinich on Why He Voted No to Health Care Pt. 2

You May Also Be Interested In

Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez: Even The Maligned Get Realigned

You May Also Be Interested In

The Proverbial Godfather to My Students

You May Also Be Interested In