The Jose Vilson

Provoked

2012-05-31T19:33:49-07:00

Dear disciplinarians and other enforcers within our school communities,

Please note: you’re trying to keep kids in school, not keep them out of it.

Let me first admit my own biases in this topic, of which I have a couple. As a teacher, I readily admit that I can reasonably reach 90% of my given class, given that my classes aren’t considered “magnet” or “gifted and talented” by most academic measures. I tend to get the classes people forget, the ones that have to fend for themselves in the swarm of adult confusion, the ones that no one human being can nurture at one time. The other 10% simply fall through the cracks for reasons I haven’t comprehended yet. I always blame myself, but it could be an issue between us.

There’s a difference between a child being my student and being someone’s child.

While it’s true that academically, I have to seek ways to motivate them (some I nudge harder than others), I don’t interact with students to embarrass them or show them I’m the top dog. That’s what scares me about some of the people I see and hear schooling our children. They think that just because they have a certain title or station in life that they can talk to kids a certain way.

Let me take this one step further: you’re not in the business of prepping kids for jail time. When you antagonize students just to get them out of the school and threatening to call police, you’re asking for them to self-identify as criminals. When you give a child a huge punishment for a minor offense, you’re telling them that schools and thus life can’t be fair. When you yell at a child in the middle of a test or quiz while disrupting everyone else from When you even give a look to a child for no real basis trying to initiate a reaction, you’re telling them that they have to be on the defensive at all times, even in a supposedly safe environment.

I won’t even get into the topic of metal detectors here, but looking at a child and instinctively pushing him towards jail does you no favors.

Instead, try pulling a student aside without the humiliation of everyone else knowing. Try getting to know the kids that do well, volunteer a lot, and try hard in their studies. Try working with adults in the building who do have a good relationship with the child and, wherever possible, emulate those behaviors. If the teacher constantly sends someone to you who you know can do better, see if the child needs help adjusting to that classroom or give the teacher some management tips for that child.

On my end, it’s great to have another adult who helps enforce things like uniform policy and excessively disruptive behavior, but I know I have to deal with the majority of it on my own. I also don’t think I need to send students out of the classroom when my primary purpose in the building is to ensure that my children learn. I couldn’t care less whether the student has on shorts and a durag or a three-piece suit, I will teach him or her.

Because as hard as I try to push my students, they understand I’m a teacher, not a prison guard. It’s also why I advocate for rehabilitation of prisoners, not severe punishment. Same with our kids.

Provoke change in the system.

Jose, who kept it way real …

Technorati Tags: education, prison, school

I Don’t Win Unless You Win, Kid

2012-05-30T19:08:38-07:00

“It doesn’t matter anyway because y’all gonna win before 2:20 anyways.”

The three adults stare at each other in frustration.

“It’s true, y’all do.”

This was one of those times that truly tested this patience thing everyone says I have. It’s the word of a student who’s devolved into playing defense where there are no offenders, walking a tightrope of trouble, playing around with what he thinks is sufficient work to get by. Unfortunately, what happens in all those cases is that kids often underestimate a teacher’s academic and behavioral tolerance for what they do. The consistent little things start to add up, whether it’s a few missed assignments or the occasional nudging other students just to annoy them.

Sometimes, we think students will continue to grow in the trajectory we set out with them. They can grow from the first marking period all the way to the third, then just completely lose their momentum in the fourth for a myriad of reasons. I took a few guesses about what was happening at home, his eating habits, and the general nature of his little pranks and decided to think on it for a little bit. Whatever his mindset, he’s already developed a force field and won’t hear that he’s wrong without some immediate resistance.

The whole conversation spun around in circles of “That’s not true,” “Oh my god,” and “I didn’t say that!” before I finally had enough of the nonsense.

“Listen, here’s our deal. We honestly don’t care who wins or loses?”

“Really?” I knew I had to press the brakes now.

“Let me ask you a question: do you think I’d be here if all I wanted to do is win? For all we care, we could sit here, collect our checks, and not have to worry about whether or not you’re doing well in our classes. Ever.”

He sat silently.

“Instead, we’ve sacrificed 1 – 3 hours when we have all these deadlines to make sure you know what you’re doing to yourself. We need you to remember the kid who you started to become from 1st to 3rd marking period, the one who actually wanted to improve on the things he did.”

He nodded and said, “This is true.” The other adults did, too.

“Please know that if you don’t do well, we don’t do well. The only way we win is if you do. If you do well, that’s the only way we win. We don’t get paid extra for winning, whatever that means.”

Then, I got exact and told him the things we thought could get him back on track. He understood. Then I asked him if he had any questions for us. He didn’t. I asked him what high school he’s going to. He didn’t know. We looked it up for him. I left him to his own devices.

The stories we rarely get to share may become the pieces that inspire our students to win in places where we don’t have an official score.

Jose, who needed to share this today …

Technorati Tags: education

An Open Letter To NYS Education Commissioner John B. King [Testing Isn't Natural]

2012-05-29T18:16:59-07:00

Dear John B. King,

Let me just get this out of the way: testing is not natural.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that parents have gotten fed up with the abundance of testing placed upon their kids, and the continual dependence on standardized testing as a measure of actual student learning. The facts are out, the voices have started to quake, and the general tenor of the educational debate has struck a chord with the general public. The terrible after-effects of the No Child Left Behind Act along with corporations pushing local and federal governments towards their own beliefs about public education have only pushed the protests further. There’s only so much misinformation that the general media can push onto parents before they too catch wind of what students and educators have seen all along.

Public education is becoming less public.

To further that sentiment, you said the following:

“The environment around standardized testing has become so acrimonious that we’ve forgotten that adults need to set a positive tone for students around assessment as a natural part [of education].”

Wait, what?

Mr. King, I beg your pardon. Are you insinuating that adults, meaning those of us actually working with the kids, need to grin and bear it while our students get pummeled with a standardized test month after month? That they should equate the way that states give tests with actual learning? That we weren’t already trying to create a positive tone without these tests actually being in the way of that?

I’m in no way outraged because, as it turns out, I expected you to show your hand when it came to these things. The same money used to draw the huge contract recently doled out to Pearson to create (and probably fix) these tests could have been used to hire more adults to our neediest schools. Plus, your department asked the rest of us to carry out your agenda in the form of a memo. As if the kids haven’t already picked up that most of these tests shouldn’t be taken seriously. As if testing them this many times will actually matter in the lives they hope to lead after K-12.

Sure, life throws tests at us all the time, but they don’t directly affect the profit margins of Pearson and the plethora of third-party vendors trying to get us ready for something no one fully understands yet. They often come sporadically, without schedule or modifications. Some of the tests my students have passed in life, you or I might have failed given those conditions. Yet, we continually push the edge of pushing the students most disenchanted with school away from school.

Making schools better isn’t a matter of who gives the most tests, but whose testament assures that all adults have assured students their best efforts to educate them, no matter their circumstances. Testing isn’t natural, but you know that by now.

Mr. Vilson, who has a few more letters to write.

Let’s Agree on This: Bring The Troops Home

2012-05-28T18:56:47-07:00

This post won’t serve as an anti-war post. I haven’t changed my pro-peace stance on any level, and firmly believe that our presence in so many foreign countries has less to do with actually promoting peace and more to do with increasing wealth for a handful of powerful individuals. My radicalism doesn’t mean I somehow hate America or want to jump to Cuba; it just means I conscientiously object to sending more and more of our young men and women to countries under ambiguous and imperial means. I respectfully do the pledge at Yankee game seventh-inning stretches, but does doing it absolutely every day of the year make me more patriotic than the next? Nope. Absurd.

But you can disagree with me. That’s how discussion works.

One thing that often strikes a chord with even my worst dissenters is this: let’s bring the troops home. I don’t care if it happens next month or within the next year (I prefer the latter); let’s get them back home. I think to all the families still yearning for the chance to hug their husbands, fathers, daughters, mothers, cousins, best friends, and colleagues. I hope their soldiers come back to their homes to defend their homes against the things happening right in their neighborhoods like bad economies and the scary monsters under their beds. I wish those soldiers the mental fortitude to stay alive knowing that their main objective is to kill another human being for a purpose they can’t quite fully understand.

I don’t approve of what the troops often do, protecting the interests of companies like Halliburton and BP, sometimes killing innocent civilians in the process. I don’t approve of the carved-out spaces Allied officials have made for themselves in countries where families can barely make it to the next meal. I don’t approve of our current president’s vicious airborne drone missiles and the current stalemate with Guantanamo Bay (I haven’t forgotten).

And I still want the troops back home.

Some of my friends might think there’s no reason for them to come back. I on the other hand believe that if we refocused our dollars on domestic issues like re-bolstering our national infrastructure, creating jobs in places we forgot, and assuring that our troops get the mental help they need once they come back to their families. If this country is under the belief system that public servants make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives, then we ought to consider our recompense once they do arrive at the shores.

Let’s remember thus.

Jose

A Whole Month Left (A Freewrite)

2012-05-27T18:34:23-07:00

“You’re going to miss us!”

“Yes, I’m going to miss bothering the heck out of you!”

I mean, why do students think we’re actually going to spend our off time thinking about them? Except when we do. Like now.

There’s only a month left before we usher them on to their next stations in life (most of them anyways). They’re going to take new trips to school, new friends, different uniforms (if at all), and new teachers. The last one is probably of most concern to me because I at least like to know that the math teacher after me is actually better than me. Maybe he or she will have a little more rigor with collecting work, better feedback, more quiet in the classroom, and their own room for children to really explore math. They’ll have the time to do integrated projects without the compromise of other duties in and out of school. They’ll be patient where I should have been, vociferous where I wasn’t, and kind earlier than I was.

Maybe their home situations will settle down more, and a different environment will help rattle them out of some of their wayward routines, like eating in class and tossing things at each other when they think I’m not looking. Maybe they’ll actually get to school on time and come prepared with all necessary materials, well-clothed, fresh, and mature enough to understand the urgency of a high school environment. They’d eat a few more fruits, drink a multivitamin on occasion, and get better sleep so they feel better in school. Their parents might work things out, and, if they don’t, they at least come to some peaceful resolution that helps the child get by.

They’ll have a settled roof over their heads, and enough strength to bear the ball and chains of their own histories.

All the while, I too hope that I get a chance to reflect harder on my own practice, as I always have, but reflect and act upon it. The time is now to consider all the things that happened since September, yearning for the end of the year. I’ll hate to see them go, but I’d be glad to get another chance to prove myself worthy of missing, and being missed by children who would otherwise be perfect strangers. I’d prefer to not be their greatest math teacher ever, because that’s the freshman year math teacher’s job, followed by the sophomore year math teacher’s …

Mr. Vilson, who has 31 days to “miss” them, so I don’t … yet …

Technorati Tags: education, reflection, students

Don’t Grade The MTA

2012-05-24T18:40:40-07:00

Dear members of the NYC City Councilmembers,

I get it. You want to hold the MTA accountable somehow for their abhorrent misuse of funds, consistently delayed projects, and general failure to produce a good service for the amount of money the average New Yorker pays. It’s hard to blame the average service worker, but the guys at the top need to hear that we as a city aren’t happy with the mess that often is our daily commute. The smells we endure coupled with the delays and detours only exacerbate what we feel is an inefficient system.

You’re right: the bastards need to pay. Just, whatever you do, don’t follow the public school model.

For now, I’ll ignore that you’re about to give F’s to the A train and C’s to the D train, leaving native New Yorkers and tourists alike confused as is. (Will we have to resort to calling them by their color and express / local? Chill!) If you’re going to grade the trains, please don’t grade them the way your friends at the NYC Department of Education do.

Let me expound.

If you use their system, you’d have to give them a standardized test every three months, usually in an isolated area with only a few trains. You’d start them off somewhere in Park Slope where the hipsters hang because they rarely give the train issues. As you’re riding the train, you’d ask the conductors to punch in an answer to a question at every stop until they got to the Bronx. As they make their way through the Bronx, they get the same bad customers asking the conductors questions they’ve already heard, presumably in the voices of Danny Devito, Fran Drescher, and Gilbert Gottfried. Once they’ve gotten past the former AFLAC guy, you’d tell them the test was over and get back to them over the summer.

Please don’t grade the MTA like this.

The conductors would just keep driving the train with the manager nervously tapping the light switches wanting to know how the hell the conductors did. If they pass, all the trains get a green light. I mean, it’s not the whole system that’s failing. It’s just a few of the overcrowded ones in certain neighborhoods. If they fail, then you go to the press and blame their union. If you can find a scandal about their affairs under the Columbus Circle Station, more power to you.

When that doesn’t work, you shut down the whole line. It doesn’t matter what the customers think. You reroute them, make them take a bus, or tell them you’re preparing for a special new line. You put these conductors in a pool where they keep getting evaluated until they leave or meet your ambiguous standard every few years, shut the train line down and replace it with the same train with a few more ads. However, you’ll have a lot more frustrated and exhausted ones who struggle to stay energized through an entire shift, and eventually, less conductors as a whole. When they leave, so do the conductors, the management, and a few other key people tired of doing the work of three different people at once.

Same customers. Same tunnels. Same groundwork. Maybe fresher paint. Sometimes a new train with Wi-Fi will come through, but you have to be really lucky or really early to catch that specific train. It’ll work, I swear.

All the while, we can make this public institution better by setting better guidelines and standards for how it should work, make sure everyone involved from the management to the person cleaning up has the experience and professionalism to serve the customers properly, invest fully in the system to make it more customer-friendly, and have checks and balances so the system functions well.

Otherwise, you’re headed down an ugly path. And trains have nowhere to race.

Signed, a teacher …

Jose, a native New Yorker of three decades, his soul much longer …

Technorati Tags: education, grading, mta

Don’t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If …

2012-05-23T18:54:17-07:00

No, not this again.

“This kid never takes personal responsibility for anything that they ever do. I’m standing there wondering why this kid is literally sleeping in my class, so I walk up to him and tell him to get out of my classroom! The nerve of him to try to get one over on me. I get paid whether or not they do well, but for them to sit there and do nothing? Get out!”

Does she even wonder why … nevermind. I inquire a bit more. She replies,

“Well, he comes in with those stupid cream cheese sandwiches from next door and he thinks he’s going to eat in my classroom and get his grubby little hands on my stuff, he’s got another thing coming. And then, he’s getting pissy because I tell him he needs to get ready for class and puts his head down. I can’t stand him!”

This conversation hasn’t happened in the last few months for me, mainly because I don’t eat in the teachers’ lounge anymore (more on that later), but I’ve heard this said so many times, I almost started to believe the hype. I could continue from here saying how my mom, unlike others’ parents, prioritized education. I, unlike other kids, paid attention to everything my teacher said and gave all my teachers demi-god status. Most of my professional, formerly low-income friends of color might say the same things about beating the odds and focusing on their intellectual pursuits.

I’m also privileged to have talents in academics, too. Others might never realize their own privilege when walking into situations with kids.

As most of you know, personal responsibility is often used as a euphemism for ignoring the environmental effects of poverty, race, class, gender, and a host of other isms we all ought to embody if we consider ourselves change agents. Even men of color who came from these tough backgrounds tap into the personal responsibility argument to get into the good graces of people who might not otherwise hear their messages. Some teachers use the personal responsibility argument on its face because it’s a lot easier than navigating through their own frustrations with a system seemingly meant to fail them. Principals and district leaders hawk it sometimes when scores go down more often than not.

The whole spectacle reeks of tree pissing.

Don’t talk to me about personal responsibility unless you balance it out with a good, rich discussion of socio-emotional foci and a keen sense of relationship building between yourself as the adult / teacher and the child / student. For instance, in the midst of discussion, you might hear me say, “Well, he doesn’t work hard enough on this” or “He needs to come prepared for class,” but best believe they know how much I care about their well being. I’ve only sent kids to the principals’ office three times, and I still have a goal of zero. I let them eat breakfast and talk while working, but in exchange, my expectations for their work increase.

I don’t walk around the room with a sense of entitlement, nor do I ever say I’ll get paid for this job anyways because my kids (yes, my KIDS) need to know that there’s someone who simultaneously holds them accountable and tries to work with them as people. Because they are people. That’s my personal responsibility to them.

Jose, who has a conversation with himself tomorrow …

Technorati Tags: education, responsibility

The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]

2012-05-22T19:39:56-07:00

You’re a firm believer that we as a country has made tremendous progress since the Jim Crow laws. We have a Black president whose education policy advances the last white one’s education’s policy. Black people are all over TV, and Black man can kiss White women on TV without much ado. This country gets closer to a tipping point where people of color as a whole eclipse the dominant culture in population. Oh yeah, and the Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954 desegregated schools and our public schools only have divisions in class, not race.

Except it does, and anyone with a finger on the pulse of these schools sees the segregation loud and clear.

A combination of school defunding for busing and magnet programs and redlining, a practice that limits certain services from reaching specific areas of a district, have made our schools more segregated than pre-Brown, but you didn’t have to tell me that. Most of my friends understood that, and have lived with the separate and unequal schema of schools for some time. Thus, when we teach at schools, we come in having seen the “other side” and knowing that experience as the antithesis of what we experience in low-income schools.

Yet, people from middle- to upper-income schools come with mouths agape when entering into these schools. These people come into environments where they don’t get to hang out in the hallways too often. The students in these environments can’t just jump into song in the lunchrooms and hallways, or talk to adults a certain way without a hostile response even if it’s an honest question. They can’t always afford cheerleading or soccer, and they don’t always prioritize classical just because the teacher says that’s cool.

They have a different culture, and for that, they either have two options: they either get induced into a whitewashing process or they have adults tell them, “Well, that’s just the way it is.”

I should know. As someone who’s been through public and private (Catholic) schooling, I saw firsthand the difference when parents have different incomes. Phrases like “My Dad got it,” or “It’s OK, we can get another one” doesn’t come easily to a person who knows they’re poor. The students who goofed around in the back of the classroom in my low-incoming school did so because they had already given up on the process of schooling. By contrast, the students who goofed around in the back of the classroom in my mid-to-high-incoming school did so because they felt safe, and by safe, I mean privileged.

In theory, I should have felt safe, too, and to a certain extent, I did. However, I couldn’t help but feel odd when codewords like “urban” and “rap” became indicators for people to stare directly at me in college classes, or when I sat in an honors class as one of two children of color knowing I had to make the grade only to find out my “English” wasn’t good enough to get that 90. Ever. Or when I’m in the middle of a professional development conference or other education conversation, and people gawk when I speak about pedagogy from a nuanced perspective … because they assumed that the pedagogy for teaching children of color doesn’t matter.

But I know what you’re thinking: what does any of this have to do with school integration? Simple. Because integration isn’t just a school of education, but a school of thought, a belief system in which we need to invest. If we don’t believe children of color can have an education that gives them as many options as the next child, then we ought to rip up the one little lesson plan on Martin Luther King Jr. for Black History Month and toss it in the recycle bin. We as a country have to care enough to integrate our schools, and thus, our collective consciousness.

Jose, who just got to thinking …

Technorati Tags: education, integration, redlining, segregation

I Don’t Write For Your F**king Approval [Channeling Kobe Bryant]

2012-05-21T18:06:14-07:00

Here is another recent interview with Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski and yours truly. The piece never made it into Yahoo!, but he e-mailed it to me anyways.

The scene here is the usual: arguments abound about the future of education, the rank and file teachers jump into their political slots for the election year, millionaires and billionaires covertly endorse the candidates malleable enough to shift their well intentioned opinions to right of center ones, and the apolitical stand to the side nesting into educational technology and other cursory vernacular. With so few that voice their opinions at this high level of frankness and transparency, Vilson can live with the snippy comebacks, the tokenism of inclusion (or the ignorance of exclusion) from top lists and acknowledgments, the general lack of positivity amongst colleagues, and the covert hate thrown in his direction by colleagues who don’t get it. Amongst friends, he rarely mentions these things. Just don’t remind him of what I just reminded you.

“I don’t give a [expletive] what you say,” Vilson told me yesterday. “If I go out there and write a nice story where no one shares it or comments, people say, ‘Vilson choked, or Vilson is x for whatever the [expletive] in critical situations.’ Well, [expletive] you!”

“Because I don’t write for your f**king approval. I write for my own love and enjoyment of the blog. And to tell the story that no one else has the cojones to tell. Most of the time, when people feel the pressure, they’re worried about what others might say about them, or do to them. I don’t have that fear, and it enables me to forget bad pieces and write harder and write about my life so candidly.”

Deep down, Vilson does recognize it. Not because the side commentary weighs him down, but because it’s the heat under his palms. Compared to his contemporaries, he doesn’t write as much in his eponymous blog as others do, but he averages enough words in a post to compensate and then some. Seven years he’s been asked to do his job at a high level, and seven years he’s grown into the professional we know today, out of sheer hard work, listening more than he’s said, and enough resolve to fight through the toughest moments in his career. He doesn’t think he’s above reproach, but nine times out of ten, he’s able to brush the dirt off his proverbial shoulder.

“And maybe that’s what separates me from a lot of people: I can laugh at myself when people think I’m doing nothing, whereas most people might feel really insecure or nervous about the next one, or pissed off and hold that anger for the next list or whatever have you. I can find the entertainment and humor in it.”

Let me write, Vilson seems to say. Piss me off, don’t include people of color in your circles. Speak ill of kids you’re supposed to care about, and he jumps right into the melee. Tell him he’s not a classroom teacher and the next rhyme he writes might be about you. He prefers discussions that get fiery without getting personal, factual without getting tedious, rhythmic without getting argumentative. He says he laughs when he lets others have the last word because he’ll wait long enough for the truth to reveal itself.

“The fallout from disagreement is always something that makes some writers hesitant,” Vilson said. “They’re thinking about their legacies, their reputations, their connections to high-profile people, and often, their agendas.”

Anyway, f**k them. No hesitancy here. No fear of the miss. It is a liberating feeling, and it’s where he forever wants to live.

Jose, who heavily borrowed from Adrian Wojnarowski for this satirical piece …

Technorati Tags: interview, kobe bryant, satire

Amber Cabral Makes Race Palpable

2012-05-20T14:40:13-07:00

Let her cook:

Most of us who have children, teach them as we were taught: that people are going to hate you because you are Black. People are going to make you prove yourself twice as often. People are going to expect twice as much before they help you or even give you the respect owed to a whole man. People are going to not hold doors for you, gossip about you, doubt your intelligence. People are going to call you nigger. Police are always looking for you. And you must stand tall and peaceful against these things. You must quietly rise above them, and work still to be the you that the world deserves, because you also, because of your skin, have no right to be angry.

Go read the rest. I had something to say here, but Amber’s post usurped that. Thank me later.

Jose, who will post frequently this week …

The Jose Vilson

Provoked

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I Don’t Win Unless You Win, Kid

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Don’t Talk To Me About Personal Responsibility If …

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The Normalcy of School Segregation [It Matters If You're Black Or White]

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I Don’t Write For Your F**king Approval [Channeling Kobe Bryant]

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