I Heart My Students

I truly Heart my students. I know I talk a lot about the problems of teaching, of education, and of my school; however, at the end of the day, I keep going back to teach. I love what I do. It makes me happy to have a positive impact on the lives of so many young people. I see so much potential when I look into their eyes. As Lauryn Hill once said, "[They] inspire me to be a higher me." Everyday I try to be a better teacher so that they can become better people/students.

The above picture was drawn by one of my former students. She's a brilliant student and an amazing artist. She's only a sophomore and she plans to attend UNC Chapel Hill. The picture is actually a sign and it hangs on the wall outside of my room, above my door. The other two pictures embody how I feel about my job. If you look close enough, you can see that the different squares (some rectangles) surrounding the Malcolm X poster are actually Me Squared. The students were supposed to put a picture of themselves in the middle and put words, images, and symbols that are significant to them around the outside of their picture. I placed their squares around Malcolm X's poster which features his famous quote: "We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary." I believe that by any means necessary, I will educate my students to believe in themselves, their futures, and their worth. And they are the means, my weapons if you will, which I will use to fight a society which systematically tries to denigrate African Americans in our country.

Again, I Heart My Students:0)

Did Teachers Take Noose Lesson Too Far?

Kindergarten teachers at Alma J. Brown Elementary, a Gramling State University run school, decided to use the Jena Six case as a teachable moment. The lesson involved nooses and link chains. Take a look at the video and decide whether or not the teachers took things too far.

Stop Making Hip-Hop the Scape Goat!!!

In light of the recent attention being paid to hip-hop, stemming from the Don Imus situation way back when, I decided to let people know how I really feel. Honestly, I do have a problem with the misogynistic lyrics and the minstrelsy of hip-hop, but I won't jump on the bandwagon of blaming hip-hop for the problems of the Black community (as if it is the only one).

I believe that today's educational system is more of an acidic force in our community than our music. Our youth are not receiving the education that they need and deserve. I really wish our so called Black leaders would channel some of their energy towards getting qualified teachers in low performing schools, getting supplies to students who can't afford them, getting computers in poor districts, upgrading school buildings that need to be condemned, closing the achievement gap, etc. I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that Jahmal, a 15-year-old gang banger, is committing crime because he heard Yung Joc say "if ya messin' with my money, ya messin' with ya life" or he heard some other violent lyric that I can't think of right now. Jahmal is probably robbing his neighbor because he reads at a third grade level and is bored out his mind in class because he doesn't want his classmates to know he can't understand what the heck is going on in The Odyssey. Our youth are becoming disconnected with school and are filling that void with things such as hip-hop music and crime, and the root of the problem is an educational system which isn't meeting the needs of our students. To take this argument in a different direction, some people may say that parents are the real root of the problems of our youth, which is also true, but I stopped blaming parents when I realized that some people are just bad parents, and we can't control that, but we can work to change our educational system. But I digress.

Hip-hop is a genre and the artists have a right to talk about what they feel and how they feel. They really aren't doing anything any different from any other genre. I think the problem is hip-hop has a stronghold on America, like no other, and it possesses more power than some of us would like for it to have. Also the problem is that we are trying to make these people into suitable role models/leaders. Everybody ain't cut out to be a leader. Being famous should not be equated with role model, and I don't believe that you have to be educated to be a leader (Fannie Lou Hamer is my favorite leader). Besides, its not the musician, its the listeners that we need to be concerned with. Artists produce what the people want to hear. Educate the people, change the artists. Don't try to change the artist to educate the people.