Mud Hill School, circa 1907 - My Grandfather (1st row, first little boy on the left) and my Grandmother (1st row, second girl from the right). My Grandmother grew up to be a teacher.
Interview an elder among your family and friends who is a retired or veteran teacher. What is the wisdom they offer you as a beginning educator? What do they love/hate about the profession? What is different about the teaching profession today than when they began teaching? Write about this teacher in this Blog and share some of the profession's collective wisdom.
Don’t know a retired or veteran teacher? No problem! How about an elder in your circle? Ask them about their own schooling. Did they have a favorite teacher? Why? What was discipline and punishement like back in the day? Was bullying an issue when they were in school? Do they remember being bullied…or being a bully? Any regrets about that? What makes a teacher great?
If your schooling - or the person you are interviewing - is in another country, well we’d love to hear about that too! You don’t really get much information in our credential program on comparitive studies of different education systems around the globe, so this is just great if you had an education experience in a different home country. Share that with us.
This blog is due within the next week.
Segregation and Integration
Most of you know about Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that was meant to end segregation. But, just in case you need a refresher because you’re now looking at education with this new “I’m a teacher” lens, read Brown v. Board.
And most of you have heard about the famous Clark Doll Experiement.
A MAJOR take-away from this class, I hope, will be a renewed interest in Brown v. Board of Education…because, it is one of the most important rulings on education in the last 70 years.
My hope is that from now on, whenever you see ANYTHING written in today’s press about Brown v. Board that you stop, read it, and pay special attention to it.
If we were in class together, you’d hear me say over and over again that when you join the teaching profession that you are, indeed, joining a movement for justice that spans decades. I believe you join the Civil Rights Movement in doing the work you are about to do. And that long march towards justice…that march continues to this day.
Brown v. Board is an important benchmark in the struggle for justice and equity because it marks the very beginning of our Civil Rights Movement. Check out this video that situates Brown v. Board as this beginning.
Check out the Civil Rights Memorial HERE
Indeed, the March continues!
More on Brown v. Board of Education in a moment.
Did you know about our LOCAL historical contribution to Brown v. Board though? Yep. Before there was a Brown v. Board of Education…there was a Mendez v. Westminster. Watch this short 10-minute video where this important legal precedent was honored by receiving an Orange County Human Relations Legacy Award. There are more links there if you want to dig deeper into this. Also, check out the lesson plan I wrote on Mendez v. Westminster for The Museum of Tolerance here in Los Angeles.
I also wanted to share with you an art project that my own daughter did on Brown v. Board. Here are our daughter Helena’s art pieces she did at the age of 8. We were teaching her at home about segregation and integration and these are the art pieces that came from our readings and discussions. She submitted them to an art contest at the Brown v. Board of Education Historical Site Museum in Topeka, Kansas and they are now a part of the permanent exhibit there.
This first one is titled the segregation of hate.
And the second one is titled the integration of love.
We’re quite proud of her!
As I’ve mentioned before, I worked at The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama for 7 years before I came to CSUDH. I was a Writer and Senior Curriculum Specialist for their amazing Learning for Justice Magazine. While there, I wrote curriculum for Oscar-winning documentaries on the Civil Rights Movement and was a civil rights consultant on a documentary about the 1963 Children’s March in Birmingham.
You can, by the way, order these items for free at www.learningforjustice.org. They’re great pieces for you to have in your personal library as well as great pieces for you to share with your students.
The documentaries I worked on while at SPLC are the stories of racism in America and in American schooling. Helena’s art pieces above and the Learning for Justice documentaries begin speaking to us of how schools are anti-Black.
View the film titled Agents of Change: The Longest Student Strike in U.S. History. This important film shows us that the long march toward freedom and equity in schooling is far, far from over.
Know that you join a long, long line of activist educators who are seeking to be agents of change, because schools are even more seperate and unequal now than they were in 1954 when Brown was passed.
By the way, there is always more about Brown v. Board. Check out the Library of Congress archives by clicking on the image below.
Check off and track what you’ve done for the history of education responsibilities. Use this checksheet for this assignment.
And the only thing you have left is that, after you do the historical interview of someone you know, not only do you post this on the History Blog, but you also cut-and-paste that Blog here on this Word document.
BAM! You’re done with the Historical Foundations assignment and you can email me the completed form at jsapp@csudh.edu.
Now, on to the philosophical foundations