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Rubby Peréz and The Ties That Bind Us All 18 Apr 8:15 AM (yesterday, 8:15 am)

Let me take it back to 1994.

I was in the seventh grade and, at the time, my mom took our family to her first barrio in Santo Domingo almost annually. Los Mina felt like a time out from the hustle and bustle of New York City. Rectangular houses no taller than two stories, dusty roads with their not run parallel, and roosters telling us the time characterize my imagination of the place. The slowest, soulful bachatas would play from the durable radio, still around from the 1950s. My grandaunt wondered whether her American-raised kids wanted mangú with salchichón or frosted flakes (yes, an alternate brand) for breakfast. We were still in poverty, but the matriarchs knew to feed each other nevertheless.

In the summer, my grandfather or uncles would drive to any of the nearest beaches so the sun would add a darker coat on our skins. In the winter, we had a full 12 days of Christmas, streets shut down for days on end with people eating and dancing in the streets. On the flight home, I’d come back bearing gifts like iron cups or dulce that I’d enjoy for days after.

When we flew back home, I’d carry those memories with me until the next trip. This narrative was common among my fellow Dominicans, many of whom still had houses there. The pilgrimages kept the culture alive in new contexts wherever two or more Dominicans were gathered.

Unfortunately, that’s not often enough to be fully seen as having “culture.” In the seventh grade, my Spanish teacher of Spanish background asked us to write a mini-biography about our family. In my first round of questions, my mother responded enthusiastically. I couldn’t stop taking notes about the pride she felt about the obstacles she overcame to get from Santo Domingo to Miami to New York City. My first draft seemed to go well enough. We then had a second round of questions, to which my mother had a harder time responding. She not only felt ill on the due date, but seemed to evade details for her inquisitive child.

I pieced together what I could, but it wasn’t enough.

A few days later, my Spanish teacher decided to correct the name of the barrio I knew well. Strike one. He then told the class that I lost ten points for not completing the assignment to his liking. Strike two. Now, as an educator, I don’t even recall him following up privately to address his concerns pre- or post-humiliation. Strike three.

Degrading one of his best students wasn’t enough. He also had to take a swipe at the culture. I’ve been out on the culture of “Spanish” skeptically since.

That nonsense sat with me for decades, especially in times when my people weren’t seen as enough. But the communities we grew up in, the foods we ate, and the people who carried this culture said otherwise. That includes the legendary singer Rubby Peréz.

When you’re Dominican, there isn’t a party you’ve been to in the last half-century that didn’t feature Rubby Peréz’s tenor. So when many of us woke up to the horrific news out of Santo Domingo, we instantly remembered everything from the hot apartments with the rickety floors or the large community halls hosting the baby shower, birthday party, or other rite of passage. Peréz along with a list of Dominican artists from the 1970s to the 1990’s solidified an era of signature music with connective melodies, poetic lyrics, and attention to artistry.

But he and the now hundreds of people who died that day leave behind stories and the people who remember. For people hearing the news sans this context, it’s sad amidst our current societal malaise. For people who share this connective tissue, we feel these deaths viscerally. My friends and former students have been sharing photos and stories over the last two weeks. I’m seeing videos of Peréz’s last performances or him dropping by people’s houses. Elders are sharing the times they went to a significant performance of his. It’s not uncommon for famous Dominican folks to be one or two degrees from other folks we know.

For Dominicans, Peréz’s music felt like an anchor, whose music connects people of a shared experience across times and spaces. When “Buscando Tus Besos” or “Volveré” comes on, we know what to do, where to go, how to move ourselves.

Over the years, I’ve struggled over issues of culture and identity because of my personal and educational journey navigating my own. Of course, we can’t let our nostalgia mask some of the murkier parts. Post-tragedy, people see the disparity between wealthy citizens who’ve been able to properly bury their dead after the Jet Set tragedy while others are still scrounging for funds. Some Dominicans have also named a fascist and xenophobic thread among the people that doesn’t feel familiar to longtime residents and the Dominican diaspora more generally. It feels pernicious to see both the elevation of darker-skinned Dominicans like Peréz take center stage when anti-Blackness still lingers among us.

And none of this makes our culture any less than the cultures that get exalted as “better” across the world.

In a time when people want to restrict and narrow cultural norms through anti-truth laws, many of us hold steadfast to the ties that bind us. At their best, these ties ground us in the best version of ourselves so we have anchors while we sail out there. Whatever there means for you or us.

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New York and The Fight For Truly Public Schools 10 Apr 4:15 AM (9 days ago)

A few days ago, the New York State Education Department rebuked the Trump administration’s efforts to pull federal funding. Namely, the federal administration has ratcheted up efforts to scrub policies related to diversity, equity, and inclusion on multiple fronts. The strongly-worded rebuke was swift and refreshing for several reasons. It’s important to note that NYC has the most billionaires per capita in the world. New York State has the second-most billionaires in the country. In other words, New York can afford to fully fund our public schools. Secondly, New York citizens have had a decades-long battle about school funding. Despite whatever political alignments people think New York City has, the political will has never been right nor just.

But for a moment, can we imagine that some level of government believes in listening to the people it serves?

Contrary to the way history usually gets taught to us, governments rarely if ever simply came to their senses when it comes to our educational rights. In education history, locally or otherwise, marginalized people have always had to engage in a battle for educational rights. These identity-centered struggles have perpetually had implications for everyone, not just the group that fought for the hard-fought win. Social movements made it possible for co-ed K-12 classrooms, culturally responsive and inclusive curriculum, math and higher order content across schools, and (dis)ability services.

None of these happened just because time passed. If anything, people forced times to change incrementally. Plus, many of the people didn’t get to see the change they influenced.

How do we imagine the word “public” in public schools in New York City and elsewhere? For that matter, to borrow from bell hooks, how do we bring the margins to center? Over the last quarter century, we’ve seen the bipartisan effort to tighten control of schools via multiple accountability measures. In the 20 years I’ve been in education, I’ve seen teaching go from “testing is just one component of teaching” to “testing is teaching.” Efforts to narrow curriculum and pedagogy have had mixed results. Our schools has also come under conflict with the same president twice for serving undocumented children.

To his credit, Mayor de Blasio fought against that pressure. To his folly, Mayor Adams would rather fight against those willing to fight for public schools.

We’re seeing how New Yorkers don’t collectively share an authentic notion of “public.” For every parent who just wants a school that cares about their child’s academic and socio-emotional well-being, there are a small but powerful few who rather render the majority of voices invalid. For every educator who wants to teach children well in the contexts that they’re in, there are others who voted for the fascism we’re seeing now. While a good number of principals and superintendents want to support their schools well, another set prefer to preserve power and only seem to care about undocumented children when it comes to attendance and putting on a façade of equity.

At the heart of the “public” question is whether or not those in power want everyone else to get educated.

Critics of public schools provide a litany of issues with this set of institutions, some with better appraisals than others. Some like to name these schools “government schools,” a name that conjures up sets of people who prefer Black people not get an education. Others bring up how, in their narrative, the United States used to be #1 in the world in education. Yet, the folks who, again, prefer to keep people uneducated keep holding on to the fantasy.

But among the more poignant assessments fall in line with identity-based (i.e. racial, gender, disability) justice. In their minds, public schools disproportionately neglect Black and Latine children across grade levels. Even though students of color comprise 85% of the NYC public school student body, teachers of color comprise about 43% of the teaching staff with no signs of change. NYC high schools with more students of color have more metal detectors and school resource officers. Informally, parents I speak to note how schools shove their students into persistent detention for behaviors that may not have qualified if their child was white and wealthy. Oh, and the reinforcement of deficit thinking through perpetual standardized testing only makes the schooling experience worse for kids.

I hear these and often agree with the heart of these assessments. But the answer is to improve these institutions, not privatize or shut them down.

That’s why we prefer to fight for public schools because the public is us. We have laws and policies that, when followed, bring a level of transparency and input that privatization closes off. Public means that people should have a level of engagement with the education process to be full participants in their children’s education. Contrary to popular belief, I believe parents who send their kids to public school care about their children’s education. But now it’s time for policymakers to match and surpass that energy with better resources, better funding, and more sustained policy regardless of who’s mayor, governor, or president at the time.

And, when public doesn’t feel public, then we the public demand that things become so.

Jose, who’s a proud advocate for New Yorkers for Racially Just Public Schools

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Three Pillars for Decimating Public Education 18 Mar 4:45 AM (last month)

What do we do when our public schools are under attack?

A couple of weeks ago, the new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon leveled significant cuts to the US Department of Education in an ostensible effort to shut EdGov down. McMahon is the latest in a string of the least qualified and/or the most subservient selections for important positions. In the same week she threatened hundreds of EdGov jobs, she was still learning education policy including IDEA and the work of school boards. While we ridiculed the nomination with clips from her WWE days, her first week in office presents a clear threat to public education in many of our lifetimes.

The “othering” of so many people across identities happens among both supporters and critics of public schools. That’s why we need to get right and get right now.

But this dynamic aligns well with President Trump’s plans for the 14,000 or so districts across the country. Many of these districts have threatened to wipe out their systems via vouchers altogether. The role of the US Department of Education has been discussed at length, but few have made it plain. The federal role in schools is to ensure at least a modicum of equity to our nation’s schools. This means every and all schools where specific groups of children may find themselves underserved by that institution or state. That matters for civil rights and education policy for everyone.

As a sociologist, I’m seeing some things that are worth your attention:

Killing Empathy Within Communities

Reducing empathy is a clear pathway for authoritarians. Even a simple search of “empathy” and terms like “Christian nationalism,” “Trump,” and “fascism” brings up the drudge from our societal well. Some pastors and preachers are signaling empathy as weakness to their congregations. Some influencers are taking advantage of people’s personal hurt to punch down or to the side, but never up. Policymakers and enforcers alike use xenophobia in their commercials as a clarion call for national identity.

This, too, makes it to children’s eyes and ears.

The attack on socio-emotional learning and diversity, equity, and inclusion points to people not seeing each other as human beings. Ruthlessness breeds mistrust and allows for us to speak in dystopian terms. This includes people across protected classes, and really, any other person who doesn’t fall 100% behind a specific ideology. Folks who fought for integration often named public education as an empathy project as well towards a shared humanity.

We don’t even have to name conflicts that started World Wars to cite a societal lack of empathy if only because we have a plethora of examples domestically. Which means …

Structural Othering

Suppressing marginalized groups (across race, disability, gender, etc) internationally and domestically means rendering their humanity as invalid. We’ve already seen a number of instances where this administration has used people they’ve deemed second-class citizens to hammer at long-standing policy, including the Constitution. Immigration officials deported a professor at a prestigious university despite her having a valid visa. NYC’s mayor gave permission for those officials to enter public schools at will, and ordered administrators to step out of the way. A list of students partly developed by people on Elon Musk’s platform sits somewhere on Tom Homan’s desk.

Even without mentioning the identity of the groups and individuals affected, we can see the peril we’re currently sitting in. The more they feel the permission to strip people’s rights and liberties, the more they can isolate whose opinions —and power— matter to them. And us.

Secretly, attendance rolls have decreased across schools due to these dynamics. Our public education systems —flaws and all— are the most enduring social safety nets we have for these groups. Not coincidentally, as our schools become more racially diverse, politicians turn the heat up on fear mongering.

This leaves them and us more susceptible.

Norming Students for Societal Inhumanity

I’ve said this for decades now, and it remains true. Focusing narrowly on test scores in math and English Language Arts — as opposed to a well-rounded curriculum — doesn’t allow our students to make critical connections between what’s happening around them and things that happened before them. To wit, science and social studies are applied math and ELA, and look how they’re devalued now. Even in this moment, we’re labeling anything that looks like “kill and drill” as “science of …” To be clear, it’s nonsense. This idea of “competing” belies how the United States has never really competed and won on international measures.

Plus, if policymakers really wanted a competition, they’d make bigger and better investments in schools, especially in personnel and curriculum.

The problem goes beyond basic literacy. It’s the whole endeavor of education, which is different than schooling. If the whole project of schooling is towards a malleable populace, then our narrow visions for schooling make norming students for societal inhumanity simpler.

What Will You Commit To?

Put all together, this creates conditions of a less-educated and easily controllable populace – one that you can continue extracting labor from – across the board. Knowledge, curiosity, and empathy are real keys. Don’t lose em. Let’s get to knowing this.

This dynamic is not new, just the next stage in the onslaught’s evolution. Over the last 15 years, I’ve documented some of the insidious ways that education reform opened the door for privatization. Unfortunately, even the most well-meaning reformers didn’t pay close attention to their narratives. Specifically, the consistent bludgeoning of these institutions gave permission for those with ill intention to disband public schools —and the “public” part of schools— completely. On the flip side, many who advocated against these education reforms rarely built coalition with children who attend public schools as well.

The Martin Niemöller poem “First They Came For …” was a lesson in keeping our eye out for the way society’s most powerful people can structurally marginalize people across multiple identities. Unfortunately, too many people have waited for the last line before getting activated. Even the mention of race and/or gender sends people into defensive mode as opposed to taking a proactive learner stance. As movements raged in the streets for human and civil rights across America in 2020, people bought books, attended the lectures, and made commitments.

My immediate question then was “Will you take the next step forward?” This is as good as any to get the “public” activated in our public schools.

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The Pedagogy of Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl Halftime Show 12 Feb 4:45 AM (2 months ago)

Can we talk about Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime performance for a bit?

Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show stirred America’s cultural pot over the last two days. Naysayers’ opinions have run the gamut from “I didn’t get it” to “It was too Black for me,” a sure sign that Lamar’s performance worked.

Nothing about Lamar’s musical tapestry suggests he would dilute his discography for people who refuse to get it. His resplendent use of America’s flag colors against his dark skin and his 400 co-performers’ skins including SZA and Serena Williams, was a body blow to President Trump’s enterprise. Co-President Musk and a plethora of unseen agents attempt to erase the legislative, intellectual, and economic gains of civil rights movements.

Therefore, Lamar’s artistry was the clarion call to cultural and interpersonal arms many of us needed.

Isn’t it wild that the same country that has both an illiteracy and an anti-intellectual problem has spent the last half-day dissecting Kendrick Lamar’s Halftime performance? Analyses have run rampant since Lamar’s 13 minutes were up (here’s one from David Dennis Jr. that works). It speaks volumes about the ways we construct educational experiences. When you read the meanings folks are making from the performance, you see the ways people are integrating knowledge from expertise and experience and forming holistic narratives about this electric display.

The disparate reactions make me skeptical that we “all want the same things” for an education.

They’ll say “But, Jose, we’re not Kendrick Lamar.” You’re right. But if you listen to a teacher who taught Lamar, you recognize that we have multiple Kendricks in our classrooms. According to this interview, Mr. Inge explains how he views all of his students as capable of success. In fact, in other videos, we see Mr. Inge’s pedagogy as firm, direct, and loving at once. These analyses seem based on skills learned from reading whole books and looking at math problems holistically, not simple passages.

It’s a good lesson for schools. Some have derided holistic pedagogies as soft or inefficient. Yet, some of our most brilliant works have come from the amalgamation of these content areas. For instance, treating science and social studies as applied English Language Arts and math gives us keys from which to make our lessons more engaging and exploratory.

Of course, post-NAEP score release analyses have focused on drilling students with skills, but that’s not new. “Drilling” advocates have pushed for efficiency and regimentation of skills as opposed to a slower, more social, and student-led set of inquiries into their work. I’m not asking us to abandon skill-based lessons altogether. Yet, some people want to teach kids to read small passages, but not expand their capacity for character- and world-building. Why are we limiting students’ literacy when we’re seeing evidence that whole books are central to students’ desire for literacy?

I’m asking for a reformation of what we consider education. I want the spectrum of what’s possible in our classrooms and schools. Akin to how Kendrick Lamar approaches his music.

It’s worth naming how our current contexts haven’t helped. American culture has moved from testing as one mechanism for assessment to testing as the education. While the Common Core State Standards have anecdotally raised academic expectations, its implementation left much to be desired. As the public school population becomes more racially diverse, the teaching population has become less so, which decreases the likelihood of a Mr. Inge and so many others in our schools. Administrators who committed to culturally responsive education a few years ago have dropped even the faintest hints of “equity” from their lexicon.

As overt fascism seeks to take a stronghold of our federal government, a better-educated populace would have used their literacy and numeracy skills to connect the historical, global, and contemporary dots. But people around the world have seen this and can’t believe America has allowed it anyways.

Kendrick Lamar sent floodlights out to the rest of the world that some of us been knowin’.

What would it take for us to move towards tapping more into curiosity and exploration? It starts with adults believing every student deserves experiences with curiosity. Schools with more students of color or students in poverty seem to never have permission to do “progressive” pedagogies. From there, we would do well to see how our lessons provide those student-led opportunities. It also means that we need to expand notions of “assessment.” The best teachers I know have a strong sense of students’ skills, but also their potential and how to elevate it.

But also, we should introduce more social learning i.e. the extent to which students learn together rather than individually.

The community learning element means students get to reach out to one another to solve problems and gain perspectives they otherwise wouldn’t. Imagine if that was a principle we embraced towards a more authentic democracy. Breaking out of silos means we should interrogate who put them there in the first place. Unifying a nation by stripping othered people of their rights, liberties, and communities’ expressions is no unity at all. We have multiple opportunities to exemplify this for our students in our institutions of learning i.e. our schools.

Kendrick Lamar sent America a message about what we know. A teacher gave him the skills to disseminate this to one of the world’s largest audiences. Up to now, many more classrooms are banning students from this pedagogy.

Will America listen?

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Some Notes about Joy Amid The Tyranny 31 Jan 4:45 AM (2 months ago)

As President Trump dropped executive orders at an alarming rate, I celebrated my life.

On January 24th, I took time to sit with myself and reflect on the past year. I read messages and took phone calls from friends new and old on my phone. I’ve traded bottles and blaring speakers for DayQuil and napkins after recent spats with the flu that passed through our family. Then, I enjoyed our quiet breakfast, ignoring the TV and the constant buzzing from this and that news for a respite.

This feels asymmetrical to the doom and gloom I would lead this writing with in times like these. However, I’ve learned a lot over the last two decades, it’s that “shock and awe” tactics are a multipronged approach to get people to stop fighting back. We need to get clear, see beyond the tactics, and point towards the bigger vision. That is to say, we can do better.

As a veteran educator turned sociologist, I find it important to say that humanity has been here before. Even in the last twenty years, uncertainty reigned at critical periods and sometimes, only the worst solutions seemed to win the day. Lessons from ancestors living and passed on can teach us to hold joy amid the tyranny. Here are some notes I’ve picked up through my journey:

1. Build your intuition. Intuition is the nexus between intellect and experiences. These days, it feels like we’re getting a lot of noise and not enough clarity about what we need to listen to and what we’re listening for. Some of the most remarkable folks we know synthesize big ideas and engage deeply with what’s in front of them. It starts with intuition. It’s true that what we commonly refer to as intuition is a “gut feeling.” However, the folks with stronger “guts” are also those who’ve had experience and got better at learning over time.

2. Read well. When I say “read,” I don’t mean just books. If you have children, read aloud with them. If you’re on your own, read articles. Gather ideas from what you read and engage with it. Ask how it either gives you a new perspective on a concept or conflicts with it. Audiobooks matter, too. Read slowly where possible, too.

3. Resist complete isolation. Humans are social creatures. Pretending that we can stop socializing with others to get a clearer mind negates how we build better with others. You don’t have to start something new; there are a plethora of opportunities to engage people on and off-line. If you don’t see it, yes, start a squad. It doesn’t have to be 100 at first. It can just be five.

4. Remember your people. Facebook tempts us to throw in a happy birthday once a year. I’ve developed a habit to occasionally call someone and send a voice note to ask how my people are doing. As an introvert, I know it’s difficult. I also feel like our devices give us a false sense of connectedness that we could improve by just picking up the phone for its original intent.

5. Take long timeouts from social media. Every time someone does the extended time out, they’ll ask “What did I miss?” And I’ll say “Everything and nothing.” Our rush to collect followers and grow engagement sometimes takes us away from becoming better people. For what it’s worth, I delete my social media apps during my breaks and it feels like a reboot for my mind. Speaking of which …

6. Learn how to tell people how you feel about them directly (or don’t say anything at all). A few years ago, I started a “no subs” policy in my work. For context, “subbing” means you’re writing an indirect sentiment or insult at someone hoping or knowing someone else knows who you’re talking about. Sometimes, people sub hoping that the person it was intended for catches it, too. Great. But I find it more effective and efficient to just tell the person you’re thinking of how you feel. It’s what we would want for ourselves. Also …

7. Have an abundance of grace for others. Grace is an important virtue for building community. The grace extends not just for others who can’t articulate the same values as you, but also for yourself when you make mistakes. Accountability is fine, but self-flagellation is an insidious cycle. Grace means that we get to show up as our fullest selves, mistakes and all.

8. Stay principled beyond laws. It’s evident that people on several levels of government would rather abdicate their responsibility to the laws of the land than serve the majority of their constituents. For that matter, some of us know that being lawful is not the same as being just. Thus, it matters when we have principles that serve as lenses for the work we want to do and the people we want to be.

9. Pick just one institution or domain we want to defend or strengthen and get really smart about. Too many people think we need to have it all together or know all the breaking news. Most people don’t have time or mind space for that. But if you’ve already picked that one thing and focused on doing it better, more humanely, and more justly, then that’s good work.

These are just notes, for sure. It’s an inexhaustive list and, amid the many lists out there, this one is for my people through my experience and lens. In other words, it’s as much for me as this is for you.

A couple of days ago, I might have considered what I did on my birthday as boring. But I appreciated the stillness of the day and having a semblance of control over how I reacted to the inhumanity. It’s not toxic positivity. It’s the idea that, contrary to their wills, my people and I have lives worth living.

And we don’t need permission to live these lives of ours. And I won’t be waiting for another revolution around the sun to make that happen.

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A Lesson About Identity and Culture in Bad Bunny’s New Album 13 Jan 4:45 AM (3 months ago)

Recently, rapper/singer Bad Bunny released his sixth solo album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, a homage to his homeland Puerto Rico. Upon first listen, it took me back to my elementary school years in a moment I’ll never forget. I went to my brother’s babysitter’s house where the babysitter and my mother were conversing over coffee. My mother (in Spanish) asked how my day was and I said, “Hey mom! You know what I learned today? A song!” She said, “OK, sing it!” And I sung “¡Que bonita bandera, que bonita bandera, que bonita bandera puertorriqueña!“

It caught my mother by surprise, but in the quizzical way. After all, she was Dominican and here comes her Dominican/Haitian son singing a Boricua anthem.

Thankfully, the moment came and went, and the Dominican/Puerto Rican rivalry feels childish in the midst of American fascism. But I never forgot that moment over the years. By the time I learned the anthem, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was a well-established Puerto Rican neighborhood. My principal Mr. Barrientos and some of our school’s staff members including the arts teacher who taught me were Boricuas. While most of the teaching staff may have identified as white and/or Jewish, the surrounding neighborhood no longer was. The influx of Boricua immigrants through the 20th century made it safer for other marginalized groups, including Dominicans, to establish families here. Many of us pronounced The Lower East Side “Loisaida,” and we credit Nuyoricans for that, too.

Puerto Ricans didn’t insist that others drop their norms in service of theirs. That’s the American way. They simply ask us to understand their culture as vital to their existence akin to our own equation.

People often want to separate the processes of teaching and learning from the culture of teaching and learning. They think teaching and learning should be apolitical, acultural, and devoid of anything related to identity, especially if it’s an identity people in power don’t like. Yet, how do you separate culture from teaching and learning? The process of teaching and learning requires receiving signals from all over the world. We interpret signals through those values and communicate these signals to receivers whose lived experiences differs from the deliverer.

This becomes even more important when the lessons center narratives not borne from the story empires tell themselves.

As I listened to Ocasio’s album, I thought about the signals I might have missed if not for my formative cultural learning. Bad Bunny pulls in Nuyorican history and those in its orbit from Track 1, NUEVAYoL. The folks who taught me probably supported PR decolonization efforts, a major plank for the NY Young Lords given the subversive nature of “Que Bonita Bandera.“ It wasn’t just learning about Boricua culture, either. I often credit The Boys Club of New York (Milliken) for having us watch Eyes on the Prize. I wouldn’t have understood the role of the Civil Rights Movement in the world we aspire to without it. My sixth grade teacher took us to synagogue once, which also opened the door for me to visit a mosque in college. I set aside my ingrained Catholicism for a truly universal drive to the ways millions understood religion and spirituality.

But this, too, was culture. Teachers helped me appreciate the world through those cultural experiences, which connected me with so many others.

A plethora of well known frameworks embody how we think about teaching with culture in mind. From multicultural classroom to culturally responsive teaching and beyond, we have yet to see a full reckoning with the depth of these concepts across the profession. In fact, only about a quarter of teachers (to be generous) probably use them in their funds of knowledge. Many have said how difficult it is to create culturally responsive curriculum, even with readily available scorecards. Few have noted that every curriculum is culturally responsive, but it depends on which culture we’re talking about. Culturally responsive teaching, culturally sustaining pedagogy, or even Cultivating Genius frameworks point to a different way of doing things.

Instead of trying to funnel everyone towards a narrow, white-centric, conservative American culture, these frameworks aspire towards a culture that embraces difference towards a shared humanity.

Bad Bunny highlights the diversity of sounds generated from his motherland as well. His seamless juggling of Boricua genres like salsa, bomba, plena, and reggaeton creates the foundation for explorations of a wide array of themes. Bad Bunny’s chants for a liberated, decolonized Borikén take center stage as a call back to Un Verano Sin Ti. (It’s also a move away from his reflections of his stardom in Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana.) Many of us from Caribbean islands understand the multiple influences that generated our cultural identities.

On the other hand, aspirations towards monoethnic states create get us further away from the respect and dignity humans individually and collectively deserve.

In this way, the concept of teaching and learning through culture means everyone has the opportunity to do both teaching and learning. We learn to dance and, in time, we teach. We learn to eat and make the foods and that gets passed on, hopefully, too. Bad Bunny excels in giving a window into his island without giving everyone ownership of those materials. In other words, we get to bring our whole selves to the space he invites without us pretending that we’re suddenly Puerto Rican.

After all, many of us have our own rhythms to teach and learn with. And we should.

Jose, who probably listened to the latest Bad Bunny offering 20 times over …

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II Hands II Heaven, A Reprise [2024 Year-In-Review] 31 Dec 2024 4:45 PM (3 months ago)

On August 6th, 2024, I had a solid draft of a 260-page dissertation in my hands. That whole week, I pored through so many of the words, I might have gone cross-eyed. Between the 100 or so survey responses and over 20 interviews, I knew I was onto something, but this draft felt like something wholly different. At noon, it was finally time to turn over this draft to my committee. I reviewed the e-mail with the attachment about five times.

But after all these years of putting my hands down in the work, I hit “Send” and put my hands up. As they say, I let go and let God.

The doctoral journey was a spiritual journey. All my friends would ask me how it’s going, and I’d nonchalantly flip: “I can read, I can write, and I can do math, so not bad.” The academic exercises didn’t feel difficult per se. I spent about two months listening to teachers and trying to make meaning of their experiences. What stood out the most from the interviews wasn’t what they said, at least on the surface. I understood how they interwove the pedagogical, the personal, and the political layers of their answers.

But this felt different. From what I surmised in the interviews, these educators with a wide range of years and experiences in the field had experienced something new in our hour-long sessions: uninterrupted listening. In many cases, they’d remark “Wow, that’s the first time someone asked me this.”

By the time I got to interview 25, I realized that my interview protocol was a series of questions I wished someone would have asked me. But I disassociated just long enough so their voices could take center stage. After dropping off my son, I’d walk into desolate rooms just before the sun fully rose, turned on the lights, coffee just warm enough to hold me over. Some opportunities fell through. Bills rose. Mental and physical challenges came, went, and returned. I haven’t been this humbled since I graduated from Syracuse University 20 years ago.

My wife and son supported me and pushed me to go write. Carry on, I did.

Because this jewel box was both some of my best work and a piece of the larger work I’ve set out to do with whatever time I have. These perspectives needed to get out into the world. My people had something to say about the teaching profession and the urgency couldn’t be clearer. I didn’t see myself as some wise master from afar, but a worker clearing the paths for others behind and next to me. I’d ask questions of my transcripts and the words talked back to me as if it was the participants themselves. I poked around numbers seeking both surprises and confirmations.

My first graduation from Teachers College, Columbia University happened in May of 2024 at United Palace about a mile away from where I first taught. By then, I was hoping to just have a good first draft. What I got was a deeper sense or spirituality.

All that deep listening, reading, and meaning-making was God talking to me. My intuition said “This is how it’s gonna go, but it’s gonna get done.” The process was as tedious as the drafting was, but I had a date and time: August 20th, 2024 at 1pm ET. Ten minutes before I was scheduled to defend, I wasn’t sure why the college felt so quiet. Soon, my people appeared and it felt just like it was supposed to. The two hour hearing ended with me whispering “Thank you” to the unknowable while other people mingled.

Then, the college got quiet again. God only knows why, though.

It’s worth saying a bunch of other stuff happened this year, too. EduColor held its fifth annual virtual summit featuring Nikole Hannah-Jones and some of the best educators I know from across the country. I keynoted and spoke on panels from the East to the West coast. A team of us co-planned and executed a creative and energetic two-week education activism and teacher learning institute at Teachers’ College, too. I signed my second book contract for this beautiful math book I can’t wait for the world to read. That Edutopia interview is still making its rounds across different districts. The White House invited dozens of prominent Afro-Latinx folks from across the country for a first-ever gathering of its kind. (I met Gina Torres; I’m never going to fail.) I rode a train right back so I could make my family breakfast the next morning.

Oh, and my son performed on multiple stages in the city. He rocked.

The New York Liberty won a chip (which means a lot to real New York basketball fans, truly). The city’s vibes were immaculate, as they say. But by the time former President Trump was named President-elect Trump again, my head didn’t stop shaking in disapproval for about a week. I saw how easy it was to splinter communities through well prepared narratives. The evidence kept pointing to the fact that this was a likely outcome, including the testimonies from so many teachers I heard. Our collective education wasn’t doing us any favors. The prescience of connecting the dots between several disinvestments in citizenship speaks to how easily this country has slipped into fascism and oligarchy.

But even then, about a week after the results, I saw people snap out of it and collect their people.

A small and powerful set of people are counting on us to be fearful. My doctoral process was teaching me a newfound courage, for the knowledge that I would unearth could help us imagine a world after the one we’re in. While people search for the meaning of life, I’ve found its meaning through this work for me and mine. In this next spiritual level, the darkness around us doesn’t dictate the world we imagine. Furthermore, I couldn’t be good at anything or for anyone if I didn’t love myself in the midst of this.

I’ve been seeking this clarity my whole life. For you and I. For us. Always.

Thank you, 2024. Let’s get this, 2025.

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Reconsidering The Kai Cenat Union Square Incident of 2023 30 Dec 2024 4:45 AM (3 months ago)

I’ve been trying to write this post for about a year, but the words have escaped me. Until now.

On August 4th, a Twitch streamer by the name of Kai Cenat invited his fans and friends to Union Square in New York City for a giveaway including Playstation 5s and PCs. With more than 11 million followers, Cenat is one of the most popular Internet figures in the world. For three hours, this poorly-planned giveaway went from a gathering of about two thousand mostly Black and Latinx fans of Cenat to a riot involving more a thousand police officers, tools from a nearby construction site, and a fire hydrant. News cameras from local and national stations got most of the angles for eyes across the country.

(Read the reliable recap from Wikipedia yourself.)

In the aftermath, the NYPD arrested and later released Cenat after being charged with inciting a riot and unlawful assembly. The mayor, police commissioner, and chief of police all had press conferences with a consistent message: these kids are out of control. We saw images of kids jumping on cars, climbing to the top of the subway gazebo, and running away from heavily armed men in riot gear. We saw a young and famous Black streamer in handcuffs, dreads hanging off the side of his face. Helicopters gave us aerial views of the gathering over those fateful three hours with mixed messages from reporters and commentators alike.

To Cenat’s credit, he paid close to 60-thousand dollars to the Union Square Partnership (USP) for the mess they made. To the district attorney’s credit, the charges were dropped. After that, it feels like we need a rethinking of the whole incident. Or, more broadly, our society needs to think about our relationship with youth. Because from an educator’s point of view, it looks like we hate kids. Let me explain.

The local media speculated that Cenat didn’t even have gift cards, but the USP contribution suggests otherwise. People described Cenat as an unsympathetic troublemaker when he graduated from one of NYC’s best high schools. Mayor Eric Adams even went so far as to say that students shouldn’t get their morals from social media. We saw clips of the skirmishes and arrests, but not of police officers picking up random kids and slamming them across cars and floors at will. We also didn’t hear students’ calm testimony that this riot was “no big deal” and this “happens everyday.”

Our kids who ride the subway, walk the bustling city streets, and have attended any parade are accustomed to large crowds. In fact, more than 70 thousand people pass through Union Square on foot on a daily basis. In fact, the next day, Union Square returned mostly back to normal. The farmer’s market, the local vendors, the chess players, and the passersby went back to business.

In researching this piece, I saw a spectrum of opinions about Kai Cenat, but where some might see a wasted individual, I see a potential leader. Cenat not only graduated from NYC Public Schools, he went on to college. He dropped out because he couldn’t keep up with his coursework and the demands of his newfound tech career. As a fellow Caribbean, I can imagine the values instilled in him about a hard work ethic and religious upbringing. In his apology, he comes across as contrite and grateful. I didn’t care as much about his choice of words as I care about his message. The more I watched, the more I realized that he was, at worse, naive about his audience. Looking through the composition of his fans, he may have thought the crowd abide by the fun, familiar, and intimate energy from his videos.

Because of his objectives for the event, he could have gone through the proper channels to ensure safety for the younger kids and their parents in attendance. He could have called it a meetup without the giveaway part, and then held an organized raffle. There were probably better spots to have such a meetup than one of our city’s epicenters, too. Events like this sometimes make people more popular and that part makes me skittish, too. But putting the full blame on Kai Cenat and the majority of attendees who weren’t trying to start a riot feels short-sighted.

They get signals all the time that society doesn’t care enough about them. Gun violence in schools has become normalized with no end in sight. The United States has some of the highest rates of child poverty in the world. Districts have stopped investing in local community centers where kids can gather. Their teachers are becoming less hopeful about K-12 education, too. Our student disciplinary codes and classrooms feel carceral. I’ve documented the parallels between school and prison for more than a decade, too. A couple of years prior to that incident, Black Lives Matter protests highlighted the plethora of children that look just like them whose lives were ended at the hands of people entrusted to protect them. These problems are not new.

Our society already oversurveills, overpolices, and under-resources them in policy and practice.

Readers recognize the parallels between the Union Square incident and another where adults gathered without police permits. On January 6, 2021, our young people watched as thousands destroyed offices across the Capitol building while police officers died and congresspeople stood powerless against the riotous crowds. Not only was the head of the “riot” not held accountable, he’s slated to become president again. (America. Learned. Nothing.) The mayor who moralized about the incident is now willingly obeying the rioter-in-chief in advance to avoid consequences for his legal troubles.

The Kai Cenat incident of 2023 was a book club by comparison.

There’s been a lot written about parasocial relationships and the nature of social media since the Union Square incident. Social media has transformed who we rely on for our information, who we take advice from, and who gets exalted. We still need more classes on digital citizenship for everyone. But even before social media, society needed a better relationship to its children.

The Kai Cenat incident offers insight about our children and we’re not listening. Let’s do better.

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Write It Down Somewhere [Some Advice For New Teachers] 20 Dec 2024 4:46 AM (4 months ago)

In a recent post, Nora H asked:

I was wondering simply what your biggest piece of advice would be for new/beginning educators?

Before I answer this question, it’s important to name that no one teacher has the same journey into this work. With the myriad identities, entryways, and circumstances, everyone has to adapt whatever advice is given to their own situation. However, over the course of my teaching, some patterns emerged in conversations with others:

• The first year is relatively difficult for everyone.
• It’s difficult (though not impossible) to do it all by yourself.
• It’s probably better when new teachers have had experiences as the “adult” in the room before they’re the main one.
• The more veteran you get as a teacher, the more likely you are to critique who you were the first year.

That last one is appropriate. We often see prior versions of our teacher-selves and think of all the flaws in them. Even those of us who appreciated our first teacher-self understand the ways we could have been better.

In my book This Is Not A Test, I recount how one of the veteran teachers said I was doing a yeoman’s job. I came to learn that “yeoman’s job” meant “good in the midst of difficult circumstances.” I can’t tell if I made it look easy or if I had a valid connection with the students. From September until March of that school year, I did relatively well. Of course, I also revealed in the book how I cried to my befuddled administration. I was a blubbering mess, and didn’t think I would come back to teaching. Looking back, I gave so much to my teaching that I had no way of replenishing that well.

But the one thing I did well: I wrote it down.

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An Open Letter to the Listeners (The Heart pt. 5.5) 9 Dec 2024 4:45 AM (4 months ago)

“It’s the first time I’ve ever been asked that, honestly.”

As I sat to analyze all my mixed-methods data from my eventual dissertation, I kept thinking about the various ways teachers of color from across New York City indicated that no one listened to them. I believed it from the younger teachers. School systems like to elevate younger teachers until they burn them out. Once they want to make teaching into a career, the system and its actors start to turn on them. I also believed it from the veteran teachers. Our school systems are conservative in their approach to systemic change. Thus, as many reforms as we’ve seen to schools, they often feel like iterations of prior initiatives. Veteran teachers know this and either adjust or move on. Collectively, these were some of the most energetic and dedicated professionals I’ve ever met and known.

But I kept thinking about the idea of listening and what it means for the listener. In this case, me. And I have you to thank. Let me explain.

How did listening this often and this intentionally change my composition? I spent hours and days listening, re-transcribing, and making notes about them. I isolated my own experiences (to the best of my ability) to elevate theirs. Within them, they contained equal parts hope and exasperation with the current ways we teach children. It’s easy to say “Well, teacher, then teach it your way.” From what I hear, the teachers who can, do. It’s harder to see the levels of bureaucracy teachers need to fight to teach from that body of knowledge and help from there.

People love to pontificate about the state of public education, but the feedback loop often stops at the school building’s door.

But you may be wondering “What is it about listening that people don’t get?” Currently, people say they’re doing a lot of listening. Upon arriving to their posts, new CEOs go on a listening tour and ask carefully curated questions. Opinion columnists start their articles with something they overheard at some coffee shop or their workplace. People in power learn to say “I hear you” in response to righteously angry people, usually to those with way less power.

The trouble with “listening” in these examples is that, time and again, we see how “listening” doesn’t seem to change the listener in power in action or policy. Or, at least, doesn’t seem to affect the listener’s trajectory in any way.

I had to keep that in mind as I formulated questions for the dozens of teachers who took my survey, then opted into an interview. Some of the stories almost made me drop my dissertation altogether. Others had me up all night and into the next day trying to get their words reflected well in my work. (If you know me personally, yes, I actually emoted.) Sometimes, it felt like I was talking to the text and it would say “No, I said what I said. You put that down.” Their curses stayed. Their nuanced vernacular did, too. I set the gossip aside, but pulled out the larger lessons from the stories undergirding the chatter.

I could feel the listening change how I heard my erstwhile colleagues (colleagues in the broader sense) laying out their views of a system designed to never love them back.

At times, I even felt myself taking on their personas. I saw myself chatting with a student about their essay and helping them through corrections. I felt the pride in seeing students who once struggled with literacy cross the graduation stage. It took me a few days to shake off the second-hand hurt and embarrassment of an administrator giving me an ineffective rating for vengeful reasons. There’d be no one in the office I was working with, but I’d feel the isolation of not being around anyone who shared my racial experiences. The news would highlight another teacher who spoke out about their identity and culture and I could see my tongue shrinking lest I lose my livelihood.

I, the educator, knew of these experiences. But I, the researcher, needed to take it a step further to fully listen. Empathy has depths.

I also realized that I had already been doing this type of listening for more than a decade. It’s how this blog became visible. We build EduColor from listening well, too. It explains how, after every speech I’ve done, I end up staying for hours, if not days, just listening. “You made me think how …” “I’m gonna stay teaching one more year after what you …” “This is what I’ve been trying to tell people and …” Part of why I get to speak to power isn’t just my truth, but the truths of many of you. The best educators I know listen intently to their students, families, and communities and adjust their pedagogy, curriculum, and instruction accordingly.

The “body of knowledge” includes how we make meaning of all the signals we receive from the people we serve.

That’s why I had to thank you, the listener, for it all. You should know the written tribute, my dissertation, to those of you who participated in this work of love was extensive and breathtaking. You’d have loved the reactions and conversations from a plethora of scholars, including some who you look up to, reading your authentic voices translated for them. Thank you for waiting patiently, hoping I might drop a hint about what I was up to. But, because you’re part of my community, you knew I was up to something bigger than just me. I don’t wish to speak for people, but I can confidently say my opinions aren’t informed by just me. I’m also informed by so many of you. That nuance is a catalyst for me to speak up and speak loudly about things I might not otherwise have so much confidence in.

And really, I wish for us the things I wish for our children. That they too have someone willing to listen and act upon that listening. Let’s make a world where we can better questions than the ones we have now.

Jose, who would appreciate you sharing this with the listeners in your life …

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