Wondering
Pondering
Thirsting
Pondering
Thirsting
Inquiring
Pausing
Marveling
Pausing
Marveling
Leaning into discomfort
Expanding the heart
Welcoming the mystery
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Repair
We spend millions on standardizing the right answer
Millions to ensure
that those who should make sure that
those who teach the right answers
are sure that the right answers are taught.
Private companies making millions of public dollars
ensuring that we teach so that at the end our white privileged children get the right answer.
Millions spent on what we know does not yield critical thinkers, passionate writers, and avid readers.
I am not against the right answer,
not against benchmark expectations to ensure our children learn
to read, to write, to count, and to compute.
Just not only for teaching the right answer when it upholds systemic oppression and racism.
Not only for teaching the standardized answer
because it never demands that we be antiracist in practice and policy,
and what if the right answer teaches them less than
they would learn from the wrong answer when critically examined?
The right answer misses the opportunity to teach them about ruptures and repairs.
Ruptures in history, friendships, and relationships,
in resource gaps, mass incarceration, and systemic discriminatory policies against Black and Indigenous people.
Why not criminalize the predatory racist centering of the single narrative in textbooks, media, and education systems?
Why not teach them the power of examining ruptures and missteps and guide them through repairing?
A radical idea it would be to scaffold repairs, rethinking, rewriting, recalculating, and reteaching.
Maybe then our children would learn to read so they could fly
and write not just words but expressions, resistance, and dissent.
Memorization and computation would be just a step to seeing that math is everywhere,
from the design of their pencils to the distance between it and their dreams.
Maybe then we'd realize that the only right answer is to repair.
Would we spend millions for that?
Millions to ensure
that those who should make sure that
those who teach the right answers
are sure that the right answers are taught.
Private companies making millions of public dollars
ensuring that we teach so that at the end our white privileged children get the right answer.
Millions spent on what we know does not yield critical thinkers, passionate writers, and avid readers.
I am not against the right answer,
not against benchmark expectations to ensure our children learn
to read, to write, to count, and to compute.
Just not only for teaching the right answer when it upholds systemic oppression and racism.
Not only for teaching the standardized answer
because it never demands that we be antiracist in practice and policy,
and what if the right answer teaches them less than
they would learn from the wrong answer when critically examined?
The right answer misses the opportunity to teach them about ruptures and repairs.
Ruptures in history, friendships, and relationships,
in resource gaps, mass incarceration, and systemic discriminatory policies against Black and Indigenous people.
Why not criminalize the predatory racist centering of the single narrative in textbooks, media, and education systems?
Why not teach them the power of examining ruptures and missteps and guide them through repairing?
A radical idea it would be to scaffold repairs, rethinking, rewriting, recalculating, and reteaching.
Maybe then our children would learn to read so they could fly
and write not just words but expressions, resistance, and dissent.
Memorization and computation would be just a step to seeing that math is everywhere,
from the design of their pencils to the distance between it and their dreams.
Maybe then we'd realize that the only right answer is to repair.
Would we spend millions for that?
Detour
What if we taught our children to learn from mistakes?
What if we used the millions spent on standardized tests to train teachers to disrupt systems of oppression or create a pipeline of critical conscious teachers practicing cultural and linguistic responsiveness and humility?
What if we encouraged mistakes, missteps, and misunderstandings to be repaired for they are great teachers?
What if we coached them how to repair through observing, learning, and not repeating?
What if the oppressive mistakes and atrocities of the past helped us write better roadmaps for a more just antiracist future?
What if we centered the stories of those whose narratives were erased by those who mistreated, misstepped, dominated, suppressed, and never repaired?
What if we were courageous enough to teach children to examine their mistakes or failures as gifts for their path ahead?
What if they were not called mistakes but detours?
What if?
What if we used the millions spent on standardized tests to train teachers to disrupt systems of oppression or create a pipeline of critical conscious teachers practicing cultural and linguistic responsiveness and humility?
What if we encouraged mistakes, missteps, and misunderstandings to be repaired for they are great teachers?
What if we coached them how to repair through observing, learning, and not repeating?
What if the oppressive mistakes and atrocities of the past helped us write better roadmaps for a more just antiracist future?
What if we centered the stories of those whose narratives were erased by those who mistreated, misstepped, dominated, suppressed, and never repaired?
What if we were courageous enough to teach children to examine their mistakes or failures as gifts for their path ahead?
What if they were not called mistakes but detours?
What if?
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