Black Lives Matter: Make Education More Inclusive
By Jill Jenkins
The NAACP proclaimed in a public service announcement, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” This is still true today. Education is the key to improving the quality of life and upward mobility to all people and with the growing gap between those who have and those who have not, quality education is even more important for the success of any individual. More Black and Brown people have been provided fewer financial and educational opportunities for decades, but making education more inclusive could make a tremendous difference in the quality of education they receive. How do we make education more inclusive are: first, invite unrepresented minorities to join extra curricular activities; second, provide academic and emotional support; and third, help families solve problems with flexible and personal solutions.
Invite Students to Join Extra Curriculum Activities
In many schools Black and Brown students often do not
participate in any extra curriculum activities beyond sports like track,
basketball and football. Although
these sports often help elevate these students by offering scholarship
opportunities, they do little to help the student who is not athletically
inclined. Even though
participation in drama, debate, journalism, creative writing, student
government or even chess club also help students earn scholarships, many of
these activities are dominated by White students. Students may avoid participating because they are working to
help their financially strapped families.
Others may not join because they don’t see any of their peers
participating. Adolescence is a
very social period. To alleviate
this problem, one school where I taught personally invited groups of friends to join. It worked, they joined and they did
well.
Problems
As the debate coach and drama teacher, I experienced some
difficulties. For examples, when I
took a group of debaters to an predominately White school, two of my debate
team members were cornered by a group of White students who were jeering and
yelling derogatory racial slurs.
Luckily, another team member retrieved me and I was able to intervene
and ended the incident. However,
at another school a similar incident happened to a student with less self
control who retorted to their ugly comments with some vehement of his own. The principal of that school asked me
to give him bus fare and send him back to school. When I consulted my principal, he agreed with the solution;
however, today, I would have taken my entire team back and ended the
competition. When I sponsored an
after school debate meet at my school, one little girl from a local parochial
high school was so frightened that she locked her knees when she stood up to
speak and fainted.
Solutions:
- 1. Luckily the district decided to cut costs, and required that the three high schools share buses when going to week-end debate meets. The social interaction between the students from the poorer area of town (my students) with the more affluent areas created a community that looked out for each other. As a result, there were less incidences of racial conflict.
- 2. Collaborative work with people from differing race groups and social-economics improves relationships and understanding. A better approach to help all stud enters interact in a more positive way and learn the argumentative skills for debate might be a workshop where suburb and predominately White schools and urban Black and Hispanic schools take workshops taught by debate coaches from both types of schools. Activities might include discussions on controversial topics, not necessarily racism, where each student has to paraphrase what the speaker before him says before adding to the discussion. It teaches listening and the students learn that they have more in common with each other than they believed. Then, pair the students with a student from the other schools mixing races and economic backgrounds and given the research material and the time, they collaborate to debate together as a team. The next day, the new teams debate one another. Although winning the debate for the school, would be lose, but learning to work with new people could be an invaluable life skill.
Another Problem
Another
problem that I encountered is when I cast an experienced young acting student
as Alice in Alice in Wonderland who happened to be Black. I was called into the principal’s
office because a parent had complained that she didn’t understand why I had
cast a Black student when her daughter, who had no experience in theater,
looked exactly like Alice. When I was the artistic director of Self Inc., an
improv psycho-socio drama troupe, I was called into the principal’s office
again because another parent had complained that seeing mixed racial families
in improvised scenes about communication in the home made her feel
uncomfortable. Be prepared as a
teacher to justify doing the right thing and if that doesn’t work, don’t be
afraid to call in members of the community, ACLU or NAACP. They are all friends to education.
Add Emotional and Academic Support Programs
At another urban school where I taught 90% of the students
enrolled where minorities and 10% were White, but the enrollment in the honors
programs was 90% White and 10% minorities and most of them were Asian. The administration designed a program
called Century Club, similar to AVID developed in San Diego. Low performing, but bright students
were identified and interviewed.
Forty students were selected and enrolled in honors classes, but given a
support class where the teachers monitored their grades, made certain they did
their assignments, tutored them and taught them study skills. Since many of
these students were from parents who worked several jobs to support their
families or were single parent households, some lacked the language or academic
skills to help their children, the school simply stepped in and helped the
student get the support that was usually available in most middle class
families. As a teacher, I also
helped students get counseling, social work or drug rehabilitation help when they
brought me a problem I couldn’t solve.
In
other schools I have seen students fall through the cracks because schools
failed to provide additional support.
For example, I taught one young man who was a refugee from a village in
Africa. He spoke a language that
no one in the district spoke and understood and spoke, no English. He was enrolled in a class with 35
other 9th grade Language Arts students and expected to do the
curriculum. When I complained to
the administration, I was told to buy a few programs for your IPad for him and
just pass him. I tried my best to
help him, but feel it was less than adequate. Many students fall behind for
reasons that aren’t in their control. I had another student whose mother was so
afraid of ICE she would pull her children out of school and take them to sit in
the hospital whenever her husband went into the hospital for dialysis. As a
result, all of these students were years behind their classmates.
Flexible Rules that Solve Human Problems with a Flexible Approach
Schools
are designed to accommodate the “Leave It To Beaver” families of the 1950’s and
few families, especially families in Black neighborhoods are that family. In
most working class families are financially unstable as a result both parents
work and older children either work or are burdened with caring for younger
siblings. If one or both parents
are incarcerated, the high school student is often attending school, raising
younger siblings and supporting the family financially. Families in stress often need a little
wiggle room in the rules to survive.
Often it is a small alteration, like one of my students who watched her
younger siblings when her mother left for work. When her father arrived home, he took her directly to
school, but she was usually five or ten minutes late. Excusing such a tardy seems trivial, but it can help a
family immeasurably. I had two
students who were failing their first period because they were terminally
tardy, when I called their mothers, I learned that both students were single
parents and woke their children before leaving for work, but the two
lollygagged about and were tardy.
I suggested a solution. I
would call the two everyday before I left my apartment and pick them up on my
way to work (something because of liability teachers could not do today). For a week the two were on time, but
because teachers are required to be in the building 30 minutes before school
started, they decided that they could get to school on time without my
help. They did.
Another situation arose where a young
Black student began submitting papers that were illegible and illogical. I showed his papers to the counselor
who decided to call his parents in for a meeting. From the meeting, we learned that the student’s mother had
recently passed away and he was living with his father and paternal
grandfather. Since his father was
an elementary teacher two blocks from the high school, we decided that during
his last period of the day, we would walk to his father’s school and tutor his
father’s students. The extra time
and the helping other students, brought out of his depression and his academic
skills returned. Thinking outside
the box often helps student who are suffering some personal loss.
In Conclusion
In
conclusion, schools need to become more inclusive if students of color are to
succeed. We need to invite students
to participate in extra-curricular activities and advocate for them when they
meet obstacles. We need to provide
emotional and academic support for students to perform in a rigorous academic
curriculum. We need to communicate
with families and in a personal and flexible manner help them resolve problems
they might be facing. “A mind is a
terrible thing to waste.” Lets not waste any.