Evaluating Our Values - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

Evaluating Our Values - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:

Evaluating Our Values

by Nancy Flanagan

Guest blogger Corey Gaber is a first-year resident in a new teacher training and certification program called Urban Teacher Center, teaching middle school Humanities at Baltimore Freedom Academy, a social justice-themed Baltimore City Public School. He has an M.Ed in Mind, Brain and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is a Community Organizer forIDEA (Institute for Democratic Education in America).

"What percentage of NFL players are black?" I ask twelve boys in a summer program designed for students in danger of being retained at their recently completed grade level. We estimate about 75%. "OK, and what percentage of NFL owners do you think are black?" No need to guess here, the right answer is zero.The conversation is designed to provide students a content base for writing a Brief Constructed Response (commonly referred to as a "BCR").

Now that the issue of race has been raised the conversation veers away from