Agents Of The State
“How many of you have a child that you believe in and no one else does?”
Seats shift.
“How many of you can relate to the children in front of you? How many of you have students who get thrown out of everyone else’s class but yours?”
Some people blink, some heads turn to the side, but the general assembly hums and huffs.
This is a Bronx auditorium where a coalition of conscious principals (headed by CASA principal Jamaal Bowman) dared have a race-centric education conference on Chancellor’s Day, NYC’s annual professional development day. As the only K-12 teacher on the featured panel, I found myself needing to push buttons for our audience, many of whom presumably get tired of getting talked at by outsiders.
“On the morning of the day after the Michael Brown decision came down, I set aside the Common Core and got to the heart of the matters. We as teachers do ourselves a disservice when we’re not willing to listen to the kids in front of us about these very issues.”
As I’m saying these things, I’m thinking about the position I currently sit in, with all these wonderful speaking engagements and opportunities and using those spaces to lift others. This might be my vision. Yet, the other, more onerous side of this argument is that I’m putting myself and my colleagues in danger by asking us to . Even with one steady foot in the classroom, our vociferous selves stand to lose our livelihoods, despite reformers’ “job for life” barbs. The idea that teachers can actually work with kids and not do things to them boils down to the question I’ve struggled with since the NYPD turned their backs to Mayor Bill de Blasio:
Are teachers agents of change or agents of the state?
This was no more poignant than when I spoke yesterday at the Boston Teachers’ Union’s professional development conference. When Paul Tritter, director of professional learning at the Agents Of The State | The Jose Vilson:
