THE GREAT I AM
The essential question: how can we reflect the changes we want to see in the world?
Because I don’t have students in front of me during the summer, I have time to ask myself existential questions that offer space for self-congratulations and self-flagellation. In Dominican culture, we laugh with friends and relatives about the accuracy of household weaponry like belts and sandals. It also taught me to be overly suspicious of where kudos come from and what vulnerability looks like. The crack and the slap call to ancestors in percussion and oppression, and my genes remember and remind, curdling my blood yet fortify my bones.
No more was this truer than two days ago at the NYC Panel for Education Policy meeting on July 31st, where dozens of attendees came to either support the Department of Education’s definition for culturally responsive / sustaining education or denounce Chancellor Richard Carranza’s very existence. Many of the supporters included an amalgam of citizens led by the Coalition for Educational Justice who proposed the definition as a first step towards interrogating our education system through the lens of our most marginalized and ignored citizens in our city.
While I won’t speak negatively about the detractors here, I felt it critical for me to be there. I sat with supporters in front of me, and with detractors filling up the rows behind me. As they began their “Fire Carranza” chants, I turned towards them and said, “We want textbooks in Cantonese, too! We want books in Mandarin, too! Don’t you think we should have characters that look like your children in the CONTINUE READING: The Great I Am | The Jose Vilson
