As I write this I am toggling between my Twitter updates and the news updates and this blog post. My world has become consumed with the civil outrage and protests in the Black Lives Matter movement.
As a teacher, my heart aches for each person that has been and is continued to be treated unfairly. I have been living in my “golden rule” world, thinking that people will, for the most part, just treat others as they would like to be treated. And, I think that most people do, or at least they think they do. But, the systems in our society are not set up to honor the golden rule. The systems are broken.
Questions that swirl in my head, specifically as a teacher and a mentor are: What can I do? What should I do? How are my students doing? How are my fellow teachers doing? How is the teacher I am mentoring doing? How can we change the education system to justly support students of color (and teachers of color, and people of color in general)? How will I approach this topic with my student teacher next year? What questions will they have, and how will I tell them I don’t know the answer?
I commit to listening, and learning all I can to be part of a positive change.
Finally, as I read the title of this blog, I realize that maybe I should change it? We are currently in a crisis, but this crisis did not just start last week. It has been continually living in our society, and our schools, with our teachers leading the classrooms, need to change.