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What to Wear When You Turn Into the Incredible Hulk
For several years, I worked in New York City’s District 75 (special education district), first as a paraprofessional and then as a teacher. When I told people where I worked, they would often pause, look at me with a mixture of awe and pity and say something like, “That must be hard.” Now, I will be the first to agree that teaching is a really, really tough job, but that’s not really what folks meant. They meant that it must be hard working with those kids.
Now don’t get me wrong, there were days when the little boogers drove me up the wall, when I drove them up the wall, when some of us showed up to school sick, or exhausted, or just plain distracted and things very quickly started to resemble a sequel to Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Because that’s what seems to happen when humans spend a lot of time with each other, day in and day out, for years on end. We all have our bad days, and sometimes we take them out on the ones we love.
But most days, I came into school and got to spend time with a group of incredibly loving, funny, curious, interesting group of people who showered me with pictures, cards, thank-you letters, sorry-I-stole-your-iPod letters, candy, and hugs that I continue to treasure. Most days, I went home after work and just laughed for minutes on end, remembering something someone had said or done. Most days, I got to spend hours reading and talking about some really great books with an intelligent and appreciative group. And that’s why I kept coming back for as long as I did.
More recently, I have had the pleasure of helping with a writing workshop at an Alternative to Detention Program for kids ages 12-16 who have been arrested. When I tell folks where I’m going, I sometimes see that familiar look. And I feel almost guilty that people seem to think I must be some sort of saint when I think about how much fun I’ve been having, laughing as we try to build Rube Goldberg machines or discuss how to handle Incredible Hulk super powers (hint: elastic waistbands and the ability to pull off your shirt quickly).
Don’t get me wrong, there are special heartaches associated with working with kids who are court-involved. When my babies got arrested, or ran away rather than take a chance on a new foster home, well, that really sucked. But if all anyone ever hears about any job or activity is the worst parts of it, then it starts to seem like the sort of job that only someone who is much more qualified and virtuous could possibly do. Court-involved youth and youth with disabilities (and there is a lot of overlap between those two groups) start to seem too different to go to school and generally hang out with everyone else. And while the consequences of that separation, distance and suspicion are more obvious and dire for the kids who get isolated into special schools or prisons, I really believe that we all lose out.
What Makes a Good Parent…and Who Gets to Decide?
Recently, the New Yorker published an article describing the experiences of a woman named Niveen, whose little boy was placed in foster care and ultimately given to another family despite Niveen’s efforts to get him back. Based on a single story from a single article, I certainly don’t want to pass judgment on whether anyone made the “right” decision or even whether a “right” decision existed to be made. But I was struck by the demands that were placed on Niveen. She was required to take a parenting class and then demonstrate parenting styles that the professionals involved in her case approved of. Niveen, an immigrant, described having to learn to “parent American style,” which the handbook described as being a democratic style that balanced the child’s freedom and responsibilities (p. 54).
My own immigrant mother is highly skeptical of raising children democratically. When I became a teacher, she advised me that I should only give children choices when I actually wanted to give them a choice–if I wanted to know what color marker, or which flavor ice cream, for example. If they needed to sit down, take out their book and start working on something, then I should tell them clearly to please do that.
When I was younger, I got into trouble at school when teachers told me I had a “choice” between, for example, being quiet and not getting a sticker, and then I would get angry that my teachers pretended that I had options when it seemed like I really didn’t. But my parents and more directive teachers eventually made clear what was expected of me and how I was really supposed to interpret “Would you like to sit down now?” As I got older, I became comfortable responding to both teaching styles. When I became a teacher myself, I was able to help my students understand and interpret different teaching styles as well.
I offer this story not to say that my mom’s parenting style is “better” or “worse,” but simply to say that it is a particular style with particular results. Sometimes my parents’ style conflicted with the teaching style of my school, but I think that conflict was ultimately a good thing for me. Well-meaning professionals who want to help parents do a better job need to be aware that there are a lot of ways to be a good parent, and that our assumptions about what being a good parent means are grounded in our own cultural backgrounds. It would be a shame to separate children from loving families simply because those families aren’t doing things the way we would.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/02/131202fa_fact_aviv
Pondering Child Homelessness in the Wake of Dasani
Last week, thanks to Andrea Elliott‘s five-part series in the NY Times, the name Dasani came to mean much more than a label found on the side of a slender, blue-hued, plastic water bottle.
The series, which profiles young Dasani and her family as they experience various dimensions of homelessness and institutional forms of support and challenge, has received a significant amount attention in the mainstream press as well as across local contexts including our twitter stream, classroom discussions, hallway conversations, and, in one instance, a bus ride debate.
I am still very much mulling over the intricate layers of information and analysis of child homelessness that Elliott’s narrative offers, so in the meantime I thought I would share a collection of resources that I have gathered to help my own ongoing analysis and sense-making:
- The original article: Invisible Child — Girl in the Shadows: Dasani’s Homeless Life
- A conversation with Andrea Elliott on NPR’s The Brian Lehrer Show
- NYTimes’ The Learning Network spotlights “Invisible Child” for their Reading Club — featuring lessons and insights from youth involved with Youth Communication (which publishes Represent magazine) and the Possibility Project (a youth theater group)
- Sliding into Homelessness: An essay by Zakkiaya Bowen — another collaboration between NYTimes The Learning Network and Youth Communication‘s Represent magazine, including discussion and teaching resources. (Read another piece by Bowen here: Choosing Who I Let In
- Making Ends Meet: Children’s Books That Explore Social Class, Homelessness, and Poverty – a post from earlier this year by Mary Ann Reilly on her blog Between the By-Road and the Main Road
Additional Resources (taken from the Reading Club and other sources)
- Lens Blog | In Brooklyn, Photographing an Invisible Child
- Learning Network Guest Post | 10 Ways to Talk to Students About Sensitive Issues in the News
- Times Topics | Homelessness
- DoSomething.org | Homelessness and Poverty
- Youth Communication | Pieces on Homelessness
- Youth Communication | Pieces on the Foster Care System
- The Dasani Effect: How You Can Help the More Than 1.6 Million Homeless Children in America
Honoring the simplicity of a moment
My fifth year working as a resource teacher I co-taught in a classroom with a Charles Mingus poster hanging at the back of the room. The poster said, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity”. At the time a large part of my job was modifying curriculum to support my students in accessing and participating in the instructional activities of a content area class. I often felt undervalued, not by the young people I was working with, but the other teachers, and school staff at my site. When I saw this poster something clicked for me. I realized, I believed what my colleagues said to me: that I was dumbing down curriculum, or making things easier for the young people I was working with. The poster helped me identify something I strong believed. It was overwhelmingly awesome (in the true definition of the word) to support a student to access a new concept or idea.
I had a similar moment, that shifted my thinking, at the alternative to detention program (atdp) where I mentor. In conjunction with the YMEJ grad seminar I have been mentoring with a group of women for the past six weeks. My initial workshop I was shocked that my knee jerk teacher qualities came out. I wanted students to learn, I wanted students to listen. I was calling young people in the program students—even though the program is not affiliated with a school. When I applied for the YMEJ seminar over the summer one question in my interview was about how I thought of mentorship, or defined a mentoring relationship. My response was a traditional model of mentorship that is one on one, where one person is positioned as a knower, or mentor, and the other person holds the mentee or learner role.
Since that conversation I have come back to the idea of the fluidity of mentorship and how the roles of teacher and learner are interchangeable. As a teacher, I often thought about how much I learned from my students, but I think it was in a trite way. As in, “Wow, these kids have so much they can teach me.” In this context I still positioned myself as the knower, and I while I was not shocked to learn from my students, I did treat the moments as a type of novelty.
As I continue my working with the young people and staff members at the alternative to detention center I hope to channel some Mingus and value the awesomeness of simplicity. Going beyond making a concept simple but also honoring the moments of being human. How can I come to a space and value each individual without imposing my own agenda? How do I extend an authentic invitation that emphasizes a dualistic mentorship role with the young people at the ATDP? To keep it simple, how do I be myself in a way the invites others (especially young people) to be themselves with me? I hope to begin to think about answers to these questions but for now, here is some Mingus to enjoy.
A Reflection on: “Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital” — “Tanisha”
While looking for some reading to pass the time over Thanksgiving Break, I came across the novel, Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital a non-fiction account of twelve patients encountered by Dr. Eric Manheimer during his time as the medical director at Bellevue. Though I wasn’t aware when I picked it up, the second chapter entitled “Tanisha” is the story of a young girl in the foster care system who found her way to Bellevue.
Though I could spend this entire blog simply summarizing the chapter, I will instead encourage you to read it, and will devote this space to a reflection on Tanisha’s story. Though I had no idea this story was hidden in this book, and it was only a small portion of the entire book, its memory lingers with me.
Tanisha had spent sixteen of the seventeen years of her life in foster care, with the exception of one home, that of Abuela, the only loving and supportive home that Tanisha ever had, only to be removed after Abuela’s death. Tanisha was then placed in an abusive home followed by neglectful home in a cyclical pattern that was without end. Though Tanisha’s stories of abuse, neglect, and horror haunt me still, there are so many positive, yet cautionary lessons that are to be taken away.
First and foremost, Tanisha was a fighter. She advocated for herself. She did not give up on herself. She was strong willed, intelligent and even when placed in vapid surrounds, kept herself sharp and alert. It is what allowed her the ingenuity and wherewithal to walk herself from Flatbush to Manhattan and to ACS in order to avoid either being killed or killing someone in self-protection. I say this only to say that there are some positive results to this story, but not all of the children put into foster care who experienced these same misfortunes would necessarily find the same conclusions. To do so takes a uncrushable spirit like that of Tanisha.
Secondly, “Dr. Eric” as he is so lovingly called, went far above and beyond what is expected? required? of doctors. Tanisha wasn’t his patient, but he went out of his way to learn about her story, to not give up on her, to find a way to extend her stay in Bellevue in order to afford her a safe place to stay, to buy her notebooks and both model and encourage her to write down the thoughts and feelings, but also to follow through on that act…reading what she wrote, taking it seriously. I want to call his actions heroic in some sense, but instead, perhaps they could be more appropriately labeled as “aware” or “available.” He never gave up on finding Abuela’s daughter and talking to her, telling her about Tanisha, taking the one in a million chance that perhaps they would be willing to take her back into the family. His actions, if nothing else were most certainly out of the ordinary. I wonder, and am glad I won’t have to know, what would have happened to Tanisha had it not been for the hospital staff and most notably, Dr. Eric.
Because it is impossible to avoid this revelation, Dr. Eric goes out of his way to find Abuela’s daughter who had held the family together, and to offer Tanisha’s story to her, and ask her to consider being a foster family to Tanisha. They found ways to keep Tanisha in Bellevue in order to avoid her being put back into the system before a decision could be made. They never gave up on a happy ending for her, and in the end she did get her happy ending. And the reader walks away feeling as if justice has prevailed.
But I think more critically now. Tanisha is one girl. And granted not every child in foster care has this traumatic experience. But for those who do, what about the many children who cannot get themselves to Bellevue? Who cannot find their way to a Dr. Eric to be listened to, protected, and advocated for in a way that they were unable to do for themselves. Where are they now? How many are there? How do we reach them? What outlets do they have now to reach out to people who can provide them the support and help they need? I hope others will have a chance to read this chapter and reflect upon these same questions as they pertain to court-involved youth, in particular those involved in the foster care system.
The Lover and the Guilty
Where there is an issue, diverse actors are affected. How is the voice of the community valued? How do we consider and support members of family and friends? How can we value narratives behind the stigma?
The following powerful testimony is in the voice of a woman who regularly visits her husband in jail. Her narrative denounces the unfairness of policies; specifically, policies that generate structural violence that are deeply rooted in state institutions. When an institution is mostly responsible for stigma and stereotypes, what are the strategies to advocate for human rights and human dignity?
She exposes her feelings in terms of what it means to be a wife, what it means to love, what it means to love a criminal. She stands up and voices her concerns; how many families are experiencing stigmas because a family member is in jail? What kind of support can they find?
The Lover and the Guilty
“Pilot-apartments” are set up in some jails so that prisoners can meet their family with intimacy… There must be only few in only two or three jails. The Centrale of Poissy is one of them, and I am interested because I am married since 1989 to a “perpète” (nick name for life-sentenced).
This project is justified by longer sentences with security measures. We do not question the heaviness of punishment, which becomes more and more heavy. All prisoners do not have access to family visit units (FVU) given the small number of units (two or three for three hundred prisoners in Poissy), where access is very rare for the largest number to benefit. Normal parloirs (visiting hours), will whereas, be very rigorously monitored with punishment for “indecent behavior”. Only a few privileged have regular access to FVU, from which is fostered shenanigans, haggling, and jealousy.
Where the shoe pinches for us, Parloirs’ women, is that softening the punishment seems so good to take … The leftist project now gained to security, and especially the arrival of a hyper-repressive right wing, however, should make us think, think to be wary. We are forced to cut us in two: the lover and the guilty.
We should now rightly fear the scarcity, or even the end, of conditional releases. By way of “half-liberty”, what it offers families is a half-detention. Opinions of Parloirs’ women are never asked: That’s why I give mine.
DUZSKA MAKSYMOWITZ, (translated into English) In Mazoyer, F. (2003). La fin de la vie privée. In Manière de voir 71. Le Monde Diplomatique, October-November 2003, p.45
Duzska Maksymowitz was married for twelve years to a “perpète” now free; she is the author of “Femme de Parloir”, L’esprit frappeur (editor), Paris, 2000.
Through her writing, Duzska Maksymowitz is an activist for women’s dignity and women’s rights. She voices the taboo of loving a prisoner. She voices the taboo of being a family member of a criminal; she voices the concerns, the challenge and the experiences that women, wives, mothers, sisters, or children are facing when a close person, family member, friend or lover is imprisoned.
Developing Justice Monthly Roundtable
Greetings, Students based in or around New York City,
Check out the NYC Student Collective to End Mass Incarceration! A group of interested students from all over the NYC metro area got together at the Beyond the Bars conference organized by the Columbia School of Social Work in the spring. Since then, the group has been working to build connections and support for students and student groups who are interested in bringing more justice into the justice system. At the moment, the group is primarily made up of undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of institutions, but is looking to involve high school and younger students as well.
The group met this past week at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, but stay tuned to the Facebook page for links to news, student group events, and other important stuff!
Possibilities of Virtual Dialogue
A recent op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, When Children are Traded, about the private re-homing of children who are adopted (often internationally) is a compelling addition to the larger sphere within which the YMEJ course contextualizes its work. I came across the op-ed piece in a backwards way: I first found a link to a series of letters to the editor written in response to the piece.
Check it out here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/29/opinion/when-an-adoption-doesnt-work-out.html
While I could use this post to disentangle the broad narratives Kristof infuses in his piece, I am more interested in the conversation the piece sparked, since I read the response first. More specifically, it caused me to wonder about the dialogue surrounding foster care in mass media and the space certain medias create for people to speak back or engage in dialogue. The opinion/response was posted by the New York Times and therefore, I am aware that many other responses may not have been shared on the website. Next, I looked at which letters had been chosen for inclusion in the paper. One came from Westchester Child and Family services — part of Kristof’s op-ed questioned American adoption agencies for being leery to accept foreign adoptions that were not working in the US. Another response was from the Children’s Law Center and the final letter came from the Center for Adoption Policy. I immediately noticed the absent voices: parents, children, teachers, social workers. This lead me to Kristof’s original op-ed piece and the comments section at the bottom of the website.
What I find fascinating is in the opinion pages the New York Times makes a point to explain who is writing the opinion and whether or not they are affiliated with a group, agency etc. In the comments section, anyone can leave a comment. But the comments are divided into sections, NY Picks, Readers Picks and All comments. The freedom to respond is still mediate and moderate, which causes me to question the role the New York Times website, itself, plays in constructing a response to the op-ed.
I call this into question because the conversation and comments that interact with the article demonstrate a wide range of responses and perspectives. Though the comments include many more parent voices, I still had to search to find young peoples responses and even responses of people who were adopted or lived in foster care. Which begs the question, whose story is Kristof telling? What can those of us involved in the YMEJ graduate seminar do to get involved in these conversations? How can we generate our own conversations in the public sphere? I hope this blog is a starting point and look forward to the virtual dialogue that unfolds.
Three Strikes Laws and the Danger of a Single Story
I have been spending a lot of time thinking about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk on the danger of a single story (video below). It seems to me that the biggest danger of a single story is that the story isn’t factually incorrect; in fact, there is probably evidence to support it rather than evidence against it. And that’s the danger. You have one small piece of the truth, so small as to be, potentially, completely misleading. You may be in possession of a single outlier, of the exception that proves the rule. It’s true. And yet. It’s also not.
So when I saw this video on the making of the Three Strikes laws in California and various other states, it seemed like an excellent example of the Single Story Fallacy. Any particular crime could not have happened if the individual who committed it had been already locked up (or incapacitated due to disease, accident, freak attack by a rabid raccoon). That’s a single truth, about a single story, about a single crime. So a logical response to that single story might be to incarcerate or otherwise incapacitate anyone who may ever potentially commit a crime.
But the problem is that the single story exists among many, many other stories. Infinitely many stories, perhaps. And one story out of infinitely many is, mathematically, insignificantly small. There are the sad stories about lives that are disrupted, even destroyed when a person is cut off from family, community. And there are the happy stories about people who broke the law but then went on to lead happy, ethical lives for all sorts of reasons. Why not pursue those stories?
- The Making of the ‘Three Strikes’ Laws (NYTimes)
- The Danger of a Single Story
Retro: Paint Me Like I Am
Re-blogged from last year’s YMEJ cohort — the connection between cultural responsiveness in teaching and research and the pursuit of educational justice (with a little Nikki Giovanni for good measure).
(And another connection to arts and justice, akin to this post with the same name by Kelly Gavin Zuckerman from earlier this semester.)
Nikki Giovanni requests, “Paint me like I am.” I am reminded of the words of this poem as I continue to work on my final publication and present the participants of this inquiry as they are; as they would like to be known.
When I think about culturally responsive research, I think about the work I’m doing in this course. In addition to thinking about youth, media, and educational justice and the interconnections between, this project has invited me to think about what I’m learning from the participants and ways I can contribute something back in honor of them.
As a result of looking at and listening to the ideas the participants several questions are raised that are driving my work. What narratives are emerging? How do these narratives play out differently among the different participants? How am I reading narratives across the ideas of the participants? How am I…
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Youth, Media, and Educational Justice 