Red Light, Green Light - Using the Game to Discuss Power, Privilege, & Discrimination

I keep seeing headlines that claim there’s a bias against White folks or how adolescent boys have become radicalized militants of conservative outrage. Curious… Generally those trumpeting manufactured outrage do so to mask their angst around losing the power and status they have benefitted from (or were expected to inherit) for years.  

You’d expect this from middle schoolers but not from adults. Fortunately I’ve long suspected that adulthood really just replicates middle school.

“That’s not fair.”  “That’s reverse discrimination.” “How come she gets…” When this comes up in class, we play Red Light, Green Light (RL/GL). Sometimes a simple, accessible approach yields the best results.  RL/GL has proven to be one of the most effective teaching strategies to address these issues in my twenty years of teaching.

Schools spend considerable money and time trying to instill a basic understanding of diversity, equity, and the spectrum of -isms that plague society. And yet, these programs often do little or make little difference to improve the day to day experiences of students who bear the brunt of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. We know students don’t like being talked at and that lecturing isn’t the most effective form of teaching. So why use that strategy in your efforts to dismantle the -isms?

Red Light, Green Light (RL/GL) represents an old school playground activity that appeals to students from a wide range of backgrounds. This activity provides a platform to address power, privilege, discrimination and many other  concepts within multicultural education.

NOTE: While contemporary parlance uses a variety of acronyms (DEI, DEIB, JEDI, etc.) for ease of use and to avoid confusion I will use the term multicultural education (MCED) to represent these terms and their objectives.

If you’re not familiar with the game it’s pretty straightforward. One person stands say on one side of a space (eg. a basketball court) while the rest of the group stands on the other side. The object is to be the first person from the big group across the space. When the director (single person) calls out green light, individuals run forward across the space. When they yell red light each person has to stop and freeze. If the director sees movement they instruct that person to start over. 

If I’m not mistaken, the first time I used RL/GL to teach MCED was in Professor Geneva Gay’s summer Diversity Institute class. While the game seemed to go over the heads of  the adults, I thought it would be great with students.  Since then I have pulled out this almost once a year. And almost every instance was precipitated by the outrage of a wealthy White dude who felt  efforts to level the playing field was an effort to discriminate against him.

To use RL/GL for this purpose you have to alter the set up a bit. For the purpose of clarity let’s say this example is happening on a basketball court. Instead of everyone starting in the same place (say the baseline), start the kid who complained loudest and start him on the foul line or midline of the court.  Have a few people start on the foul line near the base line where others are starting.  Inevitably, the students who start closest win the majority of the efforts. The other participants will become frustrated and grumble about fairness.  The kid who wins will not recognize or share that frustration. 

Next, switch things up. This is when things get interesting. You have plenty of options depending on your group. First, you can just have the student or students who started closest start on the endline with everyone else. You could have everyone start at the same privileged place the winner started from for a few rounds. If you have time, I recommend playing around with the starting points for different groups within your class - move the marginalized kids up, and the popular kids back. Assign starting places by some random decider, etc.  From these various iterations you should have the makings of a substantive discussion.

Inevitably you will have discussions about what’s right and what’s fair. You can facilitate the conversation a few different ways. Usually, the question of ‘why do they get to start up there and we have to start back there?’ dominates the discussion. You can steer the conversation towards having the class problems solve a scenario to begin that is ‘fair’ and ‘right.’ for all.  Along the way students who enjoyed a privileged starting place will voice their displeasure around losing that privilege.  Often it comes in the form of, “why am i being punished?”  

To make this activity really effective you must take the time so the group can dismantle and rebuild a lot of big feelings. One of the keys to facilitating this activity is to use that question and flip it back on the group. You can approach this a few ways: “Are you being punished?” or “Why are the others being punished by having to start way back there?” starts a lot of conversations. After a bit of conversation, find a moment to step back in and ask the group to craft a starting point that works for everyone.  Give them some time to try out and revise their solutions before you end the activity.

At some point you can then connect RL/GL to issues of power, privilege, and discrimination. Please note that during the activity I purposely don’t use those terms as descriptors.  I generally wait a bit before making the connection. This allows the experience to steep in students’ brains and for them to construct meaning from the activity.  Moving forward students will have that RL/GL experience as a point of reference and can refer back to their experience to defuse issues in the future. If need be, you can always play again and tweak the game to fit the situation.
For the record, I generally connect this to other activities and discussions throughout the year, but it could act as a stand alone if need be.

As I mentioned, this has been the most effective means to address anxiety and outrage over perceived loss of power, etc. from those at the top of the sociopolitical hierarchy of my classrooms. The underlying question almost every class has had to address comes down to, “How is making things right for me a punishment for you?” As a class and as a community we must confront unearned privilege and real entitlements head on. Might as run around a bit while we do so.

The Research vs Practice Quandary

Over the weekend I annoyed some friends when I let the air out of their discussion of the awesomeness of learning styles.  It seems they weren’t psyched when I pointed out that research has largely debunked learning styles and has shown that such style may be detrimental to students. Yet the whole learning style trend still exists in pockets of various communities and comes up at parent/teacher conferences from time to time.  After apologizing for dampening the mood I went for a jog and started thinking to avoid the pain.

In education we often find ourselves fighting, or at least spectating, at the grudge match between research and practice. If you teach even for a brief period of time you will find yourself staring at this unfortunate Catch 22. Teachers constantly wrestle with “damned if you, damned if you don’t” situations.  Lately my feeds have filled up with science of reading and math articles and articles lamenting how schools teach things all wrong or how teachers don’t practice up to date methodologies. Oddly enough I find myself agreeing with and lamenting such press. 

This article delves into how teachers, schools, and parents fail to support efforts to infuse up to date teaching methods based on established research in various subjects.  The reality of using up to date research methodologies is that many schools do not support such efforts until they have to and parents don’t support such efforts when the methods seem unfamiliar or different from what they know or expect school to look like (hello new math, Common Core, etc.).  For this article, I have organized the locus of concern into broad categories: The Customer Is Not Always Right and Same As It Ever Was.

The Customer Is Not Always Right

Parents tend to know their kids pretty well (for the most part). Yet their knowledge or understanding of their kid tends to be limited or biased. Students spend the majority of their youth at school. As a result, teachers interact with and get to know way more about individual students than their parents. Yet parents like to tell teachers what their kid needs or how to teach them more effectively. Sometimes this happens as a productive conversation or as part of a team effort. However, more and more parents treat teachers as the help and demand change.

When schools introduce new teaching methods, parents rarely embrace these changes. Sure schools can always communicate more effectively, but even when they do well to let grown ups know, the school community recoils from these changes. Soon enough a group of confused grown ups,  unsure of what’s going on,  demand things go back to the way they were. As a result, updating teaching methods rarely evolve.

Same As It Ever Was

There are no bad teachers, just bad administrations? Ha, I wish that was true. Schools and teachers share a good chunk of the blame.  Our society likes to blame teachers for whatever problems schools have. Everybody likes to tell teachers how to do their job and teachers can always improve. 

Unfortunately, teachers have a role in this problem. Let’s focus that blame on three interconnected areas - control issues, complacency, and status quo cultures. First, quite a few teachers have control issues. They like to control what, when, and how things go in their classrooms. They also don’t like to be told what to do. Many veterans tell themselves they reached the height of their craft and there is no need to change. This bleeds into the fact that the day to day reality of teaching overwhelms individual teachers.. So when an admin announces something new, the response is rarely overwhelmingly positive. Doing something new threatens their control by putting them into the learner role. Uncertainty breeds contempt for change. This leads to the complacency of teachers. Yes, teaching is hard. Yet too many teachers do the exact same thing, the exact same way for years and maybe decades. Sameness makes teaching easier, but that complacency prevents students from having access to updated methods or strategies and perhaps more meaningful curriculum. Last, the teachers at some schools often cultivate and protect their status quo communities.  When young and/new teachers arrive fresh from university eager to make a difference the veteran teachers tend to squash their enthusiasm and ridicule their new fangled ideas. This is why many new teachers avoid the teachers lounge and feel isolated in the workplace. New principals often battle this as well. The resistance admin face may however be couched in tenure and union protections. At least the admin gets paid a living wage…

What Next?

There’s plenty of blame to go around. Yet, assigning blame doesn’t solve the underlying problems.  Each of the constituencies within school can work to make things better for the benefit of their students. 

So how do we move beyond this? No easy answers present themselves. Guess that’s the thing about Catch 22s. Parents need to trust and treat teachers like professionals. Teachers need to act like and treat their craft as a profession. Schools need to seek and support the best teaching strategies, not just the easiest to implement and not just when someone forces them to shift gears. Teachers would benefit from adopting a learning mindset in order to constantly evolve and reshape their teaching practice. No easy path forward but it is critical that educators confront these difficulties.  Otherwise  I’m sure there is some technology waiting to take our jobs. 

Embracing Plan B

“And so castles made of sand

Slips into the sea eventually”

In the early 1980s I won the junior division of a sand castle contest.  My partner and I beat out our nemesis and several other teams with a stunning interpretation of Point Loma.  The funny thing is, we didn’t set out to build Point Loma. In fact, our original design (the one we’d practiced and planned for weeks to do) was the space shuttle. Point Loma was our Plan B.  

The theme of the contest that year was something like “dream big” so we thought space shuttle and the moon. The shuttle seemed big so we planned and practiced to be ready. Our nemesis (if you’ve seen any teen movie with an arch rival you get the idea) had a team of people and parents who bought him every tool and product to use.  We had some brushes, a few trowels and shovels, a few buckets, and some bottles of hairspray and water mixtures.  They gloated and commented on our rag tag operation, we got to work. They reminded us constantly that their rendition of Space Mountain would crush our bush league operation.

When our plans fell through, we started to believe them.

Things started out well but went south when we started adding detail to our shuttle shape. With 90 minutes to go in the contest all we had was a moon looking circle of sand with a mound of sand that looked vaguely like a banana someone left in their backpack too long. The others relished our setback. It seemed that glitz and fancy tools would take the glory once again.

My teammate Brian and I sat on the beach staring out past the waves. Our grown ups knew enough to leave us alone.  Should we quit and skulk off? Should we try our shuttle again or maybe start on something new in the time remaining? We opted for Plan B. Now we just needed to figure out what Plan B was…

I don’t know how we decided on Point Loma as Plan B, but it was do-able so we got to work.  Our shuttle morphed in the peninsula. Gradually we added texture and color to the sides using different color sands. We reconfigured our moon into the iconic red roof of the Hotel del Coronado. In the closing minutes we added the lighthouse onto the point. We wrapped up with something we were proud of and waited for the judges.

As the judges approached our nemesis and his cronies snickered. The judges' enthusiasm for our product surprised them as much as it surprised us. A judge asked us if we had set out to make Point Loma… Brian and I looked at each other and told the judges our story.  Instead of diminishing their enthusiasm, our honesty stoked it even more.

Somehow we won. We got a huge gift certificate to 31 Flavors and our picture on the front page of the local paper (above the fold even). As much as I enjoyed coming out ahead of What’s His Name’s fancy, well financed operation, I’m psyched we didn’t crumble like our space shuttle.  In our time of need Plan B revealed itself. Sometimes Plan B is just waiting for its chance and it turns out sometimes Plan B is the way to go.

Last Friday I shut down Do.Think.Learn’s office. After our corporate landlord added several “convenience” fees to our monthly tab which essentially doubled our rent we needed to change it up. Commercial rentals in Calabasas were already ridiculous and when that rent alone exceeds 70% of your gross it’s time for some new.   I’m not sure what that something new will be yet, but I have an amazing student whose parents understand the situation and support DTL beyond what I could ever expect. So while I wait for Plan B to emerge, we will base DTL out of a student’s home for the time being. 

I’m not sure what the future holds, but I keep coming back to that sand castle contest.  Like Brain and I, DTL doesn’t have the resources of other schools. For better and worse we have kept to our DIY ethos. On the plus side, I don't think we have any nemeses in the microschool world, but we’ll probably never be the cool kids. DTL wasn’t planning to be in this situation, but I reckon it’s time to let go of what was and start reshaping the present to build the future.

The Stories of Math

This is a student’s reflection after reading a chapter in the book Is Math Real (Cheng, 2023):

Too often in school, math is taught in a ‘my way or the highway’ manner. Teachers often use a one-strategy-to-tell-one-story sense rather than exploring the many ways to tell the same story. In other words, many teachers will showcase a singular strategy to solving a math problem for efficiency. When students attempt to solve the same problem using a different approach, they’re often told to use the one presented to them instead. Or perhaps the student uses the teacher’s approach; they’re still being deprived of the numerous ways in which a problem can be dissected. Though impractical for teachers, putting emphasis on the fact that the solving process can be undergone in a variety of ways allows for students to choose the strategy that works best for them. In doing so, they gain more independence and control in the manner in which they do their work. Instead of having one specific strategy enforced on students, teachers should explore the possibilities with them and ultimately provide students with the bandwidth to do assignments in a way that makes most sense to them.

When Students Learn to Fly

The mom of DTL’s first seventh grade student checked in last week. She included a photo of her now high schooler with the caption “your student.”  The young woman looking back at the camera in many ways is and is not the same young woman who rocked 7th grade at Do.Think.Learn.  ‘My student’ stood with power and purpose that only comes  from a strong inner sense of self. I couldn’t help but feel good about the small part I played in building that foundation.

That same mom approached me one afternoon three years ago looking for help.  Her daughter (who we’ll call Cuckles) struggled with zoom school in the first months of the pandemic. Mom saw some red flags she couldn’t ignore. Chuckles had lost interest in school. Beyond the awful tedium of zoom learning,  school had eroded Chuckles’ sense of self. She no longer wanted to do school, but worse, Chuckles no longer believed in herself or her ability to succeed in school.

Middle school represents a crucial period in life and in school. The onset of adolescence can overwhelm individuals. This is understandable when you consider that their body and brain suddenly becomes a dysfunctional construction zone.  At the same time these individuals enter middle school - a period in their education in which they are trained for higher order thinking and learning. To make matters worse, most middle schools are not designed to support such individuals or provide  what they need to successfully cross the bridge into adulthood.

After a few conversations, Chuckles became our first 7th grade student.  This did not please her. The change in schools and schooling irked her quite a bit at first. Yet, after some push, pull, and testing out the new system, she began to embrace doing, thinking, and learning. To my surprise her positivity towards school increased when we were able to return to the office (we initially met in person at her house).  I like to think that this increase in engagement happened as a result of Chuckles seeing school as having more meaning than her previous experiences. She went to school in an office in which she could interact with other professionals in the building. She had her own key and set her own schedule each day. We went out to lunch and did work like real grown ups.

The goals her Mom and I discussed included: reestablishing self confidence, rebuilding her skills across all subjects, and reigniting her curiosity for the world. We did all that and a bit more. By the end of 7th grade Chuckles had started working ahead in math; writing notebooks of poetry; presenting in a confident, professional manner; and leading discussions with the older students. That doesn’t even cover rebuilding her confidence in what she was capable of outside of school. Chuckles believed in herself again.

When we first met Chuckles seemed like a card house of confidence. However, that facade of strength and bravado would crumble at the slightest challenge or disturbance in the force. By spring break it was obvious Chuckles was ready to fly. She had the strength and skills to head off for 8th grade so we filled out applications, wrote essays, and made sure she’d be admitted to her first choice of schools. In the independent school world, it’s way easier to get into  your preferred high school if you already attend that school. So off Chuckles went and has crushed it almost every step of the way since then. 

That’s the job. When you teach someone how to fly, eventually they will fly off.

So now when I get updates from Mom I can’t help but be proud of who she has become and who she will be. I know Chuckles did all the heavy lifting, but I like to think I did my job pretty well.  

TEENAGERS & TREES: THE MENTAL HEALTH of ADOLESCENTS

The first red flag warnings of the Fall came last week - just in time for the five year anniversary of the Woolsey Fire. For those unfamiliar with that fire, it roared through the north end of LA County burning almost everything in its path from the 101 to the ocean. To see a wildland fire up close like that conveys power both awesome and awful. 

Once they lifted the evacuation notice I returned home to a scorched landscape. Anxious to see the magnitude of the damage in the Las Virgenes Open Space I went for a bike ride. Solitary oaks dotted the hills. Scarred but still standing and fire pushing out of the stumps of their fallen friends and sinkholes freaked me out. Nature recovered faster than the people did. Soon the trails were open and I could witness that recovery up close. 

A few months later I headed out for a ride before work and said good morning to the giant oak tree that stood watch as the trail began. It had survived largely unscathed. I’m sure it witnessed quite a bit in its century or so of life. An hour later I returned to find the oak had collapsed across the trail. A fire burned in the core of its stump. For all that time, fire had smoldered inside the trunk  and weakened the oak from the inside. No one had noticed. It kept its pain hidden.

In the last five years with severe drought, torrential rain, and high winds more and more of our oak trees have collapsed. Almost all of them show signs of internal fire damage that weakened the core. On the outside they seemed healthy and vibrant, bark and generations of growth hiding the scorched core until it’s too late.

While a tad sad to see these great trees fall, one can make sense of it as part of the natural order. We can’t say the same thing when it comes to the internal damage many students around us carry with them. However, unlike trees, we can work to understand the internal difficulties and weakened cores of our students. 

Teenagers resemble trees in many ways. Seemingly resilient adults often take this as an indicator of their healthy well being. Trees talk in their own ways. Humans tend not to listen however. Teenagers and their adults aren’t too different.

If you’ve ever tried talking to a teenager - you may have experienced this phenomenon.  If you get more than a word in response, consider it a success. Get a few sentences (without yelling) and you won the jackpot. Even if they don’t say much, don’t stop trying (although maybe mix up your approach from time to time). Here’s the thing, most of the time a teenager wants to know you’ll actually listen before they start telling you things.  They’re not about to waste their energy on someone who won’t really hear what they’re saying.

Sometimes it’s just about showing up and being there ready to listen that really matters. If you demonstrate a willingness to listen, they will eventually communicate (on their terms, in their own way). As the grown ups we need to be ready, willing, and able to listen and offer supportive check-ins. Eventually that consistency can melt the resistance of even the most wary adolescent.  

Teenage mental health remains a hot topic of conversation amongst educators (as it should). I prefer small, subtle interventions to large scale activities. Yet each teacher is only one person, we can’t do it all on our own. Yet, maybe we can do more. 

So go out and listen to the trees. Go out and listen to the teenagers. This way we may get a glimpse of the inner well being of that individual before any smoldering fires damage their core.

“The Superstitious Ravings of an Old Scarecrow”

The scarecrow stood facing the western horizon. His fixed, smiling face admiring the setting sun. Though he appeared without a care or a thought within his mind, the interior of his head held more than just straw and cotton. He secretly celebrated what felt to him like a great feat. The old scarecrow got through yet another day that spared him the unfortunate fate of receiving excreted bird waste on top of his head. Though this seems like an unusual victory, it was the sole thought that pervaded his mind and the sole religion that dictated his life. He held a firm belief that if a crow relieved itself on his head, the cornfield he protected would degrade and rot, leading his owner to reject him for his failure. The lack of evidence to support his belief did not inhibit his dedication.

The next morning, he awoke feeling an odd, unprecedented sensation. As if something other than his straw sunhat sat atop his head. As a stagnant, stiff object, he could not look up to see what it was. The old scarecrow relied on the mere sensation to identify the culprit. A screech and piercing through the fabric of his hat informed him of the fearless feathered creature on top of him. Panics arose immediately within his straw stuffed body. A sudden backward throttle of his body and the sight of the bird flying towards the sky relaxed some of his tension. Still, an undertone of fear seemed to coat his cotton innards.

 A feeling no short of impending doom erupted within the old scarecrow when 10 crows flew above him in formation. White slop from each bird landed all over him. Even the stick which he relied on to remain standing dripped in the waste. A painfully loud crow call traveled throughout the vast farmland surrounding the property he stood on. The barn door opened with an angry and irritated push. His farmer cursed at the sky, pointing at the feathered monsters. The closer he approached the old scarecrow, the more his face tightened in disgust. He kicked the wooden stake and freed the scarecrow from the ground. Now the old scarecrow viewed the world from upside down, too disoriented to notice the dumpster that walked menacingly toward them.

Steadman’s Cat

Student work from last week:

I am the result of a mass of volume. A visual composition played by an orchestra. My various shapes and shades represent the many timbres of sound. The harsh, yet fluid black strokes on my face may symbolize the bass. An unstoppable flow that can come off as sharp or soft. The splattered surrounding pigment illustrates a horn section, with each instrument obtaining various levels of sustain and note lengths. Some appear precise and strict, while others tend to drag. The circles within my facial vicinity mimic the bulbous or punchy sound of tom toms. The small stairway of black strokes emulates the keys of a piano, either ascending or descending. I encourage you to analyze my features and find out for yourself. Take in my song and identify each ingredient, without the aid of your ears.

Reflection on PreCalculus In Poetry

A three day week

Short, yet still challenging

Radians brought some heavy weather

Their combinations led to thunder

Bringing sporadic bolts of lightning

Unanticipated and frightening

While all else seemed prosperous and well

The radians were where our frustrations dwelled

Combining two forces of radial power

Didn’t provide any sunlight

It resulted in a shower

But we held on tight

The Black Belt of Gratitude Program

I don’t strike most people as warm and fuzzy. So when I talk about infusing gratitude and mindfulness into learning communities, many folks give me quizzical looks. I don’t look the type. I don’t sound the type. And yet I value such programs and support efforts to bring such practices into schools. As such, I have worked to create the Black Belt in Gratitude Program™ ( The BBG Program™).

The BBG Program

A year or so ago I sat in traffic listening to a book when the author mentioned that they were working on a  “black belt in gratitude.” This phrase intrigued me. So as I negotiated the inhumanity of the 405, I wondered what it would take to turn the black belt in gratitude (BBG) into a practice for students to learn and teach mindfulness and gratitude in elementary schools.

Some, perhaps many, martial arts dojos weave gratitude or mindfulness into their teaching and some life coaches discuss black belts in gratitude. So, why can’t schools enact a program to combine the belt system in martial arts with gratitude and mindfulness programs? I think doing so would provide an engaging way to infuse much needed skills to assuage the myriad issues students face in school and beyond.

This article outlines a developmental program that embraces a progression of skills related to becoming a blackbelt in gratitude for students.

GRATITUDE IN EDUCATION

Learning flourishes in supportive and safe communities. Students who have supportive and safe classroom experiences learn more and perform better in school. One way to create a supportive learning environment that enables students to better engage in their learning is to foster gratitude within the social dynamic of learning.. 

This program creates a student centered approach to gratitude. Using a belt system model borrowed from martial arts, the BBG Program™ reflects a skill based approach for students to develop, practice, and teach gratitude in school. As students develop the skills at each level they will progress towards mastery. Each level will correspond to a specific color belt.  At the beginner level students will explore and develop a range of ways to display their appreciation.

MINDFULNESS IN EDUCATION

Distinct but related to gratitude is mindfulness. The practice of being present, intentional, and still for moments throughout allows students (and teachers) the opportunity to check in with themselves and reboot their system so to speak.  Mindfulness helps students address anxiety and stress (both on the rise in schools across America), improve social skills and emotional regulation. Mindful students may also be more inclined toward gratitude.

Students in the advanced levels of the BBG Program™ will practice mindfulness and support the efforts of their peers by teaching them and supporting their efforts to adopt the practice of mindfulness into their days.

THE BELT SYSTEM

While different types and schools of martial arts ay use slightly different belt system, for the purposes of this project, we will use the basic Dan Ranking System as developed for judo in the 1880s by Kano.The belt levels are: 

• Beginner Levels: 

• White

• Yellow

• Intermediate:  

• Orange

• Green

• Blue

• Advanced: 

• Purple

• Brown

• Black

• NOTE: in some systems a red belt exists before a black belt and in other systems it sits above black belt to indicate grandmaster status. For our purposes we will not use a red belt.

Within different levels a system exists to indicate progression within those levels. The progression from one level to the next (belt to belt) involves each student demonstrating competency in a range of skills as well as leadership within their community. This is not unlike the assessment system used in some schools to describe a student’s skill development. For example some schools use: Emerging, Developing, Proficient, and Mastery as their descriptors.

The academic descriptors, much like the belt, are designed to indicate where a specific individual stands in their journey towards mastery of a specific or a discrete set of skills. Belts like this assessment system do not mean a person has more worth than another person but that he or she is further along in their journey. Also, earning belts or grades is not a competition against one’s peers. The progression from level to the next reflects a transformation of self or the journey of an individual as they develop a range of skills.

To earn a new belt  or move to the next level, students will sit with their teachers and present their knowledge and understanding while they describe their practice and experiences at their current level. If a student demonstrates mastery of the assigned skills, they will earn the next belt and begin their practice to master another level of skills.  

CONCLUSION

Critics will argue that this type of program interferes with the real business of school.  Some will even assert that mindfulness and gratitude reflect whatever extreme culture war agenda they have put forth as their latest bogeyman. To both criticisms I say, “hogwash.”

Academic development happens upon a foundation of social dynamics. Good grades and high test scores mean nothing if they happen at the expense of a student’s or community’s well being. The current mental health issues of students have resulted from an overemphasis on academic performance and a lack of supportive networks in our learning communities. To help students and support their efforts to negotiate the shifting sands of today and tomorrow we must shift our focus as educators to strengthen their sense of self by creating more supportive foundations on which every student can build their future.

Fast Food Education

“It's McDaniels, not McDonalds These rhymes are Darryl's, the burgers are Ronald's” 

(Run DMC, Hit It Run)

Over the course of the 20th century Americans became less and less connected to the food they ate.  As agriculture industrialized, the nutritional quality of food decreased. Simultaneously with this trend in farming, Americans began to emphasize convenience in how they prepared and consumed food (frozen, microwaveable and fast food).  As a result of these trends a variety of health issues have increased in prevalence across this country during this same time period.

Recent trends in growing and preparing food have sought to change our relationship with what we eat and how we eat. Trends such as eating local or seasonal, heirloom grains, and school garden programs have worked to reconnect individuals with the food they eat while increasing the nutritional content of that food. 

In many ways education has followed  similar trends. During the 20th century routine and convenience has made schooling bloated and lacking” nutritional” content. Microschooling represents one trend working to reconnect students with the learning process. Schools such as Do.Think.Learn work to reconnect students with how they learn and what they learn. We emphasize process over outcome measures; engagement over convenience; and discovery over routine. Schools such as ours adapt to the needs of students and  build off of their strengths or interests. We dismantle the over-processed nature of  school to create more meaningful and engaging learning experiences for our students.

Fast Food Education

Most of us would not choose to eat fast food everyday for every meal.  Sure it’s easy and better than nothing but the consequences could be significant. And yet many people don’t think twice about the fast food education students receive all day, almost every day.

Psssst…. Don’t freak out. There’s a good chance your kid goes to the educational equivalent of Burger King.

Fast food education reflects learning experiences so devoid of meaning and oversaturated with routine that little valuable content remains. People choose fast food for a few basic reasons - affordability, convenience, routine, and taste. People often choose schools for the same reasons.  Fast food education represents the primary source of learning in this country. Students show up for kindergarten for a kids meal and keep hitting the drive thru until they get their diploma. Education has largely lost enough meaning that even many of this country’s better schools lack “nutritional” content. 

This isn’t a rant against fast food. I do enjoy a good 3x3 now and them, but we can say two things about fast food. First, a hierarchy within the fast food world exists. Not all fast food is created equal. For instance many people in CA would say that In N Out is a cut above Mickey D’s.  While this is largely subjective, it’s a good way to start a discussion with middle schoolers. Second, fast food is not the healthiest food option out there. This is more objective. Even the better places or the healthiest options are not exactly healthy. Before you start messaging me to tell me how wrong I am, just follow along for a bit.

Fast food from time to time satisfies a craving and helps in a pinch.  Regardless of why, millions of people consume fast food daily. The food industry knows this, and uses it to their advantage.  The school industry follows the same model. 

Bloated Routines

With high stakes testing the primary focus of learning,  curricula have grown in scope and decreased in meaning. Learning 300 years of American history is the Big Mac of education. The traditional Pre-Algebra - Algebra I - Algebra II sequence is a meal deal from Taco Hell.  And a special shout out to banning books for making reading lists the McDLT of English classrooms (keep the hot side hot and the cool side cool).  

Let’s take US history to make a point. It is impossible to teach the history of this country in one year.  No textbook can adequately represent all the layers of diverse narratives.  As a result history textbooks oversimplify the historical narrative so it fits in a single text. Instead of simplifying and adding depth to history, teachers dish out bland material that skims the surface. Schools rely on oversimplification of subjects and the myth that these subjects are applicable outside of school.  As a result students have little interest in their school work. The truth is most of the subjects have little value and the oversimplification of information represents empty intellectual calories. 

The business of schooling - of feeding a steady diet of empty calories to students - has replaced the development of skill and knowledge with comfort and convenience. As a result, students go through the motions. They take tests and graduate, but lack basic skills in college or the job market. Getting good grades is the school equivalent of the prize in your kids meal these days. 

Education in most schools follows an algorithmic routine. Routine makes school not only mind numbingly boring, but also emphasizes superficial short term learning. The educational algorithm does not provide quality ingredients and therefore it provides little “nutritional “ value.

You are what you eat.

In my after school tutoring sessions I work with some great students who go to a range of highly rated schools around LA County.  The majority of their assignments have little value or meaning. Instead of working to improve their skills, they just want to finish the assignment and move on. When they show me their grades a few things stand out. Getting good grades comes down to turning your work in on time and who paints by numbers the best. Rarely do their teachers provide skill based assessment to help them improve. Evidently it is common for a sophomore in high school to, among other things, have no idea how to write a paragraph.  One student showed me an essay they got an A on.  I read it over and wondered if the teacher actually read the work.  In my class it would’ve been a decent first draft, but as a final draft… maybe a C.

Over the last few years I’ve turned down several requests to take on students using someone else's curricula. I used to do this, but it just isn’t worth the time and energy. In fact I lost two of my favorite students ever when their parents signed them up for an online school that was really just filling out online workbooks.  Paying me was overkill. Their 19 year old nanny could handle it. I tried one other time having a student in school working on someone else’s curriculum. What a mess. The DTL couldn’t figure out why they had to work so much. The outside student wanted to join us doing meaningful assignments and  discussions.

Usually an adult enrolls their student in an online school (or 1:1 program that only meets 45 minutes each week). Too busy to supervise or support the student themself, they ask me to supervise the work. Nope. Can’t.Won’t. Don’t. Here’s why. First, I am not a babysitter. Second, many parents seem to think that a significantly reduced tuition is in order since they already paid this other program an exorbitant tuition. What they don’t get is the time and effort I have to put in to break down that other tuition and reteach their students takes twice the time and energy. Third (and related) the curriculum those schools provide suck so I end up reworking the material in order to find some meaning or connection in the assignments. Meaningless busy work would be putting it nicely. The vacant and tedious assignments suck out my soul. No wonder most kids hate school.  

Learning is no longer the primary goal of education.

Technology and convenience often work against us. Over the course of the 20th century America's relationship with food and nutrition changed. We gradually began to prefer something quick and easy. Education was no different. Schools and overburdened teachers began providing quick and easy assignments and as a result students have become less connected to meaningful learning experiences.

The United States is not a healthy country. We often top the charts in terms of obesity, heart disease, etc. In order to get healthy and improve our quality of living, people have two choices - we can do hard work or we can take the easier path of pills, going through the motions, or surgery.  The United States also does not do well in quality of education rankings. Again three choices exist - 1) do hard work and change our education system, 2) go through the motions of school, and rely on technology to teach students, or 3) find different types of school experiences for students. This is where microschools come to the rescue.

Garbage in, garbage out

But wait, not everyone can afford more nutritious school options. True. Quality education costs more money just like vegetables cost more than a double double.  However, you don’t have to shop at a swanky grocery store to make healthy choices and you don’t have to break the bank to provide youth with better school experiences. In more and more communities options exist for students to attend microschool. And while they might cost slightly more and maybe be a little less convenient, wouldn’t it be worth it when your kid likes going to school and feels good about themself as a result of that experience.

At Do.Think.Learn we do not provide fast food education. We are also not the cheapest. However, like many of our colleagues and thanks to our grant from the VELA Fund, we offer financial aid to local students looking for something more from their school experience.

Just as there are a variety of food options available in many communities, there are also a variety of educational options available. In both cases those options vary in nutritional content.  But ask yourself, if you wouldn’t feed your child unhealthy fast food, why are you ok serving them fast food education?

My body isn’t my only temple

If our body is a temple, we don’t want to power it on junk food. So then why would we power our brain on junk learning?

We can provide all students with a school experience rich in academic nutrition.  To do this we have to embrace a difficult transition away from routine learning and embrace a more heuristic approach to school (Pink, 2009). If we do this we can accomplish three things. First,  we make school more engaging. Second, we provide a richer, deeper, and more effective learning experience. Third, we do a better job or preparing students for the future. Let’s work together to end fast food education.

AI: It’s A Sequel

“When no one was going to pay for the public schools anymore and they were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so that all of them could have computers and pizza for lunch and stuff, which they gave for free, and now we do stuff in classes about how to work technology and how to find bargains and what’s the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom.” (M.T. Anderson, Feed)

You can’t go too far these days without seeing or hearing some AI related news. From ChatGPT in school to AI replacing actors, musicians, and writers in Hollywood, this nascent technology seems to have invaded all walks of life. Honestly, after the Summer of AI, I’m pretty sick of hearing about AI.

I find all the fawning, blind acceptance over AI problematic. In some giant instance of FOMO people continue to clamor to monetize ‘what AI can do for you’ programs. Sure, sure keep an open mind you say. I’m sure in 2050 AI in school will be like calculators in today’s classrooms. But, I have quite a bit of trepidation around how AI will impact school and society. To quote from the book of Public Enemy, “Don’t believe the hype. It’s a sequel.”

Maybe I’m just tired of self-serving CEOs selling a solution to a problem that their marketing department conjured up so they could make millions of dollars while screwing people over.  Speaking of - if you thought robotic automation displacing American workers was a problem now, just wait until AI replaces the majority of workers in the US.

Somewhere someone (or group of someones) opened Pandora’s Box. It probably began with someone asking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” and soon they developed a cool toy without understanding the consequences or impact that technology would have on the world. So now we have an emergent technology capable of replicating human action that will, if left unchecked, has the potential to replace human beings.  The roots of Skynet are now in place, but let’s not start freaking out yet.

Can we just pump the brakes a bit on AI?  Here’s the thing people sell us on technology that will make our lives better, safer, easier, or more fun. The majority of that technology doesn’t really do much for us. In fact most of that technology replaces personal responsibility or discourages individuals from thinking for themself. “Welcome to the Attention Economy.”

A few examples from recent history include social media, all those recent  automotive safety features, and e-bikes. In each case someone pushed these technologies and infused them into our lives without much thought (beyond profit) regarding the potential impact of these technologies on the lasting impact on human dynamics. Now the rest of us have to sift through the mess and figure out how to live with the consequences.

Perhaps too easy a target but connecting the world represented a central intention of social media. Turns out those connections are superficial and really not all that meaningful. Oh and there’s the social and emotional damage done to youth as a result of fixating on their feeds.

Almost all newer cars come with a variety of standard features that include drift protection, automatic braking, and hands free driving.  All of this was done in the name of safety, and yet our roads are not more safe and in many cases more dangerous despite the infusion of safety technology. How could this be? Well, the driver no longer really has to pay attention.  Instead of supporting safe driving behavior, these technologies actively promote less attentive, more distracted drivers. And finally let’s finish with the plague of e-bikes (which are in fact mopeds). 

I abhor E-bikes . Billed as a way to encourage more people to ride bikes this technology aims at lowest common denominator human behavior. The bike industry only cares about selling more bikes, not what happens when people use their bikes.  In my experience, the majority of E-Bike riders have too much speed and power without the requisite skill or knowledge of how to use that power or operate at speed.  E-Bikes represent why more isn’t always better.

Sure, these technologies all have some upside and some appropriate uses, but with multitudes of people fawning over the latest and greatest technology appropriate uses fall by the wayside.

All of these technologies, including AI, have some things in common. First, the individual transfers power to a machine. Second, individuals surrender personal responsibility. Third, interactions, activities, and commitment become superficial. Just back while the machine thinks for you, does the work for you, or carries you onward.

AI has and will continue to have an impact in schools. Students rushed to AI programs to complete their assignments.  Teachers soon thereafter started using AI to prep material and write grade reports. Why?  Largely in response to the fact that those assignments are BS and because being a teacher really sucks these days in many parts of this country.  Some creative educators have found ways to implement AI more intentionally into their curriculum. That’s cool, but maybe they're just assisting Cyberdyne Systems' eventual subjugation of human beings.

Ok forgetting how our world may soon reflect a science fiction novel from the 1950s, let’s finish with a focus on schools.

Not long ago I spent two hours helping a tutoring client revise an essay he wrote with an AI program for his history class. Hours later, after we fixed the misguided facts and switched out a majority of the words so it sounded more like his work, I made a few hundred dollars and he had a solid essay. While I enjoyed the money, I couldn’t help but think that if he had done the work himself he could have finished in half the time. “Hey Siri, what’s 6 times 8?” was bad enough, but AI may have even more grave consequences on learning in the future. 

Understanding potential consequences should happen before not after the mess is made. If science fiction has taught us anything it’s that unchecked technology such as AI can have a horrendous impact on students and how we live our lives. As AI gains more of a foothold in schools, we will continue to dilute learning. Schools will become the educational equivalent of kiddie pools and students will be unable to think for themselves thanks to all the technology designed to make their life better.

AI has provided schools with an opportunity. However, it isn’t the opportunity  most people think it is. We have a chance to rethink and reconsider what we teach and how we teach. Students use AI when they feel their assignments and their schooling have little meaning. Teachers use AI when they can’t keep up with the overwhelming demands of and rampant disrespect for their profession.  Tech firms will bill AI as a way to make learning and teaching easier or more effective.  Folks will buy what they’re selling since it’s easier than addressing the real issues and in 20 years teachers will have been replaced by video and AI. 

So y’all can keep your AI for now. Enjoy making things easier, safer, etc. I’ll continue to focus on making school meaningful and engaging with a healthy mix of old school techniques blended with a dash of new school ideas. Pretty sure my students will outperform your students in the long run.

End Fear Based Learning

America has evolved into a fear based society. Schools and education reflect this phenomena. 

If you don’t believe me - just watch the headlines that pop up regarding education. Lately academic related headlines scream about test scores, catastrophic learning loss. Still don’t believe me - listen to what parents say and watch what they do. In some parts of the country parental fears start with,  “How will my kid get into …?” “What if they don’t…” Such statements reflect parental anxiety around an imaginary binary concerning elite colleges and the shame of raising an unsuccessful child.  In other parts of the country, those fears manifest in book bans, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-anti-racism policies, or just run of the mill bullying of teachers. Schools respond to parental and societal fears with fear based behaviors of their own. Generally this comes as CYOA reactions. Fearful of tantruming parents or lawsuits, schools operationalize bland policies or inflate grades in an effort to avoid setting anyone off.

In education, the push and pull created by our fear based society does little for students and for actual learning. Most schools exhibit the characteristics of a Performance Culture and not a Learning Culture.  This means that the community emphasizes outcome measures and not process measures. Performance Cultures work well for businesses but may not be the best model for education. And while school is the workplace of youth, we don’t need to treat students as employees and   perhaps we need to stop modeling schools after the organizational systems of various businesses. In school, emphasizing outcomes over process often creates Fear Based Learning (FBL).

The presence of fear usually results from an individual or group having little power within a community. Students make up the bottom of the school community hierarchy and as such they have little control/power over their learning. While some students and groups of students have more power than others, this article will not parse out all power dynamics amongst students at this time.

With that in mind lets; drill down a bit to focus on how Fear Based Learning impacts students. I would argue that FBL takes different forms, but you’ve probably witnessed most of them. For some students FBL revolves around seemingly positive consequences - great grades, high test scores, being popular, crafting the ideal college resume, and getting into the ‘right’ college. These students can begin to  imagine worst case scenarios if they don’t perform at a high level and soon their anxieties evolve into fear. Students who focus on their grades or test scores commit almost entirely to the outcome or product of their learning and not to the process of learning. They participate in learning only long enough to get it onto a test or essay booklet, but retain little.  Other students engage in FBL only to avoid negative consequences. These students just want the grades to appease the demands placed upon them by their adults. So they go through the motions, skim the surface, and fulfill their obligations and avoid being hassled. 

Whether intentionally or unintentionally too many students learn out of fear rather than curiosity or intrinsic motivation. That’s not really learning at all.

Fear Based Learning creates a card house of knowledge. The slightest breeze knocks the entire structure to the ground.  Perhaps using the Three Little Pigs homes will best illustrate this misnomer. The majority of schools provide an education in which their students construct knowledge represented by the first home of straw. The ‘better’ schools  might help their students build homes of sticks. These homes reflect FBL. However, not many schools focus on the building process. Few schools enable students to construct knowledge like the third little pig’s house of bricks.  Houses of wisdom made of brick can withstand the pressure and demands of any big bad wolf. The quality of learning built from fear will always lack the depth, strength, or power of real learning.  

Students who embrace learning; those who take risks; and those who engage in the learning process experience school way different than the FBL students. These students don’t always get into Yale or Stanford. They don’t always get the highest scores on their papers or tests, but they do dig in and wrestle with the material more. Not to make light of an eating disorder, but quite a bit of successful school resembles disordered consumption of knowledge. Students gorge on information - dates, names, formulas, etc. - and regurgitate that information on their exam. The information is not absorbed; the ideas not savored; and the process involves a range of harmful physical and emotional damage. Unfortunately this type of learning is viewed by many as normal. Yet most people don’t blink an eye at disordered learning. 

For the last five to ten years young adults entering the workforce have often struggled in many areas including collaboration, initiative, and creativity.  Without someone telling them exactly what to do, these employees do not know how to move forward with their tasks.  Education is not the only cause of these issues, but schools could do more to prepare students for the demands of their future. 

As a number of people have already suggested this, but we need a new normal for teaching and learning or for how school gets done. School could be an additive community instead of a subtractive institution. Caring could replace control. How a student learns could be valued more than what a student learns. These are potential pathways into a better tomorrow. Unfortunately, until students have more power - more control over their learning-  Fear Based Learning will continue to dominate schools.

Would you rather be a wave or a particle in space?

I would rather have the fluid structure of a wave than the relatively fixed structure of a particle. Waves seem to work in more subtle, yet equally impactful ways. Celestial waves come in a variety of different forms, most of which are invisible. The higher frequency, yet still visually imperceptible by themselves, like UV waves or gamma rays invoke fascination for their potentially dangerous nature. The fact that these waves have the ability to reshape people’s DNA only further provokes such fascination, but also uncertainty. Particles are mysterious mostly due to their small scale processes, which don’t compare to a wave’s huge, oscillating effect. I appreciate a wave’s ability to distribute energy over space and their unique reactions to obstacles. They reflect, diffract and refract in less predictable ways than particles. The less straightforward nature of waves serves as the reason why I would rather be a wave in space than a particle in space. 

LT

Feeling Smart

“Here’s the deal. You’ve got to give kids credit at a younger age for 

  feeling stuff more acutely. When you say something to a kid, you’ve 

got to know what you’re saying to them. The stuff you say to a kid 

 just starting out - you’ve got to be supercareful…. What skill building 

really is, is confidence building.”  

Skip Engblom from The Talent Code (Coyle, 2009)

I tutor a young man who struggles in middle school a few different ways.  At the end of a recent session, he looked up from his notebook and said, “Thanks J. You make me feel smart.”  On the one hand, his sentiment felt good at the end of a long day. On the other hand, it bummed me out that his experiences in schools stripped him of his confidence and sense of self. Unfortunately, this happens way too often.

Schools can empower students or they can dismantle them. No student should leave school feeling less confident or with a finished identity than  when they started school. Struggle is part of learning, but academic trauma should not be. For too many students schools provide a subtractive experience.  Good grades don’t protect students from mental health issues, but for right now let’s focus on the students who struggle in school as a result of their experiences with a small number of educators.

I still grapple with the times teachers made me feel stupid in school. To make matters worse, they did so in public and many of my peers soon shared the teacher’s sentiment. Reputations (both social and academic) stay with students. Fortunately I found it easier to dissuade my friends of this “J = Stupid” notion than teachers. 

My academic trauma shaped how I interact with students and how I teach. Let me take you down memory lane.

Fourth Grade - Long division still haunts me. I don’t  know why but my brain shut down when Mrs. Khan began teaching us that madness. My brain could not process the steps. Somehow those numbers and operations caused my mind to flatline. She offered to work with me after school 1:1 away from the judgment of my classmates. Despite her patience and best efforts, I just couldn’t make sense of the process. As I stood staring at the board, chalk in hand, I looked over to see such a look of disappointment and disbelief on my teacher’s face. I gave up immediately. Now I still love Mrs Khan and don’t think she meant to cause me math trauma. Whatever her intent, the impact began a long road of math anxiety.

Junior High School - I struggled in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades many different ways.  The math anxiety from fourth grade morphed into math despair during my years at RJHS. In seventh grade Mr. Lipman tried, but gave up. At one point during the year he asked us what we wanted to be as adults so he could share the role math would have in our chosen careers. When I told him I wanted to pursue marine biology he laughed and told me to choose another career. Confused, I asked why. He replied with, “you’d never succeed with your math skills.” Ok journalism it is.  I don’t remember his name but my eighth grade teacher was a giant of a man who told the other students that their work was “TREMENDOUS” when he handed back our Friday quizzes every Monday. He marked them with thick red pencil, and pinned them to the board across the back of the room after he commented on our work.  After months of scores in the 20s and 30 (out of 100) he remarked that the 42 I worked so hard for represented futility and a waste of both his time and mine. After that I scored in single digits for a full month. I don’t really remember my ninth grade teacher but I do remember my new math tutor who was more of a math therapist. He coached me up and helped heal my math trauma before high school started.

High School - Somehow I found myself in tenth grade honors English with Ms Goller. This was a year of transition and transformation, but Ms Goller didn’t care. Things were not great. I just didn’t measure up to her ever shifting demands. At some point we read Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  I thought the book sucked but knew that it was considered a classic. I tried, I really tried but just didn’t see what the big deal was about this book. So my literary analysis (40%of my grade) did not impress her. We then had to choose an author to study and analyze their work (10-15 page paper).  I chose Rudyard Kipling. To this day I don't know what happened, but it wasn’t an awesome paper.  As Ms Goller walked around handing back our papers, she commented on each person’s paper. When she got to mine, she rolled her eyes and announced to the class that I was incapable of cohesive thought and said, “Mr. Juelis, are you in fact stupid?” Stunned, I walked out.  Later on in high school (thanks to my 10th grade experience) the head of the English Department would not allow me to submit writing to the school literary magazine “because I couldn’t possibly have anything meaningful to contribute.” Evidently my reputation preceded me.

Teachers have power and as my Mom used to say, “a sacred obligation” to their students. They can’t just throw out flippant comments. Most of us learn this the hard way early in our careers and quickly pivot  and amend our interaction style. Unfortunately a few educators don’t make the connection between what they say and how they say it with how their words impact students. Intent doesn’t really matter. It’s the impact on students that matters. Mistakes happen and the teachers who acknowledge their error and the damage done can undo and heal that damage through acknowledgement and corrective action most of the time. 

The words teachers use when they talk to students matters.  As an educator what you say and how you say it has a tremendous impact on the trajectory of student learning.  Throw out the big speeches aimed at inspiring and motivating students. Instead, pay attention to the little things. Know your students. Those brief comments or few words have the biggest impact.

At DTL our goal is for students to say, “Yeah I got this.”  We want them to leave us with more self confidence and self efficacy than when they arrived. It’s not that we make students feel smart, they were smart when they got here. We just remind them how smart they are.

Authors of Devastation

The first draft of a story

A hardly perfect attempt

A foundation

The essential bluesky

Later, becoming open to decoration

Soaring birds

Butterflies

Vibrant color

An ideal landscape of spatial liberty

Sometimes, an unwanted speck of color invades

A small drop of condensed devastation

It bleeds, traveling with the velocity of a virus

Penetrating the fibers of freedom

Shortening the wingspans of the birds that once soared

A first draft that has lost its chance of enhancement

L

The Impact of Manipulated History: A Student Perspective

 The manipulation of history and spread of propaganda causes historical trauma to spread in many communities - such as African American, Native American, Latin American, Asian American communities. Historical trauma is the mental damage done to these communities that spreads through many generations. When the truth isn’t taught in history about the oppression towards these communities this represents the ignorance of White America. The ignorance of White America happens when they  ignore or underestimate the struggles People of Color went through which is a form of oppression itself.  Ignorance and power shields White America from awful mistakes so that they can easily hide from racism in the past, present, and future as long as they ignore it. This method applies to White America’s reaction to the truth of history. White America hiding from the oppression they did to People of Color represents why they choose to manipulate history. 

Carter G Woodson warned people about how history could be manipulated by a small group of people to take advantage of and gain power over others.   He warned,  “The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.” In many ways his perspective is similar to that of WEB DuBois (1935) when he stated:

It is propaganda like this that has led men in the past 

to insist that history is “lies agreed upon”; and to point 

out the danger in such misinformation. It is indeed 

extremely doubtful if any permanent benefit comes 

to the world through such action. Nations reel and 

stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; 

they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and 

beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by 

telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?

When Woodson refers to “the oppressor” he means those with power and when he talks about “the weak” he is referring to the followers of ‘the strong’ who don’t have any real power or influence. Woodson’s quote also refers to issues of race and racism. The oppressor and the weak can be seen in current events such as how some states try to manipulate the study of history in schools. Their dishonest history manipulates the past so students don't have a real understanding of racism. In the study of history the oppressor wants to hide or ignore certain facts while encouraging others to carry the torch of ignorance to use against a range of People of Color across America. This manipulation and ignorance has had a horrible impact on African American, Native American, Latin American, and Asian American communities. When White America maintains their ignorance and innocence this causes generational trauma causing racism to spread.  The weak also represents the young white students who simply don’t know better but are being taught the “propaganda” and “lies agreed upon” that DuBois mentions. It is easy to brainwash one who doesn’t know better. This reflects how discrimination and racism spread through educating the weak with ignorance and aggression towards certain groups of people. 

When the young and the weak get older and gain power they freak out when people of color question or don’t follow the ignorant standards the weak have been taught  and set up by the powerful. By manipulating the ignorant ,the oppressors can then react harshly when People of Color choose not to follow the rules White America had set for them. The oppressor can then encourage White America to flip out. 

In The Fire Next Time James Baldwin says, “the power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.” (p. 69).  He means that White America is threatened when they see someone with a different ethnicity or race break the rules and standards they set for them. When talking about White America I’m specifically referring to white individuals who didn’t want an African American, Native American, Latin American, and Asian American to succeed. The Black Panthers, a community organization I examined recently, were an example of a group of African Americans who defended themselves against the “norms” that were placed for them in society. They followed Malcom X’s Ideology that it will take whatever is necessary to stop this racism and discrimination from spreading if it takes violence it takes violence. Rather than Martin Luther King’s Ideology of using peace to solve this issue. Emerging out of Oakland CA in the mid 1960’s they aimed to stop police brutality against African Americans with armed self defense. They did things such as sending legally armed teams to observe police activity in black neighborhoods in response to an unarmed black kid getting shot by the police. White America was threatened by that so much that the FBI attempted to disrupt their newspaper distribution and then the entire Black Panther Party. . 

White America didn’t like seeing communities of the other America unite together and fight against the limits they were placed under. In Native America the Landback movement is a prime example of fighting against the standards set for them by re establishing their control of their land, culture, and food. The 1968 East LA school walkouts represent a milestone when Latin Americans fought for equal education in response to them getting segregated into these overcrowded schools. Last but not least the development of the new Chinatown was an example when White America purposely destroyed old Chinatown to move Chinese Americans out by building a train station. Instead of moving out these people gathered making a community of businesses that allowed them to establish a living where they choose not to follow the rules White America set for them. These various groups and events represent that the other America won’t back down no matter what rules are set against them. 

T

Gimme Shelter

Getting old is weird. Most of my memories have attached themselves to specific songs, foods, or smells.  So for instance, when I hear certain songs I drift off for a moment.

Last Monday at lunch a student snapped me out of a daydream. I admitted that song on Spotify thrust me into an extended memory. They  asked me about the connection between songs and memories. We ended up discussing how songs have the power to drop us back into specific and detailed experiences from deep in our memories.  

So when it happened with Gimme Shelter I had a story to share as we finished up our break.

In the mid 90s Weston called me up out of the blue. He said he had one, maybe two questions for me. First he asked if it was true that I worked with at risk and formerly adjudicated youth. When I said I did, he dropped the second query. He wanted to know if there was any chance I could work in Florida for seven weeks. He called on a Tuesday. I flew across the country and a few days later I helped put 18 young adults in canoes  along a river just outside of Orlando. Over the next few weeks I learned what it took to be an instructor for Outward Bound and what I wanted to do with my life.

This experience for first time offenders would involve almost six weeks of programming.  These youth had been given a choice:  this OB course and parole or time in juvenile detention. The course featured three weeks of canoeing and camping followed by two weeks of in-home and school visits. During the last week we (the three instructors) would write a report for each individual that included a number of recommendations for various services. The state would then use these recommendations to tailor support for each youth.  Outward Bound did the initial assessments and as a result the state saved time and money. Who knew Florida could be so progressive.

Our group began with 16 young men between the ages of 12 and 17 along with two young women (both 16). The gentlemen were primarily white and Latino while the ladies were both African American. The gender and racial disparities within the group spelled disaster.  On Day 3  we had to stop one of the young women from bashing the skull of a 12 year old boy with her paddle. Don’t get me wrong - he totally deserved the beating. Unfortunately she broke her parole and we had to hand her off to some deputies.  This left one young Black woman  - which just wasn’t fair to her. She took matters into her own hands by trying to run away before we could drop her off for pick up. This left us with 16 boys fighting for power and status - our own bucket of crabs in perpetual motion. 

For me this gig provided an array of professional development opportunities disguised among the chaos and confusion of male adolescence. I learned to swim in an alligator infested river in the dark; to walk the rails of a floating canoe in a tropical storm;  to give feedback to students with my foot covered in red ants; and to follow runaways for 20 miles in flip flops.  I also learned how to build relationships with students quicker and came away with a fuller bag of tricks.  I experienced the power of learning outside the classroom and started to see the potential of bringing adventure inside the classroom. On this trip I learned what kind of teacher I wanted to be.

Throughout the trip I had music playing in my head.  For some reason classic rock echoed in my ears while awake and asleep - primarily Down by the River (Neil Young), The End (The Doors), Who’ll Stop the Rain (CCR), and Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones).

After weathering figurative and actual storms on the rivers around central Florida, our group had made a few breakthroughs. One day we paddled along a tributary not far from a small town. The dynamics had stabilized and a layer of trust had begun to set in our group.  We had survived escaped NASA monkees a few days before,  but now found ourselves in the heart of Florida’s Klan country. We prepped the boys with some honest conversations about racism in the South, but didn’t really expect trouble.

Running low on drinking water we approached a riverside beach that  the lead instructor knew had water. Initially our plan was to pull the group ashore, stretch our legs, and fill up on water.  No one expected what we found as we rounded the bend and glimpsed the park.  The ‘park’ was really a dirt parking lot that ran up to the sand. It had  a few spigots and a partially completed highway overpass spanning part of the  river.  Pickup trucks, backed up to the sand across the parking lot with their open beds overflowing with coolers and beach gear. Families had set up for the day along the riverbank. Music blared. Kids swam. Empty beer cans lined the sand around the beach chairs. And Confederate flags hung in the breeze.

This seemed to be a moment worthy of Apocalypse Now.  Young children pointed at us. Parents shook their heads. The teenage boys muttered insults and spit on the ground while they stared.  In my head the opening notes of Gimme Shelter began…

War, children

It's just a shot away

We decided that only the lead instructor would go ashore. Myself and the third instructor would keep the group moving down the river. We reminded the boys not to react to the behavior that greeted us.

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'

Our streets today

Burns like a red coal carpet

Mad bull lost its way

As the lead paddled her way towards the shore, the youngest children started throwing rocks at her.  Any thoughts of the parents correcting that behavior began to fade as the adults laughed and took pictures of their kids hurling rocks.  When the adults started throwing their empties, we knew we were in trouble. As our lead instructor backpaddled someone started their truck and gunned the engine so a cloud of diesel smoke hung in the air along the shore. That’s why we didn’t notice their teenagers running up the overpass ahead of us.

Mmm, a flood is threatening

My very life today

Soon kids started  jumping off the overpass dive bombing our convoy of canoes - cannonballs and jackknifes just off the sides of our boats. We paddled faster. The other instructor and I instructed our boys to paddle into deeper water, putting our canoes between them and the welcome wagon.  The lead instructor dodged rocks, cans, and the divers.  Soon we were safely down the river. Shook and thirsty but out of harm’s way. 

Gimme, gimme shelter

Or I'm gonna fade away

No one spoke for what seemed like hours. A few miles later we stumbled on a spigot of fresh drinking water. We needed to process what we had just experienced, but the words weren’t ready. We told the boys we’d talk when they were ready. So, we floated downstream until we found a cove of clear water and tied our canoes to the trees along the edge of the water. With no land suitable for us to circle up and no gators to worry about, we floated in the water. The manatees curious about this intrusion lumbered by and somehow provided a level of understanding without saying a word. Eventually one of the boys spoke up, “Well that was fucked up.” We found our shelter. 

Now whenever the notes of that Stones  song come across my speakers, I don’t think of hate and violence. Instead my mind drifts down the river. In my mind the paddle pulls me downstream and a manatee watches me go. Understanding hangs in the air with a hint of diesel fumes. Yep, fucked up and amazing.

Walking Away From Twilight

The luminescent fireball approached the horizon

Descending into the mattress of oscillating water and distant mountains

Getting ready to go to sleep

My view enclosed in a purple pink sea

Provokes uncertainty within me

I only know light and dark

This atmosphere I refuse to remark

And so I turn to walk the other way

But despite my resistance

The sky will stay

Still I find something to grasp

A remnant of home

Closing my eyes remains my only solution

Towards the dark

To seek out a hiding place in familiarity

DTL Origin Story: Bart the Hero

Legendary Bart Simpson has been here since the beginning of time. Ever since the pre Do Think Learn days tracing all the way back to the Muse days. Bart skateboarded all the way from grasslands of Springfield to Calabasas dealing with large semi trucks racing down the freeway all the way to police trying to stop him from skateboarding on private property Bart held his own against them. Bart knew he was on a mission to let J know it’s time to start a microschool. Bart grew up in a school where he had trouble learning which motivated him to get on the road to find a teacher who will start one. He hit the road skateboarding across the US, flying down the largest hills one can ever imagine. Until one day he arrived at this humongous campus full of basketball courts. He snuck into a classroom, steals a bunch of pencils and slowly begins to write ideas for his new microschool. Sure enough one day J spots these ideas. Soonly after, more ideas started flowing until the name Do Think Learn formulated from a school that Bart wished he had. Overall thank Bart for building a foundation for Do Think Learn if it wasn’t for him who knows if Do Think Learn would exist.