My wife sent a letter to @MASchoolsK12 and Commissioner Riley a couple days ago. The @curleyk8 closed due to a COVID outbreak on Tuesday. She wrote it on Wednesday.
Here are some excerpts…
1/x
Today, my 2nd grader wrote an outline for an argumentative writing paper about deforestation, using evidence from his reading of The Great Kapok Tree.
2/x
His teachers started the day with a community meeting, using socioemotional learning strategies to connect with their students and promote self and social awareness. They transitioned to a lesson about finding the main idea in a text, & later taught geometric math concepts.
3/x
Say you have an arrangement with your neighbors to order pizza together every Saturday night. Your family gets 20 slices. The other families split about 10 slices among them. This goes on for years.
Then one of the neighbors says, “Wait. Maybe you should get 15 slices and the rest of us should split up the remaining 15.”
And I go ape-shit and hire a lawyer and loudly wonder why my family has suddenly become so disfavored in the neighborhood.
Let me tell you how BPS works to maintain white supremacy. Buckle up. Story time.
1/
In 2005 at the ripe age of 29, I was hired to be the principal of the Media Communications Technology HS in what was formerly West Roxbury High. An overwhelming percentage of the faculty were white veteran teachers. The students were overwhelmingly students of color.
2/
I had only a few vacancies and was determined to hire qualified teachers of color. Because representation matters.
One white veteran teacher was unlicensed and had been given licensure waivers for about 6 years. I chose not to hire him back and instead…
3/