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2 Comments
February 9, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Dear Mr. Pasley,
I hope I spelled your name correctly. I had written down your blog address some weeks ago, and I just now had the opportunity to read your blog.
It is very interesting, indeed. I have been a teacher for 16 years. I began my teaching career in the School District of Philadelphia. I continued to teach public school for 5 years, then taught in a private school for nine years (all these positions were in elementary school). I then had the opportunity to teach in Allentown School District where I taught English on a high school level.
This school year I am again teaching elementary school for the School District of Philadelphia. I am a white middle aged female. I just had an opportunity last Friday to address my students’ racist concerns. They were taking a PSSA prep test and they were concerned that I continued to urge them to complete the test, to re-focus their energies and do the best that they could. Most (not all, mind you) responded to my “you can do it – if you stop talking and focus – cheerleading cries “- with the following, and I quote, “She hyped. Why she hyped?[voices like wildfire, spreading across the classroom]; she hyped ’cause she white – you know them white people be hyped..”
I allowed their sad litany to continue until the test was finished. After my students had had the benefit of both completing the PSSA prep test and a good lunch, I addressed their corporate concerns about my skin color by reminding them of Martin Luther King’s call to arms (as it were) … “I had a dream … that someday my children might [sic] be judged not by their skin color but by the content of their character…”
Of course, I questioned them rhetorically during my speech to them about “who am I?” “and just exactly what am I doing here?”(I had, after all, admonished them to just listen for a minute and not respond), I was faced with a group of shame-faced children who really, after all, are not sure who I am and just exactly what I am doing there.
Sorry to run on. I enjoyed your blog. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Jill A. Bursack
P.S. By the way, I just finished my M.Ed. at Penn, and yes it is ironic, but my thesis was “A Review of the LIterature regarding “The Achievement Gap.”
P.S.S. So, people, you know what I am saying? Right?
February 14, 2009 at 2:39 pm
What happen to the public meeting on monitoring charter schools at 440 this past Thursday? According to the Inquirer the meeting was open to parents, teachers and anyone else that was concerned with the lack of monitoring of charter schools in Philadelphia. The Tuesday meeting was to be held from 12-2pm. Did that one even happen? Nobody down at 440 knew about the Thursday’s meeting and there was no cancelation notice. It’s beginning to sound like nothing more than a front set up for the purpose of pretending that the SRC wants public input on charters. Meanwhile, they have snuck through another 7 more charters. Somebody is getting rich off this trend and it’s not the pupils.