On Contemplative Pedagogy: I have to admit that the Vanderbilt University video began sounding a little like a Saturday Night Live skit to me. I had to stifle a couple giggles. I don’t mean that disrespectfully, I just find humor in things that most don’t. Now, having made that admission, I have actually found some substance in the ten minutes of contemplation we share each morning. And I’m looking forward to hearing the research on the subject and how it may be beneficial to my own students in the classroom. How great would it be if my students could come into the classroom, settle their bodies and thoughts, leave their troubles at the door at get to the business of learning? That sounds hopeful to me.

School: I was struck by the first two sentences in the introduction to Part Three (Separate and Unequal). Richard White says, “The past should be so strange that you wonder how you and people you know and love could come from such a time.” The history of the public school system is strange indeed. The struggle that many citizens and teachers endured in their attempt to make this system equal is a story of triumphs and sadness to me. Much of our reading has been disturbing and troubling to me. As just one example, I have a hard time reconciling the effects I.Q. tests and tracking students’ educational paths had on populations. And we still do this!  On the other hand, I imagine the joy black families felt at the Brown v. Board of Education victory. I’m a crier, so I found myself getting emotional over the joys and the defeats we were dealt during the process of building an educational system that would benefit all.

It really seems unthinkable (strange) to me that parents had to put themselves and their children in harm’s way to achieve an equal educational opportunity. It was so important to them that they risked death! Do we take this sacrifice for granted? Something I face in my own classroom is my parents’ negative attitudes toward school. I have nearly begged some parents to get their child to school because he’s already missed twenty-five days (and he’s reading twelve words a minute!).  Where’s the urgency? Did our civil rights heroes have rocks thrown at them on their way into school buildings so our children can stay up late playing X-Box?

 The big promise of Brown vs. Board of Education that black children would achieve at the same level as white children has, for the most part, been unfulfilled. As Justice Clarence Thomas has said, just sitting next to white kids didn’t erase that achievement gap.  The black community wouldn’t argue that the nuclear family within it is disappearing. Even in the high Native American population we have in our school, students are being raised by grandparents or other extended family. Poverty plays into this as well. With schools being the scapegoat for all our social ills, how do we as teachers give our students the opportunities they need to achieve in their societies and communities? It’s a huge job.