Merry Christmas

Until recently, I didn't consider myself to be someone who knows Jesus very well. I grew up pretty secular, have drawn sustenance from a variety of traditions, and am just now in life coming around to an interest in Christianity. (True I almost went to seminary, but almost going and actually going are two very different things.)  

I have f/Friends who have powerful, personal relationships with Jesus and/or with his teachings, and I think that's pretty rad.  I feel like I'm just getting to know him (Shane Claiborne, Marcus Borg, and several important mentors have really helped me along.) 

The other day I was in a group of people talking about homeless people in Nevada City and Grass Valley. I forget who was talking - I think it was one of my students - but they noted they'd seen a homeless man who was panhandling with a sign that said "What would Jesus do?" My student clearly had some notion of Jesus' care for and emphasis on the poor (oh, maybe cause we read about it in Peace Studies...), and thought that sign was pretty creative and hilarious. 

I surprised myself by saying, without really trying to sound like a know-it-all, that I thought the sign was flawed: "I don't think Jesus would necessarily give money," I said, "but he would probably invite the guy to dinner. Jesus wasn't very interested in money." One of the other adults, possibly a little peeved with me, said "You know, I don't think I know Jesus well enough to know what he would say." Then I wondered if maybe I know Jesus better than I think I do. 

So in honor of  knowing somebody more than you think you do, in honor of the Kingdom of God being at hand, and in honor of creative and hilarious subversions of power (which have become a daily occurrence for me since I started teaching high school), Merry Christmas. 

Peace Studies: The Soundtrack

As this semester winds down I'm making copious notes on how to improve my English: Peace Studies curriculum. Several things I'm clear on: 

1. We're dealing exclusively with nonfiction. Not because I don't love fiction (I do), but because I think that the thing my two classes have in common is the self and people's history: how gender, race and class relate to experiences of social power, how the voices of women, people of color and other marginalized people are left out of history, and how that is all related to violence and nonviolence. So bring on the memoir, the oral histories, and the poetry.  

2. Our focus in the class is primarily the United States - on violence, nonviolence, social movements, and social power in American society. That doesn't mean we wont talk about Gandh's salt march, Jesus, and Te Whiti when we talk about the history of nonviolence. We will.  

3. The gender unit will focus largely on feminism and masculinity, because these kids don't know the first thing about feminism, and because thoughtful conversations about masculinity that include empowered men and empowered women are hard to come by. And  because I have a feminist agenda. 

4. The social class unit has a big emphasis on poverty, but also on the labor movement, and schools and educational inequity. Still need to better integrate those, and find a really strong piece of memoir. Using Dorothy Day and excerpts from Studs Terkel's Working was OK, but could have been better. Suggestions? 

5. The race unit needs to somehow balance a BIG discussion of whiteness, the construction of whiteness and white privilege, with prisons, and with the reality of our multiracial American society. 

6. And next semester, we will have a soundtrack of teaching songs that I will assign the kids along with the readings. Get ready for Utah Phillip's quoting Ammon Hennacy ("If you want to be a true pacifist, you must go out into the world without your weapons. Including the ones you were born with") and Gil Scott Herndon talking about how the revolution will not be televised. 

I'm taking track suggestions - music, spoken word, etc. The class units are 1)Violence and Nonviolence, 2) Social Movements, 3) Gender power, 4) Social class, 5) Race and Racism. Ideas? (I know, I know: I try to do too much in one semester.) 

Kids, for homework your job is to listen to this rad mix CD I'm giving you on the first day of class. Welcome to the Woolman Semester. I hope you like it here as much as I do. 

Whiteness

Amidst the rush and crazy of final presentations at school, we’ve been trying to eke out a decent unit on race and racism in Peace Studies class. I’ve been working this whole semester with the solid foundations of my predecessor, sort of living into and modifying a syllabus that is a hybrid of his focus and mine. So we read some James Baldwin (Fire Next Time), some Bell Hooks (Yearning), some Cornel West (Race Matters), some Thandeka (Learning to Be White), some Tim Wise (White Like Me, which the kids loved), and some Elizabeth Martinez (Des Colores Means All Of Us).

We played the Race Game and talked some about white privilege. Then, for the unit paper, I assigned them a piece of memoir: “Write memoir (autobiography) about an experience you had in which you encountered societal expectations of you and your racial identity. We have read a lot of memoir in this class so you have many good examples to guide you. 750-1000 words. Due Monday, December 7^th.”

And in the course of about an hour three kids checked in with me wondering if their experience of race were valid enough for the essay. My student who is of Puerto Rican descent was thinking of writing about how people assume he’s white – and I was like “Yes, write that! Write that! (That’s really profound!)”  He was sort of already off and running and just needed a little encouragement.

But two other students, who are white, talked to me about never really having had an experience where they were aware of or reminded of their race, or encountered a societal expectation of them based on their race. They weren’t sure what to do.

I had a smart teacher moment. I said: “Not having had experiences in which you are reminded of your race, or encounter societal expectations of your race, is in itself an experience of your racial identity. It’s a unique (and problematic) privilege of white people. Go think and write about that.” We mulled it over together a bit – they weren’t totally surprised by my suggestion – and then they were off and running too.

I want to create a space where all of my students can engage experiences of their racial identity as legitimate and real, where whiteness is not the absence of race or identity. We read all about how it's not, but you can intellectually understand something without emotionally understanding it. The work goes on.