The need to grieve and to be angry

"I know how black it looks today…We have not yet stopped trembling yet, but if we had not loved each other none of us would have survived. And now you must survive because we love you, and for the sake of your children and your children’s children.”

Baldwin

I truly wish we were able to be together this week, to experience the emotions we are experiencing alongside each other in the wake of the unsurprising and still craven lack of indictment of Darren Wilson.

One of the best things we can do as teachers and people is to listen to each other, to listen carefully. Education so often wants teachers to design lesson plans for young people that don't include asking young people what they are thinking and feeling themselves.

If I were with you this week, I'd be asking you, what are you feeling? What are you noticing about this latest articulation of our collective fantasy of equal protection? Who are our writers, artists, and thinkers who help us shake of those fantasies? We're not with each other physically, but I'm still asking and I'll be listening and reading.

Below are several links, some education-specific, some not.

love,
prof. p.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/smashy-smashy-nine-historical-triumphs-to-make-you-rethink-property-destruction-20141021

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/08/18/how-the-rest-of-the-world-sees-ferguson/

http://www.teachingforchange.org/teaching-about-ferguson?utm_source=FBTW&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=20140822

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kwZl23Q9tgZ23dxSJWS-WpjZhOZ_mzVPtWL8-pWuLt8/mobilebasic

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/the-death-of-michael-brown-teaching-about-ferguson/?_r=1

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/how-to-teach-kids-about-whats-happening-in-ferguson/379049/

https://www.zotero.org/groups/ferguson