A MESSAGE FROM DR. SAPP: Hello and welcome! I want to state right up front that, since this is a course on multicultural and anti-racist education, it is important to begin with the acknowledgement of the trauma and racial injustice we watch play out in our communities every single day around the nation. Also, because it is the one-year anniversary (May 25th) of the death of George Floyd at the hands of four Minnesota police officers.
Since his death, we have been left to process the traumatic images, and once again explain the unexplainable to ourselves and our children.
Sadly, the experiece of trauma and racial injustices is a regular occurrence for many, so it is a frequent topic of discussion in many of our homes. The tragedy of police brutality against people of color is an American issue - it is born from our history, systemic, and is among the most stark contrasts between the promise of our Constitution and the reality of American life.
Moving forward, we must continue to have honest, frank, and respectful dialogue with one another about the inequalities and injustices that many of us face or witness. That is the very goal of this course. Now, not only will you be negotiating racial trauma and injustice in your lives, your families and communities, but you will also be the adult in the classroom fielding these discussions with groups of children of all ages. Children need nuanced adults who can appropriately navigate these issues. For instance, some of the text from this opening statement is from one of the parents in my daugther’s class - a local attorney named Keisha Holland - who addressed the racial trauma around George Flyod’s death in a letter to all the parents of our child’s school. I sit on the local school’s Equity & Inclusion Committee with her and other caring parents. This is the kind of leadership that we hope for in our school communities but that is, all too often, sorely lacking. The Principal of our daughter’s school sent a similar letter and, the morning the horrible death occurred, I listened in on the online classroom my child was in at the time and the 5th-grade teacher addressed Floyd’s death as well (she is a CSUDH College of Education graduate, by the way).
This class is one of many experiences you’ll have in this credential program that will seek to nuance you in all kinds of issues so that you will be the model of equity and justice for the children in your school care.
With loving thoughts to you and your family,
Jeff
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Everything you need to be successful in this course is right here at www.professorsapp.com. In the field above (the burgandy heading) you can click and find each of our 9 weeks of classes loaded and ready for your interaction. Also, there is the weekly course Blog. NOTE: Each Blog has a day it goes live and a day it ends and you can no longer post, thus it is imperative you do the Blog for each week and don’t get behind; 40% of your grade are the 12 Blog posts you have to do.
You will need to get a free account for Disqus, the Blogging system I use. So that I can properly track your individual posts and give you credit for them, please sign up with your first name/last initial. And you’ll know I have read your Blog post because I personally respond to each and everyone of them.
I am an email away at jsapp@csudh.edu if you need anything at all. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Jeff
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WEEK 1/JUNE 1: Introductions; The Importance of Teacher Identity; READ Chapter One of The Vulnerable Observer by Ruth Behar; RESPOND to Blog #1 on Most Memorable Teacher. Other scholarship mentioned this week includes: White Privilege; Juliette Hampton Morgan - A White Woman Who Understood: Lessons on Being an Ally; Wildcat Goes A-Bragging: An Appalachian Tale; “What it is like to live in a gay family”
WEEK 2/JUNE 7: My Multicultural Self; READ Linda Christensen’s “Where I’m From: Inviting Students Lives into the Classroom” - Based on the “I Am From” Poem by George Ella Lyons; DO the “I Am From” poem activity; READ Ming Fang He & JoAnn Phillion’s chapter titled Personal - Passionate - Participatory Inquiry; RESPOND to Blog # 2 on The Vulnerabe Observer
WEEK 3/JUNE 14: LISTEN TO The Power of Vulnerability in Being a Researcher-Storyteller by Brene Brown; READ the PowerPoint on the Toxic History of Education; Personal experiences with school inequality; READ Yvette Hyater-Adams’ artlcie titled How to Get Going with Personal Narrative in Scholarly Writing; RESPOND to Blog #3 on He & Pillion’s Personal-Passionate-Participatory Inquiry; DUE: “I Am From” Poem - mailed to jsapp@csudh.edu
WEEK 4/JUNE 21: Positionality; READ H. Richard Milner’s article on Positionality; READ Sapp’s Curriculum Introduction to Rethinking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality; Thinking about experiences with injustice; RESPOND to Blog #4 on the Hyater-Adams’ article and/or how your ideas of scholarship are being challenged
WEEK 5/JUNE 28: READ Brown v. Board of Education article by Brian Willoughby; VIEW “The Hate of Segregation” and “Love of Integration” art by Long Beach Artist Helena Donato-Sapp; LISTEN to Michael Dumas’ video “Antiblackness and Black Futurity in Reseach on Urban Communities and Schooling”; VIEW the documentary Agent of Change: The Longest Student Strike in U. S. History; RESPOND to Blog #5 on Naming your Injustices
WEEK 6/JULY 5: READ A Brief History of Multicultural Education by Paul Gorski; READ How School Taught Me I Was Poor; READ A Sissy Speaks to Gym Teachers: How I was Formed and Deformed by Toxic Masculinity; READ Crocodile and Ghost Bat Have a Hullabaloo; RESPOND to Blog #6 on Positionality; DUE: Positionality Paper emailed to me at jsapp@csudh.edu.
WEEK 7/JULY 12: Introduction to your Research & Practice (Praxis) Paper; Other scholarship metioned this week is Rethinking Schools’ Teaching for Black Lives; VIEW Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk The Danger of a Single Story; READ the PowerPoint on Counternarratives in Multicultural Children’s Literature; READ the article A Review of Gay and Lesbian Themed Early Childhood Children’s Literaure; READ the hate in the Gay Children’s Books Blog; RESPOND to Blog #7 on what impacted you the most from the week’s work
WEEK 8/JULY 19: Curriculum Violence; READ Stephanie P. Jones’ article in Teaching Tolerance Magazine titled Ending Curriculum Violence; READ through Helena’s 4th and 5th-grade counter narratives to the colonized curriculum she is offered in schooling; READ Wayne Au’s Rethinking Schools’ article titled “Decolonizing the Classroom”; Take a look at James Loewen’s website, the author of the classic book titled Lies My Teachers Told Me; RESPOND to Blog #8 on Colonized Curriculum
WEEK 9/JULY 26: A Scholarly Look at Multicultural Teaching - choose one article to READ; More information about your culminating Research & Pracitce Paper; RESPOND to Blog #9; DUE: Research & Practice (Praxis) Paper emailed to me at jsapp@csudh.edu by Sunday August 1st at midnight.