Other People's Children, 3rd Meeting

For our third and final meeting on Lisa Delpit’s “Other People’s Children”, we discussed the final section of the book, titled “Looking to the Future: Accommodating Diversity”. As with our previous meetings, we kicked off the session with partner conversations, this time focused around the idea of cultural barriers to communication, grounded by a quote from Delpit:

“One of the most difficult tasks we face as human beings is trying to communicate across our individual differences, trying to make sure that what we say to someone is interpreted the way we intend. This becomes even more difficult when we attempt to communicate across social differences, gender, race, or class lines, or in any situation of unequal power.” (p. 135, “Cross-cultural Confusions in Teacher Assessment”)

From there, we shifted our whole group and small group conversations to focus on what has and has not changed since Delpit published this book in 1995. While we acknowledged that many of her critiques of teacher preparation programs were incorporated in our experiences with teacher preparation, and most of us even read Delpit in our courses, we came to the conclusion that many of the issues Delpit describes remain or have become even more significant.

Delpit begins to mention the challenges of standardized testing for students and standardized assessment of educators, but these issues have become major federal policy since the book was published. Delpit talks about the importance of hiring and retaining educators of color, which has become an even more significant issue, especially here in Philadelphia where the proportion of Black educators has declined sharply in recent years. Fundamental issues of racism, power, communication, and culture remain as significant as ever, increasingly so in the era of a Trump presidency.

We closed our meeting, as we do each week, by reflecting on what makes it hard to talk about race and why it is important. After finishing “Other People’s Children”, we are shifting our conversation to “Raising Race Questions” by Ali Michael to focus on how we, as white educators, can help to foster the change that Delpit proscribed over 20 years ago.

Group notes from this meeting: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6uUa2krEBr6Y3dyV2ttT3JGRXc?usp=sharing

Raising Race/Other People's Children; Final meetings coming up!

For our final 2 meetings, we will move on to bring our inquiry about race, racism, and white supremacy to our own schools and classrooms by exploring "Raising Race Questions" by Ali Michael. 

For our August 1 meeting, we will read the Intro, Chapters 1 & 2, with a specific focus on Chapter 2 about "White Racial Identity Development". 

For the August 8 meeting, we will read Chapters 3, 4, and 5 with a specific focus on Chapter 5, titled "From Theory to Practice".   



I also wanted to share out this article, "Black Teachers Matter" from Mother Jones, which informed some of the statistics we used in meeting to and does a good job placing Delpit's work, specifically around educators of color, in a local context.

Next meeting is on Monday, August 1 from 4-5:30 at 4722 Baltimore Ave

Other People's Children, Meeting 2

Meeting number two focused on Part 2 of Other People's Children. The focus of the first two chapters was on what Delpit learned from teaching/research in Papua New Guinea and in a Native Alaskan community. This lead us to opening the meeting discussing moments in which we have explicitly or subtly learned from a culture other than our own. Many of the conversations that were shared to the whole group highlighted how this learning can help us to reduce judgement and value other perspectives. Next we shared in the whole group about parts of the reading that stood out for us. 

We ended the meeting by looking at data about the Philadelphia school district student and teacher demographics. After talking in small groups about pieces of the data  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-z9jecMhL8uzvylrBNxyjcGpg1rcQMIkI2LYm8GQtc/edit) we created visual and written interpretations of the data based on these three questions:

• What stands out / sticks with you about the data?
• What are the connections to the chapters or your own experience?
• What are some potential solutions from Delpit chapters?

We shared back to the whole group what we had discussed. Some highlights include that money (the lack of it in the best and fairest places) was a major challenge for many reasons, and that there are many barriers that are not just financial for people of color in education. We discussed how, as a group of White educators we felt uncomfortable coming up with solutions, we could be fully hearing the voices of people of color and helping to implement those solutions.

Join us as we read the final section of Other People's Children on Tuesday, July 25th at the A-Space, 4722 Baltimore Ave, at 4:00.

Other People's Children, by Lisa Delpit

On Tuesday, July 11th, we held our first meeting to discuss Other People’s Children by Lisa Delpit. While the sections we read were originally published three decades ago, Delpit’s themes and concerns still resonate for many of us. We started by reflecting on why it can be difficult to talk about race, and why it’s important, especially as educators, to engage in this discussion. From there, our conversation touched on power dynamics in the classroom, teaching skills verses teaching process, and the different implications of more authoritative classroom management styles and flexible, student-centered approaches.

We wrapped up our conversation with lots of questions. How can our instruction both help students develop skills to access the language of power and also strengthen critical thinking skills so they are prepared to challenge it? How can you run a democratic, student-centered classroom that challenges students and teaches them concrete skills? How can we create space to have these discussions with other colleagues?

We’ll be meeting Tuesday, July 18th to keep the conversation going. Join us at the A-Space, 4722 Baltimore Ave, at 4:00.