Page 12
April 4, 2018
O PINION
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A Proud Tradition of Student Social Activism
Youth lead in
rallying for social
justice
m arC h. m oriaL
When the nation’s
students march to pro-
test gun violence in
their schools, they are
following in a proud
tradition of student
leadership in social justice in America.
By early May 1963, the series of civ-
il rights protests known as the Birming-
ham Campaign had been ongoing for
more than a month. National attention
generated by Martin Luther King Jr.’s,
arrest – which resulted in his Letter
from a Birmingham Jail – had begun
to fade. It was only when the chil-
dren marched that America’s attention
would be riveted, and stay riveted.
Images of school children – mostly
teenagers, but some as young as 7 or
9 – attacked by dogs and blasted with
firehoses dominated the front pages of
newspapers and television news broad-
casts. The Children’s Crusade, as the
student march was called, marked a
stark turning point in Birmingham and
galvanized the effort to pass the Civil
by
Rights Act.
The Children’s Crusade is among
the best-known student acts of social
activism, but was by no means the first.
In 1924, students at Fisk University
staged walkouts to protest efforts by its
white president to steer the curriculum
away from liberal arts toward industri-
al education. In the throes of the Great
and fueled the emerging movements
for women and LGBTQ people. In the
1980s students successfully pressured
their universities to divest from compa-
nies profiting from apartheid in South
Africa. The rise of the internet has giv-
en socially-active young people a criti-
cal organizing tool, which they’ve used
to elevate hashtags like #NeverAgain,
The rise of the internet has
given socially-active young people
a critical organizing tool, which
they’ve used to elevate hashtags
like #NeverAgain, #VoteThemOut
and #MarchForOurLives.
Depression, the American Youth Con-
gress formed to advocate for young
people and led to the establishment of
the National Youth Administration jobs
program.
The student activism of the 1960s
helped bring about the end of the war in
Vietnam, lowered the voting age to 18,
#VoteThemOut and #MarchForOur-
Lives.
The young people of the Urban
League Movement, about 700 of whom
joined the recent March for Our Lives
rally in Washington, D.C., want to end
not only the epidemic of mass shoot-
ings in schools, but the plague of gun
violence in our communities.
In 2014, the year 12-year-old Tamir
Rice was killed by police while play-
ing with a toy gun, black people died
at a rate of about 17 per 100,000 peo-
ple, compared with 10 per 100,000
white people. Black men are 17 times
more likely than white men to be shot
and killed with guns. In 2012, the year
Marissa Alexander was jailed for de-
fending herself against her abuser,
black women were murdered at a rate
two-and-a-half times higher than their
white counterparts, 56 percent of them
by domestic partners or boyfriends,
and nearly 60 percent of them with
guns.
With the committed help of our
youngest Urban Leaguers, we will
continue to fight for common-sense
reforms like universal background
checks, limits to magazine capacity
and muzzle speeds, keeping guns out
of the hands of domestic abusers and a
strong federal gun trafficking law.
Our hearts are with the hundreds of
Urban League youth who are marching
and fighting for their own lives, not
only in Washington, but in every com-
munity in the nation.
Marc H. Morial is president and
chief executive officer of the National
Urban League.
Supporting Black Male Teachers in the Classroom
Help me be there
for my students
f ranCis P ina
Does being me give
me an advantage in my
inner-city classroom?
I often reflect on this
question because every
school year I learn from
a handful of students that I am their very
first black male teacher.
If we got 100 teachers in a room,
statistically I would be one of just two
black males in that room and one of 50
who will leave the profession within our
first five years. I am now in my fifth year
of teaching and I want to stay where I
am.
I know that it’s not my skin tone but
my cultural experiences that give me the
advantage. I develop close bonds with
my students quicker because I grew up
in the same Boston neighborhoods as
most of them, and have had close bonds
with diverse people of color since my
childhood.
Boston Public Schools has a diverse
by
student body that goes beyond race.
Someone white might be Albanian or
Polish, someone black might be Haitian
or Nigerian and someone Asian might
be Vietnamese or Filipino.
I have known and been close to this
diversity since I was a student at Bos-
ton Public Schools. At the same time, I
am aware of my limitations. I am not a
monolith of the urban experience and a
Boston childhood has changed greatly
since I was growing up in the city.
More kids come into my classroom
having experienced trauma and are la-
beled with behavioral problems than
when I was a student. Many more have
parental-like responsibilities.
So while I may be a role model, an
exemplar for my black male students, I
still have the same challenges as many
other teachers in my school building.
Challenges like trying to teach Brian-
na how to interpret linear graphs when
she is constantly responding to Face-
book drama on her phone. Like trying
to engage Jeffery in a Desmos activity
when he is tired, hungry, and did not eat
the school lunch. Or the larger challenge
of making algebra meaningful when
many of my students are struggling so-
cially and emotionally.
Yes, my ability to bond, to develop
relationships with my students is the
foundation I need to have to support
them effectively, both academically and
with their social-emotional needs. With
every interaction, redirection and teach-
able moment in the hallways or on the
sidewalks, I strengthen my influence.
However, there is a price I pay, an in-
visible tax, to doing that work, a weight
that’s placed on me when I learn about
a student’s self-harm, a friend’s murder,
immigration status or eviction.
Many of the things I have learned
about my students over the years keep
me up at night. This is why I and other
teachers like me need coaching to con-
tinue learning, deepening and reflecting
on our own social-emotional competen-
cies so we can understand how to re-
spond and support our students’ social
emotional struggles.
Just like my students, I want a coach
for my own social-emotional learning, a
professional who would focus on how
I am building my own social-emotion-
al competencies, facilitating those of
my students and caring for myself. This
coach could be a district-level posi-
tion and could work with my school’s
teaching team so we could all reflect on
our coaching and our social-emotional
needs.
Our district could also create a so-
cial-emotional learning mentor-teacher
role. This could be an opportunity for a
teacher to get trained in supporting other
teachers’ practices.
If my own most basic needs are not
being met, I will not be able to consis-
tently achieve the goals I have set for
my students.
I am reminded of Audre Lorde’s
words, “Caring for myself is not self-in-
dulgence, it is self-preservation.” I do
not want my self-preservation to come
from leaving the profession. I want to
be there for my black students, and
for all of my students, for as long as I
can so that I can continue to bond with
them, influence them and carry them
forward. For that to happen, I need a
coach of my own.
Francis Pina is a math teacher
teaches at Charlestown High School in
Boston Public Schools.