Ira David Socol
Author, Dreamer, Educator: A life in service - NYPD, EMS, disabilities/UDL specialist, tech and innovation leader for education. Co-author of Timeless Learning
Why "Felony Murder" charges and Congressional Disqualifications are essential for kids
SpeEdChange.at.Medium
police officers outside the Capitol on January 6
"Officer Brian D. Sicknick died Thursday due to injuries sustained while on-duty, physically engaging with protesters at the US Capitol, a statement said.
"Sicknick, a 12-year veteran of the force, was "responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters", Capitol Police said in a statement." — France24
I am not a big fan of punishment. Punishments rarely prevent 'recidivism,' and the threat of punishment rarely discourages the illegal, the immoral, or the inappropriate. …
Published in The Innovation
Acknowledging Privilege, Disrupting Privilege
IS 293, "Nathan Hale Middle School," in Brooklyn, NY. The subject of Nice White Parents, the New York Times/Serial Podcast Series.
Exclusionary "Learning Pods" are not just racist, and of course classist, let's state the obvious, but they are also violence against children, and we must say this.
Broadband access in this nation is racist and classist and an assault on rural children and children everywhere whose parents lack resources. We must say this.
The way schools are funded, including via PTA/PTO fundraising is racist and classist and represents violence against children everywhere whose parents lack resources. We must say this.
"The timeline of the series stops at the pandemic. But Ms. Joffe-Walt said the nation's education system is at a pivotal juncture, noting the future could be indelibly shaped by white parents. …
Read more in The Innovation · 12 min read
·Aug 27, 2020
The 2020 American Election Curriculum
Wisconsin 2018, elections for State House of Representatives. Republicans received under 45% of votes, but won over 63% of seats.
"When the Framers [of the Constitution] used the word [democracy] themselves it was often a pejorative term. On the convention's first day, delegate Edmund Randolph of Virginia warned that "none of the [state] constitutions have provided sufficient checks against democracy." A week later, Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry said "the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy." Father of the Constitution James Madison referred to "the inconvenience of democracy," and Alexander Hamilton to the "imprudence" of it." — Eric Black
America likes to perceive itself as a leader in global democracy, or at least it did before January 2017, but leadership often conveys a sense of "staying ahead of the game," and the United States has a peculiarly antique electoral and government system, one inherited — almost in entirety — from the national parent, 18th Century Britain. This "Queen Anne Democracy" was never intended to be a democracy in any way, it wasn't designed that way, the founders — though expressing noble intentions — were for the most part elite Southern plantation owners, and seven of those 13 original states (including New York) were slave states. So US Constitution was designed to absolutely limit democracy, which despite progress, it still does. …
Published in NWP Write Now
·Jul 26, 2020
Writing Monumental Memory
1965 Selma March for Voting Rights
Maybe it is five years ago now, but at one of the high schools where I worked then, our most "at-risk" high school, a Language Arts teacher and a Librarian collaborated on a project about building monuments. This was even before the 2017 Charlottesville right-wing riot with its in retrospect focus on monuments and meanings. Even before our more famous version of this project.
One of the Monument Projects from Albemarle High School
I watched one young man building the model of his monument and asked him to tell me about it. "It's a monument to front porches," he said — and what he was building was a very long porch with many places to sit — "because that was what my grandma had, and I loved the conversations [we had] there, and I think we don't have that much [anymore]." …
Read more in NWP Write Now · 8 min read
Published in Age of Awareness
·Jun 30, 2020
Departments of Community Safety. Community Learning Districts. Language, Identity, and Transformation.
SpeEdChange TLDR Long Read
Over the last dozen or so years my body has betrayed me. The physical skills that were a big part of the identity I had constructed for myself — sports, being able to build things, fix things, repair a car, wire a house…have mostly left me. Now, as I struggle to alleviate physical pain, I need to re-imagine who I am, what I am capable of, and how I will live my life. …
Read more in Age of Awareness · 25 min read
Reforming Police. Reforming Schools
Let's be clear, our educational structures and norms are every bit as at fault as the structures and norms of policing.
Things. Must. Change.
The failures of our society, of our culture, of our institutions, all on display in magnified form over the past four years, have blown up in our face.
And that can become a very good thing.
Content warning: I believe that every white American needs to watch this, preferably with VR googles on to make sure attention doesn't stray
The dysfunction has been obvious in the way many vote, in what many believe, in resistance to the basic norms of human decency, even in the disappearance of self-preservation norms, that our institutions have failed us. The United States in many ways no longer looks like a durable democracy, but more like a 'developing nation' — waiting, maybe hoping, as in Turkey before it became a theocracy, that the better minds in our military will refuse immoral and illegal orders and save us. …
Worlds Collide: White Cops on Black Streets and Challenging Curriculum
The events of the past two weeks have left many, even most of us incredibly angry, incredibly determined, and, yes, incredibly confused. But if we are educators, or if we are police officers, we do not have the luxury of either time or inaction. Sometimes the call to duty is both absolutely clear and absolutely urgent, and this is one of those times.
8 Minutes and 46 Seconds: How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody
transcript It's a Monday evening in Minneapolis. Police respond to a call about a man who allegedly used a counterfeit…
Over the past two weeks we have seen a stunning increase in the obvious lies told by people in power — and since the daily count was already very high, that's pretty horrific. Every hour a police chief, a mayor, a governor, and of course the White House claims that something for which there is undeniable evidence, "didn't happen." There's also the other lie, the "I didn't know" that's the stock in trade of Republican senators, cabinet secretaries, et al. "I didn't know where I was going," said Secretary of Defense Mark Esper after he marched across a public park seized by force by his troops to support a pathetic photo op for his boss (he made up a different story the next day, describing his job as supervisor of park restrooms). …
Education is the most political thing we do, it is the fight for our future
The obvious: it is not nearly enough to not be a racist, to be a responsible member of a democratic society one must be actively anti-racist.
Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
Is there even such a thing as being 'not a racist'? Not a racist sounds a lot like a German in the 1930s being "not a Nazi," or, in the United States in the 1860s being "not a slaveowner," or being the person who watches someone on the street having a heart attack, being assaulted, being struck by a car, who doesn't bother to call 911.
Former Minneapolis police officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao might all claim to be "not racists." Senator Tom Cotton of Oklahoma might claim to be "not racist." Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina might claim to be "not racist" — "not misogynist," etc." Secretary of Defense Mark Esper might claim to be "not racist." Even the notorious Alabama Governor George Wallace claimed he was "not a racist." But in every one of these cases, actions tell a different story. Actions or non-actions, because non-actions are actions. …
Read more in Age of Awareness · 5 min read
There is no difference at all between the looters on our streets now and Donald J. Trump…
Donald Trump has been doing this as long as he's been an adult — Long Beach Post
There is no difference between the looters in our streets now and Donald J. Trump. There is no difference between the looters in our streets now and Moscow Mitch McConnell. There is no difference between the looters in our streets now and the Koch brothers. There is no difference between the looters in our streets now and the national Republican Party, or Jerry Falwell Jr., or the 'conservative majority' on the United States Supreme Court.
And that is our failure as parents, as ministers, priests, imams, and rabbis, as educators, as a society. We have allowed a national belief to develop, or we have tolerated a national myth, that says, we, 'can do anything we want. Take anything we want. Disrespect anyone we want. …
George Floyd, Christian Cooper, and 401 years of American Racism
Photograph by Jordan Gale for The New York Times. Please read the photo/text essay by Gale and writer Mara Gay.
Someplace between age 8 and age 10, Black boys will stop appearing 'cute' to white teachers in America's schools, and will begin to be seen as a threat. Yes, they will. Yes, I know that many teachers view most adolescents as dangerous aliens — which explains all the middle school rules — but for young Black males this shift occurs at a younger age, and far more universally.
I've seen this everywhere I've worked, even in great schools. It is simply a fact of our white American world.
Of course it is not just teachers, it is almost everyone. And the unfortunate fact is this, as much damage as this perceptual shift in teachers' vision causes, what's even more dangerous is that the same change occurs in the minds of white police officers — and since every police department is, by nature, about the enforcement of, if not always white supremacy, at least the supremacy of white culture, this is about all police — despite the best efforts of many officers. …