We who are white do not want to talk about our white skin or explore what \u201cwhiteness\u201d has to do with all that is going on in our own lives and in the lives of our students.\u00a0\u00a0Now, I believe, more than ever, it is time to talk.\u00a0\u00a0It is time to let our children talk and our colleagues talk.\u00a0\u00a0It is time to study our memories: to explore what it was in our childhood that formed our racial definitions, our prejudices.\u00a0\u00a0It is time to let our students teach us, to look for historians who will tell us the whole truth, to look for activists who can inform us.\u00a0\u00a0It is time to make mistakes and learn from them (Landsman, xii).<\/p>\n
This book had its origins in my urge to write about the intersection of my commitment to equity and my life as a teacher.\u00a0\u00a0My personal litmus test as a teacher is that every one of my students learns as much as they can while they are with me, no exceptions, no excuses.\u00a0\u00a0My personal litmus test as a teacher educator is that every one of my student\u2019s public school students learns as much as they can while they are with the people I am teaching, no exceptions, no excuses.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s important that they learn a lot, and that they like what they are learning. That\u2019s my definition for what it means to be an equity educator. How to do this has taken me on a number of pedagogical journeys across the years of my teaching: teaching in urban schools and drop-out programs, conducting research on successful multiage classrooms, creating a teacher education program for teachers who wanted to teach in multiage settings, being a teacher of teachers, and now, teaching how to conduct complex instruction, a particularly powerful form of cooperative learning.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m taking a chance that these journeys might be an interesting, even instructive read for those of you who might share common interests and even motivations.<\/p>\n
I retired after my thirty-ninth year of teaching.\u00a0\u00a0I began teaching in a school that urged me to connect everything I taught to the lives of my students.\u00a0\u00a0The key to hooking their interest, I was told, was to make it real!\u00a0\u00a0That was in 1964.\u00a0\u00a0Last summer, the summer of 2004, I attended a Faculty Resource Network seminar at New York University entitled Sampling Hip-Hop: Popular Culture As A Pedagogical Tool.\u00a0\u00a0Once again I heard that theme of connection.\u00a0\u00a0I was once again drawn into the pedagogical power of keeping whatever it was I was going to teach, real!\u00a0\u00a0Thirty-nine very different years separated the two messages.\u00a0\u00a0The ingredients for student engagement remained very much the same.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always tried to keep my teaching real.\u00a0\u00a0What that means has changed from that very first summer school at Croton Elementary School in Syracuse, N.Y. to this past year as a teacher educator at the University of Vermont. This book is my story about trying to\u00a0\u00a0keep it real over my years of public school and university based teaching.\u00a0\u00a0We keep it real by learning to connect with the individuals we teach.\u00a0\u00a0We connect with them as individuals, and we connect with them as members of social groups.\u00a0\u00a0Connection comes in all kinds of ways.\u00a0\u00a0This book explores the connections that have become thematic in my professional life.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written these stories as personal narratives of connection.\u00a0\u00a0They all start with me.\u00a0\u00a0Some refer to classroom experiences, others refer to historical events during the years I was growing up, others relate moments in time where I made clear decisions about my path of development. Some are intensely personal recountings of a few demons I had to meet and make amends with so I could get on with the good work of being the best educator I could be.<\/p>\n
Three sub-themes thread their way throughout these narratives of connection: relationship, race, and reciprocity.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, this book is about a reformation of my own identity.\u00a0\u00a0The last several years has seen a renaissance of scholarship concerning the social, political, and educational implications of white people coming to know their privilege.\u00a0\u00a0My considerations of my own pigmentation, power, and privilege has re-shaped my identity as a teacher educator, for sure.\u00a0\u00a0The narratives herein surely show how that process is working for me.<\/p>\n
Each chapter is written to stand on its own merits.\u00a0\u00a0The narratives also follow the chronology of my life.\u00a0\u00a0As I took time to step back and see my life as one life rather than a collection of separate events occurring in decidedly different times,\u00a0\u00a0I saw clearly for the first time that the soil that nourished and fed the interests I pursue today was tilled in my very early years.<\/p>\n
Part One contains several narratives from these early years. These narratives highlight the impact visual imagery had on how I both thought and felt about the blatant racism of America.\u00a0\u00a0They also show my membership in the community of privilege which refused to see or could not see its collusion in maintaining the racist underpinnings of so much of what goes on in this country.<\/p>\n
Part Two refers to events in my learning-to-teach days, 1964 \u2013 1975.\u00a0\u00a0This was a time when each day seemed framed by blockbuster historical events.\u00a0\u00a0These events have become the stuff of nostalgia, their power to inspire action dulled by a new generation\u2019s concern over more material definitions of well being.<\/p>\n
Part Three continues with my career as a teacher educator in Vermont and brings my narrative history of learning about the stuff of connecting to its most recent manifestation.<\/p>\n
I have written this book from the vantage point of today, looking back on events that have been important as I\u2019ve thought about the power of connection in the teaching\/learning relationship.\u00a0\u00a0It has been impossible to really \u201cget back there\u201d although from time to time, I\u2019ve used journal entries made at the time the events of the narratives were unfolding.\u00a0\u00a0But I want you to understand each story is constructed hindsight.\u00a0\u00a0The conceptual structure I have today is what I\u2019ve used to write the understandings of this book.<\/p>\n
Prologue and postlude narratives bookend the chapters.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Each is part of one story, a story that happened recently; a story that had immediate implications for my classes and my equity challenge.\u00a0\u00a0I have tried to employ them in such a way as to evidence the fact that my past is very much a part of my present, and vice versa.\u00a0\u00a0I leave the connections to be made between the bookends and my stories to you.<\/p>\n
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We who are white do not want to talk about our white skin or explore what \u201cwhiteness\u201d has to do with all that is going on in our own lives and in the lives of our students.\u00a0\u00a0Now, I believe, more than ever, it is time to talk.\u00a0\u00a0It is time to let our children talk and … Continue reading Preface to the Memoir<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":11,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/crathbon-memoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}