At its most literal, A Little Piece of Something is a story about a public Montessori school in Memphis that is changing the way people think — about their community, about public education, and about the best way(s) to foster a healthy identity in young children.
At its core, however, it’s a story of how we come to understand who we are and why we matter. It interweaves three different narrative threads: the inextricable relationship between the health of a community and the health of its schools; the impact of structural racism on our individual and collective sense of identity; and the mission of public Montessori programs, which offer a radically different model of healthy child development than the conventional “reform” approach (i.e., KIPP, Success Academy, etc.) to educating low-income children of color.
I hope you’ll watch and share — and if you do, we hope you’ll join me in considering some larger questions worth wrestling with:
What assumptions have we made in America about children living in poverty that this school is directly challenging?
In what ways has structural racism impacted the ways we see public education, child development, and one another?
And finally, what have we become as a country, and what do we wish to become?
Whatever side of the culture war you’re on — and, unless you’re really not paying attention, you’re on one — this much seems clear: America is having an identity crisis.
We the people occupy different worlds. We read different newspapers, watch different TV shows, and hold up different heroes. We see one another as objects to be avoided or crushed, not reasoned with or understood. We feel increasingly certain of the other side’s madness. We have begun to lose hope, check out, and give up.
So it may surprise you to learn that a new 10-part documentary series about an Illinois high school is the Must-See TV of the moment. And yet three questions at the center of America to Me — which are literally posed at the start of the school year to a group of students still shaking off the languorous hold of the summer — strike at the root of our ongoing identity crisis:
Who are you? Who does the world think you are? And what’s the difference?
For the students of Oak Park River Forest, a diverse public high school of 3,200 students located at the edge of Chicago’s West side, these are the questions that contain multitudes. And for Oak Park’s students of color in particular, they are the questions that reveal the extent to which even a community like theirs, which was shaped by progressive housing and social policies, remains burdened by America’s original sin.
“Much of our contemporary thinking about identity is shaped by pictures that are in various ways unhelpful or just plain wrong,” explains NYU professor Kwame Anthony Appiah in his new book about identity, The Lies That Bind. And when it comes to issues of race, “not only did European racial thinking develop, at least in part, to rationalize the Atlantic slave trade, it played a central role in the development and execution of Europe’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial projects.”
This is the toxic legacy under which we labor today. It’s what makes people see Colin Kaepernick as either a hero or a villain; it’s what sparks the messianic fervor at each new Donald Trump rally; and it’s what leads one of America to Me’s many student stars, a charismatic senior named Charles, to observe ruefully that “this school was made for White kids because this country was made for White kids.”
Yet the series outlines more than one set of truths. Its title comes from a Langston Hughes poem, Let America be America Again, in which Hughes writes that “America never was America to me.” Throughout the same poem, however, Hughes yearns for the other side of the American story, the one where “my land [can] be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.” And in the same episode in which we hear Charles bemoan the racialized design of his school, we also hear a teacher tell a group of incoming freshmen that “when you come to this house, represent who you are.”
Which is it?
Is Oak Park the rare example of a multiracial community in which all people can represent who they are in equal measure? Or is it just another example of how our country’s intractable, deeply ingrained ways of thinking about race (and one another) have yielded two opposite realities for White and Black families, and a schizophrenic message of which parts of oneself are truly welcome, and which parts are too dangerous, misunderstood, and feared?
The beauty of America to Me is that its answer is always “both/and.” The complexity of the problems we face are allowed to hang there for us to wrestle with, unresolved.
In its window into a modern American high school, for example, we see cringeworthy examples of unaware teachers, uninterested students, and uneasy reminders of the ways in which American schools remain unchanged by the tectonic shifts of the wider world. But we also see what makes schools like Oak Park so magical — the sheer variety of what you can explore and experience, the quality and commitment of the master teachers among us, and the ways in which each day can leave a student feeling seen or ignored, heard or silenced. As one teacher puts it, “I don’t think people understand how life and death this job can be.” And as another points out, as if to clarify the source of the stakes, “In this community, when we mention race, all hell breaks loose.”
Of course, they’re not alone. The shadow of America’s racial legacy is at the root of how we see ourselves and one another — all of us, no matter our color, our politics or our age. And in their willingness to courageously confront the third rail of American civic life as the cameras roll, the students, families and teachers of Oak Park have provided the rest of us with a precious and timely gift — an extended window into how far we remain from having the confidence and clarity to honestly confront, and then answer, the only questions that matter:
Who are you? Who does the world think you are? And what’s the difference?
A new episode of America to Me airs each Sunday night this fall on STARZ, or online at starz.com/series/americatome.
This year, 180 Studio joined forces with ATTN and Education Reimagined to produce a four-part video series challenging mainstream thinking about some of the “sacred cows” of American schooling.
Our goal was to spark reflection on two fundamental questions: How should we continue to think about the structure and purpose of public education? And which rituals and habits from our collective past should we hold onto — and which should we let go of, in order to reimagine teaching and learning for a rapidly changing world?
As of today, I’m pleased to say that more than five million of you have watched, shared, and/or commented on our examinations of 1) our love of letter grades, 2) our overreliance on rote memorization, 3) our dependence on classrooms, and 4) our habit of grouping kids based solely on their age.
If you missed an episode, here’s how to watch and learn more.
Literally, of course, it’s a sacred cow. And what strikes me is how everyone around it unconsciously adjusts what they do, to the point that the cow has become all but invisible to the chaos of a morning commute — and how ridiculous that is.
We have sacred cows here, too — but whereas in Nepal they literally block traffic, in America they block our ability to think in new ways. And I can think of no aspect of our shared public life with more sacred cows than America’s schools:
For that reason, 180 Studio and ATTN are partnering on a new series, Ask Why, that is designed to help us reflect on a fundamental question:
How should we continue to think about the structure and purpose of public education? Which rituals and habits from our collective past should we hold onto — and which should we let go of in order to reimagine teaching and learning for a rapidly changing world?
So stay tuned for the first few episodes in the series — and keep your eyes open for sacred cows. They’re everywhere.
Look — I love Sesame Street, and I especially love its new model of having famous singers adapt their songs for the show. A Katy Perry song about romantic mind games becomes a story about playing with Elmo. A Feist song is turned into an extended reflection on the awesomeness of the number 4. And so on.
But even the denizens of Sesame Street– and, apparently, singer/songwriter Ed Sheehan — are beholden to the unconscious assumptions we hold about school.
This notion — that school is the place to be passive, obedient, and receptive — is a central obstacle to our efforts to reimagine something better. And this video is just the latest reminder of how much work remains to be done before we can see school, and young people, as active (boisterous even) participants in their own learning.
Did you see that Betsy Devos interview on 60 Minutes this weekend? Did you see that President Trump appointed her to chair a yearlong commission on school safety? Are you ready to gouge your own eyes out in apoplexy?
Over a year ago, a group of parents and students from Detroit tried to warn the rest of us about just how unqualified she was to lead America’s public school system. Last January, in fact, they traveled to Washington to raise their concerns at her confirmation hearing, and speak truth to power.
What happened instead was that they were silenced— literally shut out of the room where it happened. But 180 Studio was there, and what we captured on film raises vital questions about the state of our democracy.
What this story shows is the delicate, dialectical relationship between being powerful and powerless. What it reveals are the different levels of gamesmanship that go into decisions like who will ascend to the highest levels of influence. And what it tracks is a distinctly American play within a play — a story about the halls of power that takes place in an actual hallway.
We can do better. We must do better. Please share this video if you agree.
At its best, nothing is more unifying and vital to a community’s civic health than a high-quality neighborhood school. Why, then, do all notions of “school choice” end up being about either charter or private schools?
Enter Oakland SOL, a new dual-immersion middle school in the Flatlands section of Oakland, California — and the district’s first new school in more than a decade.
Created over three years of hard work and careful planning by a motivated group of local parents and educators, Oakland SOL paints a different picture of school choice — one that is squarely grounded in the aspirations of the families and children who will comprise its community core.
To some, it’s a murky picture. After all, Oakland’s school district already has more schools than it can afford; it faces up to a $30 million budget shortfall. Yet when you consider that after fifth grade, one of every four students in the district leaves the system, Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammel is making a different sort of bet — one that will require districts to become more responsive to local needs and demands.
“If we can provide programs that help them make the choice to stay in our district, I actually do think that’s fiscally responsible,” said Katherine Carter, SOL’s founding principal. “It shows the district cares about creating quality experiences for our kids and our families.”
“This was really rooted in parent demand,” added Gloria Lee, president and chief executive of a local nonprofit that supports new public school options. “I hope it is the first and not the only example of a way the district can continue to evolve and create new innovative programs that serve the really diverse families in Oakland more effectively.”
For more than a century, the physical layout of American schools has been as consistent as any feature in American public life. Although the world around us has been in a constant state of flux, we have always been able to depend on a familiar set of symbols in our schools: neat, orderly rows of student desks; teachers delivering lessons to an entire group of children; lockers in the hallways; bell schedules — the list could go on.
But what if those timeworn structures of schooling are actually preventing us from modernizing education for a changing world? What if, in fact, the physical environment is — after parents and peers — the “third teacher” of our sons and daughters?
The latest short film in our multimedia story series about the future of learning, 180: Thrive provides a window into one school’s efforts to directly tackle those questions, and do so in a way that results in a deeper alignment between what we know about how people learn — actively, collaboratively, differently — and how our schools are physically structured. It is intended to spark useful broader thinking about the relationship between a school’s physical environment and its students’ emotional readiness to learn.
Of our fifty states, I can think of no other whose local history — for better and for worse — captures the essence of the larger American story.
In a sense, we are all Mississippians.
To wit, our next 180 story provides a glimpse of the systemic and generational impacts of racism, and how vital investment in education is to all residents — and to the entire state’s economy. We see this all through the eyes of local organizer (and Mississippi native) Albert Sykes, his 11-year-old son Aidan, mothers in Jackson Public Schools, a mayor, a school board member, and other community advocates. Part history, part vignette, and full of humanity, our hope is that Mississippi Rising will begin to connect the dots of who needs to be engaged to identify, understand, and create a bright future for Mississippi that involves the entire community.
The release of this video is timely. On September 14th of this year, the Mississippi State Board of Education recommended a state takeover of Jackson Public Schools. Governor Phil Bryant is considering the recommendation, while many of Jackson’s students, families, faith, and business leaders — along with the Mayor of Jackson and several school board members — believe they should be the ones to determine the future of Jackson Public Schools. They are asking the Governor to support local governance. Commenting on the Governor’s decision, says Albert Sykes, the Executive Director of IDEA, “The Governor – and even the State Board – may have the right concern, but a takeover of JPS is clearly the wrong policy.”
The Breadcrumbs: Additional vignettes and calls-to-action (CTAs)
#myJPS is a video featuring the student voices naming the future they want for Jackson Public Schools.
#OurJPS is the group leading local organizing efforts on the ground.
Must read: State takeovers of low-performing schools – a 2016 report from the Center for Popular Democracy examines the record of state takeovers of districts in three other states.
Additional background on the takeover being considered in Jackson and a petition that was created to stop the takeover by JPS School Board Member Jed Oppenheim – who is shown in Mississippi Rising.
Implicit bias doesn’t just play out in classrooms. The schools, states, and districts where a “takeover” approach to school change has been deployed are disproportionately attended by students of color. Here’s a podcast from the Communities for Just Schools Fund on implicit bias.
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