This seems to connect to the comments above re Connected Learning in classrooms. If we can articulate a model of CL, it may be easier to adapt our classroom teaching to be more connected.

This reminds me of Dave Cormier's "learning subjectives" from Rhizo 15.

A major issue for K-12: with mandates, pacing plans, standards etc, how do we carve out this essential space for "steeping"?

If I were choose a "golden line" from this piece to share, this would be the line.

Yay! I'm already taking this approach.

Again, powerful advice for any context - and, as with so many wise ideas, we find the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

I like this idea a lot - but how does it fit into the straitjacket that often characterizes K-12 public ed?

This is good advice for any context.

The image, for some reason, reminded me of Noah Purifoy's assemblage The Last Supper: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CLcAxpJVEAAGFrX.jpg

Will read this next!

Boy is it ever. So much of the conversation in my context revolves around "content to cover." Equally distressing is the uncritical use of the phrase "what students need to know."

Reminds me of the person in an affluent neighborhood who tells the newsperson reporting on a murder or robbery, "This doesn't happen here...it's a good neighborhood!" I'm always appalled at the implication - that violent crime is somehow okay in other, "bad" neighborhoods. I think, though, one of the underlying messages of Coates's piece is that this comment is white privilege distilled: the belief that tragedy and suffering is intended for other people. I think, perhaps - while I am right to deplore and call attention to the harmful implications of the person on the news - I need to remember the advice of Matthew 7:3, that is, not to ignore the log in my own eye while focusing on the speck in another's.

The lie of American democracy - is it any surprise then that we have an education system based on the "banking model"? That claims to have as its goal to "prepare citizens to participate in society" but in fact reinforces stratification and rewards obedience?

The failure of the public system to provide an equal education for children of color - our failure, my failure - looms large here, too. Though my authority is different from that of the police officer, I carry the power of the American state, too - do I resist the American legacy that Coates describes, or do I reinforce it? I think this is a question I must ask myself every morning and reflect on every afternoon.

Reminds me of the destruction of the indigenous people of the Americas. Pope Francis recently apologize for the church's crimes but also promotes the canonization of Junipero Serra, who was the architect of the enslavement of indigenous people in California.

Excellent point: our "multiculturalism" can be another way of condescending, being paternal, ultimately oppressing. Does "Black History Month" means that black history is only 1/12 as important?

Educators receive pensions, too - to what degree am I complicit in this "heritage and legacy"?

I am thinking of two ways I may be complicit:

• Have I taught in a way that contributed to the educational struggles of students of color, and thus contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline?
• Have I taught in a way that demeans or de-humanizes students of color?

Surely I would not do this on purpose, but what Coates points out is that intention does not matter: "there is nothing uniquely evil" in the police who killed black people, he argues.