I wonder how it helps (or know) to know more about the author. [Ben Okri] (https://benokri.co.uk/)

I'm wondering what happened to the crowd.

Could you have been satisfied with less?

I'm not sure why.

I was already thinking that this paragraph had become us and them... polarized.

That's provocative!

Are they waiting their turn or observers?

Where did the tension and insurrection go? Or is it always coming back?

Wait... what!? Who is "insurrecting" against who?

I'm loving the contrast/tension here between the lovely tables and the barbaric hungry people.

I wonder who the "us" is. Does the writer assume that I am part of that us or not?

I wonder what these two words sitting there together mean. I mean I get what magnificent means and I'm assuming that "grounds" refers to land, but I'm curious about what this particular way of saying it comes from or refers to.

Don't we need to give some options here?

There is such rich teaching and learning to do here. This XP could be a playlist of its own.

Wouldn't it be great if this really was a web post (a blog post)?

I'm going to do some looking on the Storytracker on Solutions Journalism. I wonder how to capture the process in the video of looking through online newspapers and listening to the local news for two weeks.

What would an urban youth think about? My guess: tourism, transportation, health, education, entertainment, police, government. I looked it up here: http://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/top-ten-new-urban-jobs I would add construction and service to my list, and technology.

Thinking about generative themes is important for the student beginning an inquiry project.

This is a helpful guide to deep inquiry.

Teaching from our students' interest involves us in finding communities outside of our classrooms for youth to learn.

A clear description of how to use freewriting to create something.

I think of myself as a Moffett guy, in that early on in my teaching I found the notion of "Teaching the Universe of Discourse" and exciting and clear map for building curriculum and for assessing my students' progress at any moment. I learned to focus on a balance of the different kinds of writing in the UNIVERSE of discourse. When I began to think about what it meant to teach digital writing, I returned to Moffett's notion of looking at the range of possibility. And as the words here, "ever-changing" and "landscape," suggest, we can constantly be thinking about what to include in our digital curriculum. Snapchat? Instagram? Is blogging still an important part of the landscape? What does it mean to have more characters available on Twitter? Do my students need more time in something like a Google community with short, interactive online conversation or do they need to slow down a bit and create a web page? It's exciting to be playing in this field, and it's even more exciting when youth recognize that they can choose where they want to play and make a difference digitally as well -- and what they need to learn to have an impact digitally.

Interesting that the students are reading all of these stories together, and quickly.

I like this doing things together. I think there should be a lot of reading together even when the texts and videos are on NowComment.

So what kind of teaching do we do around a 56 minute documentary? We can't just show it, can we?

I wonder how we can do this in the playlists too.

I wonder where the idea of doing a history mini-unit came from. I think it's confusing. It takes the eye off language.

How do we keep this alive and connected for the youth doing these playlists?

This issue of depth and looking for patterns is an especially difficult one for ELLs. I wonder how we will address it in our playlist.

I love this a an outline for what to create for posts on Youth Voices:

• narratives
• poetry
• a culminating essay about language
• a "take-it-to the people" project, teaching others

I wonder how long Louise plans to do this unit and how long we can expect youth to work through playlists based on this curriculum

Here's another great idea for found poetry.

Here's an idea that has a lot of possible extensions.

Who could disagree? The question is how.

That's interesting. I wonder how integral narrative reporting is to solutions journalism.

I love this rallying cry.

Is this "the medium is the message?"

This is also clear in giving and teaching how to give feedback to writers as well.

I was unaware of this. It would have been pretty easy to for Trump to disavow these signs.

Some ideas to get your started

This is an another skill that we introduce when teaching six word memoirs: https://www.lrng.org/youth-voices/badge/six-word-memoir-1

An important skill we use in evaluating six word memoirs: https://www.lrng.org/youth-voices/badge/six-word-memoir-1

I love how this articulates a day by day practice.

That makes sense. Can we say what this political desire looks like right now?

These are high ideals, and he just said that he wasn't going to offer a "how to teach" guide. Hmm... still I bend toward wanting to know what this means in practice.

I don't get it. These small differences had a large effect, but the training didn't matter? What are they saying? How are you feeling about this? What does it make you think about your question?

This is such a generalization and a fascinating one. I'd can't wait to see more!

I like questions like “Why do I like chicken nuggets?”

When a girl in the back of the room blurts out this question, half a joke, half a test (Do they really want us to write down any question that we think of?), she seems a bit surprised to have her query treated seriously.

Thanks for that question Neisha. Let's use it as an example of how to think of keywords for each of your questions. What would be a good one for that question?

Chicken nuggets.

Not really. That’s too specific. What's a more general word.

“Food,” somebody yells.

Right, write that down Neisha. What kind of food are we talking about?

Junk food. Fast food. Fried food.

Right. Right. Where do you get chicken nuggets?

Down on Nostrand Avenue where all the fast food places are.

And who…

Neisha catches the drift, interrupts: It’s in my neighborhood and not in White people's neighborhoods. They get healthy food, which is hard to find where I live.

So could we add “health” to your keywords?

Yeah.

And what else is in your description? What about “inequality?“

And “racism.”

What else?

They’re good, Mister.

So, what about “delicious? “

Do we have to write five keywords for every question?

Yup.

Ahhhh.

But what a gift this question was! Do you see how a question can start with something personal, something real for you, even if you aren't sure how important it is? Keep putting the personal pronoun, I, in your questions, then ask your friends and your teachers to help you find the social justice behind them. That's what to look for in your keywords.

Follow this link to a screencast and directions for how to submit one link for your best annotations on Hypothes.is. Here's the Vimeo Screencast.

As a student recently wrote in a brainstorm of questions, "Why are people judged by what they were?" https://www.instagram.com/p/86A-X7OmNX/?taken-by=paulrallison That's something else going from a "criminal history" to a trait: "bad actor." Maybe he was unlucky enough to not be able to escape the criminal justice system. Maybe he was a good person who had something terrible follow him.

Here's a history of this the process of gentrification that Linda Christensen uses in here gentrification curriculum: BLEEDING ALBINA: A HISTORY OF COMMUNITY DISINVESTMENT, 1940–2000

The three men yelling this at Black Lives Matter demonstrators must not have learned their lessons in Linda Christensen's English class at Jefferson High School http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/EJ/1052-nov2015/EJ1052Focus.pdf

No representation of skill trees captures the concept completely, but what I hope is evident on this page is that any Badge, with its related Playlist, should be connected to other Badges and Playlists that come before (in this case, above) it, and it should be one of a few available choices (represented in this case by other Badges and Playlists on the same row), and that it leads to other Badges and Playlists (below it), and that what comes next has choices as well.

You could spend 30 seconds off line or longer online... and you can take many hours or days learning how to use a image editor. (See YouTube.)

Remember this Mood Board is about the sources of inspiration for your poetry on this author's page.

Obviously, you'll want to put your bio here. Adding an image or a video is optional.

You can change the color of each of the eight boxes here. The boxes will grow to the size of the content you put in them, with the columns in each row remaining even.

We will set up a page for you, and ten (or fewer) of your poems will show up in this slider if you add a tag to each.

The tag is: 10poems

(just the number and word without a hashtag)

Add the tag 10poems to each poem that you want to show up in this space.

Thomas is writing about his essay on Youth Voices.

Thomas is writing about this essay on Youth Voices.

Who wouldn't support this goal, but when I think about it, I end up in a chicken and egg loop: do we work to eliminate poverty to provide more equitable access or do we provide more equal educational experience to reduce poverty? Of course the answer is yes, both. But where to begin?

Nice graphic here:

So often we are thinking the other way around: How can I find a parallel in technology that would give youth an experience in learning similar to what they get in the classroom? I actually this is a great way to begin to design learning experiences for student, and what we find is that we sometimes end up with even richer materials and wider/deeper connections with others when we move enable learning with technology. Still starting with what works without the tech makes sense often.

Or it can do the opposite. It can reify longstanding practices, diminish and undermine relationships between educators and students, widen the gaps between wealthy and poor students, and lock students into step-by-step online curriculum.

Love this careful distinction: tech is not enough, and tech can provide learning experiences for youth that can't be attained without technology.

Wow I wonder what that means! If it's "the ship in a fleet that carries the commanding admiral," then I can expect to see other tech policy ships, and who is our admiral? Seriously, it would be great if this kind of leadership existed.

and ours, I suppose.

Join @EddieONY @eavidon @gracer @bluegina @juliemiele &more @nycwp techrs edtechtalk.com/ttt 2nite 9ET/6PT goo.gl/clhWV3 #NWP

Interesting. So this was a whole-school effort?

It's not a strategy, a program, or a technology, it's a position of peer leadership, a way of working with colleagues.

This work was in schools with teachers, right? When foundations and funders of after school programs ask about how to "spread and scale" the work, it baffles me that they don't begin to answer their questions by turning to how to effectively bring the innovative after school work to teachers and students in schools. Working on the connections between in school and out of school learning is important!

Great title. It puts us into the middle of work that is designed for change.

More about Ella Baker here

I love how this program has roots and is new.

This is especially true when we think about segregated schools, and how we need to teach in them without accepting them

Important facts!

Five years after I started teaching, and a couple of years into our work at University Heights Secondary School where we were inspired with the Coalition of Essential Schools to re-think school from the bottom up -- and in our case for African-American and Latino students in the Bronx.

But isn't this also what Roberta Davenport is doing at P.S. 307? Not waiting for racism to disappear, but accepting that it will always be with us, and trying to build an educational environment that resists injustice, that teaches the students how and why they are in segregated schools, and what we can do about it -- but also a stance that rejects judging schools by test scores and other standard measures.

That was then, that is NOW!

And I know that my giving up on integration basically denies the truth of this. When I say that we need to give the African-American and Latino students the best counter-education we can give them, I am accepting that they will always be separate and unequal. I don't accept that, but what can I do about it? This is inspiring: http://www.integratenyc4me.com/

Wow. That should never be a problem for a parent.

Behind this assumption is that the education is better in those other schools as well.

Thank god! Does this only depend on an individual, though?

How -- oh how -- do we judge schools?

The "everyday violence" of this is easy to imagine, impossible to solve.

It's more complicated than this. There are a few options that have excellent resources, and many more options that are under resourced, not just two. And why point this out? Because it doesn't seem as stark as it's presented here on the ground... and the subtle differences between top-tier and lower tier schools fools some into thinking that this separation isn't real.

Here's a relevant quote from this study: "Schools with mostly zoned students generally reflect neighborhood segregation patterns. Those with the means to attend less disadvantaged schools are also often the more advantaged students or families, which increases the segregation within CSDs and the city." There is so much that would be possible to study around these issues. What a rich multi-disciplinary (history, law, politics, statistics, English) project this could be! Here's another interesting source that is distracting me from Hannah-Jones's essay: http://editorial-ny.dnainfo.com/interactives/2014/12/diversity/diversity-frame.html Try this: go to any neighborhood, and start with All Schools, then go to Middle Schools, then High Schools. Notice the green dots (schools with Whites) disappearing? Of course in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Hannah-Jones lives, this stays the same across the different ages -- only Black-dominant schools are available.

Very much like the exceptions that I was pointing out in my own teaching experience.

Uh... wait a second, shouldn't we be doing numbers for elementary public-school students?

Ah-- now we are getting to a real goal. I do like that Nikole Hannah-Jones is making clear her personal frame for these issues. What's mine? I grew up in a town in Pennsylvania, where "the racial makeup of the borough was 97.32% White..." and the one high school in the town reflected this homogeneity. As a teacher (except for a couple of years in Salt Lake City), I have always taught in segregated African-American and Latino public schools in New York City -- except, I need to remember, for three years of teaching at the East-West School for International Studies in Flushing, where the diversity of students was something special. And there was a lot of diversity at the International School at LaGuardia where I also taught for a few years. SO... There are exceptions, and I suppose these exceptions are important to think about as I consider my own frames and biases on these issues.

Again... Is this a goal?

Location, location, location! In the end we made decisions about where our children would go to school based on where the schools were located -- not totally, but it was an important part of our decision.

Is this the goal?

This makes me want to take the time to figure out the argument that I heard explained on the Brian Lehrer Show about six months ago http://www.wnyc.org/story/neighborhoods-are-integrated-while-schools-stay-segregated/ Here's the study they are talking about http://www.centernyc.org/segregatedschools and the basic thesis is that even while neighborhoods are integrated (or -- as this author says about Bedford-Stuyvesant "rapidly gentrifying"), schools remain segregrated. I'm assuming that it's because middle class (and White?) parents who might be moving into segregated neighborhoods are still not sending their children to schools in those neighborhoods.

There is so much here to respond to. First this analysis is clearly about what happens in elementary schools, and whatever "racial and socioeconomic divisions" this mother has found in elementary school, just wait until high school. We are a segregated school system. So does this mean that we should be fighting against this and supporting policies that would lead to more integration? Or should we focus on making the schools that Black and Latino students go to are the best they can be for these students?

THIS is something I could learn more about.

Although there is much more that is possible in connecting youth in the middle of their research process, our experience of having students post at many and early stages of their inquiry/research process is invaluable!

Sometimes this takes weeks or even months. I remember taking a walk with an art teacher several years ago, and I asked him how a particular student was doing in his class, and specifically what he was working on because it was hard for me to figure out how to get him connected to my work in English. It was November, just before Thanksgiving, and my colleague said, "I haven't figured out what his project will be yet," he said, before going on to explain a couple of things he had tried without success. I was struck with how patient he was being in letting the project come to the student, and not forcing him into a prescribed curriculum. Waiting is so hard, yet the work produced once there is a "flow" for a student makes it worth the wait. This has strong implications for school structures however! We need to be with students for longer periods of time. It also has implications for how groups work together. Perhaps a student who hasn't found his/her project yet can help others?

Funny thing is, one can imagine that students -- at least my students in the Bronx -- would come up with a similar list. They have! But you can't bring it to them. There are shades and subtleties that are important in any group's list of topics. Like my students wanted to explore why people from the Bronx are not treated the same as people from elsewhere.

Gentrification -- or housing patterns -- is a great topic to explore with youth, precisely because it is both in the news and the stories represent historical patterns that can be studied deeply. Similarly, this is a teaching moment that can be about what is happening in the lives of youth in our classes and built on the strategies of placed-based education and writing. I started to pull some of this together around Renee Watson's Youth Adult novel Close To Home and Linda Christensen's work with the Oregon Writing Project and beyond with the Roots of Gentrification. See http://youthvoices.net/home1 I'd love to finish some of this curriculum development -- but only when teaching the material with students, not in the abastract.

I hope this is true. And I love the idea that adults are that important to students. Still I wonder how this fits with the connected-learning notion that youth want to be heard and recognized by their peers. I suppose it isn't an either/or: some youth seek peer approval, others want to be heard by adults. When you post on an open social network, you never know who will respond.

Is it just the kids? What role do teachers, doctors, and parents play? And older siblings?

learning code = computer science? I guess, but I also wonder if my need to learn code has come more from a desire to communicate on social media more effectively.

There's also something about teachers who went to school then too. I'm one of them, and I love to tinker with the curriculum.

Yup! That's the secret.

It's the different kinds of experiences in one place that makes Minecraft different.

And it's worth teasing out the differences.

That's an interesting verb. What skills does Jordan have that allow him to do this?

Notice how many options there are here: "some," not all the animals, kill and eat or tame and make pets.

This is what my students describe: loosing track of time while they are on Minecraft.

We can never underestimate the pleasures of moving around in what seems to be a virtual space.

He invites peers to play his game with him.

After reading a book, this 11-year-old sees ways to create his own version of an imagined world.

In the second paragraph, I'm delighting in how many different modes of thought are evident. First there's the making.

When I ask students to post on Youth Voices, I'm asking them to participate in mass media. It's a big jump for some who do very little by friend-to-friend communication.

These are preventable. That seems to be the message. Jill Stein is well suited to a year when Flint is still a boiling cauldron.

Wow. So my allowing students to play Minecraft is giving them too much structure in their play, and they need to learn more skills for overcoming frustration?

Or coding or doing homework or reading, writing, having a conversation...

I think Faith says this: that kids turn to Minecraft because school is boring. And I'm wondering if there is a way to take this activity and turn it to more imaginative, creative projects.

I wonder if students feel this way after playing Minecraft during lunch. Why would they?

Key word here, I imagine, is "can." It probably all depends on how the time on Minecraft is structured, and I worry that I haven't done this well enough for my students.

Parents need to give children "structured" play time and more "free time." Granted, but what do the structures look like and don't we need to do the same in school for youth of all ages? We need play AND we need to think about how to structure this play.

When I watch Gabriel, Faith, Mia, and others playing Minecraft, I worry that the game is inspiring more "work, work, work..." or mindless obsession than it is creative making and expression.

That's how school feels to many youths!

This would be a good goal for developing Youth Voices too.

Such a simple mechanic! I wonder how we could conduct classes that way... something that would encourage building or getting busted back to nothing.

Perhaps part of the appeal of Minecraft comes from this separation between people who get it and those of us who prefer more clear instructions or goals. Perhaps some of this is generational too.

I've been in the first two categories: timid and uninformed, and I've watched my students be adventurous players!

This is off-putting to some of us, but I guess a lot of young people like the freedom of being able to get lost in such a world without "instruction."

It continues to be quite popular!

I guess when they sold it to Microsoft, they were finished?

So there's more to it than building things and surviving? A student who plays minecraft told me today that he thinks you actually do learn what you are simulating in the game. "Like when you build a garden, you learn how to farm," he told me. Hmmmm.

This is really interesting. Of course, it's not an either/or, but this helps me to understand how it looks through the eyes on an engaged youth.

These are indeed the stories we need to hear, and the data that needs to be collected -- how ever she drew data from narratives.

I think it's important to be able to identify the changes in attitude, relationships and moods that we can see when at-risk teenagers begin to be self-directed learners. If we could see what these changes look like and agree on them, then we might be able to assess students better. Currently none of the ways we move or prevent students from moving through school make sense to me: social promotion (advancement because of age), testing (usually of a small subset of math and reading skills), or even portfolio assessment (because at-risk students usually don't have a body of "mastery" level work).

Is this our fate? I'm afraid it might be. In other words, are we fighting to change this inequity or are we working to "innovate" within it? And what does this innovation mean really?

So... what would a portfolio of "Understanding Yourself" have in it? How would we assess it?

These are particularly important in schools, and rarely measured well or given their due in positive ways, although we are good at punishing their lack.

I wonder if this is about understanding the web and hyperlinks, and coding... too.

I love his examples here. They are urban, rural, natural, built... but all real-world.

Seems like a pretty important path toward success in our culture right now, even if it isn't as recognized in school.

I guess I do have a prejudice for this one. Don't all people use language to learn, reason, argue, and communicate, no matter their discipline or field?

I love the exploratory, scientific note in this opening sentence. We are promised Gardner's "current" thinking, and speculations about where this work might go next, not some sort of settled notion about there being six or eight intelligences, not a complete theory, but a snapshot of how we might think about these issues.

Got to get to bed!

Can't help but think of how thread-bare these bonds are with the police (and it isn't just African-American's feel this distrust.)

Recent statistics I read in the NYTimes. Number of ISIS fighters in 2014 = 30,000. Number of fighters killed in air strikes in 2015 = 25,000. Number of ISIS fighters at the end of 2015 = 30,000. New math? 30 - 25 = 30? (And only 6 non-combatants were killed the U.S. claims.)

Ever need inspiration about youth? Check out their work on climate change on Youth Voices: http://youthvoices.net/search/node/climate

How do these compare to Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms"?

Dan Doernberg put the address on NowComment -- another place to comment: https://nowcomment.com/documents/44829/

Here's a recent assessment of the candidates by a tenth grader: http://youthvoices.net/discussion/our-presidential-candidates-fearful-or-cautious

Join teachers and students from around the country to annotate Obama's last State of the Union address on Tuesday at 9PM. Join Jeremy Dean, as he leads an "annotatathon" -- one of many we hope to see during this electoral season, as part of the Letters to the Next President project, co-sponsored by the NWP and WQED. Keep your eye out for the link to the transcript of the speech then join us on hypothes.is to annotate it live -- or later this week. Have your students join us live or later in the week as well!

I want to talk to Mark Naison about this.

I'm deeply saddened by this response. I've felt it so often. But what would Jamar have been able to do with those few more hours? What could have stopped this tragedy from speeding down to its inevitable end.

What does that mean?!? Is it something in him? In our schools? In his experiences in his adoptive family? In not having a steady job? In getting pushed in and out of jail? What?

Come again?

I guess this is a basic human need: connection. But I'm struck with how sensitive Jamar was about this need. This sentence makes me want to write a song or a poem about Jamar, the lovely repetition of "cared" and "care."

This sentence and others in this article point to Jamar's connections to family: biological and adoptive parents, 14 siblings, wanting a family of his own, and a nurturing, loving man. And the police call him a "bad actor." Which is it? I guess he could be both. What does this phrase "When things were going well..." mean? Does it mean when Tim was providing employment and a motel room?

That seems pretty clear by now, a tragic series of events with Jamar going "in and out" of prison for three of his most precious years, his early 20's. But what can we imagine instead? How might "the system" respond to "troubled youth"? Who can we help now to avoid Jamar's path?

What gave Tim Hoag this optimism? What was he missing? Or is it just luck who can move past "it" and who can't.

Once back on the streets there were times when I couldn't afford to take the bus I didn't know where I was going to sleep at night Thank God for Tim who would get me a motel room, and a job when he could.

I've made mistakes in my life, and I've paid my dues.

When the cops stopped us after a high speed chase in July, did they have to beat me too?

I want to know more about Tim Hoag and his wife and their rental properties. And how Jamar came into their orbit. How could government have supported Tim Hoag and his wife in their reaching out to Jamar?

Here's the beginning of a lead to learn more about Tim Hoag. He's the President of Copland Trucking. http://www.copelandtruc-king.com/team.htm

Piecing this together, it seems that many of Jamar's troubles started with this "petty misdemeanor" for marijuana possession when he was 18. How can we see this story as being about a young Black man who was ensnared in a system of prison and crime that would only make things worse for him.

I'm writing this from a workshop that Renee Watson and Linda Christensen are doing at NCTE about housing and racism in Portland. Reading this sentence, I can't help wonder how housing and incarceration and racism and joblessness are at the heart of Jamar's anger and difficulties in his relationship with his girlfriend. And given his struggles for stable housing, doesn't that help us understand what is going on with Jamar as he faces the police after having another fight with his girlfriend. The last sentence in this article must be given attention. How could we have done one more thing to help him?

Okay, so which of these is more credible. Isn't it irresponsible journalism to just report such an important detail as he said/she said? Which of the people who the reporter interviewed seemed most credible? Who was actually there?

Sarah Gartnor, a friend of Chris Rodgers -- who took us over to the 4th Precinct yesterday (Thursday) -- told us that when she was sitting in the Mayor's living room the night before as part of a protest, a special prosecutor told her and her fellow protesters that Jamar had been beaten at the end of this high-speed chase. He was about to testify about that beating in January, he told her.

He's had a hard time, but this sounds ugly.

What does this mean? Was he is prison or not?

Okay, he was either reaching for a gun or he was handcuffed. How does a reporter merely report this without pointing out that this is clearly NOT what many witnesses said happened. And I would assume that she did follow-up interviews with quoting these eye-witnesses. what did these "union reps" have to say about why their story is so different?

Putting this out there like this: Are we expected to trust this or not. Is this totally up to the reader and his/her background as to whether or not we are to trust the "police union representatives?" Certainly we can all agree that these reps have a reason to make Clark look bad. Why doesn't the writer remind us of that fact?

What a sentence! I keep reading it and wondering what he would say if he could read it. Twenty-four -- with the last three years in prison, living at times in a motel, and he cared deeply about his parents and 14 siblings!

The details below -- about throwing a brick, etc.... -- make me wonder, but I hope so. No matter what this is a tragedy!

Yes, they used their hands AND they used at least one gun to kill Jamar.

Is this a formula? Dragging up a victim's past? And what's going to happen as I read this (again). On my first reading, I was upset with how Jamar was trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to escape the criminal justice system, and now it finally caught up to him.

There are annotations from the "Youth Voices" group on this court filing. Join our conversations here.

There are annotations from the "Youth Voices" group on this article. Join our conversations here.

There are annotations from the "Youth Voices" group on this editorial. Join our conversations here.

There are annotations from the "Youth Voices" group on this editorial. Join our conversations here.

It's hard to remember how much of New Orleans was devastated and for how long.

Perhaps New Orleans is a global symbol of what Naomi Klein has called Disaster Apartheid

"Bush doesn't care about Black people," made clear the neglect that we felt immediately, but it was only later the I became aware of the years of incompetence and broken systems that led to the storm surge doing so much damage. Immediately -- and for me to this day -- New Orleans was a symbol of carbon corporate power. Where is BP in this sentence in the Times?

It's that "special direction" that becomes the key to organizing a curriculum. How do we help students to attach their interests to a direction in their lives? Or am I wrong to think that Whitehead, here, is pointing to a learning experience that connects interest with being of use in society, with political activism.

I love the details, the pride, the power of this description!

But how exactly are they related? And doesn't this (of course it does) deeply complicate the concerns about "black-on-black" crime, making the violence experience by a black youth all part of a connected system of violence?

I wonder if curriculum like this http://youthvoices.net/blacklivesmatter makes similar mistakes.

I wonder if our "BlackLivesMatter" curriculum sometimes makes the same mistakes. http://youthvoices.net/blacklivesmatter

I wonder how he got there? These warm memories are wonderful to read.

Or Restorative Justice these days, I suppose. Yeah, there's something going on here. I need to just listen more.

Only? I get the contrast Coates is describing here, but can't we have non-violence and a savage civilization, with reality bouncing between these?

This, of course, is flipping Martin Luther King's famous quote about "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." It's upsetting to think that Coates is saying that the reality is that the arc bends toward death, not justice.

See:

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/15/arc-of-universe/

and

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129609461

What about school? Can school be a retreat from the culture of the street? Or does it just extend that culture?

Given my interest in inquiry and the use of questions, I wonder if Coates would say the same about school, that it transforms "every ordinary day into a series of trick questions," and (I fear) "every incorrect answer risks a beat-down" -- even if it's just humiliation and bad grades.

Teachers need to understand that this is going on in our classrooms too.

I'm trying to remember if I, growing up in a home that thought of itself as white in a small town, ever felt this dread. I do remember fearing death as a child, but it was when I was in the back seat of a car, watching the highway rushing by. I don't remember feeling like anybody could kill me.

Does "surging rage" = fear?

A different kind of dream from the Dream referred to in the first couple of paragraphs.

Why do we have to accept this as either/or here? Why can't we continue to embrace both sides of this opposition?

And I guess that the point is that we have to live with both sides of the oppositions presented in this paragraph

And what about the other side of this? What if a school, like the Lyons Community School in Brooklyn practices Restorative Justice. Does that prepare those youths to deal with cops who treat them with disrespect and violence in the streets? See Act Three. The Talking Cure. of This American Life 538: "Is this Working?" October 17, 2014.

the feeling that your funky little system is cool when we're in school and all, but don't try and take it and apply it to our world. You're in over your head.

Actually listen to the whole thing to see that they also end up, like Coates, with "maybe, yes, maybe, no."

This reminds me of the incident during the Baltimore Uprising in April where Toya Graham beats her son. Stacey Patton wrote about this:

The kind of violent discipline Graham unleashed on her son did not originate with her, or with my adoptive mother who publicly beat me when I was a child, or with the legions of black parents who equate pain with protection and love. The beatings originated with white supremacy, a history of cultural and physical violence that devalues black life at every turn. From slavery through Jim Crow, from the school-to-prison pipeline, the innocence and protection of black children has always been a dream deferred. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/29/why-is-america-celebrating-the-beating-of-a-black-child/