Black History Month

A few weeks ago, some students from Leadership/Student Government asked for books to create a display for Black History Month. I did a display last year using pages from this calendar that I purchased on Amazon.  I remember that while researching what type of display to create, I felt conflicted after reading about Mike Wallace’s interview with Morgan Freeman. Freeman calls the establishment of Black History Month ridiculous and when Wallace asks him why, he says, “You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” Morgan goes on to ask Wallace if he wants a Jewish history month, to which he responds, “No.” Freeman says that Black history is American history and the way to get rid of racism is to “stop talking about it” in the way people refer to Wallace as a “white man” and himself as a “black man”; they are simply Morgan Freeman and Mike Wallace.

I don’t have anything new or profound to say on the topic. I wish I did. I do wonder about it a lot, though. I recently saw a Walmart commercial called ‘Here’s to the Weeknight,’ featuring an Asian husband preparing dinner. When he realizes he’s out of salad dressing, he texts his wife, who is Black, to pick some up at the store. The commercial is very dramatic, with several parts in slow motion, and a kitchen timer counting down from twenty minutes. My ten-year old son and I were in the living room and when it was over he chuckled a little, saying, “Sheesh! Did you see that?” My first thought was about the interracial couple but before I could answer he quickly followed with, “They make it so dramatic!” He doesn't notice race the way I do. My hope is that my son wouldn't define anyone by their race, that he would treat everyone he meets with dignity and respect, regardless of appearance. I think I understand why Freeman was insulted but until we have fully integrated Black history into American history, we need to raise awareness.

National Education Association - Black History Month Lesson Plans
Smithsonian - Black History Teaching Resources
The Library of Congress - African American History Month

Language

An English teacher at my school had his students read 1984 and write a research paper in response to it. I gave them a quick tour of the online resources our district offers and showed them how to navigate through some of the databases. North Korea and Cuba were the two obvious choices, but he wanted them to dig deeper, of course. The Ted Ed talk by Noah Tavlin, “What ‘Orwellian’ really means’ (http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-orwellian-really-means-noah-tavlin) was the perfect introduction to the research session.

When Trump began using the term “fake news,” I really didn’t see it as a term or phrase at all, but it’s become just that. George Lakoff, linguist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, provided some valuable insight through NPR’s Kurtzleben. Although Trump may use the term to refer to things he disagrees with, “calling something fake news implies that it isn’t news at all.” Using the term the way he does, Lakoff explains, “…undermines the credibility of real news sources, that is, the press. Therefore it makes it harder for the press to serve the public good by revealing truths. And it threatens democracy, which requires that the press function to reveal real truths.” It’s even more dangerous now, at a time when ideas travel so quickly, with such unfiltered power.

Language is so powerful. I remember when we bought our son his first mobile phone just a few years ago. It was a brick-type phone, and he was embarrassed by it because all of his friends had smart phones, and I perceived this as ingratitude. In conversation one day, he referred to it as a dumb phone and I was insulted. What he had to explain to me is that that’s an actual phrase. It’s not a dumb phone, it’s a dumb-phone. Oh. Does that then dilute the power of the word “dumb”? I think so.

Kurtzleben, D. (2017, February 17). With ‘Fake news,’ Trump moves from alternative facts to alternative language. All Things Considered.  Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2017/02/17/515630467/with-fake-news-trump-moves-from-alternative-facts-to-alternative-language

Social Fabric

I found Dormont’s article, “The French connection: Remembering the American librarians of post-WWI France” on ALA’s website under “Library News.” Some things from this article struck me: “Economic reconstruction and health care were priorities, but Morgan [who mobilized the volunteer movement for relief activities and was the daughter of J.P. Morgan] believed that education and recreation played as much of a role in reweaving the social fabric of these communities.” She spearheaded efforts to provide shop and home economics classes, as well as kindergarten services, cinemas, sports, and libraries. What would I consider to be the most important aspects of my social fabric? What weaves and bonds me together and more tightly with others? Do I enhance that fabric or am I like an ugly stain, threatening to spread?

My immediate social fabric is my family. I will always consider their needs first. But unless we are completely self-sufficient, that fabric will quickly unravel. Nickols, Collier, and Holland (2015) share:

               

Individuals fret about their families, about family relationships, finances, education, health, housing, and happiness…They fret about new connections, changing roles, relocation, and securing resources. As they go about their personal lives, their micro-level decisions on these family matters accumulate into broad social changes culminating in greater complexity of families and communities today (p. 16).

I am amazed by Morgan’s vision to rebuild the basic needs of the community, things that I take for granted every day. Libraries and recreational centers don’t just provide for our needs, they make us resources for one another by gathering us together for emotional support.

Dormont also shares, “Prior to the war, the focus of French librarianship was still on collection and conservation, with municipal libraries catering mostly to scholarly research. The field was male-dominated, often by scholars more preoccupied with the preservation of the books than the needs of the reader.” We’ve come so far - libraries are now known as the great democratizers and I cannot stray from that vision in my day-to-day responsibilities.

References

Dormont, M. 2017 February 16. “The French connection: Remembering the American librarians of post-WWI France. American Libraries Magazine. Retrieved from https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2017/02/16/french-connection-librarians-wwi-france/

Nickols, S. s., Collier, B. J., & Holland, J. M. (2015). Families in the Social Fabric: Unraveling or Reweaving? Considerations for Family and Consumer Sciences. Journal Of Family & Consumer Sciences, 107(1), 10-18.

Poetry

My Emerging Trends group is working on Makerspaces in the middle school library. While exploring options in the language arts content area I came across visual poetry. I love the tips provided on the Power Poetry website on how to write visual poetry and the Poetry Foundation provides some great resources.

I was trying to get some research done while hosting a play date for my ten-year old son. As I was browsing through different resources, he and his three friends decided to engage in a Nerf war. It was also during this time that my thirteen-year-old son decided to practice the piano. He’s working on an easier version of Caprice and a contemporary Christian piece, “Good, Good Father.” Instead of feeling like the noise and activity were competing against each other, it was as if they were a harmonious reflection of our crazy household. I can barely put into words how full my heart felt but the noise did it all for me. It made me think of another option to poetry expression – music.

Last year was my first at my library and I wasn’t sure what to do for National Poetry Month. There wasn’t a lot of traffic when I started so I experimented. And when there wasn’t a steady flow of newcomers, I felt like the little things I did could serve as appreciation for the faithful few. 

One of my students created this poster and we put scrolls of poems inside the pockets.

On another day, I provided pages from old books, markers and colored pencils, and created a black-out poetry station. I’ll try to fish out the examples my students and I made. One day we invited performers from Get Lit (getlit.org) to share their personal works with students. The spoken word revolution has had a huge following and has experienced great success; I was embarrassed that I hadn’t already known more about it.

All this to say that sometimes it can be difficult for people to convey meaning in the traditional structure of the written word and when we can provide creative and alternative outlets of expression, we give them a voice.