Carissa Explains It All

      In the film I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck was both inspiring and sickening in the same viewing. It was almost like James Baldwin had a magic crystal ball in 1968 and knew what was to come regarding the struggle for justice amongst the black community. He predicted the Black Lives Matter Movement. Just as Robert F. Kennedy had prophesied before he was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles in 1968 he said that in twenty years a man of color would become president. His prophecy came true with the election of Barack Hussein Obama II in 2009. However, although we elected our first black president, it has been marred from the ever constant struggle for blacks to be seen as equal members of US society. Baldwin's account is haunting in that he was a witness to lives and death of three prominent men, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr whose words will echo throughout history forever.      One of the first things that I noticed from this film was Jame

         In the United States, one cannot refute that the passing of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990 was not a turning point for people with disabilities. However, almost thirty-years later we still see gross inequities within the dis/abled community. While reading Disability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/abilty by Annamma, Conor and Ferri brought up a range of emotions and memories. I have witness first-hand what it is like to live with a disability. My cousin Richard who was born in 1929 he had no formal schooling and was sixty years later diagnosed as being on the Autism Spectrum Disorder, which in the reading these "notions of dis/ability continually shift over time according to social context." Had it not been for my grandmother's family, my cousin Richard would've ended up at the Howard Complex in Cranston, Rhode Island where the disabled were lumped in with the mentally ill. My grand

Of our textbooks 1,192 pages, fewer than 100 pages are dedicated to people of color. That's less than 10% of our history curriculum, in a district where 91% of students are people of color .-Providence student Afaf Akid.       This quote is a testament that there is an inherent need for students to learn about their culture in academic institutions. Ethnic Studies should not be an elective on a transcript, but embedded in all classes. The film Precious Knowledge begins in Tucson, Arizona, Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). Here, there are 32,500 Latinos, a majority, not minority. The nationwide dropout rate at the time of the documentary for Mexican-Americans was 50%. That means if a Mexican-American looked to their classmates on their left and right, one of those classmates would not see their graduation. This staggering statistic is the reality for many of our students of color. Furthermore, disallowing students to study about their culture as seen in the film, is evidence t

I can conclude that I am not a person of color, however I am a proud educator to students of all colors. This weeks readings and film The 13th , really hit home for me. This was my second time revisiting the film, after showing it to my Ethnic Studies class last winter that was not shocking to many of my students of color, but created a great discussion in my class. Many of my Black and Latino students  were overtly against policing and some who opened up about their personal experiences with the American penal system. Many of their family members had become products of "mass incarceration" that was heightened by Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill. Even after watching the documentary a second time, that opening statistic of incarceration's stared at me through the screen. The US has 5% of the world's population, but 25% prisoners. Insert head shaking GIF here. Furthermore, in 1972 incarcerations were 300,000. In 2020, it is almost 2.3 million. We talk about funding fo

          My week has been one of trials and tribulations. As an educator many of my colleagues returned to school; I was not one of them. I have been placed in the Providence Virtual Learning Academy (PVLA) due to my asthma, which under CDC Guidelines determines that I am at risk. However, since school began this virtual academy has laid testament to the gross inadequacies and inequalities that currently exist in our society and public education system. I can work from home, many cannot.       As of last year 2019, Providence had a student enrollment of 24,336 students. Out of that number, 65.8% are Hispanic and 16.2% are Black. COVID is affecting these two populations the worse. As of today there has been 86 new cases and the Providence municipality has some of the highest recorded cases. So one would ask, why did Providence Public Schools open? They opened, in my opinion due to politics, but this isn't what this post is about. In the article, T hinking About Racial Disparities i

  I am a teacher who stands up for my students against the machine of oppression , who is in favor of change against the tide of archaism , who is a supporter of the equities of education against suppression of individualism , and who is a defender of public education against a one size fits all educational model . I am a teacher who favors the permanent struggle against educational negligence and against the educational factory model . I am a teacher who rejects convention , because it is responsible for the imbalance in education today . I am a teacher who is full of hope , in spite of these times of darkness . I am a teacher who refuses to give up . I am a teacher proud of what I have learned from my students . If I do not struggle for better, attainable education for all , then I will no longer be able to call myself an educator.