Teach Out Proposal: Revisiting a Flawed Report

 Step 1: Choose a Text

While I intend to use a fair number of the concepts and topics that we've covered in class, I intend to use The Silenced Dialogue by Lisa Delpitt and One Room Schoolhouse - Chapter 2 by Sal Khan as my main two texts. I think both of these texts challenge conventional ideas of education by examining how our educational system is largely designed not as an effective education tool, but rather a system with more complex and less-lofty goals. 

Step 2: Choose an Audience

In 2023 and 2024, I was the Mayoral Designee on a Legislative Commission created to provide recommendations on labor-management standards for the Providence Public School District. The robustly named "Special Legislative Commission to Review and Provide Recommendations for Professional and Labor-Managment Standards that Provide School-based Flexibility and Accountability for Employees of Providence Public Schools" never actually issued our final report, as the two members of the commission representing the two teacher unions quit in protest when the final draft of the report was written. That report can be found here. 

For my teach-out, I intend to hold several meetings. I intend to meet separately with: (1) former Commission Chair Senator Samuel Zurier; (2) My former boss and replacement at the Providence Mayor's Office, and (3) hopefully the members of the Unions, though I think that is my most uncertain meeting. 

Step 3: Choose a Format

I think for a structure I will use 1:1 or 1:2/3 meetings that I record. What I would like to do is talk through the top-level recommendations of the report, and how I now see this report through a new lens as a teacher. I want to use the Khan and Delpitt texts to really unpack with Senator Zurier and Chief of Policy Sheila Dormody some of the inherent and flawed assumptions we make about what needs to stay the same in education, and make an appeal for boldness when we think about education policy. I also want to bring some of my personal experiences into the framework for talking specifically about student behaviors and management within a structure that (as Kahn describes) is not designed with their well-being in mind. I would like to emerge from these meetings with recorded audio, and some interesting notes or questions raised by these two phenomenally intelligent policy minds. 

Creating Helpful Guidelines or Passing the Buck?

Introduction 

On May 1, 2019, then-Mayor Jorge Elorza signed a "Plastic Bag Ban" into effect in the city of Providence. This ordinance unequivocally banned businesses from using single-use plastic bags to contain the items purchased by their customers. And yet, five years later, I had to stop the deli just two blocks away from Providence City Hall from putting my Friday-Treat sandwich, iced tea, chips, second bag of chips, and cookie (I'm a weak man) into a plastic bag. Huh? What? Why? I remember walking down the street with food flowing out of every pocket, a living example of the distance between "policy", "execution of policy," and "desired behavior change." 

The issue with the plastic bag ban was an issue of enforcement. In Providence, businesses were supposed to face a series of escalating fines for noncompliance, but the ban did not specify the agency responsible for inspecting and fining businesses. The ban did not have a budget to finance those increased responsibilities or a funding apparatus to ensure they did not lapse. After an initial flurry of communication, the ban was delegated to a newly created Sustainability Office alongside other small responsibilities like addressing the disproportionate impact of climate change on low-income frontline communities. And so, a policy of a complete ban was relegated to newsletters and social media posts, and failed to achieve any desired behavior change.  

How Do We Create Safe Schools? 

I could not stop thinking about this dilemma as I read through RIDE's "Guidance for Rhode Island Schools on Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students," PPSD's  "Guidelines and Implementation Strategies for Nondiscrimination - Transgender and Gender Expansive Students," and my own Woonsocket Education Department's "Transgender Student Non-Discrimination Policy." In line with the chapter "Queering Our Schools," I saw a central argument that schools should be places where every child, parent, and staff member feel comfortable openly occupying all parts of their identity. However, the central question in my mind is how these policies actually create the conditions necessary for that to occur. 

The authors of "Rethiniking Sexism, Gender, and Sexuality" published their work in January 2016, a year before the first inauguration of Donald Trump. They spend a large amount of time and space focused on individual actions that people can take. It cites the work of advocates like Sasha or Jeydon Lordo in advocating from the ground up, credits the role of administrators and unions in supporting staff, and cites the responsibility of social studies teachers like myself to provide historical context. I credit all of these examples as important, and yet feel obligated to copy and paste the text that appears above a blog from the Indian Health Service's fantastic description of Two-Spirit, a topic I always cover when we discuss pre-Columbian America: 

Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of 11:59 PM, February 14 2025. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate, and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.

I would guess that there was a glaring lack of support for gender nonconfirming students in 2016, and unfortunately I think it's only been upgraded by active opposition. But I'm a good civics teacher, and so I know that education, and particularly safe guarding students who have unique educational needs, falls to the state. And so I turn to the RI Department of Education (RIDE). 

RIDE's Guidelines do some incredibly helpful things. The systematic review of federal and state laws provide the backbone to this document and lend weight and validity, while the definitions provides each district with a rapid and necessary education. Providence and Woonsocket mirror the format, definitions, and policies provided in these guidelines, though I do particularly appreciate small differences like Woonsocket's note that teachers may use their discretion when sharing information with parents. I think Delpit would agree with me when I say there can be a gulf between the comfort a liberally-minded Social Studies teacher feels on these issues versus a Woonsocket parent. But is a set of well written policies really going to accomplish RIDE's goal of ensuring a safe and supportive environment for all students? And is delegating ALL of these responsibilities to the schools going to create actual behavior change? Or is this just an empty policy without any form of execution? 

In Providence, they claim they will have Transgender and Gender Expansive Student Point Teams at every school. As I was writing this blog post, I recieved an email from my building principal. It says: 

The MLL Department in Woonsocket is looking for any educator to join the MLL Regulations Implementations Team. You do not need to teach MLLs. All voices are welcome. [. . . ] Due to the scope and complexity of new regulations, this is the team that is responsible for a phased and thoughtful rollout. [. . . ]

This is not a good sign. I think more often than not, this is the end-result of handing off complex and difficult responsibilties to already overstretched districts. 

What if . . . 

So I will go back and start with an asset mindset instead of a deficit one. We have a good  goal of creating a safe and supportive environment for all students. And we have a reasonably good set of guidelines and policies. And I think that in every school we have students and faculty who could come together and support this work. We are bursting with all the conditions necessary to actually make this goal happen. 

What we lack is that bridge of "execution" that connects policy to behavior change. What if instead of just guidelines, we had funding incentives? What if instead of instructions we had an Office of Civil Rights at RIDE to make sure this work happened? Policies are fine, but people are the ones who actually make the work happen. 

Tell Me How the Sausage is Made

My first year teaching (aka last year), I received the advice to only create a few, simple, easy-to-understand classroom rules. The four rules I created included cell phone use (none), touching each other (please don't), and being respectful (what does that even mean?). Students also created class norms over the course of several classes for each group, but the rules were mine. Midway through the year, trying to get a student to stop wandering around my classroom and/or yelling to her friends across the class, she said something along the lines of, "Mr. KV, you have so many confusing rules and you don't write them down!" 

In the chapter "The Silenced Dialogue," Lisa Delpit notes that oftentimes white liberal educators create a white supremacist culture of unspoken expectations and rules that mirror the SCWAAMP power structure we've discussed in class. Delpit argues that students should be explicitly taught that structure and codes of power in the classroom, and to do so teachers need to be in consultation with adults who share their students'  culture. Delpit follows a theme of this "culture of power" that exists within classrooms, reflects our current society, and is often blindly perpetuated by overly defensive do-gooders. 

Early in the text,  Delpit provides several examples to demonstrate how unhelpful ignoring unspoken rules or expectations is for someone who does not comprehend how they are failing to meet that standard. Her example of the interview hints or asking questions that are intended as directions illustrate how accepted language can derail someone. Classroom rules often perpetuate this issue, for example in the image to the left. What is "showing respect" in Rule 3? What are safe choices, or active participation and cooperation? Will a student be rewarded if they excitedly yell out their opinion during storytime? Or will they be confused on why their active participation was not wanted? These are the indirect ways of telling students that there is a code of conduct that they are expected to follow. This code will be simple and easy for some students to follow, and meanwhile others will be continually confused why they are failing to meet opaque expectations. 

To borrow an idiom, Delpit's chapter seemed to me like a detailed argument on teaching how the sausage is made. She notes several students' frustration with indirect methods of instruction, as they vent that the teacher did not do anything to actually teach them. She references a prevailing worry that there are secrets being kept and deliberately not shared with students who are outside of the existing power structures, when in fact it's more likely that teachers are designing lessons based on reinforcing or reviewing information that they assume students already possess. In the middle of the text, Delpit notes that the strongest teaching methods that she sees are explicit direct instruction, followed by student-centered conferencing. 

And yet, there still lies the question of how. I struggle with this question, because of the balance that must exist. I agree with the point that ignoring these power dynamics perpetuates the status quo, as it mirrors work that I've done earlier regarding aspects of white supremacist work culture. However, with a classroom there is a delicate balance that I'm not completely confident in navigating. It seems like a thin line between trying to incorporate instruction and committing the type of cultural genocide that Delpit references early in the text. However, luckily for me, she provides an answer. 

The last key point that Delpit notes in the idea of consultation. She notes how liberal academic spaces silence people who can speak from direct experience, and how ostracized the community can be from schools. It's only by working within and with that community that teachers will be able to navigate these questions. Because not all lessons are as easy as realizing you need to give direct instructions on 7th graders. Luckily for my students, that one was a quick one for me.