Truth, Learning, and Change

Knowing that a 30 plus page report is a lot when everyone is swamped with work and the rest of life, a team of students of Learning Network committee member Professor Chris Gallagher have produced aSummary Report that captures some of the major findings in our Phase One report. We hope you will check out this Summary Report–especially if you’re coming to the gathering on October 27.

Please know that we still want to hear your feedback on the complete report when you have time to get to it.

Many thanks to Northeastern University students s Charlie Lesh, Haley Hamilton, Erin Frymire, Rachel Lewis, Michael Turner, Bryanna Parker, Kevin Ruby, Jacob Erickson, Kathryn Bloom, and Amanda Sherman who worked with Chris on the Summary. It is much appreciated. You did a fabulous job!

If you haven’t already, please register and attend the gathering this coming Saturday October 27 from 9 am to 3:30 pm at SEIU 615, 26 West Street downtown Boston.  A light breakfast and lunch will be served. Also, if you have childcare needs please call UMN at 617-830-5085.  We know it’s an extremely busy time of year but your presence is so needed and we hope to see you there!

For a year and a half now we at the Boston Busing/Desegregation Project have been listening to stories – stories of the past, stories of he present, stories of pain and trauma, stories of succeeding and flourishing against odds, personal stories, and community stories. Through talking about Boston’s history, the busing/desegregation crisis, and issues of race and class segregation people have let us into their lives, which can be deeply personal but also highly illuminating. The BBDP works on the assumption that through listening to the stories and experiences of others we can both deepen our understanding of our history and connect our past struggles to today. Now, we are launching a project to formally record and share widely stories from Boston’s busing/desegregation crisis and its impacts from then until now.  There are three components to this project – three ways you can participate.

1. The Story Archive – through one-on one interviews we will collect individual stories, which will be recorded and transcribed for a searchable online archive. We’d like to collect at least 200 interviews in the coming year and plan to launch our online archive in May 2013. Have a story to tell? Email Meghan Doran to set up an interview.

2. Story Circles – Stories are not just about individuals – they are about bringing people together and listening to each other. We aim to have story circles in communities across the city this year. Email us to set up a story circle in your neighborhood.

3. Story Workshop series and Slam – Participants will learn to craft a five minute story to tell in front of an audience. Want to develop your story of Boston’s busing/desegregation crisis? Join us for this workshop series in January led by the talented folks at Massmouth

We can’t do any of this without volunteers! We need facillitators, interviewers, and transcribers/ Even a few hours of your time would be extremely helpful.  Contact us for more information about how you can help.

Since Mayor Menino announced that he wanted the Boston’s schools to adopt a plan which brought students closer to home back in January, we have been following the process very closely.  Now the Boston Busing/Desegregation project has joined with  community groups across the city in the Community Coalition for Equity, Excellence, and Engagement. This coalition is asking the BPS to slow down their process and put quality schools first. Want to know more? Read the Community Coalition Press Statement

At the coalition’s press conference our program director, Donna Bivens, had this to say:

When Bostonians look back at the crisis in education that occurred in the mid-70’s, we most often refer to it as “busing”. We do not recognize that “busing” was a school assignment process and it was a most a tactic. We do not consider the strategy of school desegregation that was meant to equalize resources and that that strategy needed to extend to race and economic segregation and inequities as well. And we do not consider the struggle for quality schools and education for all that was the ultimate goal. Today with well documented increasing racial and economic segregation in public education, we, through focusing on the tactic of school assignment rather than focusing on equitable access to excellent education for all stand poised to continue to misname of the problem

We have learned two lessons from listening to well over 2000 people reflect on Boston’s Busing/Desegregation crisis: no one has all the answers or knows the full story and everyone has something to bring to its development and conclusion—provided that is where our values lie. We have a unique opportunity to drop the “take no prisoners” politics of who has THE answer for Boston public schools and move to a “lose no passengers” collaboration and engagement that brings all our children to safety, to equal opportunity to learn, and to a school system that prepares them to be contributors and global citizens ready to face the challenging future that awaits them.

We also recently put out a statement on our involvement with the coalition and the lessons we think we can take from our past for today.

There are lots of things you can do as a part of the BBDP learning network or a concerned community member:

– Attend a community/External Advisory Committee meeting. Visit  http://bostonschoolchoice.org/ to stay up to date about community meetings. Be sure to listen, ask questins, and let the BPS and community know how you feel.

– Attend our Community Gathering on Equity, Access and Excellence, where we will link this history to what is going on in the city today, including with school assignment.

– Participate in Our What’s Your Story? Initiative. By telling your story you help us continue to broaden the narrative about Boston’s history and make concrete links between what happened then and our needs today.

– A group participating in our coalition, QUEST  (Quality Education for Every Student), has a petition circulating asking the BPS to slow down their process: http://signon.org/sign/a-petition-to-stop-the

– Stay informed; here are some recent articles about the process:

• Boston Globe
• Boston Herald
• New York Times
• The Atlantic Monthly
• Dorchester Reporter: On Grove Hall
• Dorchester Reporter: On Mattapan
• The Patch
• Bay State Banner

Greetings!

We hope you had a wonderful summer. We are excited to share with you Can We Talk about Equity, Access and Excellence: Connecting Our Past to Our Future, a report on the first phase of the Boston Busing/Desegregation Project.

This report is our attempt to synthesize all we heard and learned in this Phase of the Project which:

•  raised awareness of the Project,
• built a Learning Network and
• began looking at the context for the crisis –its history, meaning and relevance for today–from the perspective of diverse communities.

There is a lot in the report but if you do not hear your voice, we strongly encourage you to talk back:  to share your agreements and disagreements and to add what’s missing in the spirit of truth-seeking and learning and change at the heart of this Project.

Also, please come to our first annual gathering on October 27 to move from what the learning of this report to next steps. Details to follow!

Earlier this summer, BBDP represented Union of Minority Neighborhoods –in making a presentation to the External Advisory Committee on Improving School Choice (EAC). Our program Equity, Access and Social Justice included a film clip of Can We Talk?  followed by six wonderful speakers:  educator Dr. Theresa Perry, community activist Carmen Pola, historian Dr. James Green, education activist Gina Chirichigno, BPS Achievement Gap director Dr. Carroll Blake, and special education advocate Toni Saunders. The panelists explored the many aspects of equity and access in public school education paying special attention to race and class disparities (see videos below). After the presentation, EAC and community members engaged in a lively discussion of the issues raised. (see notes from this discussion and the journaling on the film clip here)

Not surprisingly, many equity, access and quality education themes and conflicts that came up during the desegregation crisis of the 70’s continue to present themselves—for example,  issues of the conflict between “neighborhood schools” and equal access to quality schools, questions of whether equity is possible when the economic and social resources of different communities are so unequal, demands for  culturally appropriate curricula and instructors, disparities of expectations for learning based on race or class, etc.  Moreover, Gina Cirichigno of One Nation Indivisible made a presentation on the nationwide trend toward race and class resegregation and deepening disparities.  These minefields are not unique to Boston. They echo from the past because they are systemic and grounded deep in our history.

While many of the EAC members were unable to attend due to summer schedules, those present found the panels and the discussion to be helpful and very relevant to their work looking at equity and access issues in the school assignment process.  The EAC discussed this program at its July 16 meeting.

All seemed to agree that these issues will not go away with any new assignment plan or any one reform measure. These are issues for the long haul and BBDP and UMN  look forward to continuing to working with the many stakeholders  committed to grounding  in our history in order to address the systemic barriers to equity and access to quality public education for all.

In early June we partnered with Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion to hold a conversation about the Latino experience in the Boston busing/desegregation crisis. Miren Uriarte, director of the Gaston Institute at UMass Boston and member of the Mayor’s External Advisory Committee on school choice, started the conversation  with the historical context in the Latino community (see her Powerpoint here.)

Long time community activist Carmen Pola then shared her experience as an activist during school desegregation, followed by former BPS teacher and Teacher Activist Group founder Jose Lopez, who talked about the situation in the schools today.  Click here to see our report from the evening.

That same week we had the pleasure of seeing a play at the Rafael Hernandez school that chronicled the school’s history. A citywide bilingual (English/Spanish) K-8 school, the Hernandez  was born out of Latino parents and activists’ struggle for education. The play, which featured elders Carmen Pola and Jeannie Dunn (a community activist and retired BPS teacher) along with each class in the school, started by illustrating Boston’s busing/desegregation crisis and the struggle for bilingual education. We were thoroughly impressed about how the school and its young people rooted their understanding of today through history in this play. Unfortunately, the Hernandez is one of the few schools in the city and even the state today that centers around bilingual education, largely due to Massachusetts’ English only law, despite the enduring popularity of bilingual programs.

As we gear up over the summer to launch phase 2 of the Boston Busing/Desegregation Project,  we are thinking a lot  about how people tell their stories. We’ve heard so many powerful stories since we began this work, and now we are thinking about a more formal process for collecting those stories and using stories to make change.

In the video below Kelley Creedon explores  how breaking the silence through telling stories  can lead people to make change, an idea that is central to the work we are doing here. This TED talk makes a great companion to an earlier talk we posted on the danger of a single story AND it features an organization doing great work here in Boston – City Life/ Vida Urbana, whose executive director, Curdina Hill, is on our Steering Committee.    So, once again we want to know: what’s your story?

At the end of May we teamed up with the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center and the Chinese Historical Society of New England to continue our community convening process.The panel was moderated by Stephanie Fan, a retired BPS teacher and administrator who framed the evening with a presentation on Chinatown and Boston schools. We then heard from three panelists: Suzanne Lee spoke on her experience as a teacher and then principal in the BPS, Elaine Ng spoke on her experiences as a student in the Boston Public Schools in the 1970s and Jessica Tang spoke on her experiences as a BPS teacher today. What emerged from the panel and audience discussion was a wide ranging discussion on this history and how it is connected to the issues we face in our schools and city today. See the video of the panel below and read the full report here.

Traditional stories of the Boston busing/desegregation crisis pit white against black, anti-busing against pro-busing, and neighborhood against neighborhood. In reality we know there was racism across the city, but that there were also people who took stands against racism, regardless of their color, position on busing or neighborhood they lived in. Some of these folks were, for example,  white, anti-busing, and born and raised in South Boston. They were young and old, activists, parents, bystanders, politicians etc. Throughout the past year we’ve met many white people from across the city who tried to take a stand in the 1970s in some big or small way and feel frustrated that their story is not a part of the narrative of what happened. We decided to hold an event to focus on the experiences and communities of a variety of white people who didn’t like the racism they saw around them at the time and the things they responded in their communities to the crisis.  We classified this group as ‘allies for racial justice’ although as one participant pointed it, this isn’t language that was used then, ad man people never considered themselves in this vein.

As a part of our context setting we asked participants four questions:

1. What were the challenges, struggles, strategies and strength of white people who believed in racial justice in Boston leading up to this time?
2. What was the state of relationships between white allies for racial justice and the various communities of greater Boston? What history had shaped these relationships?
3. How were white allies for racial justice interacting with local institutions (school, government, business and finance, etc.)? (e.g. How were they positioned both inside and outside these institutions?) What history was this grounded in?
4. What was happening culturally in Boston’s communities during that time period (e.g values, politics, arts, families, class, etc.)? Where did white allies for racial justice fit into this?

What ensued were some lively and very informative discussions. Click here to read the notes from this event and lease feel free to add your voice to this conversation by commenting below!

If you’ve been to one of our events, chances are you’ve heard us present on the William Bridges Transitions model as it applies to Boston and it’s busing/desegregation crisis. The BBDP recently hosted our transitions coach Marvin E. Johnson of the National Center for for Alternative Dispute Resolution to have a more in-depth conversation with us to think about how this framework applies to our work and how we can use it going forward.  Below is an excerpt of this conversation with BBDP staff and learning network members, along with the slide being referenced through the talk.