panaritisp
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Phil Panaritis
"I was stunned when I walked into the classroom of Carmen Wilkinson at Jamestown Elementary School in 1975 (all names are actual people and places). In my first year as Arlington (VA) school superintendent, I had already seen hundreds of elementary classrooms. This was the only one I had seen that had mixed ages (grades 1 through 4) and learning stations in which 50 students spent most of the day working independently and moving freely about the room; they worked in small groups and individually while Wilkinson–a 27-year veteran of teaching–moved about the room asking and answering question, giving advice, and listening to students. Called “The Palace” by parents, children, and staff, the class used two adjacent rooms. Wilkinson teamed with another teacher and, at the time, two student teachers. She orchestrated scores of tasks in a quiet, low-key fashion. Wilkinson’s informal classroom was unusual at Jamestown–I did discover a few more in other schools–in the 500 other elementary classrooms in the Arlington public schools.
Wilkinson began teaching in Arlington in 1950 and came to Jamestown in 1957. She taught first through third grades. She was one of the first teachers in the County schools to try and then embrace “open classrooms” in the late-1960s. Parents vied to get their children into “The Palace.” Local colleges sent their student teachers to Wilkinson where she trained them in the different ways to construct and run an “open classroom.” Her know-how and commitment to this type of teaching and learning garnered her many requests to lead workshops and seminars both in out of the district. In 1987, Wilkinson was named Teacher of the Year in Arlington.
While I wish I had my smart phone in 1975 to take photos, sadly I have no snapshots of “The Palace.” So here are a few photos of “open classrooms” that exist today that remind me of what I saw decades ago in Wilkinson’s room. ... "
"Too often civics and US history are taught as sets of facts to be memorized — without giving students an opportunity to ask deeper questions about what they are learning. Students are rarely challenged to connect classroom content to their own lives and communities. And this includes students in Massachusetts, even though the Commonwealth has been at the forefront of the effort to revive civic education.
That can leave students unable to understand the context for the political battles they see on the news, and unequipped with the civic skills they need to fix the problems they see all around them.
Young people deserve civic learning that imparts deep knowledge about our constitutional democracy as well as giving them the agency and skills to wield that knowledge so they can become civically engaged stewards of our republic.
"In July 2018, a few months after New York City welcomed a new schools chancellor, The Atlantic asked, “Can Richard Carranza Integrate the Most Segregated School System in the Country?”
Now we have our answer. On Friday, Carranza announced his resignation, attributing it to the emotional toll the pandemic had taken on him. But many observers believe — and The New York Times reported — that Carranza decided to leave at least partly because it had become clear that Mayor de Blasio did not share his commitment to ending segregation in the nation’s largest school system.
So with 10 months left in office, de Blasio, who ran for mayor decrying New York’s “tale of two cities,” leaves New York public schools with two systems, divided by race, class, and resources. The question is whether the battles of the last seven years — and Carranza’s tenure — will lay the groundwork for the next mayor to end that split.
Integration advocates say Carranza’s three years have not been devoid of accomplishment. They cite his overseeing integration plans in Manhattan’’s District 3 and Brooklyn’s District 15, laying the groundwork for similar efforts in other districts, instituting an at least temporary end to screened admission to middle schools, and launching an ambitious program of anti-bias training for teachers.
Above all they commend the outgoing chancellor’s unabashed advocacy for integration.
Zakiyah Ansari, advocacy director of the Alliance for Quality Education, praised Carranza as a strong leader “who’s very clear on what his agenda is and…who didn’t have any problem speaking out when white parents came after him” and when the New York Post went after him. “He has never backed down,” she said.
“Carranza used the bully pulpit to elevate the issue in a way no previous chancellor had,” Richard Kahlenberg, director of K–12 equity at the Century Foundation and a member of the executive committee for the mayor’s School Diversity Advisory Group, said by email.
But the last three years brought resistance from a supposedly progressive mayor who lacked either the conviction or the backbone to fight for true equity. “No chancellor has ever highlighted racial justice the way that Chancellor Carranza did. The big disappointment was he was dealing with an obstructionist mayor,” said Matt Gonzales, director of the Integration and Innovation Initiative at NYU Metro Center.
The angry town hall meetings and the attacks on Carranza in The Post and elsewhere also highlighted once again how strong the resistance to equity can be and made clear that many white and Asian parents believe the system, unfair though it may be, is good for their children and should remain."
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