District Administration - February 2007 - (Page 62)

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My high school music classes focused on the study and perfor ma nce of many African-American jazz masters, and my parents always had African-American friends with whom we socialized. An AfricanA mer ica n woman even sang gospel songs at my bar mitzvah. I watched “Roots” with my family like millions of Americans. Majoring in jazz and playing in Latin bands enhanced my multicultural perspectives. However, it was not until I took a required college course on racism and sexism that I appreciated the depth of the void in my education. Gary Stager the Prize” videos. I’ve traveled to the King Center, Central High School, Ole Miss, the Lorraine Motel, as well as South Africa’s Soweto and Robben Island. This is all part of my continuing education and makes me a better educator. Serving on a recent panel discussion with Robert Moses about improving education in Harlem remains one of the highl ight s of my career. The Truth Shall Set You Free We all need to brush up on African-American history I Wat c h i ng the remarkable PBS document a r y “Eyes on the Prize” countles s times introduced me to Americ a n heroes from my lifetime such as Medgar Evers, A. Philip Randolph, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Meredith, John Lewis and Robert Moses. List en i ng to Benny Goodman, Michael Shwerner and James Chaney, Malcol m X and the Little Rock Nine speaking in their own words left me feeling guilty about how little I knew about the real struggle for equality in this nation. I was furiou s about how school had denied me access to recent history and lied by omission and commission. I was taught as little about Dr. King as my children were about the Watergate scandal, the Camp David accords or Iran-Contra. Yet each of these topics inﬂuences our current events. I’ve since read W.E.B. DuBois and Dr. King. I own a set of the “Eyes on Required Reading A n educator’s obligation to be informed and speak truthfully with students is brought into focus in Herbert Kohl’s stunning book, “She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott” New Press, 2007 . Kohl exposes the usual story “Rosa’s feet were tired and would not give up her seat and the world came together to end segregation” as a fable that robs all children of their history, diminishes the struggle of those who fought to make America live up to the ideals of its constitution, and continues to RESOURCES Herbert Kohl recommends the following books about For middle-high school students: Rosa Parks for school use: The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, by AttalA Dream of Freedom by Diane McWhorter Scholastic lah Shabazz foreword , Alex Haley interviewer , Malcolm X primary contributor , Ballantine, 1987 Non-ﬁction , 2004 Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary by Walter Dean Myers Rosa Parks, My Story by Rosa Parks, with Jim Haskins Pufﬁn Scholastic , 1994 Books , 1999 Martin Luther King by Marshall Frady Penguin Lives , 2002 Rosa Parks: The Movement Organizes by Kai Friese–part of a nine-volume series, The History of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks by Douglas Brinkley Penguin Lives , 2005 edited by Eldom Morris Silver Burdett , 1990 For teachers: Gar y Stager’s favorite resources include: The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement – 7 DVDs, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle by including study guides PBS , 2006 Clayborne Carson, et al. Penguin , 1991 For elementary students: For learning more on your own: Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own The Children by David Halberstam Ballantine , 1999 Stories by Ellen Levine Putnam Juvenile , 2000 Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching by Alana Oh, Freedom! by Casey King and Linda Barrett Osborne Knopf Murray and Deborah Menkart Teaching for Change , 2004 Books for Young Readers , 1997 We Were There, Too! Young People in U.S. History by Phillip Hoose Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2001 62 February 2007 District Administration DA_207_SpeakingOut.indd 62 1/17/07 10:22:17 AM Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - February 2007

Contents
Editor's Letter
Update
Inside the Law
Curriculum Update
Tackling Health Care Together
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Curriculum Hotspots
New Information Systems Track Student Progress
Students Wanted!
Spread the Word
Mentors Boost Student Reading Levels
The Online Edge
Speaking Out
Research Corner
Problem/Solution
Leadership Books
New Products
Calendar of Events
Professional Opinion

District Administration - February 2007