Holding Babies: Talented Leadership please Stand Up!

In 2023, you’re either on board or off track. 

(Note: This is a snippet from chapter one of The Justification of Splitting Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools Districts in Half  - By Don Allen (2023). 

1. All the bad stuff about education is perpetual; it had NOTHING to do with the death of George Floyd or the COVID-19 pandemic. 

2. Parents realized in real-time during distance learning that if an educational construct (5-12 Twin Cities Public Schools) could not maintain a policy to save the children during this time of reactionary buffoonery, where is learning really happening? 

During the pandemic (2020-21), many of my students in secondary had their babies in my (our) classrooms. In the photo below, the child is six months old; the father is in grade 10, and the mother is in grade 9. Let me make it clear: adults failed these children, and it’s not the fault of the young parents when the local education system continues to fail them. The parents, forced to live as adults (yes, a consequence for actions) came out of a middle school system that is, and has been (generationally) unprepared to teach them anything; it’s personal, backed up by MN Report Card data. You will not read this story in the newspaper, nor will you hear it on public radio because taking actions to make sure our states 30 years old and under majority (2023, YMCA Equity Report) of Black & Brown students succeed is not a popular education or political talking -point. When I looked at this baby’s face, I wondered if he would survive. Who will he be? What would kindergarten look like for him in 2026? Will the achievement gaps still have a firm hand on Twin Cities schools? Or will the education system start to call it a ‘belief gap’ to somehow twist the onus back onto the scholar as to say, if they don’t believe, they cannot succeed (it’s already happening)? Our children are sorted and categorized within the lens of bio determinism - meaning some teachers think being a student who is poor, having parents who did not attend college, and living in the hood is written into the student's DNA.

The only tactical approach for a successful middle school reading and writing classroom model is to make sure every 5 through 8 grade student you’re responsible for can read and write. When starting, it takes a week of classroom expectation reinforcement, then 21 days to form the habits of a student-centered classroom with fingers crossed that muscle memory will kick in for each dependent learner. Yes, there will be multiple levels of cognition within each child’s factor of economic, social, and familial status along with outside-of-school pressures that can push a grade 5-8 scholar into surviving as an adult in his/her community thereby weaponizing the anti-education traits commonly seen in communities where maintaining man-made poverty is structured, nurtured, and maintained.