Journal of a Black Teacher

Consent Decree: These orders are usually called “consent decrees.” The term reflects that the order was negotiated and agreed to by the DOJ and the City that was investigated. A consent decree is  a legally binding agreement where the court supervises the implementation of the agreement.   By Don Allen, M. A. Ed./MAT #Fiction, #FutureCast Twin Cities, Minn…Once upon a time, in a city plagued by gun violence, there was a controversial agreement in place between the police department and the community. The agreement stated that the police would only use force as a last resort and would work to build trust and positive relationships with the people they served. At first, the agreement was met with skepticism and resistance from both sides. The police felt that their hands were tied and that they were being unfairly criticized for doing their jobs. The community, on the other hand, felt that the police were not doing enough to protect them and that the agreement was just a way for the pol

A personal narrative about looking into the blind spots.  by Don Allen, M. A. Ed./MAT       ​I consider myself somewhat of a league civil rights activist in the early 90’s. I felt that my upcoming visit to the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, would be my pilgrimage to what I considered my Mecca.”      ​1992 had been a good year. I had had stories published in two Minneapolis newspapers as well as other work published in Denver, where I used to live. I was always very critical of the way the mainstream media presented the civil rights struggle and the plight of Black Americans in the United States.  At the same time, I was critical of the Black community itself.  While it was not a popular view, I believed firmly that a significant number of the problems faced by those in the black community were exacerbated by privileged members of the Black middle class more concerned with personal enrichment than with carrying out the work of Dr. King.   Every year, the Church of

By Don Allen, Educator and Truth Teller  The Black Lives Matter fundraising movement left the Twin Cities with $90 million dollars (plus) ignoring the need to address systemic racism, institutional racism, education, and economic justice in the Twin Cities. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) saw to it that the local (Minnesota) organization Feeding Our Future quickly scaled up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and received $193 million in federal grants in 2021 after having gotten $307,000 three years before. The rapid rise came crashing down in January (2022) when dozens of federal agents raided locations owned by subcontractors who have been accused of stealing millions of dollars (Fox 9 News).. Of course, we don’t know where the money went, nor can we find a family that was saved from this mysterious agency funded by MDE.  When Black Americans in Minnesota lose, our losses are monumental, devastating, mostly man-made, a

By Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT  “ As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task. ”   ~Diogenes Laertius, (c. 404—323 B.C.E.) Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6, Chapter 35. He “Diogenes of Sinop, (Turkey)-School of Cynicism ”, is labeled mad for acting against convention, but Diogenes points out that it is the conventions which lack reason citing that most people, he would say, are so nearly mad that a finger makes all the difference. “For if you go along with your middle finger stretched out, someone will think you mad, but, if it’s the little finger, he will not think so” (Diogenes Laertius).  Logic and common sense scare many good natured foundational folks in education. When you look at challenges in our public educational system, it’s even more scary to see the actions of good natured people that have generationally ignored best practices outside of their own cultures and just simply put, b

  How can understanding the “continuum” be helpful to planning Culturally Responsive work with individuals within your organization? When I opened up chapter five to start reading, the pull-quote by Ellis Cose from his book, The Rage of a Privileged Class has me rethinking everything, and I cannot move past it; he wrote, “If we tell ourselves that the only problem is hate, we avoid facing the reality that it is mostly nice, non-hating people who perpetuate racial inequality”  (Cose 1998, p. 20). In my organization, as well as in the state of Minnesota, we know the ‘nice’ people are at the center of some of the most horrific, disabling, and learning-killing proposals and policies from the Minnesota Department of Education granting over $245 million to a non-existent agency for feeding children and families during the 202o COVID-19 quarantine, to its lack of diversity, inclusion, and color in the agencies upper leadership . These ‘nice’ people make sure the status quo is never disrupted

Mined by Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT   Introduction      When you have been intellectually abused you recognize it by the types of human biological functions that happen; sweaty hands, upset stomach, headaches, and anxiety levels too high it will trigger your reptilian brain into flight or fight mode. The assignment, this paper was to identify a problem at work and insert it into intercultural communication using the early chapters of our class text Communicating Across Cultures at Work (2017), and the later chapters to propose solutions; this is what I interpret to be the assignment. In reflection, to see a problem for what it is and the realness of the effects on team members, systems, and outcomes in efficacy leads me to ask “What can you do when teams inside Educational constructs don’t know what they don’t know?”        The first time I became aware of intercultural communication, which refers to the communication between people from two different cultures was when I was much younger