Tuesday, September 10, 2019



New NYC teachers given book with essay titled ‘Dear White Teacher’

A cadre of newly hired teachers will report to city schools this week following orientation sessions where they were given a book that includes an essay titled “Dear White Teacher,” The Post has learned.

But unlike the Department of Education’s controversial “implicit bias” training — which, among other lessons, tells teachers that “racial equity” requires favoring black students over whites — the essay’s message is that white instructors should stop being afraid to discipline black students.

Essay author Chrysanthius Lathan blasts white teachers who she says routinely send minority students to “teachers of color” for discipline — because they’re scared of being called racist.

“My strength in the classroom does not come from my racial identity, and neither does yours,” wrote Lathan, a former teacher in Portland, Oregon, who now works as an educational consultant.

“It comes from the way we treat — and what we expect from — kids and families. It is time for you to take back the power in your classroom.”

Lathan also gives blunt advice to the white teachers she says “live in fear of their good faith actions being labeled as racist.”

“You need to find that bone in your body that tends to recoil when it comes time to deal with people of color —- and purposely straighten it back out,” she wrote.

By contrast, the $23 million, “implicit bias” training mandated by schools Chancellor Richard Carranza included consultant Darnisa Amante’s justification that a middle-class black student would “have less access and less opportunities” over the course of a lifetime than a poor white classmate, according to sources who heard her say it.

A veteran Queens teacher said DOE educators were getting “a lot of mixed messages.”

“On the one hand, we’re told that we have these implicit biases that we need to work on to get rid of,” the teacher said.

“And on the other hand, certain teachers are told that race is incredibly important in everything we do. It’s like: don’t focus on race, but focus on race.”

“Dear White Teacher” is among more than 50 essays in “The New Teacher Book,” a 324-page manual published by Rethinking Schools, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit.

Copies of the $24.95 paperback were included in some of the tote bags given to the 2,700 new teachers who attended two days of orientation last week ahead of Thursday’s start of the 2019-20 school year.

Several readings take aim at traditional measures of learning, with titles including “Time to Get Off the Testing Train,” “Beyond Test Scores” and “My Dirty Little Secret: I Don’t Grade Student Papers.”

There are also repeated attacks on charter schools — which purportedly pose a “fundamental threat to the hope of sustaining a multicultural democracy” — and sections that urge new teachers to get involved in their unions and join activist groups.

A veteran city educator who took part in last week’s orientation sessions was outraged that the book was distributed, saying it was “of no practical use.”

A DOE spokesman said the book contained “valuable strategies for new teachers and received positive reviews from several leading educators,” but also maintained that “its views represent the book’s authors, not the DOE.”

SOURCE 






White children fall to joint bottom place in British Sats, official figures show

When compared with immigrant children

White children have fallen to joint bottom place in Sats, official figures show. 

Figures released by the Department for Education show that 64 per cent of white pupils reached the expected standard in the three R’s this year, the same proportion as black children.

More than half a million 11-year-olds across England took national curriculum tests in May.

Chinese students were the highest performing ethnic group, with 80 per cent meeting the expected standard, although they only make up one per cent of pupils taking the test. The second highest performing group is Indian children, with 76 per cent meeting the standard.

When the Government launched a new "tougher" curriculum in 2016, black children were the lowest performing ethnic group, with just over half (51 per cent) meeting the standard. But over the past four years, this has risen by 13 percentage points.

White pupils’ scores have also improved, but at a slower rate, meaning that they are now the joint bottom group with black pupils.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University’s centre for education and employment, said that white British families can have a “lackadaisical” approach to school.

He said that the difference in performance of ethnic groups is “down to how keenly parents feel that education is important to their children”.

Prof Smithers explained: “Many of the ethnic groups are recent arrivals to this country or first generation immigrants and the parents know from the experience of their home countries just how important education is to getting on in the world.

“Therefore they make it plain to their children that if they want to get on they really have to apply themselves in school.

“Whereas I think the white British tend to get rather complacent and comfortable in life. They assume quite falsely that the world will take care of them.”

The gap between boys and girls is getting wider, the data showed. Seven in 10 girls (70 per cent) reached the expected standard, compared to 60 per cent of their male classmates.

This is a gender gap of 10 percentage points, up from a gap of eight percentage points last year. This has been driven by a widening gap between the sexes in reading results, the Department for Education (DfE) statistics show.

Poorer pupils continue to lag behind their richer peers, the Government statistics show. In total, around half (51 per cent) of the most disadvantaged pupils achieved the expected standard across all three subjects, compared to 71 per cent of their peers from more affluent backgrounds.

Pupils who speak English as a second language are closing the gap with native speakers, the figures show.

This year the expected standard for children for whom English is their mother tongue was 65 per cent, just one percentage point ahead of their peers who speak another language at home.

Four years ago, native English speakers were four percentage points ahead, but the gap has narrowed over time.

Earlier this year, Jeremy Corbyn announced that a Labour government would scrap Sats because primary school children are “unique” and should not have to go through "extreme pressure testing".

Mr Corbyn said that children should be “encouraged to be creative” and allowed to “let their imagination roam” rather than be subjected to the "unnecessary pressure of national exams".

However, ministers said that axing Sats would cause “enormous damage” to education and undo decades of improvement in children’s numeracy and literacy.   

Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said:  “We want all pupils to leave primary school equipped with the knowledge and skills that will help them to be successful in the rest of their education and beyond – that’s why I’m pleased to see an increase in pupils reaching the very highest standards at the end of primary school.”

SOURCE 





High School Assignment Forces Kids to Disclose Sexual Orientation, Reveals Massive Political Agenda

A high school in North Carolina is under fire for an assignment entitled "Diversity Inventory" that left students crying and parents outraged. Heritage High School English teacher Melissa Wilson gave out an assignment to her class last week that asked them to categorize themselves, their parents, their doctor, friends, and more by race, class, sexuality, and religion, among other things.

Students reported that Wilson made them go stand by a sign on the wall that correlated with their sexuality. One student called a parent during the exercise to express her discomfort with it. Another student broke down crying. North Carolina Values Coalition reports.

Students were also asked to stand up, and walk towards posters in different areas of the room that correlated with their sexual identities.  Students were traumatized. Some were even brought to tears. At this morning's meeting, one parent said that her student had been experiencing PTSD from the incident. Another student didn't attend school on Friday, and is so scared to return to Wilson's classroom environment that they told their parent they hoped the hurricane would distract everyone from this incident.

Another parent's child Facetimed them in the middle of the classroom to tell them how uncomfortable they were with the assignment. Another student had a friend who had recently shared very private information about themselves to a select number of their peers, and went white when the teacher asked students to now stand and reveal their private identities.

When the students expressed discomfort, the teacher's response was to tell them it was alright because she used to be Catholic and is now a bi-sexual atheist.

Colorado Teachers Asked to Take 'White Privilege' Survey
PJM reached out to the school for comment and was told by district Communications Director Lisa Luten that the assignment has been removed from the curriculum, but questions remain. The same assignment, without the worksheet, was used by the same teacher in February and met similar criticism. Luten claimed that the assignment had been reworked before being done again. But this go-around the outcry was even greater, resulting in a letter to parents from the principal that read in part,

At Heritage High, we value the opportunity to learn and to grow from challenges we face in teaching and encouraging constructive discussion around sensitive topics.

This week, one of our teachers conducted a classroom activity that included a worksheet titled Diversity Inventory. After learning of concerns from a parent, I reviewed the activity and resource and directed the teacher to discontinue the lesson immediately.

This particular worksheet was not a resource that was provided by our school or our school district. My team and I are committed to working together around the important classroom conversations connected to identity, culture and other sensitive topics as appropriate.

We value efforts to build a classroom community that is inclusive and respectful of all students and backgrounds. But we also must respect and value student privacy, along with their right to engage in discussion about personal identity only when they are comfortable doing so.

The North Carolina Values Coalition found that the teachers at this school district are involved in a district-sponsored program called WCPSS Equity.

This office promotes a far-left "social justice" curriculum written by the controversial anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center. The assignment, created by Wilson, is taken from lessons found on a website founded by the SPLC called Tolerance.org. The district also contributes to Tolerance.org via articles written by at least one staff member, assistant superintendant of WCPSS, Rodney Trice, who wrote:

Equity work is not a one-off professional development training or an office that works in isolation. This work requires embedded and systemic shifts. Diversity, equity and inclusion must be infused within the very fabric of your organization, school or district. The transportation department needs to be operating with an equity lens just as much as an academic department, and so on. While traditional leadership is top-down, equity leadership looks more like a lattice—everyone from families to support staff to educators all the way to the school board  must be in.

A school that operates under the assumption that the fabric of the educational system must be embedded with cultural Marxism and race theory is a school that is interested in churning out nothing but politically and culturally brainwashed students. It also, by default, must necessarily target for censorship any dissenting voices. One wonders how Christian students fare in Ms. Wilson's class. (Any of you who want to speak out about it can contact me at @MeganFoxWriter on Twitter.)

The Tolerance.org website is full of far-left propaganda, including lessons about gender that are completely unscientific and based in the far-left fantasy that biological boys can be girls and biological girls can be boys.

The site also gives away grants to schools that use their radical teaching materials.

Teaching Tolerance Educator Grants support educators who embrace and embed anti-bias principles throughout their schools. These grants, ranging from $500-$10,000, support projects that promote affirming school climates and educate youth to thrive in a diverse democracy.

Luten did not answer whether or not the school is participating in these grant programs through the SPLC. The taxpayers in this North Carolina district ought to be very concerned that their tax dollars are supporting a very organized, subversive movement operated by the district under the WCPSS equity office to infiltrate every academic subject and radicalize students to turn them into good little Democrat voters. Removing this assignment does absolutely nothing to stop the problem. Disbanding the "equity" office and cutting all ties to radical anti-Christian hate groups like the SPLC would be the best place to start rooting it out.

SOURCE 




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