Jesse Hagopian
@JessedHagopian
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Teacher|My Books: "#TeachTruth" (forthcoming), Co-editor "#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool," https://t.co/lOGKwbMaLJ|@RethinkSchools|4 booking: @SpeakOutIDEC
occupied Duwamish land-Seattle
Joined February 2011
🚨🚨Thrilled to reveal the cover of my new book, “Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education,” on today’s National #TeachTruth Day of Action! 📚✨. For years I’ve helped organize the movement against laws banning teaching about racism while writing this book. Coming soon!
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Today I took my 2 kids to Mississippi to install the grave stone for their great great great grandparents, Laura and Thomas Lenoir—who had been enslaved and never got a headstone. This ceremony was a momentous occasion for our family that I can’t even put into words.
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Students deserve to be taught the truth about the origins of police in patrols of enslaved African people. They deserve to learn about the long racist history of policing. Here are lessons to start the conversation:
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✊🏾✊🏾. Something new in the rebellion of players in the NFL:.After the kickoff, all the players on both the Seahawks and the Falcons took a knee. No one returned the ball, no one gave chase. These players know that Black Lives are #BiggerThanFootball. #BlackLivesMatter
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My 2nd grade son got this worksheet called, “Police Protect Us.” . He read it, thought carefully about it, and then wrote his answers to the questions. #PoliceDontProtectUs
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BREAKING: .Portland is removing police from the schools!!!. Bring this movement to your school district next!. #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool .#CounselorsNotCops! .
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America 2019:. *1.7 million students in schools w/ police but no counselors. *3 million in schools w/ police but no nurses. *6 M in schools w/ police but no school psychologists. *10 M in schools w/ police but no social workers. #CounselorsNotCops .
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As a teacher in Seattle, it’s really astounding to see so many cops make 250–300K a year. Teachers work a lot of overtime too—but don’t get paid a dime for it. Learn about the “most overpaid cops” & the brutal conduct of some of these officers here:.
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Meet @SeattlePD officer Sandra Delafuente. She assaulted me with pepper spray in the face in 2015 at the MLKDay rally without provocation. She is still policing the streets. @MayorJenny you need to fire the officer, prosecute her, and then resign yourself.
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Huge difference between TIME covers from 2014 & 2018 about teachers! First they ridiculed & shamed, now they praise & empathize. Why? Because educators stood up & led a wave of strikes that taught the country the truth about our profession & impact of underfunding education!
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White supremacists didn’t just now invade the Capitol—they’ve been running their affairs there since the building was first opened.
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Wow. The endorsement by @TheBarbaraSmith of @BernieSanders says so much. Barbara has been one of my guiding lights in the struggle for gender, racial, sexuality, and economic justice!.
I'm honored to be endorsed by @TheBarbaraSmith, whose work and leadership has empowered millions in the fight for justice and equality. Together we will carry on the struggle for all our people to live in dignity.
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I took my kids on a field trip to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (#CHAZ)! Best educational experience yet!.I suggest you run cops out of a precinct near you, set up zone of solidarity, mutual aid, memorials to martyrs, & gorgeous art—then you will know what public safety is!
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Here’s what happened to me when I protested at the Washington State Capitol to demand more school funding to support smaller class sizes, a nurse in every school, and more counselors. I was immediately surrounded by police, arms yanked behind my back, handcuffed, & arrested.
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This is not a teacher. We are not in the same profession. I help people unlock their potential so they can be part of making positive change in the world. This officer does whatever you call the exact opposite of that.
The police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black man in Tulsa now teaches a course on how other cops can 'survive' controversial shootings
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“Learning loss” due to COVID is part of a deficit narrative—like the “achievement gap”—that is racist. These models proclaim Black kids to be behind white kids without acknowledging:.1. The brilliance of Black kids.2. What Gloria Ladson-Billings calls “The education debt”.
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There are 150 homeless kids at my Seattle high school. Many students don’t have an internet connection & can’t engage in remote learning. One of our neighbors is worth of $200 Billion. Those aren’t parallel facts. My students are deprived because Bezos has too much. #TaxTheRich.
Jeff Bezos now worth an astounding $200-plus billion
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I’m thrilled to say @BernieSanders just released the most powerful statement against #HighStakestesting: “The most serious flaw of high-stakes testing. is that it ignores the real problems facing our teachers and students: social inequality. ”
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Sometimes it’s not easy to hear the truth. But in this case you need to make yourself uncomfortable & watch #EricGarner’s daughtor, Emerald Garner, speak like her name was Sojourner about the outrageous lack accountability for the cop who killed her dad.
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@SoundTransit @JoshuaTufts @Taylor_Soper Your absolutely right. This is a good reminder of how the system works: if you’re young, Black or Brown, or don’t have a lot of money, then you will be harassed & intimidated by the system. There are 150 homeless kids at my school who might not have gotten that pass in the mail.
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I’m overwhelmed with emotion. The King County Labor Council just voted to expel the police! As a union teacher, I’ve been working for this day!. Cops killed #CharleenaLyles, a Seattle Public Schools parent & have assaulted teachers. Now they gone from the house of labor!.
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BREAKING: Victory for the youth in Minneapolis—school board just voted to remove cops from all schools!. “Students & board members said that money could be better spent on mental health services.”. Now it’s time to have this movement sweep the nation! .
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Breaking news: Teachers work overtime & earn $0 more. Seattle Police’s top earner was patrol officer Ron Willis. He made $128,716 in base pay last year & racked up $214,544 in overtime pay, $33,628 in retroactive base pay & $37,656 in retroactive overtime
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Let me be clear: these fare enforcement officers took photos of student’s IDs. This level of intimidation is uncalled for and harmful to our youth!.
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Boom! . I’ve never been more proud to be a #Mariners fan. And I was at game 5 of the 1995 Division Series when Edgar hit the double to score Griffey and they beat the Yankees!.
The Seattle Mariners, who have the most Black players of any MLB team, will not play tonight's game against the San Diego Padres, per @JeffPassan.
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Heartbreaking and infuriating. As she is being arrested, this 6-year-old Black girl says through her tears, “Please give me a second chance.” . But in America second chances are reserved for investment bankers—not Black kids. #blacklivesmatteratschool.
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Black and Brown youth are getting a lesson on this first day of school for sure: This is a unforgiving world that tries to hold you back from being your very best. @SoundTransit you need to do better for our youth. What are you planning to do to make this right?.
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The most menacing aspect of #StandardizedTesting is the way it trains kids to fear making mistakes by labeling & shaming. Misunderstandings should be opportunities for breakthroughs in comprehension, but the tests teach that miscalculations are perverse transgressions.
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🔥💯Every teacher must listen to @BernieSanders’ powerful vision for #education at his packed out Tacoma Dome rally last night! He calls for tripling funding for low income schools, setting a minimum salary of 60k for teachers, & tuition free college!
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We do have an opportunity to reimagine schools: fully fund them, provide a nurse in every school, wrap around services, antiracist teaching. Unfortunately, the @gatesfoundation is not so good at reimagining. They peddle in tired privatization & testing narratives.
As we prepare to reopen we have the opportunity to reimagine and build back our education system better. We will work with the @gatesfoundation and develop a blueprint to do this.
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Victory!. Thank you to the Minneapolis protesters who made this victory of removing police from the schools possible! Without the uprising, it wouldn’t have happened. Now we need this in every city!.#BlackLivesMatterAtSchool.#CounselorsNotCops.
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Rebel. “It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color…Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, & violate the law in order to uphold justice.” . -Howard Zinn.
The Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and obtained by POLITICO. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito writes.
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A Latino & a Black kid were handcuffed by a Kentucky sheriff “both of whom have disabilities, & were so small the deputy sheriff locked the handcuffs around the children’s biceps.” Outrageously, 1.7 million kids go to a school with a cop & no counselor.
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BREAKING: Gov. Inslee just announced all K-12 in-person schooling canceled for the rest of the school year in WA State. So many serious equity issues come up w/ moving to online learning. Amazing how many kids don’t have internet here in Seattle, in the shadows of tech giants.
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I’m a teacher & I reject this death sentence. Fund a nurse in every school, lower class size to where social distancing is possible, provide single payer healthcare for every person in the country, & provide PPE for every educator. Then get back to me about opening schools.
I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!.
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Educators, . Monday after the Super Bowl is a good time to teach a lesson about ending the use of Native Americans as mascots. It’s racist.
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Just a reminder: If someone is talking about education reform & they aren't taking about massive wealth redistribution, then they aren't really an ally.
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Puerto Rican Teachers’ May Day Strike Brutalized By Police: “We resisted. We will prevail!”
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As a teacher, I don’t want a gun in class—I want antiracist curriculm to protect my students.
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Folks should know that is was courageous youth at Rainer Beach High School who organized a movement that had to struggle for, and finally won, free ORCA transit cards!.And now students are being harassed because they didn’t have them on the first day?!.
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Angela Davis, @iJesseWilliams, @Kaepernick7 & many more signed letter supporting Michael Bennett #BennettSolidarity
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🔥✊🏾Our educators’ union, @SeattleEA, just voted to remove all police officers from The Seattle Public Schools!!. #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool .#CounselorsNotCops .#PoliceFreeSchools .@SeaPubSchools.
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.@MayorofSeattle: As a teacher of many homeless students in #Seattle over the years & someone w/ homeless family, I demand you apologize to them for saying: “I don’t think anyone has a right to sleep in a public space or has a right to sleep on a sidewalk”.
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Shuttering a school is more than mothballing a brick-and-mortar edifice — it is hanging a closed sign on the hopes of a community. We live in one of the richest cities in the history of the world. It is an absurd outrage that we are closing schools. I had to fix this headline.
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🔥. I love it when kids expose the hidden curriculum ✊🏾. So much of school isn’t about the subjects being taught but about about reproducing the current (harmful) social relations.
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Yes!!! The Washington Post just wrote an article covering the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool movement! These stories of teaching for black lives around the country are a MUST READ!.#BLMatSchool #BlackHistoryMonth .
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I’m so hyped for #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool week to start on Monday! . Pass this on if you are too. Save The Date: Black Lives Matter at School Week, Feb. 3-7, 2020.
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VICTORY FOR SEATTLE YOUTH!!!!. Tonight’s board vote banned cops from Seattle Public schools!. Black kids “last year made up nearly half of students referred to police across the district but just 14% of enrollment.”. #PoliceFreeSchools!.#CouncelorsNotCops!
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Seattle police killed #CharleenaLyles, a mother of 4. A mother of seattle public school kids. That means she was part of the school family.
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YES!! The Washington Post just reviewed the new book I co-edited, “Teaching for Black Lives,” calling it, “A handbook to help educators fight racism.”🔥 Check out the review, order the book, and join the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool movement!
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Undocumented students are welcome in my classroom. Teachers will build movement to defend students from Trump #DACArepeal #NoOneIsillegal.
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Now that budget cuts hit police y’all mad. Where was your outrage when they made massive cuts to education? Hundreds of my colleagues & I were laid off, students lost critical programs. Educators create public safety when they nurture youth. Y’all create mass incarceration.
While no decisions have been made yet, we wanted the community to be aware of the situation. Laying off 50% of the department would be catastrophic for public safety in the city of Seattle. 2/4.
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Proposal: Let’s end the segregation of accidemic disciplines (a thread). A lot of teachers are enamored w/ their subject areas, but what if we stop separating classes based on academic disciplines & based them on questions that need addressing & problems that need solving. .
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The Seattle Times just published my Op-Ed about the #Seattle’s K-12 educators’ vote to #DefundPolice by 50%!! . Educators also demand that the money saved be spent on increasing public safety w/ counselors, social workers, & restorative justice programs.✊🏾.
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I’m excited for the school year to start because I am going to teach more critical race theory than I ever have!.
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Boom!! Major victory here in Seattle against racist high stakes standardized testing! . Many thanks to the thousands of educators, students, and parents who built the opt out movement and made this possible!
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Yes!! @macklemore & @mosesbread72 teamed up to buy copies of the new book I co-edited, “Teaching for Black Lives,” for ALL Seattle middle & high school social studies & language arts teachers!! . The struggle to make #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool is growing!.
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Happy #Juneteenth2023!!. I wrote this piece about my recent pilgrimage to Mississippi with my dad and brother to discover the plantation our family had been enslaved on. We found the gravesite of our ancestors and I wrote this letter to them.
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Stop. Now they are building a school-to-prison-pipeline that extends into the homes of Black and Brown kids. #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool
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If they can fire this teacher for having students read Ta-Nehisi Coats and watch a poem by Kyla Jenee Lacey, than not a single educator is free! . All of us educators must be in the struggle together to #TeachTruth about structural racism.
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We next!! The Seattle School Board just voted for #PoliceFreeSchools!!.
🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 San Fransico voted for #PoliceFreeSchools!!! Who’s got next?? . Minneapolis .Portland.Charlottesville.Denver.Columbus.Rochester .St. Paul (the twin!) .#winning.
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Meet, Ifrah Abshir, one of the students who led the movement for free ORCA cards for all of Seattle’s students.
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I refuse to lie to kids. Today, I did this interview on on CBS News about the bills sweeping the country that attempt to ban the teaching about structural racism in this country. Regardless of the law we social justice educators will teach the truth! .
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8 years ago my family & I survived the earthquake in Haiti. So many Haitians did not. #Haiti is resilient & beautiful, Trump is an obscenity.
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What if we educators declared a #NationalEductorsStrike and shut down all the schools until all children were freed and reunited with their parents? Who is in?.
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🤬 Seattle Police are unhinged. Did y’all see what they did to this person? . I know they are mad because we built a movement that forced the city council to cut millions from their budget, but that doesn’t give them right to commit brutal assault. #DefundThePolice.
The police at the #seattleprotests just ran over an injured mans head with their bikes. @SeattlePD is this how you train your officers?
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🔥Our educators’s union, @SeattleEA, just voted to remove the Seattle police “union” from the King County Labor Council!. As I pointed out in the debate, members of our union (like me) have been assaulted by the police and SPOG has worked to to protect officers from discipline.
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After the ceremony, I took my kids to show them the plantations our family was enslaved on. We met a woman in her 90s who knew my enslaved great great grandmother. She told our family about the KKK burning crosses & when they burned down a Black daycare #LegalizeBlackHistory
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America 2019: I’m at a PTA meeting right now for my sons’ school in Seattle & I’m hearing that there will be 3 teachers cut. The two richest people in the world live here & we have among the wealthiest corporations ever: Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks, Microsoft. #TaxTheRich.
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One reason the media often doesn’t report on the endemic lying & racism of police is it could destabilize the social order. Rappers who cuss at cops would be transformed into compassionate philosophers & respectable people who did nothing would be thugs.
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The STARTING salary for cops was raised to $105k, w/ a department budget of over $370 million—the only city department without a hiring freeze. The Seattle Public Library budget is $86.9 million. The budgets are connected, & budgets reflect values. #ThereFixedThat
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Black kids aren’t behind—it’s that we are measuring success incorrectly!.
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Sooo. remember that antiracist book club or equity committee you joined? . What’s the next step for y’all now?.
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From teachers in #PuertoRico teargassed on May Day, to the people of #Palestine being shot down, the U.S. government supplies weapons of brutality around the world. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was right, "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: My own Government"
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I sued Seattle Police after this cop assaulted and I won a settlement. I didn’t win justice because that officer is still policing. But I did use the settlement to start the “Black Education Matters Student Activist Award.” Nominate a student today!.
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Yes!! My union, @SeattleEA, just voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike for education justice! . The strike would begin next week if the Seattle School District doesn’t come back w/ a proposal that enables us to afford to live in seattle and respects all educators. #RedforEd
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We must reject the Biden administration’s call for Spring high stakes testing to measure learning loss and instead infuse the schools with what they need: COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, vaccinations, psychologists, nurses, social workers, trauma counselors, and more!.
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Thousands of Seattle teachers wore Black Lives Matter shirts to school. Here's what it looked like. @EdgeofSports.
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.@BLMAtSchool just released this powerful statement of solidarity w/ the striking educators of LA!.“The demands of the UTLA strike support students and parents and align w/ the demands of #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool.” .
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Seattle is one of the richest cities the world has ever known. We have the two richest people on the planet who live here. And yet we hear there’s not enough money to pay educators a living wage. That’s why we educators voted to authorize a strike! .
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Racism runs deep: W/ Rodgers out, Kaep would have best % in football, but NFL teams prefer to lose than sign Black player challenging racism
Colin Kaepernick has the 2nd best interception rate in NFL history behind Aaron Rodgers. #Athletes4Impact
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When I eliminated multiple choice testing in my class, it was a challenge for some of my Advanced Placement white students. When I centered collective problem solving to challenge injustice, my Black students excelled & their white peers came to see them brilliant intellectuals.
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My $100,000 settlement 4 assault by a police officer is not justice, but it will fund the struggles for for justice:
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Betsy DeVos cites the work of John Paul Wright to continue over disciplining Black students. “Wright is credited with reigniting interest in using genetics and biology to explain criminal behavior”—in other words, trying to make eugenics respectable again.
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White supremacists forced standardized testing into the schools in the early 1900s. They are still used to segregate & punish today. I’m joining @Okaikor, Wayne Au, @denisha_jones, @BLMAtSchool & @NJEA to discuss building antiracist assessment movements.
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It’s true that High stakes standardized tests (originally invented by eugenicists) show that on average Black students are behind white peers. These tests are good at identifying:.1. Who is good at eliminating wrong answer choices.2. Your proximity to white middle class society.
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I would argue Black youth turned in one of the best group projects in history when they organized rallies after police murdered George Floyd, Breonna Taylor. They educated the nation about the depths of structural racism & the effectiveness of solidarity!.
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To all my undocumented students: I love you and support you. Our government is preparing to terrorize you & your family tomorrow but please know that it is not because there’s anything wrong with you. You are wonderful, kind & brave. You are not illegal – No one is illegal.
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Yes, people paying millions to cheat on tests for their kids is despicable. But so is the normal use of college entrance exams, which are a predictor of family income, not intelligence or skills. Did you know the SAT was created by a eugenicist? Look it up. #MoreThanAScore.
JUST IN: Dozens, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, charged in alleged cheating scam on college entrance tests
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I was assaulted with pepper spray by the @SeattlePD on Martin Luther King Day in 2015. The incident is on video for all to see that I had done nothing wrong. Officer Sandra Delafuente-who assaulted me-faced no discipline & is still policing. #DefundSPD .
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Today marks the 3 year anniversary of police gunning down Charleena Lyles in her own home in front of her kids. Please join the family this evening at 6pm at Magnuson Park in solidarity with Charleena’s family! It’s time we got justice!.#SAYHERNAME.
Seattle police killed #CharleenaLyles, a mother of 4. A mother of seattle public school kids. That means she was part of the school family.
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Just finished watching the new episode of #Mandalorian. This episode is the fist time schooling in the Star Wars world is depicted. It strikes me that the writers have an ability to imagine the most amazing new worlds but still envision school lectures w/ kids in rows of desks.
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✊🏾🔥My piece is in the Washington Post about the GOP passing laws attempting to mandate that teachers lie to kids about structural racism. This weekend’s uprising around the country in defiance of these laws is proof that we will continue to #TeachTruth!.
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Some of my students will see this story. We need schools to offer help w/trauma & teach against racism!
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This really did just happen before the end of the school year! Educators of Seattle voted to end ALL standardized testing for 2 years while we develop more culturally responsive and authentic assessments.
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Calling all educators: Scrap whatever work packet or online lesson that isn’t related to #GeorgeFlyod or #BreonnaTaylor & teach for Black lives!. I coedited “Teaching For Black Lives” to give you the lessons & resources you need to rise to this moment.
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Where was the outrage the when “defund education” was the policy of the land? .
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