MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY
Happy MLK Day to all the teachers and everyone else who reads this blog. A Golden Chalk Award to all teachers who have done so much to fight for racial equality in this country. Teachers and teacher unions have played a huge role in the civil rights movement in this country.
I can honestly say that I have never met a teacher who has not gone out of their way to make sure all students are treated equally no matter what race, religion, ethnicity or other traits they might have. Teachers are given a sacred trust and a big part of that trust is to ensure equality in their classroom. I can’t imagine anyone being a teacher and harboring prejudice towards any child.
When I had just started teaching back in the early 1970′s, I had an interesting experience at one of my first parent teacher conferences. I was teaching at a school on the near west side of Chicago in a changing neighborhood. There were racial tensions as a few black and hispanic families started to move into the previously all white neighborhood. We were one of the first schools in the area to teach African-American history as part of our social studies program. At the parent teacher conference, a white parent took a textbook on African-American history and threw it down on my desk and said, “why are you teaching this shit to my kid?” Fortunately, the principal was just outside my room and had been keeping an eye on me as it was my first parent conference. The principal called the man out of the room and dealt with the situation. I sat there rather amazed at the whole incident and thought to myself, “wow, these parent conferences must really be something”. I was lucky enough to never have a parent confrontation like that for the remainder of my career.
