Prof. Development: Off the Shelf

Professional Development: Off the Shelf

Mollie Kasper

We Got This. Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be: A Review

I’m a teacher. I’m not a hero, a martyr, or a saint. I am, however, a highly trained professional whose work is to educate others, and I have long felt that the superhero myth is a weight I cannot carry, a standard I cannot live up to. In We Got This. Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be, author Cornelius Minor opens by examining the “hero teacher” myth and explaining the damage it does to teachers and the teaching profession. In reality, the hero myth serves as a trap; it ignores the humanity and fallibility of teachers. As Minor states,

The problem with this narrative is that it erases the complicated calculus of becoming and being a hero, a leader, a change agent, a teacher. This narrative does not allow heroes to be imperfect or to be nuanced. It does not allow them to grow tired, to fail, to learn publicly, or to grieve. As such, it is exclusive, (p. 3).

Minor goes on to explain that since the 1770s, U. S. teachers have fought for equity, and there are, of course, forces working against that work. The “hero teacher” myth has arisen, in part, “[b]ecause if educators are working toward equity, one way to silence them is to deify them” (p. 4).

If we, as teachers, are called to be change-makers and equity fighters (and many of us are), and if the hero myth is designed to silence us, then We Got This. is a manual for taking back our voices. It provides a road map for reexamining our teaching practices and discovering where we can increase equity, accessibility, and inclusivity in our classrooms.

The book is organized in two sections of three chapters each. In each chapter, Minor introduces a topic, explains its importance, and then goes on to provide tools for implementation.

Chapter one details the act of listening. Minor describes how the labels we associate with others, such as black, white, male, female, gifted, and challenged, “cannot cover our whole humanity,” (p. 11) and often prevent us from listening to them. “We lose lots of human capital each year because people bearing essential insights and experiences are wearing labels that we’ve been conditioned to ignore” (p. 11).

As he does throughout the book, in this chapter, Minor illustrates his point by allowing readers to witness his own fallibility. He relates the story of a student, nicknamed Quick, who came to him for help. Minor dismissed Quick because he wore the “good student” label; Quick’s grades were fine, therefore Quick didn’t need Minor’s help. The student, who needed help on a personal matter, became frustrated; “Minor, all y’all want to… save my future, but none of y’all know anything about saving my now,” he complained. As a teacher of low-income, struggling readers, this story was a gut-punch for me. I know the importance of reading for my students’

futures, but how am I relating it to their nows? Am I truly listening to what they need right now? I wasn’t even sure how to begin that task. How do you explain the importance of reading to kids whose main goal is to get another skin on Fortnite?

Fortunately, Minor provides a plan. For each of the topics he covers, he delineates the step-by-step process of implementation and provides a series of planning sheets available as downloads on the Companion Resources website (http://hein.pub/wegotthis). Minor presents the planning sheets not as yet another form for teachers to complete, but as thinking guides, questions to ask yourself.

Once you have listened to and truly heard your students, the next step is to consider all students who may be left out by your current classroom culture. Minor offers a template for planning an inclusive, student-centered classroom that responds to your students’ needs and priorities. Teachers should view themselves as allies, not saviors. “We are most powerful when we labor to understand young people and when we work alongside (not for) them . . .Teaching without this kind of engagement is not teaching at all. It is colonization” (p. 28).

Subsequent chapters explore various aspects of implementing change in the classroom. In “Do Your Homework and Then Go For It,” Minor explains that exploration and inquiry are needed but cautions against getting bogged down in extensive research: “[R]esearch quickly, try courageously, fail reflectively, stand up, and try again” (p. 51). The chapter entitled “Show Kids That You Hear Them” explores the power of relationships. “Relationship building must be intentional,” (p. 83) Minor states, and class meetings, student feedback, sharing of power are ways of developing relationships with students. One way he shares power is to ask one student to be a timekeeper. “In all honesty, I don’t really need a timekeeper, but when building classroom community, the public sharing of power matters” (p. 89).

Additionally, Minor gives a concrete plan for what to do when the curriculum you are given does not meet the needs of the students you have, stating that “my job as a teacher is not to teach the curriculum or even just to teach the students; it is to seek to understand my kids as completely as possible so that I can purposefully bend curriculum to meet them” (p 104-105). He advocates a universal-design-for-learning framework to remove barriers to learning and increase inclusivity, and even finds a way to think about required test-prep activities and make them into what students actually need.

Finally, Minor addresses the internal struggle of many teachers between being a good teacher or a good employee. He notes that in general, teachers tend to be rule-followers; “When merit or school standing is at stake, and we are asked to do a thing, we tend to be the kind of people that do the thing. As asked” (p. 126). We sacrifice our creativity and growth on the altar of evaluations and teacher rubrics, and Minor, referring to Gloria Ladson-Billings, names this as a “classroom death,” the by-products of which are “student disengagement or failure” (p. 127).

Yet there is hope for a resurrection, and true to form, Minor offers a plan for that as well:

Our way forward from here must recognize a new power: ours. The work can be hard, but the steps are simple.

We set our goals, we learn, and we put that learning to use. We stop regularly to reflect (p. 144).

Early in the book, Minor shares that as a child and young adult, he loved skateboarding. He practiced and practiced, and fell, and fell, and fell. His body was often covered in scrapes and bruises, which he considered “the currency that I paid for the ability to fly” (p. 9). As teachers, we have permission to experience failure—epic, glorious, down-in-flames failure—in the context of practice, reflection, and repeated effort.

We Got This. would make an ideal candidate for a teacher-led book study. The chapters are short and easy to read but provide inspiration for profound reflection. Even though it’s an “easy” read, with multiple, comic-book inspired illustrations and relatively large print, you’ll want to take your time with this book. Use a highlighter. Stop and reflect as you read. Download the planning guides and fill them out, thinking deeply about your students and your classroom. Finally, discuss your thoughts about the book with others, and try out what you’ve absorbed.

Learn to fly.

Reference

Minor, C. (2019). We got this. Equity, access, and the quest to be who our students need us to be. Heinemann.

Mollie Kasper is a classroom teacher, with seven years’ experience with special students. She has taught the last five years at Forney Independent School District in Forney, Texas, but will be moving to a fourth-grade class at Phillips Elementary in Kaufman, Texas, in the fall. She is a reading specialist with a master’s degree from Texas A&M-Commerce and can be reached at molliemd24@gmail.com.