A IS FOR ACTIVISM: Tracy Aiden — by Theresa Collins With her epic collection of t-shirts for Black history month--one for each day--February is always special for Ms. Tracy Aiden. Beyond her amazing fashion sense, and the month of February, is a deep and abiding commitment to teaching her elementary school students through the lens of equity, kindness, and social justice. Ms. Aiden teaches “little people” at the University of Chicago Laboratory School, where her students spend three years with her in a loop. Before entering the field of elementary education, Ms. Aiden had a “whole other career as a counselor” for adolescents, working in a variety of CPS schools to help teens and their teachers develop peer mediation centers. Her work with children has been a lifelong element of her professional identity, however her move toward elementary education came after she had her own daughters. As she watched her own children’s education develop, in particular the ways that her daughters and their classmates were “invited to be part of their learning,” Tracy decided to make a pivot from older learners to the younger ones; because of her lifelong dedication to justice, her keen interest and focus on raising her daughters to be proud of their identity as young black women, and her strong sense of self as a progressive educator, her classroom work has always included social justice. Over the course of the last 3 years with her students who loop with her from pre- k - 1st grade, Ms. Tracy’s learners have marched for Black lives, created buttons and a pop up t-shirt shop, made a public memorial for Breonna Taylor, mixed paint colors to reflect the variety of their skin tones, read dozens upon dozens of books that center and celebrate identity, community, and connection. Tracy’s work has had impact on her students and their families, anyone who follows her on Instagram, and recently, her co-facilitation for an online PEN Zoom space for BIPOC Women, and her presentation at PoCC 2020 titled “The Takeover: Creating ‘Blackspace’ Where Black Children are Valued in a Predominantly White School” which had an audience of close to 1000 attendees. A NIPEN 5.0 alum whose work includes the classroom work students and a robust classroom newsletter for their parents, Tracy facilitates learning that embodies the Progressive philosophy that school is life itself, that the needs of society determine the work of the school, and that teaching and learning are a shared experience that extends beyond the classroom to the family and the communities in which our students live, learn, thrive, and to which they learn to contribute their “knowledge power skill and service.” What follows is a collage of experience with Tracy--excerpts from an interview with Theresa Collins, former president of the PEN Board of Directors, and selections of Ms. Aiden’s own writing about progressive education, as well as images from her classroom which highlight her focus on equity and justice in her curriculum.
Spring 2021 The Journal of the Progressive Education Network PEN 27
