5 a. M. Wakthe 5 a. M. Wake up tot like her but that that is justn wish. Shes wonderfully and is also [inaudible] carman and linda were and are my inspirations and im so lucky to have the opportunity to introduce my mom, my favorite educator and the best mom to the stage. [applause] not always do you get to be introduced by your daughter but i think we are getting more seats in here. [applause] via here to talk about this book that you all are going to buy it because you dont make money writing books. My book is still the royalties are going back and this will go to the arts academy kids so its really important that you buy it from independent bookstores as well. How many of you are teachers right now teaching . How many of you have ever taught . Okay i feel better. How many of you are leading the schools or organizations . Cow many of you have ever led schools or organizations . How many of you are graduate students . How many of you are a former graduate student of mine . Thank you for being here. So, i moved the book to start a larger conversation about what we believe will help students succeed after high school. I also wrote the book because im really angry. I am angry at what it takes to really create access and equity in this country. We continue to think it is the responsibility of the most vulnerable , those with the least amount of access to create themselves. I wrote the book to say that its just not true. I told this story and i get crucified a lot for this but i want to tell you this because it was a lot of my motivation. She was one of my students at the academy graduated at the top of her class and was accepted with a full scholarship. She was a first generation scholarship kid. Its disappointing there are not more at harvard. There should be. For complicated t reasons, she never stepped foot on her college campus. She lost her scholarship in the summer after high h school becae she missed a deadline to send in a deposit to hold her space. For the reasons that combine a lack of experience in the absencand absenceof cultural anl capital and im surebs some sha. This one dramatic mistake had an effect on the course of her life. This story became the impetus for this new book. When i stepped down from the arts academy i wanted to take a more critical look at what i haveve accomplished a. I. Began to interview a long night, those that have gone on to college and those who had not. Those had done well in graduated and in total i interviewed over 90 students and spoke in the form only to dozens more. Her story i would soon find out was not an exception. I begin to reflect on the promise that i made each year to buy 125 freshmen. All of you i would say in and of some elite just like this will go on to college or a postsecondary career. You will go on to a conservatory thatol was college with all of u will go on to college. Its the right promise to make. I still feel that way, but my emphasis was wrong. I didnt do enough to promote Career Opportunities along with college and as i listened to my former students, five of some shins or myths became a clear refrained if we carefully begin to interrogate them and that is the invitation of the buck, i believe we will continue to build better bridges between Higher Education and pre k12 education. The book is organized around these five. I want you tohe hear them. Money isnt an obstacle. Number two, race doesnt matter. Justr. Work harder. College is for everyone. If you believe your dreams will come true. The College Acceptance rates of students from the Boston Arts Academy is very high. I could have just been pleased with those statistics. 94 to 98 are accepted to college and waited nearly two thirds graduate within six years. These are extraordinary figures for any school particularly urban school, but i wanted to understand what happened to those that didnt go to college or were not successful and i wanted to understand the journey of those in college. Its too easy for us to assume all students start in the same place and everyone has access to the same degree of knowledge to navigate. As a recent New York Times article says this came out just as i was turning the puck into o the publisher and i would quote for young people with collegeeducated parents, the path to Higher Education may be stressful but there is a roadm roadmap. If thehe essay is lackluster aty can hire a writing coach and no one will be all the wiser. If they cant decide which college is the best fit they can visit and when they ar are tempd tare temptedto get off, their pl push them on. Few of these are in place for the win, or firstgeneration students and that is what this book is about. We assume the deep social inequities can be overcome by individual efforts and everyone has an equal chance of success and if we just work harder we will be fine. We assumed this because there are so many wonderful stories of those who make it and in the book i tell those stories. Many of you may have heard of diane in the country we love she played the little latina and orange is the new black. She was p a part of the interviewed for this book, but we make the assumption that those who just lack determination are not sufficiently gritty are the reason folks will not get ahead, and this great pedagogy if you will is something that has been popularized in our schools of education and this just work harder kind of ethos, so i want you to critically examine that. Im going to read an excerpt from the book wherere i describd to classrooms, one where the teacher is all about great if the other where the behavioral expectations are little more relaxedd and id reading this in the hope that you will all come out of here, buy the book and say great is and what we need to be talking about right now, so here we go. This is on page 84 in case any of you want to follow. Im going to read from my big print text. 2,512th graders facing their teacher and a big debate the big video screen. We are about to begin the unit and this is the video i promised yesterday we would watch. A hand shot up in a little girl with braids and ribbons in her hair asked in a whisper is that the one where we see the snake actually walk out of its skin . Yes, we will see that and take notes like scientists as we watch. Everyone nodded eagerly. The teacher distributed clipboards and papers and a nervous excitement rippled through the class. E clearly this was a lesson they had eagerly anticipated. When we are ready and sitting up and tracking me, i will start the video. The students repositioned themselves and held their clipboards to the ready in their laps. However, two students in the back row of the drug were overtaken with giggles and seem to have a hard time either putting in the paper or paying attention. The teacher redirected them a couple times but they were in a world of their own. All others had their eyes facing forward and were not paying much attention to the giggling but certainly the teacher said it is clear to me that the class is not ready to engage in learning. Lets go back to the desks until we have 100 engagement. You are not respecting the learning process and have completely forgotten. Did you move your back muscles over the weekend plaques to many of you are slouching. Im going to stop from the text for a minute to make sure we know whats landing is. Raise your hand if youve heard the acronym, situps, look at question, not an attractive speaker. Part of the grid ethos is that all kids know how to do that on demand. The little girl, returning to the text whispered to her friends we are not showing respect. Her friend nodded. The students quietly got to their seat an and became heir of despondent street silently back to their desks. Now we will have to wait until tomorrow to see the video and i really do not want a dinner. When the class was dismissed for lunch teacher demanded everyone line up outside silently. As they proceeded to the cafeteria, they passed a second gradehe class walking and. Very common in a lot of schools these days. They held their arms crisscrossed a most like they were in a straitjacket, their cheeks puffed out as if they had caught a bubble inside. Theye proceeded silently to the cafeteria where they dropped their arms and relaxed. There were five different classrooms in the cafeteria and all of them, they ate in complete silence while the teachers monitored the room. Im going to stop from the text because i think in the book i dont tell you what schools these are from, but this is not an exceptional school. Want you to think it is. I visited many schools like this. I inquired of silence lunch was a punishment for bad behavior and i was informed i went for lunch was a regular occurrence. We want students to have time in the day that they are quite peaceful, but it felt anything but peaceful to me. It seemed more like a prison with the teachers at guard. I was stunned that this has become a regular practice. Gone is the joy of meeting friends at lunch and chattering about anything or nothing. Gone is being a carefree kid. As in many schools, all of the teachers are young and white and female. What message does it send to kids that are not of the dominantid culture . The school to me felt oppressive. While making eye contact and nodding at speakers isnt wrong, this land system isnt contextualized to a variety of learning environments. It resulted in an emphasis on behavior over active learning. In other words you were consideredd a good learner if yu could demonstrate this plan slat this is a minimal condition of learning. In mostg situations for many students the behavior had nothing to do with the learning. Of course it is hard to teach if they are cutting in class but the third grade Science Teacher described that it had clearly been trained to stop in the absence of a 100 compliance. In the conversation later the teacher admitted she felt badly about the decision to abort a lesson in favor of behavior. In this school bpd that students are not i practicing slant, then thes learning will be compromised. Its like the broken window theory you have to take care of the small things before the big things or nothing will get fixed. But this adherence that i have been witnessed in the so man soo excuse schools makes me wonder about the message we send to our young people. The word of process kept comingh to mind and a little room existed for the divergent thinking. I reflect on another school and visited which was the opposite of the no excuse schools. In the urban Public School in new york city i witnessed a group of eighth graders discussing the novel by james baldwin. What struck me in addition to their level of discourse how they arranged themselves in the classroom some sat on top of their desks and others were on chairs and a few were standing. Not everyone was in a circle. One sat outside the circle and participated in a discussion even though he looked angry the entire time. Another sat at the teachers desk. When i asked if the seating arrangement was distracting to him or other students, he looked at me curiously. Why should it matter how they said if they are saved if they g and respecting one anothers opinions. That is my goal. Can they talk to one another from the text and find evidence about the point of view and build off of what each other said . What about the fact not everyone was living by the same rule, clearly the directions were to sit in a circle. He began somewhat impatient with me. What i like everyone to sit in a circle . Of course. Do i want to sacrifice valuable teaching and learning time to be constantly reminding students of that expectation and more importantly do i want to make sure the classroom is a place theres also breathing room . I know whats going on with carlos and edward. The rest of the class doesnt care. I wasnt sure that i was satisfied with the answer. Ive wanted to do if he had seen the practice where the rules for easily and quickly adhered to in the teacherand teachers felt ted begin to. Many are asked to leave because theyy were not disciplined enough. He held up his fingers to make the air quotes. You wont see those banners all over my wall. My job is to teach them to thi think. I was not comfortable with the lack of structure and consequence in the classroom and i wondered if it could be used in this case. They learned to listen to one another. I know many of my colleagues believe by following the formula kids will go into college that i dont think they are asking the students for the community where they come from what success would look like for them. Its learning about selfdetermination and i know that its a lot to ask of teachers that we cannot keep seeing ourselves as these a historicalal beings. Anin his teachers didnt particularly like me we need to understand students of color are in then situation because of the systemic racism. We have to critically examine how we might be perpetuating that. Mr. Johnson went on to describe how they were doing in high school. They know how to think critically and independently. So in a this book i question the longrange effectiveness into the race and class effectiveness and training teachers in these methods would create a Classroom Teachers deserve. The benefit of the learning and grids may have been overrated and the curiosity does that google the most may be the most curious learners later on. They were the key to the productive economy and are not well facilitated by the no excuse approach. Another of them should i address is one of this college is for everyone to. We know that isnt true were realistic about we prepare them for careers that will leave middleclass white kid we must change over language to college and career ready and move the way from what i see here. Here is the national statistic. Hi School Graduates enrolling in college meanst nearly half of te students do not and what kind of preparation are we giving them . To answer that i like both locally and internationally and here is what i conclude. We must do a better job with curvier and Technical Education, with workca experiences while younger people were in high school. I want you to consider the next statistic it took a long time to get this one. Those with highest c unemploymet rates come with families of an income above 120,000. The teams with the highest employment rate and here i argue for Work Experience come from thfamilies with income over 120,000 so we are perpetuating again and again income inequality. Those younger peoplthose youngem lowincome sectors are in the greatest need of Work Experience but the least likely toth receie them. In switzerland one of the countries i looked at as a counter experience, Students Experience ant cohesive approach to education and work. At least 50 of 16 to are involved in Vocational Education and one of the hallmarks of the system is that it is permeable to. There is the sense that apprenticeships are a high status way to learn. I saw this level of career and Technical Education in some schools in the country, not nearly enough. In the book i talk about one school 50 miles from here located in the workingclass Community Just outside boston and here is what a student said to me. Using college as a place to grow up as expensive. Im glad ive been exposed to so many different areas i might want to specialize in. Another studentnt told me he was graduating from the alliedhe Health Program and was certified as a nursing assistant but knew he didnt like patient care and would be going on t to meijer tn clinical lab science. D he felt he didnt like direct service work for th that the sce behind disease. I could have written another book about my experiences here in the schools with the career and technical Vocational High School. School. The school holds such a promise for people and it has been under it for three decades. I believe having a strong sense of what youre interested in pursuing in college or the curvier Technical Program needs to become a focus of high schools across the country. In the book i also talk about forprofit schools because they have come in saying they are filling thee gap, but the Horror Stories was enough to move me very quickly away from them although i did try in some cases to give them a good look. Elizabeth warren, the senator from massachusetts hasat a webse that serves as a watchdog and she urges us to stay vigilant especially in the time where i fear that forprofit colleges are coming back. In the book i have many suggestions about how to reinvigorate the curvier and Technical Education. To ensure they have Work Experience and not just middle and upperclass students. And not just the 40 hours of community service, but a real commitment and i even suggested the book i envision a program where all willhe have the chance between high school and college or as a part of their senior year to work in an area that speaksks to their passions. Of course in this book those who know me i take on the countrys current obsession with highstakes testing. This is one of the reasons there is no room in the curriculum for the education. We have become so focused on sorting out the students in the schools that weve lost sight of the importance ofof teaching empathy and how to get along with those different from you. At the time the Democratic Institutions are being daily undermined, i believe that a curriculum focused on the student agenc agency activism cp prepare young people to enter a world in which they have the tools to reshape that reality. We must continue to embrace the largest purposes of education to help our young people understand the context of their lives including the linguistic and a history ahistory as well as thef others different from themselv themselves. I know from seeing the young people play today that education in the arts does just that and we need to ensure that the young people graduate from high school having learned metaphorically speaking to walk in one anothers shoes if we must learn to embrace language, culture, and movements that are foreign to our own perspective. We must learn to express connections through drawing, painting, building and painted the differences from becoming impediments to change. As teachers it is our job to help people critically perceive the world and the way they exist in the worl world and not the wd is a static reality, but the reality in the process of transformation. Even in the era of trump, i remain hopeful. In large part by hope is derived from