CET Writes

In order to be truly effective, educators must recognize that what they teach is merely a vector for the greater objective: teaching students how to think. Regardless of the practice fodder, students must be taught how to critically consume information, break it down to understand its individual parts, compare it to their present understanding, and use it to build a new understanding that is truly theirs. Developing these skills is vital to preparing them for life-long learning in a dynamic future. My drive to educate is fueled by my desire to make the invisible visible, and thereby demystify the process of understanding. In my teaching methods classes, an article by Robert Probst stood out to me by explaining that American high school English classes are too often taught as prep courses for a literature degree; whereas many of the students may not pursue higher education at all, let alone study literature beyond the minimum requirements. In this environment, few skills are taught; in

Although I’ve led a relatively privileged life, I’ve never been allowed the luxury to forget that I am Black and that this life is Promethean fire, stolen from those who would refuse me such power. From a young age, I was raised with an awareness that the life I enjoyed was hard-won, secured by generations of conscious decisions to undermine institutional inequity, and that it could only be retained and furthered by never seeming too Black,  always outworking non-Black peers,  and pretending obliviousness to shock at my excellence. I was groomed to live as an exemplar of this rhetorical triangle, persuading the powers of American society not to bar my way to success and perhaps even grant the same opportunities expected by my non-Black peers. At home, I was taught to blend into non-Black America as a successful woman capable of navigating any social register. I grew up the daughter of college-educated professionals in an upper-middle class, predominantly white neighborhood in an afflue

Thelma Streeter (circa 1948) Earlier today I was chatting online with a friend and colleague about the surreal and exhausting state of the world, and he made the following statement:  Sometimes, I feel like an imposter in the conversation  [about equity work], as I am the quintessential benefactor of this historic class system, but I still feel like it has to be much more difficult to be a mouthpiece as a black American. So often, it has to feel like people immediately shut down when you start talking about inequality. Or systemic racism. To which I replied: If you're the imposter, then I'm the sleeper. I, too, have benefited from the same class system. My parents circumvented and exploited it, and then taught my brother and I to not only do the same but to also conduct ourselves as if we have always been here. And that was just the most recent generation. Some day, we'll talk about my social-climbing, paternal grandmother. ***** Thelma Streeter (née Dennis) was born on Jul