Bus No. 2857. The old surplus bus had been sitting
in the backyard of Roy H. Sommerfield’s house in Montgomery, Alabama,
for 30 years. Now, it was up for online auction—no, not
eBay—and the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn,
Michigan, outbid the Smithsonian and a museum in Denver.
Today, you can board the bus and relive history by sitting
in the same seat Rosa Parks sat in that fateful day, on December
1, 1955—exactly 50 years ago today as this teachers.net article
is posted.
Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman who worked as a seamstress,
boarded this Montgomery City bus to go home after work.
According to Jim Crow law, the first ten rows of a bus were reserved
for whites. Rosa Parks sat, correctly, in the eleventh row, the
first row behind the white section.
However, on that day, all of the seats in the bus soon filled.
When a white man boarded the bus, the driver (following the standard
practice of segregation) asked that all four blacks sitting just behind
the white section give up their seats so that the white man could sit
there. Rosa Parks, who was an active member of the local NAACP,
quietly refused to give up her seat.
When the police came on the bus that day, they said to Rosa Parks,
“You know if you continue to sit there, we’re going to have
to throw you in jail.” She answered, “You may do that.”
An enormously polite way of saying, what could your jail possibly mean
compared to the imprisonment I’ve been subjected to for the last
42 years, an incarceration from which I break out of today?
As a child in Pine Level, Alabama, Rosa Parks remembered watching buses
take the white kids to the new school while the black kids had to walk
to their school.
Although she was well-schooled in civil disobedience, her actions
on the bus that day 50 years ago was ultimately her personal choice.
After her arrest, local civil rights activists, the Montgomery Improvement
Association, initiated a boycott of the Montgomery bus system.
Leading the boycott group was a young Baptist minister who was new to
Montgomery. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr.
Since African Americans made up about 75 percent of the bus riders
in Montgomery, the boycott posed a serious economic threat to the company
and the white rule of the community. The boycott lasted 381 days,
into December 1956 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation
law was unconstitutional and the Montgomery buses were to be integrated.
It was Rosa Parks’ arrest that ultimately
gave every American citizen,
regardless of color, creed, or national origin, the freedom to
sit where one chooses to sit,
eat where one chooses to eat,
worship where one chooses to worship, and
learn where one chooses to learn.
You Choose to Learn
Although we all have the freedom to learn, note where some people sit
at faculty and inservice meetings. Some arrive early just to be
able to reserve seats in the last row or sit in the most remote corners.
Their message is clear, “I do not want to learn, nor do I want
to collaborate.”
All I want is a job.
They want a job working 180 days, 8 am. to 3 pm, closed in a room with
no worry of a supervisor, reluctant to be in-serviced, and free to belittle
people (administrators, children, and parents) to cover their ineffectiveness.
Making money to pay bills is the primary concern of such worker-teachers.
They blame others so they do not need to take responsibility for their
own actions.
The moment Rosa Parks chose to be arrested, she had no assurance
as to what her actions would bring. She had no assurance
that her friends would be there for her in the aftermath of that action.
It was a lonely decision made in isolation, just as
we all have to make isolated decisions that can affect our lives and
the children we teach.
For instance, it can be very lonely when your negotiated contract states
that the work day ends at 2:30 pm but you choose to stay late and even
come in on weekends to work.
Or, you are part of a culture where people work in isolation; a culture
in which life-long learning, such as going to conferences and networking
with colleagues to solve problems, is not the prevailing practice.
The decision to continuously learn is a choice you must make, as Rosa
Parks’ action gave you the freedom to make those choices even
though you know that the people within your negative work culture are
going to give you a difficult time.
It’s a sad reality
that you may be the finest of teachers and
have the finest of lessons and programs, but
if you work in a negative culture—
the culture always wins.
As a teacher, if you conspire to be part of a negative culture, then
you help create a culture that is deadly for the children.
The Rewards Go to the Professional Educator
By making choices (Read Chapter 25, The
First Days of School, on choice), the negative aspects
of your life stop being your enemy. When Rosa Parks sat down that
day, it was partly an acknowledgment that by conspiring with racism,
she had helped create racism.
By conspiring with ineffectiveness, you conspire to create ineffective
schools and the children are the losers.
However, effective teachers know that the rewards go only to
the professionals. They are the happiest, make the most
money, get the most respect, and are the most successful.
The children are the winners.
Professionals have arrived at this happy state in life because
they build on strengths, not on weaknesses. Their attitude
and abilities are their strengths, and they do not dwell on whining
about people, places, and things because they have discovered that life
is fuller when chasing a future challenge than when bemoaning the past.
The first days of school may be history for you now, but the school
year continues. What does the effective teacher do after the first days
of school?
The professional educator chooses to always learn and grow.
The professional educator is on an endless journey; looking for new
and better ideas, new information, and improved skills to further student
success.
This Is Teaching: Recognizing That Knowledge Is Power
Knowledge is power. Knowledge, like money and
status, is a form of power. Power is not physical force but rather
the ability to get things done. For instance, the more money a
person has, the more a person can do. The more horsepower in a
car, the easier it is to climb a hill. The more knowledge a person
has, the more the person is able to accomplish. The ability
to achieve and accomplish accrues for those with knowledge.
Knowledge provides choices. A person without
choices is helpless in life. Ineffective teachers do not read
beneficial literature on education or attend conferences; thus their
reserve of knowledge is limited. They complain helplessly that
things don’t apply to them, waiting for someone to TELL them what
to do.
Whereas, effective teachers have a passionate pursuit for knowledge,
delighting that every new piece of knowledge allows them to reflect
on more CHOICES and options in life.
Do not allow people who cannot control their own lives to control
your life. Rather, proceed through life expanding your
awareness, searching for opportunities, working and sharing with other
professionals who are also expanding their awareness.
Professional educators believe that within every great teacher, an
even better one is waiting to come forth.
The Basics for a Beginning Teacher
The most crucial time in a new teacher’s life is the
first one to three years. During this time, some 40 percent
of new teachers will decide to leave teaching. But regardless
of the reasons they state, the fact is that the successful teachers
DO NOT QUIT. The professional educator accepts the responsibility
of personal growth and invests the time necessary to become an effective
and successful teacher.
There was a time when we could discriminate against minorities, by
restricting them to less appealing places. That way, minorities
could not get anything, while the majority got to choose everything:
jobs, opportunities, and schooling.
However, because of activists like Rosa Parks, today, the only
person who can discriminate against you is yourself.
Thanks to Rosa Parks and her contemporaries, we now have equal
access to all the opportunities that are available in a free society.
She left behind an inspirational legacy. Choices in school and
learning is one of them.
May her noble spirit remind us
of the power of fateful, small acts.
| |
Barry Black
Senate chaplain |
Much of the preceding has been excerpted from Chapters 25 and 26 in
The First Days of School. As you begin
a new year, please reread these two chapters. They will have a
direct impact on your own life and happiness.
He Chose to Go to School
(The following story is excerpted from a column written by Jessie Mangafunan
that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, November 19, 2005.)
Jackson Dung Huynh lived only 15 years—almost half of them sick
with cancer—and he was a student a mere two and a half months
at Andrew Hill High in East San Jose, California.
But in his short life, racked with pain, his body reduced by bone marrow
cancer to a shadow of skin and bones, friends, classmates and teachers
say he left behind an inspirational legacy.
“I was struck by the irony that so many students are trying to
get out of school,” said teacher Joshua
Greene, “while young Jackson fought valiantly, even until his
dying days, to stay in school.”
On Friday, Greene and more than 150 students and teachers—many
of the classmates, like Jackson, were recent immigrants; coming from
China, Vietnam, Laos, Samoa, Mexico, and Cambodia to learn English—paid
a somber, moving, multilingual tribute to the young student who had
a simple life goal—attend high school.
Kids and teachers looked on at Jackson with fascination and awe as
he lived his dying wish with sheer mental will.
“He was one of the most powerful people I’ve ever met in
my life,” said Mark Grey, Jackson’s teacher from Sylvandale
Middle School in a tearful tribute.
“That boy wrote every letter in his homework with
his heart.”
Jackson, a 2001 Vietnamese immigrant, died November 1 at Stanford University
Hospital of complications from the bone marrow cancer he was diagnosed
with at age 7 while still living in Ho Chi Minh City. He endured
13 months of chemotherapy, his mother Muoi Thoi said, and the result
was hopeful. The cancer had retreated.
With the help of Muoi Thoi’s brother in San Jose, the family
immigrated to the United States—but by then the cancer had returned.
In 2002 Jackson had a bone marrow transplant.
Through years of treatment and home-schooling, Jackson deeply missed
the company of students and teachers, the rhythm and life of school.
He fought to stay in Sylvandale Middle School and graduated in a wheelchair.
He was frail and seriously ill but he wished to be in school.
“I don’t know where that comes from,” said his mother,
flipping sadly through the meticulous school notebooks that Jackson
kept in a blue and gray knapsack. “He just loved school
so much.”
When doctors told the family that Jackson had months to live, he had
a wish. He wanted to spend his final days going to classes, doing
homework—just being a regular student.
“Any child who’s that passionate about school, who’s
so determined to do homework even when he is seriously ill, has a lesson
that we—adults and children—should all learn from,”
said Bryan Cong Do, a San Jose real estate consultant.
“We all have limitations, but we must overcome and accept it
and move forward. To me that’s Jackson’s story.”
That lesson was clear to many students and teachers at Andrew Hill,
who wrote, spoke, sang, and recited in poetry the inspiration they drew
from Jackson. A memorial wall in the cafeteria was covered with
their sentiments in French, Tagalog, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Spanish,
and English.
“Siempre en nuestro corazon (always in our hearts),”
wrote one student.
Teacher Julie Hoving noted that many students find excuses not to do
work. “He was the opposite of that,” said Hoving.
“He wanted to be as involved in high school as he could.”
Jackson spent just two and a half months as a freshman at Andrew Hill,
wheeled from classroom to classroom by his mother, who was equally determined
to grant her son’s dying wish. His final, half-finished
homework was about people like Albert Einstein and Rosa Parks who influenced
the lives of others by living lives of example.
“He was a really strong individual,” said ninth-grader
Cindy Ngar, 14, who knew Jackson from Sylvandale. “He really
inspired me because he never gave up. He inspired other kids but
he didn’t know it.”
So determined was Jackson that on his bed at Stanford Hospital on a
Monday—tethered to intravenous tubes dripping pain medication
into his bloodstream—he called his sister Linh Huynh, a freshman
at Evergreen Community College, with a plea, “Don’t forget
to pick up my homework so I can do it.” He died that Thursday.
“He was strong in the head,” his mother said. “Sometimes,
I wanted him to stop because he was hurting. He was hurting a
lot.”
But not even the worst pain prevented Jackson from going to school.
In fact, school work, he told his mother, seemed the only salve for
his pain.
“He told me not to cry,” Thoi said. “He said,
‘If he had one day to live, I want to go to school.’”
He CHOSE to go to school. He CHOSE to learn.
Page 303
Commanding a full page story in The First Days of School
is our acknowledgment of the importance of Rosa Parks and the impact
of her choice on our American rights. Over the past 14 years,
Page 303 remains unchanged—reminding us as educators we have the
power to choose to become better educators for our children.
You can be a voice for quality and dignity in the profession.
Continue to grow and educate yourself. Lead the way for
others to follow in your professional beliefs:
- Continue to grow as an educator by reading the journals, the Internet,
and going to workshops and conferences.
- Collaborate with each other and share the wealth of experiences
you each encounter.
- Care for each child with respect and patience.
- Dress professionally.
- Create a culture of fairness and understanding in your classroom
so the children can live it each day.
- Choose to make a difference in the life of a child.
We’ve been given the greatest charge on Earth—educating
our children. Exercise your power of choice. Begin
your action with one small act. Make December 1, 2005, the day
you recognize the legacy Rosa Parks delivered to us and use to it to
transform yourself and the profession and create a classroom full of
winners.
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