I just had a very interesting dream. I was a teacher at a school and I was new. I sat down at 11:30 and I was talking with other teachers and we started talking about race. I started talking about being white and how I think a lot of the achievement gap between white kids and black and brown kids is because teachers don’t connect with black and brown kids and our culture is set up so seperately for white people. As a white person, I am insulated from black culture. I talked about how mixed couples experience racism and how much racism is a part of our culture. I went on and on at this table and everyone was raising their hands because they wanted to join the conversation. I waited for a moment and someone said. “Go on, your not done.” And so I talked about the way teachers do not feel empowered to get to know their students. I talked about my conversation with the teachers from the white school and how they were so disempowered they couldn’t even think of how to reach black kids until I asked them how they reach their low achieving white kids and encouraged them to go the extra distance over race boundaries and do similar things with their black and brown kids, like get to know them personally, connect with what they love, find ways to enjoy their perspective and step out of the white teacher box.

Awaking from this dream I began to daydream about having a job where I could be around teachers who were interested in teaching all students and conciously breaking down the racial barriers. It made me think about doing a job where I am on a racial achievement gap task force.
Party

We just had the red party. We got red lightbulbs and a red tablecloth and we made sangria and people brought red vines and red candy and we had chips and salsa. It was a nice bunch of folks who didn’t know each other. I hope people enjoyed themself.