Keep up the good work!

Are your administrators aware of what you are doing? If they are at all progressive, toot your own horn at them so they see what is happening in your classroom. Good PR goes a long way to advancing your own career and maybe improving education in other classrooms and schools.

I’ll agree, though, that as much as I ponder the question, “What shouldn’t my students become?”, child abusers, murderers, and Adolf Hitler, concern me more than poor Lauren Caitlin Upton. But, David, I’m unimpressed by the risk of my kids turning into Hitler and they would be likewise unimpressed by my admonishments not to (pick one) kill people, abuse children, do drugs, or become Adolf Hitler. It’s not on any of their horizons.

What is on their horizons, whether they or you realize it, is the temptation to tuck into the safest circle the world offers them and never leave.

Maybe Lauren Caitlin Upton is a brilliant, multi-faceted individual who caved under pressure like any of us might. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter much. Miss South Carolina, as my class and I know her through those forty-eight seconds of video, offered up a valuable lesson, one which I couldn’t throw away.

David Jordan

P.S. Please write me back.

The overlaps get hard, especially if you go for “just a little” or “quite a bit.” And not all of us get to the top of the board quite so easily…

You are one of the teachers who realizes the bigger picture in education. We can create moments where we address the child instead of the content. I hear others voicing concerns about stereotypes, but this young woman has made a life of entering and winning beauty pageants. The proof is not in her words, but in her actions.

This fact aside, you gave your kids permission to step out of the circles they are rooted in within their lives. The act of making yourself vulnerable in hope of better understanding the world around you is both liberating and frightening, yet you have clearly created a safe place for this to happen in your classroom.

Keep up the good fight! You are changing lives in that classroom of yours.

I used Miss Teen South Carolina on the first day of school in a World Studies class. I first showed a picture of her, in her civies at a baseball game, sans crown and make-up. After asking the students to write down adjectives that describe their impression of her, I showed them picture of Jennifer Lin to do the same. They did not recognize the beauty pageant queen and of course did not recognize the piano prodigy.

We got into an interesting discussion about the comparisons of the words used to describe a bright-eyed blonde at a baseball game and a bright-eyed asian girl sitting at a piano. The practically all-white class could not believe that these people were almost the same age. Why was one “happy” and the other “serious”? What makes one “energetic”, but the other “patient”?

Then we went on to test these first impressions by listening to the public embarrassment of the geography answer, then listening to Jennifer at TED Talks take five notes at random and organize a absolutely awe-inspiring composition off the top of her head.

When you look at someone, you begin putting them into a circle without really knowing if that circle is where they belong.

Next year, I’ll add the circles – thanks Dan