Friday, February 21, 2025

They're Coming

 How many minutes do I have before the Secret Police show up at the door of my classroom, asking if I was the one who was reading Yertle The Turtle to kids in the Transitional Kindergarten class? 

Will it be before they close the Department of Education? 

Will it be after they have already carted away all the students in our school with "questionable" immigration status? 

Will it be around the same time as cameras are installed in my classroom to take note of anything that I might say or do that constitutes "woke?"

It might be while I am sitting in the quiet morning minutes I catch up on this blog, waiting for the moment when I spring into full-on teacher mode.

I am thinking right now about Fort Campbell Kentucky. Department of Defense officials have been busy remaking the schools at that base in the MAGAt image. A directive from on high has banned the celebration or promotion of "monthly cultural observances," like Black History Month. It also required that all library books with references to diversity, equity, and inclusion be removed. In an effort to comply, librarians are removing hundreds of books with themes including slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and the treatment of Native Americans. Schools are also set to remove any bulletin boards that reference Black History Month or historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks.

Knowing exactly what the hallways and classrooms look like currently in my school, and knowing that I have assigned to my third, fourth and fifth grade students a research project based on those same historical figures, I wonder just how long it will take for the strain in our otherwise liberal bastion of Oakland, California to show. 

How many more minutes before what I am doing and have been doing for decades will be declared illegal? 

Meanwhile, I remain steadfast. Immovable. 

And just a little frightened. 

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