Recently I had the opportunity to interview Valencia D. Clay, a Baltimore Public School teacher who has recently gained media attention for her “activist-style” teaching in the classroom. Teaching, for her, is activism and she uses her classroom as a safe space for black and brown students who have negative experiences with literacy. Many of her students come to her well below reading level and have been dismissed by a system that is designed to “help” and “educate” them while totally ignoring their lived experiences and social and cultural literacies. Clay seeks to reclaim this via teaching, infusing her classroom with her own canon and validating them every step of the way.
This experience, for me, tied in perfectly with the readings connected to literacy and Prince Edward County’s “Free School”. The resilience and persistence of the educators was able to overshadow a neglectful government (similarly to Baltimore) and create a positive space of learning for black children. Those teachers, and Clay, are hyper aware of the pipeline that has been built into the very fabric of the educational system and are doing everything in their power to help their students recognize and overcome the challenges that have been set in front of them.
It makes me wonder, then, what do we need to do to change this completely? To eliminate this purposeful miseducation? Who/what do we need to remove?
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