Category: Culture

Calling homeschool pods fundamentally racist won’t help education equality

Posted on by Suki

I’m sure you’ve noticed all the scary articles about how so-called “homeschool pods” are going to undo all the small amount of racial equity that our public schools have been able to put in place.

Need a refresher? Here, here, and here are the top three hits I got.

This argument rests on three premises that I dispute:

  1. Only white parents will set up pods for their kids’ learning
  2. Only affluent parents can afford to have a teacher or other educated person supervise the learning
  3. These pods have to function separately from the public school structure

The assumptions behind these premises are really quite awful when you think about it:

  1. Non-white parents are submissive to authority, have no personal networks, and are not fit to guide their children’s learning
  2. Parents who make less money are by definition less fit to guide their children’s learning, and are not creative thinkers who can pull together resources available in their communities
  3. The public schools are screwed. Run!

Learning “pods” are not new

Homeschoolers form pods by design or by choice. This was a group from our homeschool program learning about recycling.

First, let’s do away with this idea that by creating a hip new word for it, affluent white parents fleeing the public schools have come across a brilliant idea all on their own.

Sorry, learning “pods” are just a pandemic-era iteration of something that teachers, parents, and students have been doing for ages. It’s always been the case that people learn better in smaller groups. When that’s not possible, such as in a large public school, good teachers create learning pods within their classrooms. Involved parents create learning pods of their own children (if they have enough) or with families they know. Teens instinctively create study groups that, yes, have a social function, too.

(Aside: Please forget what the bean counters tell you: social interaction has always been an intrinsic part of a good learning environment. Without the R in recreation, no one would bother to learn the other three R’s.)

Pods aren’t new to homeschooling, either. I created learning pods when I was homeschooling my kids. We called them “clubs.” Other parents did, too. And I will point out that non-white, non-affluent parents have always done this. Creativity in learning is not an exclusive club.

Learning pods are not exclusive of school

All of the examples I gave above come from families who were attached to public schools in one way or another. We don’t have to run screaming from the public schools because they can’t offer us everything we desire in a learning environment.

In all the years we homeschooled our kids, we were always attached to a public school program. We had a 100% free teacher to advise us. We had some financial support for resources, and a 100% free resource center where we could access materials, make photocopies, and get support. None of that has changed.

Public schools should encourage pods, not assume they’re racist

While kids are not in the classroom, teachers shouldn’t resist pods—they should help parents organize them. Teachers can continue their mission of equity in education by working extra hard to include the kids who might fall through the cracks. In our county, that’s not only kids of color, but also English language learners and rural kids who need a 30-minute ride from a parent to take part in physical activities.

If you are homeschooling and forming a pod, draw on your basic decency

If you have just left the public school system—for whatever reason—and you are an affluent, educated, and/or white family, you can do your small part just by being decent. Or if you are staying in the public school but forming a pod to support your own kids, again, be decent.

By that I mean simply look around you and see who is not being included. Just as a decent host would do at a party, scanning a room to see if anyone looks uncomfortable or lonely, look around your school community and reach out. Offer a spot in your pod to a kid whose parents work too hard to help their kids with homework. Offer your expertise to help other families form pods. Talk to your child’s teacher and principal about encouraging pods within classes to offer extra support.

We are facing lots of hard problems

We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Our country has failed at a national level to lead a reasonable, consistent public health response. Our weakened public school system is teetering on the edge of collapse. Our communities are in anguish over the growing understanding of racial inequity built into our systems at the lowest level. We may be facing economic distress that dwarfs the Great Depression.

Really, learning pods are not the problem.

Learning pods are a very small part of the solution.

6 ways to structure online learning for physical and mental well-being

Posted on by Suki

The other day I went for a “physical distance, social closeness” walk with a friend at the beach. She teaches adults at a law school, and was wondering how to do her online courses in a way that would mirror how she teaches in person.

In the past, she had observed that her students, adults with day jobs, were tired in the evenings, so she arranged things so that they would get up and move about the room for various different activities. How was she going to do this online?

Yes, we were both wearing masks, just not for the picture.

We brainstormed some ideas for her, and while we were doing that, I mused about how my own students are no longer doing all the things they were doing before the pandemic. Most of them are probably doing online courses for much of the day now, even for physical education. Lots of them have working parents who can’t fill in the holes.

During the first quarantine, I paid special attention to my teens, many of whom are quite independent and not used to being at home with their families all day. I redesigned some of my activities with their mental and physical health in mind.

This coming year, I am planning to pay more attention to promoting healthy habits in my classes. In the spirit of sharing with other teachers, and hoping that parents will keep this in mind at home, here are some of my ideas and the reasons for them.

1. Incorporate movement when possible

Maybe this seems obvious, but kids are moving even less than they used to. At school, at least they were moving around the classroom. And during recess, they had other kids to interact with.

Movement is really not an obvious match with the courses I teach, but I hope to encourage them to move before and after class when possible. And who knows, I might figure out a way to incorporate movement specifically in my webinars…without inciting chaos!

We saw this man out making awesome bubbles when we were on our walk. Send your kid outside to make bubbles in between classes!

2. Get students away from the computer screen for specific tasks

It’s so easy for all of us to get sucked into the screen and think of it as real life. But that leads us to be less in touch with the environment around us. My classrooms (where students do self-paced learning when they are not in the live webinar room) are obviously full of videos. But I also incorporate real-world activities when possible, asking them to engage with physical objects, pets, and other people in their household.

3. Engage the senses

Obviously, my students are engaged with their eyes whenever they are involved in the class and their ears during our webinars. I try to make sure that my courses are visually and aurally stimulating. But that’s just a small part of the world.

Now that they aren’t getting as much sensory stimulation in their daily lives, I’m giving more thought to how to incorporate all senses into my webinars and my assignments. That will be an easy one in my new Yum! class about food and eating.

Even cats need to change their focal distance!

4. Get students to change the focal distance of their eyes

Our webinars are mostly around an hour long. Although I recommend that parents never schedule young students for more than an hour at a time online, many parents already did that before the pandemic. Now, most of my students will probably be online most of the day.

In normal life, our eyes change their focal distance on a regular basis. Aside from using screens, there are very, very few typical activities that we do that require us to sit with one focal distance for a long time. My plan is to try to get students to look away from the screen whenever I can, if only for a moment.

5. Keep students in tune with their physical bodies

If students are now going to be sitting in front of a computer for wall-to-wall online courses, it will be very easy for them to literally forget about their physical bodies. Breathing, focus, and periods of quiet will help them be more present in their bodies.

Teachers who have a single group of kids in an online course for hours at a time will need to find ways to keep the kids’ attention but also keep their bodies engaged. This will be a hard task for them! Since I never teach for more than an hour at a time, by design, I don’t run into this problem.

6. Keep them grounded in the physical world

All of us need to remember that the physical world is where we are. Lots of the services we use online are designed to try to make us forget. Kids are especially susceptible to becoming convinced that their online “life” is more important than the physical world around them.

Teachers can help students by making sure that their assignments and activities involve the physical world around their students. Even though we don’t necessarily connect with our students’ families the way that classroom teachers do, we can ask them to use their home life as a resource. Even though the room in which they are attending school is one that we may never set foot in, we can integrate that physical space into the world we create online.

Related:

How is your favorite nonprofit doing?

Posted on by Suki

Soon after the quarantine was announced for Santa Cruz County, I got a query from Kate Pavao, the leader of a local nonprofit:

Hi Suki: If you’re interested in writing an article about the virus and non profit budgets and impact on kids, please consider Live Like Coco as a source. Angela Farley at Teen Kitchen Project and I had a good conversation about this yesterday.

I was intrigued. Of course nonprofits are front and center in this epidemic, providing food and medical supplies and so forth. But what about the nonprofits that can’t function? What about the nonprofits that serve at-risk populations?

I talked to Kate and Angela for my article, which was published in Growing Up in Santa Cruz. I didn’t actually mean to make a podcast of it, but our conversation was so much bigger than a short article could convey. So here it is, the recording is rough, but the thoughts are worth hearing!

Conversation with Kate Pavao and Angela Farley, March 14, 2020
Nonprofits are being hurt by the quarantine more than most people are aware.

This April there’s no foolin’ for musicians and other independent artists

Posted on by Suki

Here I sit on March 31, editing the Jazz Society of Santa Cruz County’s weekly newsletter, and I’m trying to think of something funny to add. It’s my first April 1st edition of the newsletter, and I love a good laugh, but everything I think of seems in bad taste.

The Jazz Society jam brings out musicians from pro to beginner to play together in a supportive atmosphere.

April is the time when outdoor music starts up in earnest in Santa Cruz.

April is the time when bands start busking on fine afternoons downtown.

April is a month full of fundraisers and parties where musicians make money.

April is full of classical music concerts for which professional musicians often get paid a flat fee.

Except this year.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the plight of local businesses during the quarantine. You can read my article about businesses that serve families in Growing Up in Santa Cruz’s April issue. Business owners are starting to balance paying rent on their empty place of business with buying food for their families.

Not a good choice to have to make.

Performers have a uniquely different situation.

Although many musicians make money on the side teaching lessons, professional musicians these days largely make their money in performance. The days of making a living income by selling albums are gone. Getting out there and performing is everything.

This shutdown isn’t going to hurt Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. It may even help some artists who are reminding their fans how much they love them by giving live online concerts for free. The editor of GUiSC, Brad Kava, texted me in ecstasy while watching Richard Thompson’s Facebook livestreaming event. We’ll probably even see some new stars born during this time.

But my heart goes out to the musicians I know:

An online jam leads to some….interesting sounds!
  • My professional friends are sidelined, watching. They’re trying to focus on planning for summer, learning to use Zoom to teach, and beefing up their online presence.
  • My more advanced amateur friends are trying to jam together online (not terribly successfully, but it’s fun).
  • My friends who are rank amateurs seem to be watching, unwilling to expose their lack of skill to a medium that is much less forgiving than an in-person jam. [A note to rank amateurs: Don’t worry about it! Play! Turning on your phone to livestream on Facebook is weirdly exhilarating.]

What can we do?

What can we do to support professional musicians and other performers? Right now, I’m really not sure. But I encourage everyone to be vigilant. Make sure your musician friends, who were probably not making such a great income in the first place, are having their needs taken care of. Actually buy (I know this is a weird concept) your favorite artists’ albums. They make very, very little money when you stream their music.

And let’s all commit to supporting musicians once they’re back out there on the streets, in the cafes, in the restaurants, and up on stages big and small.

Our country is suffering, but as in all disasters, this one isn’t going to hit us all equally.

April Fools? It seems pretty serious this year.

The Day the Music Paused

Posted on by Suki

I am part of a community that most people don’t even know exists.

Jazz, voted the least popular genre of music in a poll done in Santa Cruz (really, we came in after polka!), is alive and well in our little edge of the universe. I am on the board of our local Jazz Society, which has a weekly newsletter, puts on jams, and offers a well-attended monthly lecture series.

Until this month.

This coming weekend brings the regular jam date, but the brewery where our jam takes place will be silent. We have entered The Great Pause.

There are so many ways that this is going to hurt our fragile little enterprise. First, our large group brought in a good amount of money to support a locally owned business. Second, we paid professional musicians to come in and provide a solid backing band for musicians from beginner to professional. Third, we exchanged information and ideas in a thriving corner of a musical discipline that is threatened with extinction.

It occurs to me that this pause is harming community on all sorts of levels. It’s financial, it’s musical, it’s emotional.

But let me take a moment to describe our jam as it was rather than focusing on what might or might not be:

The band arrives early and sets up. Our drummer, bass player, and pianist are professionals who have had long careers. It’s such a thrill that our Jazz Society members can pay them for their hard work.

Next, our fearless jam coordinator arrives with the all-important clipboard. Already several avid players who want to get the first slots are there, poised to sign up. Other players and audience members arrive as the music starts. This is a tight community: The band members wave and sometimes pause their playing to give hugs.

The bar and nearby restaurant do an unusually good amount of business on these Sunday afternoons. Participants buy beer brewed on site, soft drinks, and barbecue from next door.

We have all the instruments you’d expect…and more. We regularly have singers, from beginners to pros, horn players of all varieties, woodwinds, guitarists, and an occasional violinist, harmonica player, and once we even got a recorder player from Sweden. We also get lots of pianists, drummers, and bass players who spell the band and take their turn.

Each musician gets to call two tunes and invite other soloists up with them. Sometimes we get full horn sections playing well-known standards. Sometimes we get songwriters sharing their own tunes. The mood ranges from maudlin to magic, and it’s all in good fun.

Perhaps what I’m describing doesn’t seem that amazing until you consider the fact that we are an isolated county of 250,000, hemmed in on side by the Monterey Bay and the other by mountains. We don’t seem like a likely place for a thriving jazz community.

Yet it thrives. In part it thrives because of the hard work for over 20 years of a group of dedicated board members. In part it thrives because Santa Cruz has a long tradition of art for art’s sake, with pros and amateurs finding a comfortable home here. But mostly it thrives because we all value the camaraderie and learning that happens on those Sunday afternoons.

For now, we have gone silent. Until we meet again, you can check out our rather new Youtube channel, which has some moments from our jams and a few of our lectures available. If you’re a player who wants to be part of our community, you can subscribe to our newsletter and join our Facebook Group.

Like everyone during this Great Pause, the Jazz Society board is in wait-and-see mode. There will be a lot of work that will have to be done to pick up the pieces when life gets back to normal.

But the music will go on!

Now available