Since I last saw my Buena Vista Horace Mann students on March 14, this whole system has only spiraled deeper and deeper into crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has now claimed 167,000 lives in the United States. It is the straw that broke the weak economy’s back and forced it into the greatest Depression in history. With millions left jobless, every week has more than a million new applicants seeking unemployment benefits. Consequently, the pent-up frustration exploded into the Uprising. The whole country witnessed how even when experiencing hopelessness, Black lives cannot take a mere breath because a brutal occupying police force strangles it away. Watching the enormity of it all is truly surreal. Thinking it is worth saving makes the whole situation incomprehensible.
The Federal Government has made it clear it is willing to sacrifice workers for the sake of profit. They demand that we open schools without the funds necessary to provide safety. If we don’t comply, then underfunded schools risk losing the pennies we have. These are pennies compared to the trillions (TRILLIONS) handed over to the military, corporations, banks and every life-draining entity in between. The powerful in this country love to watch the little people squirm as we desperately try to make sense of a senseless situation.
Given that I am a teacher who will soon be drawn into the insanity of trying to patch together an already broken system, I want to offer a lesson I learned from the past few months. Despite the aggressive individualism and self-interest forced upon us by those responsible for this crisis, this moment has shown us that every-day people are willing to build an alternative based on solidarity and collaboration.
During the past four months, just in San Francisco, hundreds of educators donated more than $100,000 of their stimulus checks to undocumented families. Over a dozen community-based organizations and dedicated leaders of the Mission District joined together to create the Latino Task Force. The Latino Task Force helped create the Mission Food Hub to feed thousands of residents on a regular basis. They partnered with UCSF to test Latino residents when most city organizations were stuck overthinking what to do. At the height of the Uprising, Mission High School students led a powerful and peaceful march of over 50,000 people that spoke proudly of building an alternative and also distributed more mask and hand sanitizer than any local governmental body.
These powerful partnerships, which developed before the crisis, didn’t wait for the failing system to save them. They built an alternative in the vacuum. They empowered those wanting to come together to commit themselves to the same vision of solidarity and collaboration. How can we apply these lessons in our schools?
This alternative would finally acknowledge that everyone has a role to play in strengthening a school community and that we must all contribute to save each other. Each student would be paired with a collaborating family. Families would offer the support they give to their children at home to a small group of their child’s classmates who do not have the same support. Families with more resources would show their solidarity by reading their classmates books, listening to each other read, playing games, practice their lettering as a group, skip counting and basic math facts, etc.
The school, via volunteer staff and parents, would have regular “office hours” on the sidewalk, where books, materials and practice packets can be picked up for families to support their students at home. All those books that sit inside buildings accumulating dust can finally be given to children to read! The school can work in collaboration with other schools to develop curriculum that is relevant, engaging and rigorous for students who can work independently. This would free up educators to focus on small group instruction with students that have yet to develop these abilities.
Young people, already constrained by traditional schooling, can focus on learning that builds the alternative now. They can be given the freedom to give back to their community. Neighborhood development plans can be created for the communities their schools are in. The youth can be trained and supported to clean up the streets, paint murals, plant trees, establish community gardens. They can learn to cook and feed their most vulnerable neighbors. Technical training courses can be developed so that they refurbish bicycles, skateboards, computers etc. Software courses will allow them to unlock their cellphones’ true creativity! Photo and video editing software, graphic design and coding software can all be taught remotely. Some can even be trained as volunteers for groups like the Latino Task Force. Their leaders can then report back to delegates from all across the city so that the connections needed to build a better future don’t disappear when learning is forced back into a building.
As a city, especially one so close to Silicon Valley, we would finally have free and high-speed Wi-Fi throughout San Francisco with accompanying charging stations. For being such a wealthy and technologically advanced nation, it is embarrassing that people don’t have access to the internet because the same corporations getting bailed out overcharge us for something we subsidize. Widespread high-speed internet would free up everyone to collaborate anywhere. A learning channel on television should have been developed ages ago. A constant streaming of SFUSD content is not impossible. The talents in San Francisco are infinite and should be showcased. I have been to Cuba and if a developing nation that has been blockaded for 50 years by the biggest military power in the world can host a daily learning channel, I am sure the richest city in the richest nation can do so too. In fact, I remember learning about Marcus Garvey and the “Return to Africa,” Movement during the one-hour session I tuned in. Talk about social justice curriculum!
The system is crumbling in real time and we need to ask ourselves, “should we prop it up again?” The great thinker Albert Einstein said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” Einstein did poorly in school but changed the world. Let us stop the insanity and build a new world together. Let us commit to solidarity and collaboration so that we can put a stop to the rigged game where we fight each other for the crumbs. The crisis has allowed for people to build alternatives. To make them permanent, we only need to unite and join the effort in empowering those alternatives.
Frank Lara is a public school educator in San Francisco’s Mission District, Executive Board member of the United Educators of San Francisco, organizer & all-around desmadroso.