Through AJ's Lens

One of the biggest issues that stood out to me in these readings is how deeply social and political systems affect the daily lives of students and school communities. Both the intro reading,  Kicking ICE Out of Our Schools  and Communities and the Recipes for Resistance reading highlight how schools are no longer just places of learning but spaces where fear and uncertainty can follow students through the door. The idea that children are carrying emergency plans in their backpacks in case their parents are detained is heartbreaking. It forces educators to confront the reality that before students can focus on academics, they need to feel safe, supported, and protected in the environments where they learn. What also stood out was the role educators and communities are taking in resisting these conditions. Schools and teachers are organizing “Know Your Rights” trainings, sanctuary teams, and community communication networks to support families who are living under the cons...

  CHOOSE A TEXT: The reading that stayed with me the most was The Silenced Dialogue by Lisa Delpit. It highlights an important conversation about how power, culture, and expectations shape classroom dynamics between educators and students. Delpit’s discussion about the “codes of power” and the importance of explicitly teaching the rules of academic spaces stood out to me. I am interested in exploring how different lived experiences influence how students understand and navigate those unspoken expectations in school. WHO DO YOU WANT TO SHARE WITH? I would like to share this topic with both youth and adults who work in education. Hearing directly from students about how they experience expectations in school could provide valuable insight into whether these “unwritten rules” are clear to them. I am also interested in hearing from educators about how they approach teaching expectations and whether they believe those expectations should be taught more explicitly. Comparing these pe...

After engaging with both the policies and the reading Queering Our Schools , I found myself thinking about the gap between what schools say they do and what students actually experience. On paper, policies like the Providence Public School Department’s transgender nondiscrimination policy and the Rhode Island Department of Education’s guidance are strong. They outline protections, expectations, and rights for transgender and gender nonconforming students. But the more I reflected, the more I realized that policy alone does not guarantee safety or inclusion. Students don’t experience policy—they experience people. Policies create a necessary foundation, but without intentional implementation, they can easily become performative. A school can have all the right language written down, but if educators are not actively creating affirming spaces, those policies lose their power. This is where fear begins to show up. Fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of backlash from parents, fear of not ...

Chapter Two of Other People’s Children , “The Silenced Dialogue,” covers many ideas, but what continued to stand out to me was the power of expectations and assumptions—especially the assumptions teachers make about what students and families already know. Delpit writes, “What school personnel fail to understand is that if the parents were members of the culture of power and lived by its rules and codes, then they would transmit those codes to their children. In fact, they transmit another culture that children learn at home in order to survive in their communities.” That quote resonated deeply with me. Students—particularly students of color—often grow up learning the rules necessary to survive and thrive in their communities. From an early age, many parents begin instilling the knowledge needed to navigate a world that may not always be designed to work in their favor. While this is not the experience of every family of color, it reflects my own upbringing. As the child of two Black ...

As I began reading this piece, I instantly found myself saying, “YES,” “THAT PART,” and even the occasional “DUHHHH.” I have always believed in the importance of being proactive when working with students. Assessment and continuous reflection are necessary for improvement, but when those practices are absent, both students and teachers deal with the consequences. When school administrations operate reactively rather than proactively, they often miss the mark. In many cases, they add fuel to existing challenges or unintentionally ignite new ones, while overlooking students who may not exhibit “typical” behaviors but still have significant needs. Even the way we label children by their behaviors—as if that is who they are—reveals a deeper issue. For a school’s culture to shift toward an asset-based model, that change must begin from the top down. I have witnessed staff members being appreciated for one specific skill they excel in—event management, relationship-building with students, me...

As I was reading this chapter, so many things began to stir in my mind—many questions and many opinions—but they all boiled down to one overarching idea: a flawed system produces flawed and restricted thinking. It is evident that the education system in the United States was designed to make students “take their place in society, be cogs, and keep this system going,” as stated in the video. The system functions like a machine that benefits itself by producing individuals who maintain the structure of society exactly as it is. In this way, education becomes less about growth and more about preservation. Khan explains how we are so accustomed to routines and systems that were put in place long before us, yet there is nothing that truly stops us from choosing differently. Our world and our nation are constantly evolving, but very few people are willing to go against “tradition” and disrupt the norm. When people do, they are often viewed as problematic rather than innovative—difficult inst...