Always Motivated By the MLK Convocation Dinner and Speaker @FairfieldU. Waking Up Inspired

Since 2015, I've been teaching The Problem We All Live With in my undergraduate and graduate courses, especially when discussing philosophy of education, pedagogy, and accessing a great education for all students. I've linked the radio show here, because no matter how many times I hear it, I still get moved, angered, and motivated to do more.

I'm lucky. My time in Kentucky was at a K-12 school with a mission for diversity, inclusivity, and the intentional investment of every child for what they might contribute to the community. I knew classrooms where, if it was out there in the world, it was in room 301, too. It was beautiful. It was normal. And quite frankly, it is all I knew.

Then I left. I realize that the integration achieved at the J. Graham Brown School in Louisville was most definitely not a national norm, especially in the northeast who have high brow academic institutions that love to point out the flaws of the south without interrogating its own problems. At this point in history, I can say that the zip-code apartheid and cultural hypocrisy of this problem is Distinguished-Exemplar in the Nutmeg State.

Perhaps that is why I was engaged, hooked, mesmerized, captivated, and encouraged (albeit discouragingly) by the 1619 Project presented by Nikole Hannah-Jones convocation speech as she received our University's prestigious LaFarge Award. I was invited to the dinner earlier to recognize 4 outstanding middle-school essays inspired by the vision of Martin Luther King (these kids were given autographed copies of New Kid by Jerry Craft, We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai, and scholarships to attend CWP-Fairfield's summer literacy programs for youth). I entered the evening's event knowing I would present the awards, and follow with he commencement speaker, but I didn't make the connection in my head that this Nikole Hannah-Jones was the same Nikole Hannah-Jones who has inspired much of my thinking in other work. I blame time, demands, teaching, and Crandall stupidity for the fact that I didn't make the connection. I've been using  The Problem We All Live With in my courses since 2015. I am very excited that it is soon to be a book, an extension of Nikole Hanna-Jones' hard work.

One of the messages I left with last night was her pessimistic, yet hopeful, solution of integrating American schools. It is something I've written about in the CT Mirror (2014) and that, aghast, elicited much hatred, vitriol, and outrageousness from readers. The highest perforating schools in the state, do not wish to integrate with others. That was known. And I thank all the clever responses I got to that, especially the expletives and variations of the the F word. Sadly, the work CWP-Fairfield did with CT Mirror appears to have lost its place on the Internet.

In the meantime, last night Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist, didn't report anything other than expertise as a fact-finding reporter. That is her job, and that is why the 1619 Project has become so important. She's smart. She's witty. She's got a magical mind. And, sadly, she also has traced a nation built on two realities: one of democracy for some which we have, and one for a democracy for all, which we're still working to realize.

Nikole Hannah-Jones' case was made, and like the This American Life stories of 2015, America has a lot of work to do, especially to meet the ideas originally conceived. I'm with her 100% of the way - integration is the answer; investments in public schools is the way.

Struggling populations have always been the solution, not the problem. They've built this democracy.