Small Strokes Big Oaks

I do not live in Arizona.  In fact, I’ve never even been to Arizona.  When I was in undergrad, though, it seemed like Arizona would be an oasis for teachers.  There were superintendents and principals at job fairs that were offering contracts to teachers right then and there, without the strenuous interview process that teachers applying in the Chicago suburbs faced.  How easy it seemed to be to get a job teaching in the Phoenix area, and how wonderful the weather would be without the stifling humidity in the summer and the snow in the winter.  Now, however, I wonder if Arizona is the same sort of haven it used to be for budding graduates from teacher education programs.  So much is going on in that state that it’s hard to believe anyone would move there now, in this climate.

I am the eternal optimist, or, at least, I really do try to see the best in situations.  I have been told that Arizona legislators had reasons for passing SB1070.  I have been told that the state of Arizona is in such a bad economic situation that they had to do something.  I have been told all of these things, and more, but I can’t see any positive side to a law that creates such a culture of hatred and racism that people are comparing Arizona police to the Nazis.  And now, this law and the culture surrounding it has opened up avenues to effect the education of students in the state and, by extension, the country and the world.

I first heard about the effects of SB1070 on education with this story on NPR which stated that “The Arizona Department of Education has told schools that teachers with “heavy” or “ungrammatical” accents are no longer allowed to teach English to kids just learning to speak the language.”  Imagine the implications of this!  If teachers are no longer allowed to come from different backgrounds, students are then deprived of more global points of view that are necessary for a broad-minded and unprejudiced society.

Imagine, also, all of those students who will no longer be taught by teachers who are like them.  Take this excerpt from Ileana Jimenez’s blog, Feminist Teacher for example:

It wasn’t until seventh grade that I had an inspiring and challenging Latina teacher for my honors history class.  I always strove for an A and always came up with an A-.  Even the students rallied behind me and said,”Why don’t you give Ileana an A?” She would always say: “There’s room for improvement!”  I strove and strove and finally got that A at the end of the year.  I wanted to impress her not only because she was my teacher but also because she was one of my own.

We should not underestimate the power of having a teacher that can identify with our background, who can show us they understand where we’re coming from.

This directive from the Arizona Department of Education was not the end of the educational implications of SB1070.  Shortly after this, ethnic studies courses were targeted:

On the heels of the state’s highly controversial immigration law, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a new bill targeting “ethnic studies” classes in public schools. The law prohibits schools from offering classes “designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group” — or that “advocate ethnic solidarity.”

In this same article, Tom Horn, Superintendent of Public Instruction in Arizona is quoted saying: “One of the functions of the public schools is to take kids of different backgrounds and teach them to treat each other as individuals. And this ethnic studies program does the opposite. It divides kids up by race.”  And yet, how do we teach students from different backgrounds to treat each other as individuals if we cannot first teach them what makes them individuals in the first place?  Are we supposed to pretend that we’re actually all exactly the same?  Doesn’t this, in fact, make us not individuals at all?  This type of colorblind ideology only breeds racism, as studies show, and as I think we all know by now.

The bottom line is this: By taking teachers with varying backgrounds out of public school systems and by further refusing to educate students about the cultures that make America the great country it is supposed to be, we are doing our students an immense disservice.  And this isn’t just contained to Arizona.  What happens, then, when these students graduate and take jobs in other parts of the nation or other parts of the world?  The consequences are too broad, and too downright scary, to imagine.