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A Buffalo Public Schools administrator has been chosen a national leader.

Fatima Morrell, associate superintendent of culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives, has been selected out of hundreds of applications across the U.S. as one of TIME magazine's 10 "Innovative Teachers of the Year."

This inaugural list profiles teachers who, despite all the challenges of the 2021-2022 school year, went above and beyond to change the educational landscape and make a positive impact on their community.

Time said Morrell was chosen for the significant impact she had on Buffalo relating to anti-racism curriculum. She helped redirect the curriculum to include lessons with principles including empathy, diversity and restorative justice. Morrell said it was part of a six-year effort that created a new office of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Initiatives in the city school district to address racial inequalities in the classroom, the curriculum and the community. And it has become especially significant in light of the racially-motivated mass shooting at the Jefferson Avenue Tops supermarket May 14.

Read and listen to her conversation with WBFO's Marian Hetherly below:

WBFO's Marian Hetherly talks with Fatima Morrell

"We have we literally built an office from the ground up, called the Office of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Initiatives, to address racial inequalities in our school district community, in our schools, classrooms and our curriculum providing equity spaces for our students and professional development for our teachers, as well as updating our curriculum to include those voices that are historically marginalized in our curriculum, our textbooks and, in many other ways, in our schools and classrooms.

"So we really went on a very ambitious endeavor to train 3,000-plus teachers three times over the last last three or four years in any bias, any racist teaching, and teaching culturally responsive practices and inclusion. And also our administrators and parents having received the same training. And also bringing in our nation's top experts on culturally responsive teaching and pedagogy, such as Ava Max Kennedy on anti-racism. Nikole Hannah-Jones has been here. We actually implemented the 1619 Project at the high school as a mandated requirement for all teachers of social studies and our district. We created the Emancipation curriculum to, again, in the histories and narrations and voices of communities of color that are so often left out of the American story that is told in our schools and in our textbooks. We really wanted to ensure that our our district community had a great office that was a resource for elevating these practices, understandings and ways of knowing in our school district.

"You know, 86% of our scholars are of color. Almost a flip of that, approximately 80% of our teachers are white. And we know that many of them is their first experiences with anyone of color when they come to work in the Buffalo Public Schools. So we always felt that it was really important that we integrate and infuse into our standing curriculum because we knew that it was very Eurocentric-based in nature that we included these other narrations and perspectives and voices and advocacy for social justice into our standing curriculum. And we have been doing that quite effectively for about three years along with the required teacher and administrator and parent training that goes along with it.

Black Lives Matter

"I will have to say to you that, after the incident with George Floyd, you know, we looked at that degradation of human life and dehumanization, another event of dehumanization, but this time it played out in such a horrific way on national media and social media platforms. To actually watch it was just horrific. And it really struck a chord with our teachers in the Buffalo Public Schools. In fact, we had a demonstration that summer of our teachers. Approximately 700 had Black Lives Matter protests right here on the steps of City Hall. And so many of those teachers are curriculum writers in the Buffalo Public Schools.

"They came back to the table and said, 'Hey, we really have to do more, we have to ensure that our young people know their value, we have to ensure that their culture is in this curriculum, we have to ensure we edify their voices even more so now. Because we knew there were many, many young people who are watching this play live out live and, of course, it became a national racial reckoning for our country, as we dealt with the dual pandemics: one being COVID-19 that had us all locked away in our homes glued to the television in a computer for 18 months, and then the other one being systemic racism that just really took a lead in terms of the dialogues and conversations.

"So teachers came back to the table after George Floyd and really began to say, it has to go deeper, it has to be more widespread. It can't be superficial on any level. And, of course, these were our white teachers, as well as our black and Latino teachers that were really saying, we need this in our schools. And we started writing more lessons that really focused in on our commonalities, but also included the narrations and stories and histories of our black, Asian, Latinx and, of course, indigenous student populations. We want to make sure that we honor those contributions and the intellectual brilliance and capacity of all people and especially, Black and brown people whose stories aren't told.

Buffalo Supermarket Shooting

"We also said, we don't want to ever create another Derek Chauvin or George Zimmerman, we don't want to create these folks, right? These people who have learned that they don't have to value Black lives or brown lives. We want all of our children to see the common humanity in all people. And so we said, we never want to raise another person like this person who committed this massacre on the Black community in Buffalo, and who actually touched the lives of 10 innocent people, many of them community giants who worked for excellence in education and equity. Were taken out, were killed that day. And so, in light of that massacre happening at our own doorstep, in our own backyard, we're now also doubling down on our efforts even more to say, this cannot just be about Black children knowing their own history and culture. This has to be about white children also knowing the history and culture of Black children.

"Because we know that they are fed over time with stereotypes about Black and brown people, and specifically black people. I'm talking about racial stereotypes. There's hate that is occurring. Each and every day, they fought on the national stage, like we've never seen it before, on January 6, right there at the Capitol building, which many of our children had a field trip there just the year prior to that. And so our young people have been exposed to this hatred and our white children are being exposed at even exponentially greater levels, because there's no one inserting, 'Hey, here's another perspective, here's another voice on what democracy means to this group of people.' Because we all believe in the democratic ideal of America, but we have many different perspectives about what those democratic principles mean for us as a community.

"So there are white children who don't even know where they come from many times, their history or their background, if they're Irish students or if they're German. They don't even know their own history and background to be able to love themselves. As this young man who came into Tops and stole and traumatized our community, and stole 10 lives of our community, they know how to love themselves. When you can't love yourself, because you don't know about yourself and you haven't been nurtured or you haven't been taught to value life, then you can't value someone else's life. And, therefore, it's easier to dehumanize someone based on their race and based on their social economic status or their gender identity or whatever it is.

"And so that's what we're doing in Buffalo. We're saying this is not only for Black and brown children who definitely need to know their greatness, because we're sending them so many messages of failure, so many negative ideas that help to develop negative self-concept. And we need to develop positive self-concept.

Healing Conversations

"But turning to this recent event, what are we doing with white children to ensure that they are globally competent citizens of America that respect all people? That also becomes a conversation around culturally responsive practices and knowing the greatness of other people in the common humanity. And where there are differences, why those differences are so great. Because that's what makes us America, our differences. And so in light of all of this, absolutely, we're doubling down on, of course, our healing practices in the district, our social emotional learning practices and being able to restore ourselves. It's traumatizing, right? And so, how do we restore ourselves as a community to remember our greatness, right? Our greatness as Buffalonians? But our greatness as Black and brown people? Our greatness as people, period, in this district community, in this city.

"So, yeah, a lot of conversations are occurring and the work continues. And we're now, you know, really, at this time, focused in on those healing conversations and those healing dialogues and how do we move forward as a district community. Who has been harmed and how to repair that harm? We ask for help from everyone, even those who don't look like us, to understand our plight and to understand that racism is real. And so with white supremacy, it's not something someone's talking about in a back room and it's just superficial. It's actually real, okay?

"This young man was a teen. He had guidance on this, he'd had thoughts that were put in his head, in one way or another, because he can't just make it up on his own, because he's still a child. So he was on these websites, he was interfacing with people saying things in the media regarding replacement theory and he ran on those ideas, because there was nothing else inserted to say, 'Wait a minute. Here's another idea. You might be looking at that the wrong way. You might be perceiving something that's actually not.' There's no one to interrupt the white supremacist notions that he had maintained once they were started.

"We are actually interrupting white supremacist notions of superiority. We're interrupting the marginalization of communities of color in our schools and our classrooms and our textbooks. But most certainly, after the incident at Tops on May 14, we are doubling down on how we ensure our kids are safe. But not just physically safe, intellectually safe, all children of all colors. How are we making sure that they are intellectually safe, so they don't get caught up in this web of lies and half truths and misconceptions about people of color and all people."

Go here to read the rest:
Buffalo associate superintendent named to Time's 'Innovative Teachers of the Year' list - WBFO

The University of Notre Dame issued a statement saying it is appalled that the suspect in the Buffalo grocery store shooting cited an article written by one of its professors in his diatribe before he killed 10 people.

Payton Gendron, 18, has been charged with murder and is being held without bail.

In 2013, John Gaski, associate professor at Notre Dame, wrote a commentary titled A Discussion on Race, Crime and the Inconvenient Facts, where he makes claims of race-based rape and crime statistics but fails to cite where he got his information.

A group prays at the site of a memorial for the victims of the Buffalo supermarket shooting outside the Tops Friendly Market on May 21, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y. (Joshua Bessex/AP)

A 180-page diatribe allegedly written by Gendron refers to one of the claims in Gaskis article and links to it. The diatribe, which officials are working on to verify its authenticity, repeatedly cites the great replacement theory, a conspiracy theory that falsely claims white people are being replaced.

On May 14, Gendron allegedly went to a supermarket in a majority Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, and opened fire, killing 10 and injuring three, most of them Black. The mass shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.

The Notre Dame connection came to light after comedian Liz Hynes, a writer on the Last Week Tonight show, posted on Instagram and Twitter about the article.

In the article, Gaski wrote, Because the number of white-on-black rape is so low nationally in any given year, the ratio ranges from 100-to-1 to infinity. This is the part cited in the diatribe.

Gaski does not mention that rape and sexual violence are difficult to measure because the crime is underreported. He also provides only one citation throughout the article.

The article was written after George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012, and it accuses prominent leaders, including Al Sharpton and Barack Obama, of race-baiting.

This petty, intellectually dishonest piece, dripping in racial animus, has forever linked the University of Notre Dame to a white supremacist murderer, Hynes wrote on her social media platforms three days after the mass shooting. No marketing on earth can undo that. But an acknowledgment would be a start.

On Thursday, Joel Curran, the universitys top spokesperson, issued the following statement from the university: We are appalled that a 2013 article by John Gaski, an associate professor at Notre Dame, was cited by the perpetrator of the heinous murders of innocent people in Buffalo. Whatever professor Gaskis intentions, we deeply regret that his words were used to support a doctrine of racial hatred. We urge all, at Notre Dame or elsewhere, to speak and act in ways that never give harbor to hatred and violence.

On Friday, Gaski issued his own statement, published on the universitys news webpage.

It is sobering that a portion of an article I wrote in August 2013 was cited in the document composed by the Buffalo shooting suspect, Gaski wrote. It was, of course, never my intent to in any way incite violence in fact, just the opposite. I also am appalled and deeply distressed that the information I provided is associated in any way with this young mans horrific actions.

An attempt to reach Gaski by phone was unsuccessful. He is listed as an associate professor of marketing in Notre Dames Mendoza College of Business directory. In response to a request for comment, a Mendoza college spokesperson referred the Tribune to the schools published statement.

scasanova@chicagotribune.com

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Notre Dame says it is 'appalled' the Buffalo shooting suspect cited an article by one of its professors - Chicago Tribune

Today, a group of right-wingers are gathering to fetishize guns. The cast of characters includes a former president, multiple sitting congresspeople, and the senator of a state which just saw the fourth deadliest school shooting in American history. There also will be members of the far-right group the Oath Keepers, people who attempted to overturn the results of the last election, weapons manufacturers, people who call queer people degenerates, and an actor who once played Superman. And thats just the board members.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) hosts their annual convention this weekend just a few days after a school shooting in Uvalde left 19 children and two adults dead and a few weeks after a white supremacist fatally shot 10 peoplein a supermarket in Buffalo. Yet, the convention the Associations first since the pandemic began is proceeding as normal, complete with a keynote speech from Donald Trump. The event will also feature speeches from multiple members of the military and police.

While the NRA has the audacity to tout itself as Americas longest-standing civil rights organization, in actuality its a devoutly right-wing organization which works to protect the profits of the gun manufacturers who fund them. Indeed, the NRA functions as the primary lobbying arm of the entire gun industry and donates in huge numbers to politicians and not just far-right Trumpist politicians. In fact, the NRA has donated millions to North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, who voted to convict Trump in the impeachment trial, Senate Majority Leader and Trump opponent Mitch McConnell, and even a handful of Democrats.

Indeed, the NRA spent $250 million in 2020, largely on lobbying and donations to stop even attempts at discussing gun policy. This is indicative of the way that lobbying works under the current system: corporations give off-shoot lobby organizations huge swaths of cash which they then use to influence policy by passing that money on to politicians. Politicians of both parties are happy to accept this money and, in return, do the bidding of whichever industry has bankrolled them. This is such a bipartisan phenomenon that in 2022, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is currently the top recipient of lobbying money, by a pretty wide margin.

Yet, for all of their blustering about protecting gun rights, the NRA has consistently failed to even make a statement when the most policed group of gun owners is targeted by the state. Theres a reason for this, of course, and its that the gun owners who face the most repression are Black. But the NRA isnt interested in them. Not when the police killed Philando Castile in front of his child for having a legal and licensed gun in his glove compartment which he informed the police he had a license to carry. Not when Tamir Rice was killed for having a toy gun. Not when Kenneth Walker, Breonna Taylors partner, fired his legal and licensed gun to protect himself from a home invasion and was then arrested. Not even when Gaige Grosskreutz, a white gun owner and BLM protester, was shot while attempting to be a good guy with a gun against active shooter Kyle Rittenhouse. Instead, the NRA tweeted text of the 2nd amendment in support of Rittenhouse immediately after his acquittal and never spoke of Grosskreutz at all. The list of the NRAs refusal to support Black gun owners goes on and on and on.

In fact, rather than show any support for the Black Lives Matter Movement a movement which featured the actualization of the famous NRA hypothetical of jack-booted government thugs [taking] away our constitutional rights and even injur[ing] or kill[ing] us, leaders of the NRA spoke against the movement. One board member called BLM a rancid evil, a former NRATV host called Castile a gun-toting thug, and another NRA board member wrote multiple op-eds against the movement. Indeed, the NRA is so pro-cop and that they even have a special division for law enforcement.

But the NRAs racism isnt anything new. They supported George Zimmerman and, most damningly, even supported gun control laws when it was aimed at disarming the Black Panther Party. The 1967 Mulford Act was a California state law (pushed through by then-governor Ronald Reagan) which was a direct reaction to the Black Panthers policy of arming themselves. The law banned open carry of loaded firearms and banned all loaded firearms inside the state capital. This was a direct response to, amongst other things, a 1967 occupation of the state capitol by 30 armed Black Panthers. Compare the NRAs response to this to their response to the January 6 riots and it is clear who the NRA is interested in advocating for.

This weekends convention will feature many grand speeches about freedom, liberty, civil rights, and the Constitution. But the NRA is little more than a front group for the gun industry which has cunningly used the rhetoric of freedom and resisting state repression to work in tandem with the state to ensure that guns are kept in the hands of a privileged minority specifically middle- and upper-class white people. For all their talk about jackbooted thugs, the NRA has not only welcomed those thugs but given them their own special division within the organization and multiple speaking slots at their convention.

The NRA isnt interested in protecting gun rights for the oppressed, theyre interested in protecting gun rights for right-wingers and ensuring that the state keeps its monopoly on violence. Its not a civil rights group its a group of heavily armed bigots.

Ezra is a NYC based theatre artist and teacher.

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The NRA Exists to Keep Weapons Profits Booming and Guns in the Hands of the State and Right Wing - Left Voice

When George Floyd was in high school, his teacher Bertha Dinkins prophetically told the teen: I want to read about you in the newspaper that you have made history and done something to change society. She could never have foretold that Floyd would become a household name because the world watched a video of police officer Derek Chauvin slowly choke him to death with his knee on his neck in 2020.

The killing sparked the largest protests ever against racial injustice, prompting society to discuss racism in ways it has not done for more than a generation. His Name Is George Floyd (written by two Washington Post reporters) attempts to use the life and death of Floyd as a vehicle to examine the bigotry that lies at the heart of the present-day US.

Figures that spark protests are often barely drawn in two dimensions: we have a name, an image and little else. We know Emmett Till whose lynching in 1955 is credited with sparking the civil rights movement after his mother displayed his disfigured body in an open casket as a 14-year-old killed for supposedly whistling at a white woman. Trayvon Martin whose killing by George Zimmerman in 2012 ignited the Black Lives Matter movement is the teenager in a hoodie who died for going to a shop to buy Skittles.

In this age of misinformation, where the victims of police killings are made out to be the problem, this humanising of Floyd is necessary. The book does not paint him as a saint but explains his flaws in the context of his experiences. Yes, he was an addict, a convict, and even made a porn movie. But these are not separate from his role as a father, friend and the backbone of his family and community. It is welcome that Floyd is no longer an anonymous Black man and you can feel the devastation of his family, friends and community in the interviews that pepper the book.

Samuels and Olorunnipas greatest triumph is placing Floyds life in the context of white supremacy. Before we get to Floyd, we learn about his ancestors struggles as tenant farmers in the period after slavery was abolished, known as reconstruction. Rather than abolition marking an end to racism, we grasp how the logic of racism continued. Racist laws and segregation became the tools for keeping the Black population oppressed. Floyds great-grandfather was stripped of the land and money he had managed to accumulate in tobacco farming, leaving the family in the poverty that was passed down through the generations.

The authors reflect on the irony of Floyd being killed after allegedly buying cigarettes with a fake $20 bill, given his familys history with tobacco. Throughout, Floyds life is used to discuss issues such as racial terrorism, housing segregation, mass incarceration and racism in schooling. The point is driven home that his life and death were a result of the racism built into American society. David Smith was killed by Minneapolis police in 2010, in an almost identical manner to Floyd, but there was no public outcry.

There is a way in which all the attention on Floyds death has in some way limited the conversation: we all agree that his murder was indefensible, Derek Chauvin went to prison, minimal policing reforms occurred and now we can move on. His Name Is George Floyd adds to this narrative by focusing on this one event and its aftermath. The lack of any global context severely limits our understanding of racism, which, as Malcolm X explained, is not just an American problem, but a world problem.

The focus on Floyd also follows the unfortunate pattern of highlighting the plight of Black men, reinforcing how we are drawn to the spectacle. The violence has tended to be public, from lashings on the plantation to lynchings leaving strange fruit hanging from southern trees. The oppression of Black women is more private sexual violence, evictions and deadly institutional inequalities, such as being four times more likely to die in childbirth and more difficult to capture on camera.

Activist and professor Kimberl Crenshaw started the #SayHerName campaign to draw attention to the Black women who were far more likely to be killed by the police than their white counterparts. I couldnt read this book without thinking how Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her home by police in 2020, would have been a rich subject.

The horrific murders in Buffalo last weekend are a reminder of how a focus on racism can cloud larger issues. Killing sprees by White supremacist males are a symptom of structural racism but they are so violent and public that they, rather than the ways in which society kills Black people every day, become the basis of our discussions.

In defence of the authors, they make a valiant effort to use Floyds story to educate society about the ills of structural racism; for many readers this will be the first time they have encountered the history that shapes the present. But it is also a depressing reminder of how much work needs to be done, of the lessons that still need to be learned this deep into the 21st century.

Kehinde Andrews is professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University and the author of New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World

His Name Is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa is published by Transworld (20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Originally posted here:
His Name is George Floyd by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa review the murder that shamed the US - The Guardian

West Virginia University has again extended its test optional admission policy for the ACT and SAT. The extension does not apply to all cases, as there are still some majors that require certain test scores for admission. But as WVU has decided now that there are cases for which ACT and SAT scores are not required for admission through the spring 2024 term it begs the question, should the requirement be eliminated permanently?

Providing students the flexibility to choose whether or not standardized tests are included in their college applications allows them to feel more in control of the process, said George Zimmerman, WVU assistant vice president for enrollment management.

It also saves them money, or perhaps opens doors to students who were not able to pay to take the tests more than once.

Though the change began as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems now as though the reasons for extending the policy have everything to do with better serving students in an evolving academic world.

The pandemic has changed the way many people live their daily lives, Zimmerman said. Higher education is not immune to these types of changes. Test optional admissions has allowed schools across the country to provide students with new choices when it comes to applying to college. The pandemic made this shift necessary and we have seen students embrace test optional admissions processes as part of their college search.

Attention does need to paid to ensure students who otherwise may not have been prepared for a four-year college do not take on massive amounts of debt, only to struggle and possibly drop out of college. The issue is more nuanced than just saying we dont need standardized tests for students, and WVU officials will need to scrutinize the data over the next few years.

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Be careful with testing waivers | News, Sports, Jobs - The Daily Times