The fashion and lifestyles of fear. I love the details in this paragraph. I wonder what to do with this critical perspective. Do we look at sagging pants and think, "I know something you don't. I know that you are responding to the fear in your life." Of course not, but then how do we integrate Coates insights? Or do we just listen to what he is saying to his son, and take something from what he is saying in the context of explaining something to his son. Perhaps it's enough to understand that fashion and lifestyle choices have meaning, and it's worth exploring these meanings with the youth making these decisions.

(I know this is an aside... but maybe it isn't.) Just in case anybody needed a definition of "inquiry," these sentences would do just fine. I know it can seem like too much to ask of youth, but I think we can find ways to help them to find the question they have been asking all of their lives, just like Coates's question here: "unanswerable, which is not to say futile." How different that is from finding a "researchable question."

What does this central thesis -- I think -- feel like, get understood to mean... to a 15 year old?

This is what we need in our teaching with other 15 year olds. In our curriculum, do we have a strand... maybe a stance... a readiness... an ill-formed set of prompts... an inquiry at the ready... that also says: We are teaching http://youthvoices.net/blacklivesmatter (as one example -- thank you Renée Watson) because this was that year that you saw...

I'm wondering if "the dream" -- at least as Coates sketches it out in the remainder of this paragraph -- has become a "war with the known world" for people without education and money. Is it about race or class. Robert Putnam makes a good case for the problem being about rising economic inequality in America, even as racial and sexual divisions have been lessening.

I read this paragraph three times, blinking back tears. Moments like this get collected by many (not all) of our students. It's amazing to ask them, to give them space -- perhaps a little information -- to tell their own memories of these weeks. There's something here for curriculum, for teasing out the memories of our students over the past years. And asking them what these stories mean to them, and asking them to use writing to remember and to make meaning of these moments. That's how anti-racist education with African-American and Latino youth is different.

Stop and frisk has ended, right? Not so fast: "The NYPD hasn’t ended its practice of stop-and-frisk...." It just stopped reporting the number of stops.

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/nyregion/some-new-york-police-street-stops-are-going-undocumented-report-says.html?_r=0

Start at 9:29 Face the Nation, November 30, 2014

Again, this reminds me of the connection that Jeremy made to Frederick Douglass's 1841 speech about the 4th of July.

I like that he is taking us on a journey of this sadness becoming more clear or perhaps he is just noticing the times when it comes up.

The clarity of this sentence comes from this being a letter.

I'm just trying to imagine how it might make Coates son squirm to have his dad talk to him about his body. I guess I'm squirming a bit too. I'm expecting to hear about racism, but here I'm being asked to think about a body.

So it all comes back to self-directed learning again. As I've begun to think about this competency in our school, I've thought about how this might be something that is intertwined with all other competencies. In plain language, this might mean that students are always pulling back holding up a mirror (or taking a snapshot) of their learning/journey.

This is the goal -- or at least I think it is -- of competency, mastery-based learning and of open badges. One thing I love about looking at Alverno's 8 Abilities like I did this morning is to see two things: First, the over-arching 8 remain more or less the same for almost 40 years. And second, there is a constant revision, re-owning, re-thinking of the skills under each ot the abilities (thus the history of the changes).

This is real, and perhaps, a bit understated. When students are doing worksheets, filling in blanks, how can we ask them use them for self-expression (sonnet), self-reflection (mirror) or for making a plan (map).

But then, does this mean that we have to spend more time on creating conditions and projects for meaningful work before working on portfolios? Probably not, but this does remind me of how much gets revealed because of portfolios.

Seeing what's not there yet -- in our own curriculum -- is a big reason why teachers resist student portfolios, I think.

The purpose of criteria is not about judgment or meeting standards, it's a precursor for conversation or interaction between teacher and student.

The obvious paradox here is that the more "explicit" and digestible (student friendly) our criteria, the more a student can be independent in assessing her own work. That's a wonderful tension between top-down criteria and bottom-up assessment.

That's a lot to throw in here at the end. It does make me wonder about how focusing too much on assessment might become the tail wagging the dog, if you know what I mean. Because ultimately it gets back to working together to create quality assignments and teaching the process of self-directed learning.

This comes close to my philosophy of education.

These are great "meta-competencies."

This is an important notion, that making something is the beginning of having evidence of learning. AND that embodied in that object is the process and the learning that you went through, which needs to be given time and place to show.

Versions of these questions would be good for us to consider in our portfolio panels.

What a powerful reason for asking students to keep and develop a portfolio: because we want you to see the progress you will make/are making, or at least see the changes and development of your work.

What a bracing shift it would be to ask students to consider their portfolios as something that is an expression "worthy of their time and effort." To treat the portfolio as another presentation of their work, for a real audience, and one that matters.

How can we begin to give students experiences of this kind of presentation of self/work in small ways, not just at the end when a portfolio is due.

This would suggest that a portfolio is a means of self-expression. Students should be encouraged to show who they truly are through a portfolio.

So I was just looking at a folder of work that a seventh grader wants to use in her portfolio. She came to me asking me to "approve" of the work. "Is this good enough for my portfolio in Independent Reading?"

It wasn't easy to get her to understand that I wasn't going to give approval or disapproval, and instead I asked her in as many was as I could think of to show me how the work show us something important about her ability to "have conversations online" (as our competency states) about her reading. Or more generally, I said, "Okay, so here are three responses to short stories that you have first drafts of. You do need to finish them, and as you do, think about what you want these to show about your unique, thoughtful ways of responding to literature."

We have work to do. But Mary Diez's metaphor here reminds me of how important it is to return the power of the portfolio to the student. It's not my approval of the work that matters, it's the student's ability to recognize and articulate her own sense of why this work matters, how it shows something important about herself.

There's a lot to learn about the leadership and vision shown by these questions and this process.

1. We want to know what the burning issues are in your field, and we want to know how you are dealing with these issues in your general courses and in the advanced courses.

2. What so important in your classes that everybody needs to learn it?

3. Let's forget credits and course requirements. Instead tell us what students need to know to be successful in your department.

4. Let's assume that your work with students is one piece of a larger picture. How do you think they might connect the work in your classes with their work in other classes? Let's think about the connections, not just hope they get there.

5. We value the liberal arts and professional learning. How do you see the two interacting.

The scheduled discussions make clear that this is a self-research project. This is what we need to do in schools at all levels.

The power of this concluding paragraph says it all! Wow. And it's not just cops who show this disrespect.

This parallel list, with the devastating quotations interspersed is powerful indeed!

I wonder how many cops even seek to receive admiration and respect. I agree that fear and caution are a much less human level of respect, but how do we move from a culture where only the lower levels of safety are sought or given?

What this means is that there is a gap between what people feel on their gut level (or whatever you want to call it and what they are willing to act upon on an intellectual and political level. Intuitions can be true, but isn't it important to help people move from the intuitive levels of understanding to more committed levels that will lead to more sustained political action and change?

Seems to me like we need to value the lives lost mysteriously in back alleys too, no?

What's new might really have a history.

These five barriers, "in addition to poverty" seem similar to what we face in trying to support the educational needs of migrant farmworkers and their children.

One could also describe this as "contested." "Remains uncertain" already feels like the authors are moving toward an inevitable certainty of using nuclear power. Or am I being paranoid?

Coalition of enemies!

That doesn't sound good for ISIS. What kind of impact does that have on morale when they kill their own fighters for trying to escape the enemy?

It's odd to think how little territory is actually controlled by ISIS, at least in the area of Tikrit.

Okay, so it's paragraphs like this that make me want to throw up my hands. Check out what is being said here. First, who is Sadr? "Sadr is one of the most influential religious and political figures in the country," according to Wikipedia. And he is sitting this one out. Why? Because forces who are supposed to his allies, the Shiite militias. Sadr is also a Shiite, I think. But after defeating ISIS, they kill the people who live there? I think I remember something like this being reported on Democracy Now. So yeah, what kind of unity is this? Sounds like mad confusion! Here's a Human Rights Report.

So what's the truth? Do Shiites slaughter Sunnis when they get a chance to or not? This article leaves me more confused than when I started.

And the Sunnis are connected to Qaeda?

Oh, so the Peace Brigades aren't the official troops, but they vastly outnumber the government's soldiers, and without them, nothing happens. I get it.

So Mr. Sadr's Peace Brigrades aren't the official government troops of Iraq? Makes you want to give up on ever understanding this stuff.

That's some name for militias of soldiers!

So this is implying that the Sunnis and the Shiites, from the above paragraph are working together with the Islamic government. Is that the case or is this a small exception tot the rule of not working togeter?

700 in a force of 30,000? Seems like this could only be symbolic.

This makes it sound like some sort of game.

If you have to call for unity, it's implied that you don't have it currently. Also later in this same paragraph. It feels chaotic and splintered to refer to fighters as a "faction" -- faction of what? I assume a faction of the Iraqi government forces.

What I can't wait to find out is what drew you to this topic.

I'd love to know why you enjoyed a sad story.

This makes me wonder how complicated this story is, with biases and struggle all over the place.

Nice start!

Titles are so important.

I like how the final four lines, all of which start with "and," make connections between the reader and you, showing how we know about each other and motivate each other.

One of the problems is that teachers burn out after their first few years of hard and endless works.

I think we all feel this way at times. I wonder why it overwhelms us sometimes, makes us angry at other times, and we just brush it off still other times.