Race Lesson 10: Racism's Effects on Whites

1. Read the post below which will introduce you to the lesson and to Jonathon Metzel, a sociologist and medical doctor. 

2.  When finished with reading the post below, choose to either:

a) read the introduction to the book

b) listen to the interview of Dr. Metzel with Mr Hayes

c) read the transcript of the interview 

d) (or you can do both b and c)  

3.  Please complete #2 and be ready to discuss it tomorrow.

4.  Answer the Google Form 

Racism Effect on Whites

Just like people are unique and dynamic, so is each racial group.  Therefore, racism affects each group differently.  Surprisingly, however, even whites can be affected negatively by racism towards nonwhites.  One person studying the effects of racism on whites is Jonathon Metzel, a sociologist, and a medical doctor at Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Jonathon Metzel, Sociologist and Medical Doctor

As both a sociologist and a medical doctor, Metzel explores the connection between racism and the negative effects on society, especially among whites.  In his book, Dying of Whiteness, Dr. Metzel finds that the life expectancy of white Americans has gone DOWN for three years in a row, 2015, 2016 and 2017.  (This was even before the Covid-19 pandemic!)   The last time that life expectancy went down in the U.S. for three years in a row was one hundred years ago because of World War I and the influenza outbreak of 1919.  The reasons that it is going down again now are surprisingly related to race.  This has not happened in 100 years and it is almost unheard of in the developed world.! Life expectancy should be going up.

Here is the introduction to Metzel's book.  If you read the last 2 pages of the reading (18-19), Metzel explicitly states that,
It is not liberal or conservative politics in general, but a specific type of politics:

"It is best to avoid knee-jerk assumptions that more money or health care are automatically good....There are far too many examples of liberal or Democratic initiatives that result in poor health for minority and low-income populations...When politics demands that people resist available health care, amass arsenals, cut funding for schools, or make other decisions that are perilous, this is literally asking people to die for their whiteness." 

I argue that the way forward requires a white America that strives to collaborate rather than dominate, with a mind-set of openness and interconnectedness that we have all-too-frequently neglected. 
This is not to suggest that everyone become a Democrat - far from it.  Rather, our nation urgently needs to recognize how systems of inequality we build and sustain aren't benefitting anyone...."

Chris Hayes had Dr. Metzel as a guest on his podcast called Why Is This Happening?

The transcript is available here in case you want to read along while you listen, or in case you simply prefer to read the interview instead of listening.  But you can also listen to the podcast on Apple here and on Stitcher here.  If you listen to the interview, it runs for about 50 minutes.  Note that this is just an interview with Metzel.  For a full understanding of Metzel's findings, see his book, Dying of Whiteness.

Here is the episode embedded:

 
Here is a preview of the interview:

Trigger Warning:  **This conversation explores death by suicide and gun violence**

Life expectancy in America has gone down three years in a row. You might expect to see shorter life expectancies in the aftermath of war or famine — to witness it in an industrialized nation in the middle of an otherwise prosperous era, however, is unprecedented. It is a distress signal that something has gone horribly wrong. 

Jonathan Metzl traced that distress signal to its origin and found something remarkable. He writes that the policies promising to Make American Great Again, policies rooted in centering and maintaining the power of whiteness, are shortening the lives of the white Americans who vote for them. From supporting conceal carry to cutting social services, Metzl explores just what policies white voters are willing to risk their lives for. 

Anne Case and Angus Deaton (mentioned in Metzel's book) detail the rising death rate for whites without a college education.  Here is an explanation from the Brookings Institution.  And here is Deaths of Despair, a 2020 book that Case and Deaton wrote as a follow up to their ground-breaking 2015 study.

Here is a summary of Case and Deaton's work,

Case and Deaton find that while midlife mortality rates continue to fall among all education classes in most of the rich world, middle-aged non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. with a high school diploma or less have experienced increasing midlife mortality since the late 1990s. This is due to both rises in the number of “deaths of despair”—death by drugs, alcohol and suicide—and to a slowdown in progress against mortality from heart disease and cancer, the two largest killers in middle age.

Race Lesson 8: Racism and Colorism

Google Doc is Here

Our last lesson was about how racism can be implicit, or subconscious.  That racism shows up in both institutions and in individual interactions.  But because we all live in the same society, we are all socialized to think similarly about what types of people we should trust or not trust.  This means that even non-whites are socialized to have a pro-white bias.  This results in lighter skin being seen as more trustworthy and more desirable.  That is called colorism.

A Girl Like Me

The implicit bias throughout American society affects all Americans living here including the minorities who are most negatively affected by the bias.  Watch the following video and look for the ways that kids are affected by subconscious bias.  https://youtu.be/YWyI77Yh1Gg

1.  Where is the explicit racism in the video?  

2.  Where is the implicit racism in the video?


DiAngelo's What Does It Mean to Be White?

Sociologist Robin DiAngelo's book, What Does It Mean to Be White?  is a terrific book for anyone wanting to be more racially literate.  Racism and Specific Racial Groups, Chapter 17 of her book,  is all about the different histories and discriminations against specific racial groups.  She does a great job of succinctly explaining the social, historical and political contexts that affect each group.  While I teach much of what she explains in her book, it is a valuable resource and I recommend it.  We will examine an excerpt below.

Additionally, for more info about racial terms and the changing nature of what terms are acceptable,  UW Madison professor Pamela Oliver's website is really helpful.  Dr. Oliver has made a list of terms that explains the history and nature of racially-based terminology.  Her post is continually updated here, but she also posted a PDF version of this essay on SocArXiv.

Read a brief excerpt from sociologist Robin DiAngelo's book, What Does It Mean to Be White?  Please click on Racism and Specific Racial Groups to read the section called "White Racism and African Heritage People" (skip ahead to read ONLY pages 315-319)

3.  Based on the excerpt above, what is colorism and why does it matter?

4.  If you are not black, what was interesting from the reading?  If you are black, what else would you include that the author did not mention? 

The Police Officer's Dilemma from the University of Colorado at Boulder 

If minorities themselves can be socialized to see their own race as something less desirable then obviously it can apply to everyone in the U.S.  That means teachers, doctors and yes, police officers too (more on how implicit bias affects black Americans black in all of these areas in tomorrow's lesson.  But because police officers are authorized to use deadly force, the impact of implicit bias has much more serious consequences when it come to policing.   The University of Chicago's Joshua Corell has research showing that unconscious bias results in split-second differences in all people (not just police) who are confronted by either a white person or a black person.  Soc Images explains it here.  

The study's home page is here, but you can try an online version of the First-Person Shooter Task here.  Below are the basic findings from the study:

In short, the findings are that we live in a society that teaches us all to have implicit bias.   This includes police and even includes other minorities.  

5. Can you understand how implicit bias might result in police shooting more black men than other groups?  (And that acknowledging that is not being anti-police, it is just being realistic about race in America)

Finally, this video called Slip of the Tongue uses slam poetry to explore how one girl stands strong to embrace her identity without giving in to popular pressure to change who she is.  Lyrics available here.

 

The poem is also highlighted at Critical Media website here.

  

Race Lesson 7: Implicit Individual Racism and becoming Race Conscious (Bonilla-Silva Racism Without Racists)

Reviewing Yesterday:

What is implicit racism?

What is Dubois' "Wages of Whiteness"?

What is McIntosh's "White privilege"?

In our last lesson, we learned about how racism indirectly affects people through institutions by allowing dynamics like accumulating wealth and segregating housing and schools.  But implicit racism can also show up in more mundane ways.  Dubois' wages of whiteness and McIntosh's privilege show up indirectly in everyday interaction.  As Americans became aware of the damaging effects of racism, many Americans sought to become "colorblind" in terms of race.  The idea was that not seeing race would get rid of the race-based institutional policies that shaped racism in the US from 1619-1970.  Additionally, because racism was so stigmatized, many Americans were afraid to talk about race at all.  Many people felt that by not seeing race, they would treat everyone equally.  Consciously trying to ignore race became an intentional goal of American culture. 

From Color-blind to Race-Conscious

However, the sudden taboo of race in American culture did not change the racist effects of the previous 350 years.  Sociologists responded to this new trend by noting the ways that race continues to shape our everyday interactions in subconscious, implicit ways.  

Duke University Professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva spoke about "color blindness" in his 2001 speech to Texas A&M here.  And he wrote about the effects of implicit racism in his 2003 book, Racism Without Racists.  Bonilla-Silva noted that turning a blind eye toward race actually exasperated racial inequalities because now society could appear well-meaning while ignoring and even increasing inequalities.   Bonilla-Silva argued that instead of being "color-blind" we should seek to be race-conscious.  

Click here for the Google form for this lesson.

1.  What is Bonilla-Silva's important contribution to race theory?

As you complete this lesson, think about the examples below and how they might allow inequality to exist if we ignore race.

The same year that Bonilla-Silva published his seminal work on race (2003), The Ohio State University opened the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity to study implicit bias.

The institute publishes a yearly review of the state of implicit bias research.  You can find that here.

Kirwan Institute's 2017 research also shows that even doctors and patient health are affected by implicit bias.  The research is supported by the American Association of Medical Colleges.  You can download it here.

Besides the scholarly examples of implicit bias published by the Kirwan Institute, implicit bias that ignores race shows up in more everyday examples as well.

2.  What color dress is Mrs. Obama wearing in this picture?


This picture featuring Michelle Obama was published with a caption saying that she wore a "flesh-colored" dress.  Are they implying that Michelle's skin is not flesh?  I don't think so, but this is an example of the privilege of being white; white skin is considered normal/flesh-colored.   This is just one of many privileges of being white in a culture that sees white as normal, desirable or better than other "colors".  If we see society through a color-blind lens, then we implicitly accept that white skin is normal skin in the U.S.  

 

Here is another example from Johnson and Johnson.  Note that the bottle says, "Normal to Darker skin," implying that there is normal skin and then there is darker skin which is implicitly abnormal. 

3.  How are the two examples above examples of implicit racism?

   

Police Surveillance and Implicit Bias from the Sociologist Toolbox

Part of the privilege of being white and implicit bias of not being perceived as white is the idea of belonging.  Similar to Nina Davuluri who was perceived as not American, here are a number of examples (A NY Police Lt., Harvard U. President, State Senator Obama) of Americans who are perceived as black being treated as they don't belong.  Sometimes, they are seen as not belonging in the U.S. or not being American, but in other instances, it is that they do not belong within a more micro-sociological context such as living in a certain house or neighborhood.   Below are examples of this from 2018.

In 2018, police across the United States have been urged to investigate black people for doing all kinds of daily, mundane, noncriminal activities. This year alone, CNN has reported on police being called on African-Americans for:

Operating a lemonade store

Golfing too slowly

Waiting for a friend at Starbucks

Barbecuing at a park

Working out at a gym

Campaigning door to door

Moving into an apartment

Mowing the wrong lawn

Shopping for prom clothes

Napping in a university common room

Asking for directions

Not waving while leaving an Airbnb

Redeeming a coupon

Selling bottled water on a sidewalk

Eating lunch on a college campus

Riding in a car with a white grandmother

Babysitting two white children

Wearing a backpack that brushed against a woman

Working as a home inspector

Working as a firefighter

Helping a homeless man

Delivering newspapers

Swimming in a pool

Shopping while pregnant

Driving with leaves on a car

Trying to cash a paycheck

And these are just the incidents that CNN has reported!  There are no doubt many others.  A review of news headlines this year shows that police were also called on other people of color. But it seemed to happen most often to black people: black people just going about their business.

4.  Have you ever had the cops called on you for doing something that was just your normal life (and not illegal)?  If so, what was it?  If not, are these examples surprising?

A 2020 study by White, Stuart and Morrissey, published in The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity shows that,

Building on and advancing theories of “color-blind racism,” the authors examine the process by which the news media uphold and reify the devaluation of Black and Hispanic lives through ostensibly race-neutral language, story lines, and cultural narratives. Drawing on an original data set containing all news articles (n = 2,245) written about every homicide victim (n = 762) in Chicago, Illinois, during 2016, the authors use multilevel models to assess the extent to which victims’ race and neighborhood racial composition are associated with the level of attention, or “newsworthiness,” devoted to their deaths. Using two measures of newsworthiness—the amount of coverage and recognition of “complex personhood”—the authors find that victims killed in predominantly Black neighborhoods receive less news coverage than those killed in non-Hispanic White neighborhoods. Those killed in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods are also less likely to be discussed as multifaceted, complex people. Our analyses underscore the importance of place, especially the racialization of place, in determining which victims are treated as newsworthy.

Here is another example of disparate news coverage: 

Here is a story from public radio about a study of basketball announcers:  

Here is an excerpt of the story which features sociologist Rashawn Ray:

two sociologists recently published a study that looked at a decade's worth of March Madness broadcasts, and they found that sometimes racial bias sounds like this:

"That’s a tough matchup for JJ Redick on the glass. Redick not known as a rebounder. Tasmin Mitchell much stronger, bigger and more athletic."

"I mean, of course, we can highlight some of these bigger comments that most people would consider to be racist," says Dr. Rashawn Ray, who teaches sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. "But instead, what we were highlighting, in many ways, is implicit bias and the subtle ways that race actually operates, when it comes to talking about some of these historical stereotypes, about what it means to be Black and physically superior and, at the same time, intellectually inferior, and, on the other hand, what it means to be lighter-skinned or white."

Same Action, Different Description

Dr. Ray and his co-author Dr. Steven Foy, of the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, transcribed 52 men’s college basketball broadcasts, including 11 championship games. They were looking at the ways broadcasters talk about players of different skin tones, and whether racial bias was at play.

5.  How do the three examples above implicitly affect Americans who are perceived as black?

An amazing example of implicit racism (and white privilege) was highlighted on the TV show What Would You Do?  You will be astonished at the difference in how the two men are treated.  Watch this video  (embedded below).

 


Sociology of Education and School Discipline

Edward Morris and Brea Perry's research found that discipline in school for subjective offenses might be shaped by implicit bias.  Read the abstract and try to answer the question below.   Please don't guess.  Either read it and actually try or skip the question.  See their research published in the ASA's journal here or here.

6.  What did the researchers conclude about who gets punished and why in high school?

A Girl Like Me

The implicit bias throughout American society affects all Americans living here including the minorities who are most negatively affected by the bias.  Watch the following video and look for the ways that kids are affected by subconscious bias.  https://youtu.be/YWyI77Yh1Gg

7.  Where was the explicit and implicit bias in the video?  


The Police Officer's Dilemma from the University of Colorado at Boulder 

If minorities themselves can be socialized to see their own race as something less desirable then obviously it can apply to everyone in the U.S.  That means teachers, doctors and yes, police officers too.  But because police officers are authorized to use deadly force, the impact of implicit bias has much more serious consequences when it come to policing.   The University of Chicago's Joshua Corell has research showing that unconscious bias results in split-second differences in all people (not just police) who are confronted by either a white person or a black person.  Soc Images explains it here.  You can try the study by clicking here for a link to the game and conclusions.

In short, the findings are that we live in a society that teaches us all to have implicit bias.   This includes police and even includes other minorities.  

For more on policing and bias, see:

Focusing 2020 on Protests for George Floyd

Whose Lives Matter? (A History of Black Lives Matter Movement)

A Knee into the Gut of America (Colin Kaepernick)

Ferguson
Why Don't People Protest When the Violence is Not Because of a Cop? (They Do!)

 
8. Can you understand how implicit bias might result in police shooting more black men than other groups?  (And that acknowledging that is not being anti-police, it is just being realistic about race in America)

University of Chicago School of Economics and Labor Market

Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan published a study of implicit bias and the labor market in The American Economic Review called Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination?

Labor Market and Felonies

From the NY Times, When a Dissertation Makes a Difference shows not only how unconscious bias can play a role in hiring in a most inequitable way, but also how sociology can make a difference that influences policy.

As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Devah Pager studied the difficulties of former prisoners trying to find work and, in the process, came up with a disturbing finding: it is easier for a white person with a felony conviction to get a job than for a black person whose record is clean.

9. What are some of the evidence that implicit bias makes it harder for Americans who are perceived as black to get a job than Americans who are perceived as white?






Finally, this video called Slip of the Tongue uses slam poetry to explore how one girl stands strong to embrace her identity without giving in to popular pressure to change who she is.

For more on implicit bias:

Implicit bias as "microaggression"

Sometimes these subtle instances of racism are called "microaggressions".  

Here are 25 microaggressions from buzzfeed.

Using the link above, what microaggression stood out as particularly racist?  Can you see how that small microaggression might make someone feel like they don't belong or shouldn't have power?

This article from American Psychologist explains microaggressions and the implications of them for clinical therapists.  See the table below for an explanation of different microaggressions.

Look at the chart above and find a microaggression (from the middle column) that you have either said or that you have had said to you.  What theme does it fall into?  What is the message that it sends?  

And, here are some privileges related to Christmas.  

Why an Award-winning Teacher Who is a Leader in his Field is Leaving Public School Teaching after 25 years

Official letter is available here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k3SlU4JBmMG78ONMgTv74-bhwcfo_yIR/view?usp=sharing

 April 26, 2022

Dear District 125,

This letter is to regretfully announce my resignation from the district at the end of this school year. I have served proudly and honorably for 23 years. For more than 15 years I was selected for senior awards night as a teacher who made a difference in students’ lives. I have earned three Ambassador Awards from the Board. My Student Voice Survey SEL data has been consistently and substantially above the average for SHS (20+ percentage points). I have appreciated the ways that the district has helped me thrive in my discipline; I was able to serve for ten years as one of only two high school teachers in the nation to be on the American Sociological Association High School Advisory Board. I was able to be a co-author of both the National Standards for High School Sociology and the C3 (Common Core) standards for sociology. I was a pioneer of the Loyola University Chicago Dual Credit Program. And, one of the myriad anecdotal examples of my impact is when two of my former students who met in my class were so inspired by my class that they asked me to be the presider at their wedding. In short, I am very proud of all that I have done for the district and I appreciate the many ways that the district helped me to become a national leader in teaching high school sociology.

However, teaching in the district has become pedagogically and morally untenable for me. My willingness to be a team player and a pedagogical pioneer led me to attempt the Evidence Based Reporting (EBR) assessment practices as early as 2013. I spent countless hours leading my team to research, create and revise this method of assessing. But, as early adopters, we discovered that EBR assessment practices were flawed. I tried to voice concerns about the assessment practices over the years and I have documented evidence of voicing concerns to the SHS administration. Please see this detailed and documented list:

• May 20, 2014 email to the Director of Assessment, Research and Evaluation:

“We need help sorting our students who do not turn in assessment. How do we grade students who are

missing assignments?”

• Jan 23, 2015 email to the Director of Assessment, Research and Evaluation:

“EBR does not have the technology to take into account all of a student’s work. We really want the grade to reflect ALL assignments, not just the mode or dual mode.”

• Jul 23, 2019 email response to the Social Studies Division Director:

[M]e - just in case it comes up with admin, I wanted to explain a few concerns carefully in writing...

[Director]-M and N both run the risk of failure. M can still be turned in by whatever policy the team/assignment has. N means missed the window of time for doing and need to coordinate with teacher (and maybe other support personnel) how the course will proceed because they are now lacking potentially essential evidence from the course.

[Me] - But what happens when this occurs at the end of a semester?

[Director]-Communicating early with parents about any missing assignment would be my suggestion, yes we want to treat them like adults but they are still in HS and have missed an assignment...they are not warranting handling it on their own if they cannot get their work done. If a kid missed things in Feb, include/notify parents and counselor then.

[Me] - I did communicate with parents. I sent home a mid-term grade indicating progress. Additionally, please remember that I had 20+ kids in this situation until the last 3 weeks. This is because kids don't feel there are any consequences to turning in things late.

[Director]-Deadlines will be honored and teacher determines the grade. But the grade should reflect the story the gradebook seems to be telling. And all 3 of these specific kids seem to have a different story. Which is why I am asking for some clarifications on the individual student situations. (See underlined questions in original email.)

[Me] - IMHO, the best way to reflect the whole grade book is to average it together - no? And if the teacher determines the grade, why can't I decide to average? My deadline was May 17. Honestly, I probably never said that "If you miss the deadline, you will fail", but I did say, this is the deadline. I never mentioned failing because I thought that was against SHS policy to fail a kid for missing a deadline. This is still a really confusing area that admin has not provided clarity on.

[Brad]-As for responding during the summer... I appreciate that you responded as you did not have to prior to the end of the summer break. I also told parents/kids that teachers are on break and do not have to respond until the 7th. I was just hoping we could get ahead of this before the 7th and relaying their info to you.

[Me] - I appreciate this, but it begs the question: when is the end? What if a kid gets his report card in June and then emails a revised assignment in July? What if an incoming senior finds me in the halls in August and says, gee my grade was low and I heard you accepted [another student’s] assignment over the summer, can I revise something?

[Director]-Do situations develop where teachers sometimes address incompletes or make-up work over the Summer or coordinate that with Director, sometimes, but those are on case by case basis. But the grades for 99% of the kids should be closed and done at the end of each term.

[Me] -When is the term done? This sounds as though all 3 Fs should stand.

[Brad]-I am not sure EBR is the underlying issue, or only issue, here as we have seen these kinds of concerns/situations with students in both EBR and traditional courses over the years, with anecdotal information that during 2nd sem there have been increases in recent years, but is that EBR, stress, earlier calendar, or other factors nobody is certain.

[Me] -EBR is the issue because it has 2 contradictory philosophies that admin has not given direction on.

• October 2019 Pre-observation Form to the Superintendent:

As I mentioned in the first section (1a), the mishmash of expectations in recent years has made defining what should be assessed all the more difficult. This is complicated by the mandate of evidence-based reporting which seems to de-emphasize content knowledge and instead emphasize skills. But this is a difficult road to navigate. Do I ignore the content that is knowledge-based such as the National Standards and the C3 appendix standards? If I am supposed to emphasize skills, which skills are they? And how do I emphasize these skills with a textbook that is based on content knowledge? I have tried to balance these, but it has become increasingly frustrating to balance as I feel more and more constraints on my teaching.

One of the constraints that has created more difficulty for teaching is the emphasis on assessing only what students can do. I was an early adopter to evidence-based grading. Tony Reibel and I were meeting as early as 2013. But even before meeting with Tony, (before EBR was created), I personally eliminated the zero penalty in my assessments, used a 1-4 grading scale instead of percentages, and I emphasized applying content as a skill. As I switched completely into the EBR model, I found it difficult to motivate students who are only interested in their grade (and not interested in learning for the sake of learning). These students have trouble with being motivated to do the work necessary to prepare for the graded assessments. For example, I have used readings as a way of assessing whether or not a student can apply a concept from class. The process should be that the student does the reading, then in class I can teach and assess the student how to apply a sociology concept to that reading. However, this is not possible if a student has not done the reading. In the past, a grade (even if it was just for completion) was motivating for the student to do the work. 

Additionally, using the modal based scoring of EBR allows students to game the system in a way that renders nearly half of their grades meaningless. Students know that if they have a modal score of 3 then they can get as many 1s as they want as long as it does not change the modal score.

Last June was one example of this and it was also one of the lowest points of my career. I had decided to go all in on EBR. I reinvented my class. I assessed only students' skills. Students had to create their own sociology literature reviews. I gave them time in class to do it. I gave them formative feedback. I worked with them individually and as a group. At the due date however, there were 19 students out of 80 who did not even turn in the assignment. On the last day of the semester, there were still 12 who did not turn it in. On the day of the final exam, there were 9 who did not turn it in. And finally, by the end of the semester (the end of the very last final on the last day of school) there were still three students who had not turned in their work. They turned it in over the summer. This is stressful and disappointing as a teacher, but even worse, it is a disservice to students to lead them to believe that deadlines do not matter.

• January 26, 2022 letter to Principal:

I find it reprehensible that SHS administration would focus on the specific events that the letter addresses without being willing to look at the larger context that caused this. I know there are dozens of teachers who feel the same frustration with the new grading mandate and turning a deaf ear to these concerns is hurting teacher morale and student competency.

These are only a fraction of the written communications that I have documenting my attempts to clarify and understand EBR and apply it to the actual classroom. But I have had numerous other interactions that were verbal and so not documented, but multiple people can attest to these. For example, I found it frustrating that at the 2019 pre-observation meeting with the Superintendent (cited in my pre-observation above), he told me that he disagreed with the Principal about whether teachers can grade students’ homework and effort in class. It is very frustrating to be forced to grade in a system that my own principal and superintendent can’t agree on.

The assessment practice has created a student culture and attitude that what a student does in class does not matter; effort does not matter; and turning in assignments does not matter. In 2018, I had numerous students simply not turn in their final paper. Then, in December 2021, I had 20 students not turn in their final assessment! Not only is this bad pedagogy which leads students to poor learning practices, but it is stressful as a teacher who puts his heart and soul into his teaching. I was upset that so many students were simply not turning in work and defiantly flaunting their gamesmanship of the EBR System. However, my frustration with this grading and my pleas for change and fell on deaf ears. Instead of addressing my concerns, the administration chastised me for displaying my frustration. In the meantime, SHS teachers across the school feel the same as I do, but teachers do not feel safe expressing this concern publicly. Students are not trying their best; they don’t feel the need to do homework or give their best effort. I do not think that this is preparing students for the rigors of college or worse yet, the demands of the workplace. This predates the pandemic and has been building for years because of EBR.

But it is not simply the pedagogy that has gotten me to this point. I am also morally at odds with the EBR practices. It is hard to ignore the book that the administration wrote touting the assessment practices even though none of them taught EBR in the manner which they wrote about. And it is impossible to ignore that the book was published before the vast majority of teachers were actually using EBR. Indeed, I have done professional development with teachers all over the country and I have had more than a few teachers reach out to me to ask if all teachers at SHS were doing the practices in the book and I had to say “No!”

Finally, the most egregious violation of moral standard came as I pioneered the Loyola University Chicago Dual Credit Program. Loyola has reached out to me regularly to explicitly state that their program demands that I use their grading scale and that I give students a final exam. But I have been told by SHS administrators to ignore these stipulations. Below is one email I sent explaining that:

• May 4, 2021 email from me to both the Social Studies Division Director and the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction:

I know that in the past we have talked about grading for Loyola's dual credit and from my understanding SHS's position is that I should just translate the EBR grade and be sure it reflects Loyola's understanding of an ABCDF grade scale. Also, Loyola requires a final exam so not sure but assuming that SHS's position is that a final "experience" can count even if it is simply adding additional evidence to an EBR standard.

I wanted to forward the email from Loyola (below) because it makes me uncomfortable that I do not use the prescribed grading scale nor do I give what would be considered a traditional final exam. Obviously, I would never want to do anything that would jeopardize the dual-credit option, but I also don't think that Loyola realizes how far SHS has deviated from traditional assessment practices.

It is morally corrupt to not only ignore these requirements, but to also not give students the college experience that will prepare them for actual college. We are setting these students up for failure.

I am deeply appreciative of my time at SHS and all the ways that SHS helped me thrive. I truly cared for all of my students over the years and I am proud of the work I have done. But I feel let down by the current leadership of SHS in regards to assessment and teaching and learning. These practices have been implemented unilaterally in a top-down manner without regard to teacher concerns. And many faculty and staff throughout the school have the same concerns as me but they continue to remain silent out of fear of retribution by the highest levels of administration which controls the school with an iron-fisted approach from a top-down direction. This is not how a collaborative, professional learning community should work and what’s worse, this is not serving our students.

Regretfully, but sincerely, with these EBR practices still in place, I cannot in good conscience return to SHS next year.

Respectfully and regretfully, I resign.

Christopher Salituro

For questions or further comment, please contact chrissalituro@gmail.com