Journal of a Black Teacher

  By Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT - Entry: J ournal of a Black Teacher May 26, 2023 Today, I am frustrated.      I’ve worked for the last seven years to understand the data-driven defeat of some of our most reputable educational institutions. When I write ‘defeat,’ it does not mean the system is not functioning at some level; you have buses, students, passing bells, teachers, social workers, counselors, administrators, and such with an output that might not meet the core ethics of society’s expectations for a well-rounded education system (creating Minnesota’s Best Workforce ). I could be wrong. Maybe people don’t care? I don’t hold any of the power; if I did, the conversation would look different. To be honest, I do not understand the current rules about being just fine with less and inefficient with what you have. Processing the Twin Cities' educational information for understanding and critique is very different from simply blaming the school systems for the recent uptick in teenage

Consent Decree: These orders are usually called “consent decrees.” The term reflects that the order was negotiated and agreed to by the DOJ and the City that was investigated. A consent decree is  a legally binding agreement where the court supervises the implementation of the agreement.   By Don Allen, M. A. Ed./MAT #Fiction, #FutureCast Twin Cities, Minn…Once upon a time, in a city plagued by gun violence, there was a controversial agreement in place between the police department and the community. The agreement stated that the police would only use force as a last resort and would work to build trust and positive relationships with the people they served. At first, the agreement was met with skepticism and resistance from both sides. The police felt that their hands were tied and that they were being unfairly criticized for doing their jobs. The community, on the other hand, felt that the police were not doing enough to protect them and that the agreement was just a way for the pol

Note: While this piece is fictional, the art is real-life. " Police killed a Black Army veteran outside his home. His family wants answers"  (Griffith, 2021) NBC News .  Not knowing he was born both a success and a target, 23-year-old Army veteran John-Terry Lucine returned home from the service ready to live his life to the fullest, unaware of what could happen to an unarmed man in today’s society. Life, so he thought, awaited him.   By Don Allen -  All Rights Reserved.       T he Army was great. I did my three years – got out, came back here. Captran County is hot, filled with people running from one side to another. Suburban neighborhoods with names like Mars, Lunar One, and Apollo have popped up out of thin air. This is the big city, not the city I left three years ago.       Momma put me to work right away. She asked me to get some paint and fill in the letters on the old wooden mailbox out front of the fence. It had been weather-beaten while I was gone, and the family n

  Click here to read my report . 

By Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT  “ As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task. ”   ~Diogenes Laertius, (c. 404—323 B.C.E.) Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6, Chapter 35. He “Diogenes of Sinop, (Turkey)-School of Cynicism ”, is labeled mad for acting against convention, but Diogenes points out that it is the conventions which lack reason citing that most people, he would say, are so nearly mad that a finger makes all the difference. “For if you go along with your middle finger stretched out, someone will think you mad, but, if it’s the little finger, he will not think so” (Diogenes Laertius).  Logic and common sense scare many good natured foundational folks in education. When you look at challenges in our public educational system, it’s even more scary to see the actions of good natured people that have generationally ignored best practices outside of their own cultures and just simply put, b

We must study humans as we would study other animals to discover what their “nature” is. Look among the species; see who are the thriving and successful and in what activities do they engage? For Aristotle, this is how to determine what is and is not appropriate for human and human societies .    ~ Aristotle - Rejection of Plato’s Rationalism Statement from Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT: Teacher and Servant Leader Please, everyone - cast a spell, wave your magic wands, pray, rub the chicken feet (I have mine, it’s a Jamaican thing), and hope teachers don’t strike. The results from a strike in this critical moment will disrupt all levels of society. The Twin Cities are not prepared to have thousands of K-12 scholars unstructured; yes, the achievement gap is alive and growing, but educators need this time between now and June to kill it. Parents must work; childcare is critical. We are just easing back in because of COVID-19, bad Wi-Fi hotspots, we have kids who are seniors that can’t get in

Video Blog by Don Allen, M. A. Ed./MAT  What do you tell students about the death of 22-year old Amir Locke in downtown Minneapolis by  the  MPD? It's like peeling an onion - so many layers, so many people, missed opportunities, along with policies and procedures that date back to the 1970s. Many local politicians are complicit in this death, maybe this death brings about the change like they said about George Floyd, Dante Wright, Winston "Boogie" Smith, and the future dead Black Men in the Twin Cities - game over. 

No one should be treated differently but addressing race and inequitable education is toxic; but in Minnesota, spending more than $600 million a year on closing the achievement gap with ZERO successes in any district is considered a win?   By Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT - Journal of A Black Teacher©  2022 All Rights Reserved (Editorial Opinion - Not Written for the Guilty or Weak Minded) Besides everything else, W.E.B. Du Bois must have also been a fortune teller back in the day.  In all of his authored books, Du Bois sternly warns Black folks in the United States about our Black and Brown children being used as “doormats to be spit and tramped upon and lied to by ignorant social climbers.” Today, the proverbial ‘doormats’ and ‘spit’ come in the form of the generational minimal proficiencies for Black and Brown children born in the United States, and the phenomenon has spread quickly to our new kids - some Somali, Latin, and Asian children whose families exited a bad situation in their hom