News

This is an interesting and challenging time for educating students, but teachers and parents have no other choice than to make virtual learning work, was the motivational edict from Principal Baruti Kafele, award-winning educator and best-selling author. 

The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville East St. Louis Charter High School (CHS) hosted a Zoom webinar on Wednesday, Aug. 12 featuring Kafele, who presented “Culturally Relevant Remote Strategies for Teachers and Parents.” Kafele, who calls himself “America’s Principal” and an advocate for the potential of Black and Latinx students, explained that Black students are facing two pandemics – COVID-19 and the longstanding disease of racial injustice. 

“It is important to offer our parents support as we begin the school year, like we never have at any other time,” said CHS Director Gina Jeffries, EdD. “I am proud that we are able to offer this culturally relevant remote space today, and we will continue to do so in the upcoming days, as we go forward into our new school year.” 

In an effort to meet the critical and pressing demands of CHS students in the midst of COVID-19 and racial unrest, Jeffries identified the need for what she has termed CRRL-Culturally Responsive Remote Learning. Students need:

• Positive student-teacher relationships
• Culturally relevant curricula
• Culturally sensitive grace (the understanding that Black/Brown students are currently fighting two pandemics) 

Therefore, because of the need to offer CHS teachers and parents CRRL strategies to support remote learning, Jeffries called upon Kafele.

 In helping Black students thrive while facing two pandemics, Kafele spoke to CHS teachers first. He encouraged them to look past behaviors and circumstances that may be unfavorable in a child, and gaze at the potential that may be buried inside.

“When you look into their eyes, what do you see?” asked Kafele, “It plays a critical role in who they become. Even the ones who have made multiple bad decisions.” 

Kafele then displayed a photo of himself at the age of 18. “My 18-year-old self was saying, ‘I’m completely lost. I’m in my fifth year of high school with a 1.5 GPA,’” he recalled. “‘I’ve attended four different high schools. I have zero ambition. My decision-making is problematic. My self-esteem is very low and my self-confidence is virtually nonexistent.’” 

“My counselor had the audacity to inform me the day before graduation, that I would never amount to anything,” Kafele continued. “He didn’t realize that 30 years later, the books that I wrote would be used by that district to train its staff. So, my 18-year-old self is saying to you teacher, ‘Don’t quit on me now, because who knows.’” 

Specifically, Kafele gave CHS teachers direction on how to best teach and reach Black students, which comes from knowing their history and empowering them with knowledge of a proud and magnificent past. He offered book titles to both teachers and parents, ones Kafele said he has recently provided to white colleagues seeking to learn and understand more about Black history, culture and racial relations in the U.S., following the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. 

“Parents and teachers, when we unpack Black history, we can’t start off with slavery and end with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” instructed Kafele. “When we start children off with the history of themselves enslaved, then we put them at a deficit at the outset that they may never overcome. We need to go back thousands of years to African civilizations. They need to see the relationship between Black people and science, technology, mathematics, engineering, architecture, medicine, astronomy, agriculture and more.” 

Book titles he recommended:

• Introduction to African Civilizations by John Jackson
• Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America by Lerone Bennett Jr.
• From Slavery to Freedom by John Hope Franklin
• Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson 

“I can’t teach what I don’t know. Secondly, I can’t teach whom I don’t know,” Kafele intoned. “If you have a Black child in the classroom, and you don’t know that child’s history, then you don’t know that child. The educator can be Black, and the child can be Black, but if the educator doesn’t know the child’s history, thereby, he doesn’t know his own history.” 

In other comments to parents, Kafele encouraged them to keep fighting for their children. 

“I don’t care where your child is right now,” he said. “If your child is doing phenomenally well, your child can quadruple that. If your child has made some bad decisions and wrong turns, your child can correct that. 

“The reason that I’m here as an award-winning educator with more than 150 awards over my lifetime and 11 best-selling books, is because my mother never lost hope. She kept believing there was something beneath the surface. She knew she had a gem in her son, but she had a difficult time finding out how to make it manifest.” 

The principal offered “12 Critical Questions for Effective Parental Engagement.” A few of them include:

• Do I spend quality time with my child?
• Do I encourage my children to believe in themselves?
• Do I encourage my children to discover their life’s purpose?
• Do I encourage my children to develop a vision for their future?
• Do I talk to my children about respecting themselves? 

Also scheduled to speak and offer strategies to CHS teachers throughout the year is Nate Williams, PhD, one of the organizers of The DREAM (Dismantling Racism through Education, Advocacy and Mobilization) Collective at SIUE. 

CHS will be 100% remote learning when school starts on Monday, Aug. 17 and will be reassessed after the first quarter. 

Photo:
Principal Baruti Kafele is an award-winning educator and best-selling author.