I was asked to speak from the education perspective at a rally at the NH statehouse called Courage Over Censorship. It was a rally to bring folks together to speak out against the Divisive Concepts language that has been added to our state budget. This is happening all across the country and NH has been entrenched in the conversation for months. I wrote my speech, memorized it and then when I got up there, I froze. I have not been in front of a group of real live people in almost 18 months. My muscle memory kicked in and I was able to deliver most of my main points, but not in the eloquence I had planned for, and I want it to be seen in full. It’s written as I would have said it, punctuation, etc. was of not much concern when I wrote it. Here it is:
“Good afternoon. My name is Carisa. I live on Abenaki ancestral land six miles up the road in Penacook. For fourteen years I was a NH public high school teacher and for the last five years I've been working with educators as they improve their practices, especially in assessment. My husband is also a public school teacher and I have three children, one who just graduated this morning. In our house we talk about education a lot!
As a teacher, and I was certainly not a perfect one, I walked a fine line trying not to expose my opinions that would be considered political. There's great responsibility as a classroom teacher because you control the learning journey. Most teachers I have met take this responsibility seriously. We want our students to think critically for themselves, to come to conclusions themselves so that they are prepared to do that same thinking as adults, so that they can feel fulfilled and make the world a little better. That is genuinely our greatest hope.
And for the most part, we carry this hope because the young people we work with have beautiful hearts. They are kind. They are empathetic. They look out for others. When they are faced with stories and facts that clearly show how the system is unfair, they know, and when they see situations that are unfair they'll say so.
And that's why we are here today, because of the hearts and minds of young people. Those who are working hard to codify ignorance by introducing Divisive Concepts language wherever they can are afraid of the goodness in the hearts of our youth. They are afraid because young people are brave and when folks with good hearts get armed with knowledge and get brave, it means oppressors lose their power.
You know who else has good hearts, teachers. In NH we have really great teachers who want nothing but the best for their students. The problem is most of our teachers were taught a single story of America, from the elite white perspective, and so they too retell that one story. But, New Hampshire teachers are learning. That’s what educators do, they’re curious. We have so many who are learning all the stories they were never told, and they are sharing those stories with their learners. They are exposing kids to truth about Christopher Columbus, the 1931 Tulsa Massacre and the 1985 MOVE bombings in Philadelphia. They are talking about current events and helping their students make sense of what they see on the news. They are teaching about Martin. Malcom and Rosa, and they are also exposing kids to Ruby and Emmett and the young Indigenous children who were stolen from their families and killed in residential schools as part of the greatest genocide in human history. Our youth are exposed to more truths than they have ever been before and they see the inequality, the injustice and that is why we are here today. This is the potent combination, the threat that has bad actors working hard to get this legislation passed because they are afraid. They are afraid of hearts that are good, minds that are filled with truth, and the courage of youth.
I want to recognize our New Hampshire Educators of Color who in many schools carry the burdens of truth whether they have colleagues who want to or not. I want to thank the teachers who have begun the hard work of exploring their socialization and checking their bias and exposing our learners to more truth. It is a brave thing to do. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had teachers come up to me and say, “You know that stuff you said about culturally responsive assessment. I can’t talk about that sort of thing in my school. Who can I talk to?” In New Hampshire still in many schools without this legislation, talking about racism or sexism with learners is dangerous territory, because many teachers think they’ll be exposing their politics or ruffling feathers with parents, community members or school boards. Exposing kids to truth should not be an act to be feared, but revered. Wherever this legislation happens to land, I hope that the teachers who have gone first, continue to tell truths and if you haven’t started yet, I hope you’ll be brave enough to start. Our kids need your bravery right now, our future depends on it, our collective liberation depends on it, our earth depends on it.
I want to leave with some words of hope, because I’m not feeling too hopeful that our legislature is going to do the right thing. In 1961, Myles Horton, a founder of the Highlander Folk School came back to the school to find that it had been padlocked because the Tennessee Supreme Court had ordered the school closed, in part because Highlander was where so many civil rights leaders organized and it was dangerous to the status quo. Myles laughed at the idea of the padlocks. He said, “you can padlock a building, but you can’t padlock an idea.” Folks, even if they pass this dangerous divisive language into law, too many of us know the truth to let them win in our fight for justice. “