As part of my special summer series of posts, I've invited educators Cornelius Minor and Bridget Wilhelm to write a guest review of Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book, Between The World And Me.
Cornelius Minor is a dad and a Brooklyn-based middle-school teacher. You can follow him on Twitter at @MisterMinor.
Bridget Wilhelm teaches middle-school literacy in Seattle, Washington. You can follow her on Twitter at @bridgetlwilhelm.
If you are a teacher, we are not just peers, we are siblings. Because we are teachers at this moment in history, our familial bond is one that has been forged in the crucible of all the systemic adversity that we have faced -- both as individuals and as a collective.
As teachers, to live each day of our professional lives is to be subtly under attack by a system we can't quite name and can never seem to repair. Our assailants are a faceless "they".
When we talk about how "they" have underfunded our programs, or how "they" have made it all about testing, or how "they" don't see the countless small miracles that we create for children every day, those not in the profession don't always understand.
Because we know that no change happens unless people outside the profession do understand, fostering a radical understanding is our activism. We tell stories to advance our cause -- so that the young among us can know our struggles, and so that those who do not stand among us recognize our humanity and eventually do.
The business of democratic progress can't begin without understanding.
So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest work, Between the World and Me. It seeks to cultivate an understanding. To that end, the book is masterful. With it, Coates recognizes in black people much of what we have come to recognize in each other as teachers...
