Janice Gilmore - From Student to Educator to Collaborator: Creating Change

Janice Gilmore is a columnist, educator, popular motivational and inspirational speaker, and author. She took early retirement after a 31-year career in the Omaha Public School District (OPS) as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal. Janice writes a column for the Omaha World Herald newspaper and Revive, an African-American lifestyle and community empowerment magazine. She is also a consultant for Innocent Classroom, a part of the OPS - Minnesota Humanities Center professional development partnership.

I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska in the 50s. My experiences as a little black girl during that time were many — not all of them good. And, unfortunately, many of the unpleasant experiences I had during that time were based on race.

I remember when I was in second grade the white teacher in a classroom with mostly white students and a few black ones read the book Little Black Sambo. The book’s illustrations showed exaggerated features of Sambo including huge red lips, big white eyes, and skin the color of coal — an offensive portrayal of any person of color. After the teacher read a page, she would turn the book around for all the children to see the picture. The white kids would snicker and point at us; the black kids would feel ashamed. The teacher seemed not to have a clue on the impact it would have on us black kids. And of course, there were no black teachers around, as black teachers were few and far between during that time.

When I became a teacher, and ultimately a principal, I wanted to guarantee that all children were treated fairly. I still carried some hurts from childhood, so I was especially sensitive about ensuring that these little children were not subject to some of the experiences that I had.

Then about five years ago, after I had been enjoying my early retirement from OPS, I became affiliated with the Humanities Center. I was so impressed with their professional development program that I was eager to become a part of it if possible. The passion that Humanities Center leaders Dr. David O’ Fallon, President and CEO, and Dr. Eleanor Coleman, Education Strategy Consultant, have exhibited concerning this program is contagious. And being a part of this organization has been exciting to me.

Not only am I a consultant for Innocent Classroom, but Increase Student Engagement Through Absent Narrative workshops, School Action Team, Story Circles, and Reconstructive Curriculum, are other workshop offerings that I have been able to see or participate in over the years. There are other programs that are touted by educators that I have not personally witnessed, but my understanding is that they are superbly designed to help teachers better educate students.

If my teachers had access to professional development of the magnitude that the Humanities Center provides, I would venture to say that no little child would have had to sit through the humiliation of Little Black Sambo as my friends and I did.  And that would be a good thing!              

---

Meryll Levine Page - Saved by the Humanities

Meryll Levine Page served on the board of Minnesota Humanities Center from 2004-2012.  Following her tenure on the board, she served as a consultant, drawing on her thirty-nine years of teaching experience. Meryll also blogs at:  More Jewish Luck. Together with her sister, Leslie Levine Adler, Meryll is the author of the nonfiction work:  Jewish Luck:  A True Story of Friendship, Deception and Risky Business.

Picture a life preserver bearing the word ‘Humanities’ thrown out to a struggling young girl. She grabs hold and doesn’t let go until she reaches dry land.

Until I researched the lives of two Jewish women under the Soviet regime for our book, Jewish Luck:  A True Story of Friendship, Deception, and Risky Business, I would have thought “saved by the humanities” was hyperbole. Hours of interviews taught me that books and the arts were truly a lifeline for girls who understood from a young age that school and Soviet ’culture’ were intended to squelch individuality, creativity, and free thinking.  Both women remember — with an emotion approaching rapture — the books that promised them hope, a future, and a sense of identity — books that were smuggled into the USSR and shared among trusted friends at the risk of imprisonment. For others, underground music or the underground art scene offered a way out of the gray Soviet life. Humanities meant possibilities.

Our American educational system is not designed to create automatons and robotic allegiance to our country like the USSR’s schools. Yet, many students feel alienated, estranged, and ill-served by their schools. Can the humanities serve as a life preserver for them?

In May 2014 I attended an Omaha Public School District teacher’s meeting to review the efficacy of their partnership with the Minnesota Humanities Center. I felt like I was part of a revival meeting. Teachers ecstatically testified to the power of the ‘absent narrative’ and building an ‘innocent classroom.’ The stated goal of the initiative — to build and strengthen relationships, recognize the power of a story, learn from multiple voices, and discover that solutions to problems are often entrenched in the community — was endorsed and celebrated. The humanities approach made students, parents, and community members of all races and ethnicities feel welcome and affirmed. Children saw themselves reflected in the curriculum and they flourished.

What struck me more than the statistical proof that adjusting curriculum to include absent narratives was successful was the emotional impact it had on teachers. Teachers want to succeed with every student and this approach supplied them with tools to be the best teacher — a teacher who begins by building relationships with students.
 
Unlike the women who grew up in the USSR, we don’t live in a dictatorship where the humanities are proscribed and conformity is celebrated; yet, students are marginalized by curricula that ignore multiple viewpoints and cultural realities. I urge all Minnesota teachers and administrators to investigate the Minnesota Humanities Center’s Educators Institute. Learn about the possible. 

It could be a life preserver for a Minnesota teacher and Minnesota students. 

---

Nora F. Murphy and Jennifer Tonko - How Do You Understand the Impact of the Humanities?

Nora Murphy, co-founder of TerraLuna Collaborative, has a broad set of experiences as an evaluator and researcher. She earned a Ph.D. in Evaluation Studies from the University of Minnesota, an M.A. in Research Methodology from the University of Pittsburgh, and has her B.A. in Education from Earlham College. With strong quantitative and qualitative skills she has conducted evaluation and research in schools, school districts, local community organizations, national non-profits,  and government entities. Murphy’s primary approach to evaluation is to view programs and people as fundamentally interrelated, applying systems theory as a framework for evaluation planning, design, implementation, analysis, and reporting. She’s been working with the Humanities Center since January 2013.

Jennifer Tonko is the Minnesota Humanities Center’s Senior Project Coordinator for Omaha Public Schools.

The Minnesota Humanities Center and TerraLuna Collaborative have been partnering since January 2013 to evaluate the Humanities Center’s Education Strategy with the Omaha [Nebraska] Public Schools (OPS). This relationship-based and partnership-driven strategy is based on the premise that strong relationships between students and educators are essential in increasing student engagement and ultimately their academic success. The Strategy is not a pre-determined model but rather guided by four core values: 1) Build and strengthen relationships; 2) Recognize the power of story and the danger of absence; 3) Learn from and with multiple voices; and 4) Amplify community solutions for change.

A values-driven, relationship-based approach requires different kinds of evaluation. Rather than reducing the evaluation plan to inputs and outputs it calls on us to pay deep attention to educators—their experiences and their relationships. Their stories matter.
TerraLuna Collaborative – a cooperative research and evaluation firm based in Minneapolis, MN – has worked in partnership with the Humanities Center to create a developmental evaluation that supports program development by identifying what is and what is not working, and bringing attention to emerging information. Key elements of the evaluation are:

View Schools as Human Systems. Rhetoric around public education sometimes makes it sound as though teachers are robots delivering pre-determined lessons to passive recipients in an attempt to raise test scores. We justify this by saying that students need to hit certain academic milestones for success. But educators and students are people—people who have relationships, hopes, joys, and fears. Our evaluative process does not reduce people to numbers, describe a single “average” experience, or view the educational system as one that’s static and separate from the people in it. 

Collecting Stories. We use story-based methods to find powerful narratives of change and look for voices that might be missing. Having the stories of learning, implementation, challenge, and success are what help us truly understand what is going on in the offerings.

Reflect the Core Values. We commit to working in and through the core values and principles of the Strategy so participants have a consistent experience when they are working with TerraLuna and the Humanities Center. Because the Strategy is so committed to building relationships, it is absolutely critical that all partners treat participants as the whole people that they are at all times; participants are never just data-points.

Make Meaning Together. We commit to reflective practice and meet regularly both as whole teams and as smaller teams to create a space for shared meaning-making. With project staff spread across multiple states and the quick pace of adaptation, it is critical to convene people to engage in reflective practice. This allows the Humanities Center to continually refine our shared vision and move forward with coherence.

This evaluation approach allows us to learn what this work means for educators and for their relationships with students and with each other. By making sense of stories and experiences together the Humanities Center and OPS can decide how to move forward and a way that best meets the needs of educators, students, family members, community members, and the school district. Through the evaluation process relationships are formed, voices are heard, and solutions are amplified.

---

Eleanor Coleman - What do the humanities mean to you?

Eleanor Coleman is a life-long educator, leadership coach, and associate of Human Systems Dynamics. Dr. Coleman is currently the project lead for the Minnesota Humanities Education Initiative with Omaha Public Schools.

What do the humanities mean to me? This question is one that has had different meanings at different junctures of my life. As a language arts major in my early years, I thought of the humanities as a set of course work that helped to explain history through the study of art, music, literature, drama, social sciences, etc. While fascinating to experience and teach for me personally, as a young teacher, I often found it difficult to transfer that passion to my students. I remember one student asking me, “Why do I need to study about these old dead white people?” This brought about a shift for me in my own thinking because I had to seriously ask myself, “Why indeed?” What that student taught me was that history should be taught as an ongoing investigation and conversation rather than a dry compilation of facts and dates, or a set of questions easily answered on a test. An inquiry – a genuine humanities approach – would allow students to extract meaning from the past and explore the connection between their personal experience and the author’s own assumptions, perceptions, and values.

Today, my understanding of the humanities is not just about academic subjects but human rights involving feelings, values, and opinions, which must be given at least equal importance if transformative learning is to take place. Educators of the humanities need the courage to resist the safe, purely cognitive approach, and honor and engage in a respectful dialogue and acceptance of the lived experiences of themselves and others.

Anchored in four core values acknowledging the power of story, authentic relationships, and the power of the community to resolve its own issues, the important and impactful work of the Minnesota Humanities Center’s Education Initiative with Omaha Public Schools is providing the opportunity for educators to fully explore and accept the responsibility of honest, critical self-examination, not denying that she or he is susceptible to the social construct of race and its biases, but striving to recognize them and thus to change them.

---