For me, Just Mercy really pushed me to question my position in institutions. When I started teaching, I think I was comfortable just doing what I was told and keeping my head above water in my new school. Years later, I still have flashback to moments when I held students accountable with unfair rule systems or assigned tasks with full knowledge that some of my students weren't prepared to complete. One of the bigger messages from the book that I'm taking with me is our obligation to regularly interrogate the structures around us. 

For me, Just Mercy really pushed me to question my position in institutions. When I started teaching, I think I was comfortable just doing what I was told and keeping my head above water in my new school. Years later, I still have flashback to moments when I held students accountable with unfair rule systems or assigned tasks with full knowledge that some of my students weren't prepared to complete. One of the bigger messages from the book that I'm taking with me is our obligation to regularly interrogate the structures around us. 

 Jayson Wilkinson  , this is a a great reminder about taking the injustices described in Just Mercy to the classroom level. My first 20 years of teaching were in an upper middleclass school, where students had very few challenges. When I moved schools, I was forced to look closely at my teaching practices. The school I moved to was in transition as the minority enrollment was shifting from 10% - 70%, our Free/Reduced Lunch also took the same shift, parents were working 2 -3 jobs, so students had to miss days if siblings were sick. The number of students who had parents or siblings in prison was huge. My teaching practices had to change and I became a better educator because I was meeting my students where they were. This did not mean I lowered my expectations, instead I had to change my strategies for helping students to reach this bar. Learning is not a one size fits all approach.  You are correct, as educators we do need to constantly examine the situation beyond the classroom walls.

Excellent point Jayson. My last school was a middle school that had a huge homeless population and most of our students were on free and reduced lunch. I also had many students whose parents were addicted to drugs, so those students became caretakers for their siblings and parents. I know I made a lot of mistakes as I worked with them to understand how to help them. The biggest lesson I learned early on was the students wanted to be treated like kids and not like trouble makers. They craved the love and respect they deserved, not judgement by outside eyes. Reading the book, like you, reminded me to not be so passive, but to question decisions being made to make sure that the true interests of those kids were being served.

First, I could not put this book down once I started reading it.  I was so engrossed with the stories of the incarcerated people and I was rooting for happy endings for all of them.  When I finished the book, I was left with the same feeling of my obligation to question the systems and structures around us. That, however, leaves me feeling overwhelmed and stagnant because I just don't know where to begin.  The question I am continually going back to is - What aspects of my classroom and community need my attention the most so that I can make a positive impact and change those systems and structures that are broken or inequitable? 

Boom! Agreed! And this sort of self-questioning isn't always fun...I know even as I tried to be progressive in my younger years I still played into institutional inequities (ugh my intentions were good but I was missing things nonetheless). Same today, especially when I began to dabble in grading for equity work. I'm going to be chewing on this one for a long time...but its perhaps the most important thing I really made an effort to do last year...confronting my own connections to, as well as the larger ones around me (peers, school boards, etc.) is hard work.

Megan Suits  I felt myself rooting for them, too! There were so many times in the book that I had to stop and shed a few tears. There is so much work to be done, but like you, I try to redirect my attention to what I can do. 

We have kids from all over town in my school. I think a lot of the kids just don't know what they don't know but are eager to learn. I was party of a superintendant's advisory committee on equity this past year and we had an outside organization survey all middle and high school students in the district. The thing that popped up over and over again was that students in middle and high school wanted more opportunities for dialogue over difficult topics. So for next year, I think that will be my starting point.

Kathy Hays what were some of the strategies that you found most helpful? When I was in college, I did a pre-service student teaching placement in a 7th grade special ed class. The teachers talked a lot about how their student demographics changed when a prison was built in a nearby town; many families moved into the district to be near an incarcerated family member. In hindsight, I wish I would have pressed more to find out about how that changed the school dynamic. 

I realized that some students were not doing work because they had to take care of family members when they got home. Parents were working 2-3 jobs so they had to take care of younger siblings. Rather than penalize students, we created a work schedule that would allow them to succeed. My room opened at 6:00 each morning so students could come eat and have a quiet place to work. It was open at lunch as well. They didn't have to work on my content, it was just a place they could go. We still had deadlines, but there was flexibility and we worked together.

I took a good look at what I assigned and whether it was necessary for students to succeed. Assignments became compact with a lot less fluff, but meaning. I thought I was doing this before, but found I could pack even tighter. 

We also had to focus on skill development. Students who were in honors were not the same as honors students I had previously, so I had to break things down and build up those skills. It wasn't a matter of lowering my expectations, but building a ladder so students could achieve them. This really forced me to take a good look in the mirror and evaluate my own thinking and teaching practices.