13 Year Old Persecuted by the Rochester City School District Over her essay NSFW

[AllMotor]

http://www.fdfny.org/blog/2012/02/27...hool-district/

The words in the essay are NSFW, but wow. That's just amazing that the schools would be that damn ignorant.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 26, 2012
Media Contact: Tracy Fickess
(585) 576-9435 or tfickess@fdfny.org
In Case You Missed It
13 Year Old Jada Williams Persecuted by the Rochester City School District Over her essay on Frederick Douglass.
On Saturday, February 18, 2012, the Frederick Douglass Foundation of New York presented the first Spirit of Freedom award to Jada Williams, a 13-year old city of Rochester student. Miss Williams wrote an essay on her impressions of Frederick Douglass’ first autobiography the Narrative of the Life. This was part of an essay contest, but her essay was never entered. It offended her teachers so much that, after harassment from teachers and school administrators at School #3, Miss Williams was forced to leave the school.
We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation honored her because her essay actually demonstrates that she understood the autobiography, even though it might seem a bit esoteric to most 13-year olds. In her essay, she quotes part of the scene where Douglass’ slave master catches his wife teaching then slave Frederick to read. During a speech about how he would be useless as a slave if he were able to read, Mr. Auld, the slave master, castigated his wife.
Miss Williams quoted Douglass quoting Mr. Auld: “If you teach that ****** (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.”
Miss Williams personalized this to her own situation. She reflected on how the “white teachers” do not have enough control of the classroom to successfully teach the minority students in Rochester. While she herself is more literate than most, due to her own perseverance and diligence, she sees the fact that so many of the other “so-called ‘unteachable’” students aren’t learning to read as a form of modern-day slavery. Their illiteracy holds them back in society.
Her call to action was then in her summary: “A grand price was paid in order for us to be where we are today; but in my mind we should be a lot further, so again I encourage the white teachers to instruct and I encourage my people to not just be a student, but become a learner.”
This offended her English teacher so much that the teacher copied the essay for other teachers and for the Principal. After that, Miss Williams’ mother and father started receiving phone calls from numerous teachers, all claiming that their daughter is “angry.” Miss Williams, mostly a straight-A student, started receiving very low grades, and she was kicked out of class for laughing and threatened with in-school suspension.
There were several meetings with teachers and administrators, but all failed to answer Miss Williams’ mother’s questions. The teachers refused to show her the tests and work that she had supposedly performed so poorly on. Instead, the teachers and administrators branded her a problem.
Unable to take anymore of the persecution, they pulled her from School #3. Wanting to try another school, they were quickly informed that that school was filled and told to try “this school.” During her first day at this new school, she witnessed four fights, and other students asked her if she was put here because she fights too much.
Long story short, they took an exceptional student, with the radical idea that kids should learn to read, and put her in a school of throwaway students who are even more unmanageable than the average student in her previous school. To protect their daughter, her parents have had to remove her from school, and her mother has had to quit her job so she can take care of Miss Williams.
To date, the administrators of School #3 have refused to release her records, even though she no longer attends the school, and they have repeatedly given her mother the run around. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation have contacted school administrators in regards to this situation and have also been told to hit the pavement.

That’s what we intend to do. If this school will sacrifice the welfare of an above-average student whose essay, that they asked her to write, they find offensive, we intend to make everyone aware of this monstrous injustice. The school has a job, and it is not doing it. We would like as many folks as possible to call the Principal of School #3 and complain about this injustice. Her name is Miss Connie Wehner, and she can be reached at (585) 454-3525. This treatment of Jada Williams cannot stand.

[~Brian~]

That's ridiculous...

[420sx]

I hope this goes viral. Id like to read the essay before I pass judgement though.

[HatchSurfer3]

Honestly, I don't like that article. I hate racism, and everything that goes along with it, but I think that article is kind of shenanigans. This sentence:

"Long story short, they took an exceptional student, with the radical idea that kids should learn to read, and put her in a school of throwaway students who are even more unmanageable than the average student in her previous school."

is crap. Its one thing to want kids to learn to read....but the girl who wrote the essay apparently just blamed white teachers which isn't right. Also, whoever wrote the article referred to the kids at the new school as unmanageable when the girl who wrote the essay blamed white teachers for not teaching the "unmanageable" kids in the original school. Like I said, I hate racism, but put the blame on white teachers is racist. Maybe the essay had more to it than that, but from what that article portrays, it wasn't right.

[Slevin]

sounds like another racist black kid, who if questioned, probably couldn't name the member(s) of her family that were enslaved. apparently all of the teenagers at her school don't know how to read and it's the teachers fault? maybe if her school wasn't filled with a bunch of ****ing wanna-be gangsters, rappers, thugs, and white-trash pieces of ****, they would know how to read. each kid goes through at least 10 teachers a year, so you're telling me that over 40 teachers, since kindergarten, have consistently failed at their duty to teach each and every kid to read and write? yea blame it on the teachers, that will solve all your problems. "her people are being neglected by white teachers" yepp that's exactly it. all the white teachers her entire life decided to communicate through telepathy since her birth and said "we refuse to teach this Jada Williams and "her people" anything for their entire lives." also, what is this bull**** about "telling her people to not just be a student, but become a learner." YOUR ROLE AS A STUDENT FROM A SOCIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT IS TO LEARN THE PRESENTED MATERIAL. the fact that she realizes HER PEOPLE can't read properly is because they are TOO ****ING LAZY to fulfill their role in society as students.

[DPancoast]

thats a shame but it doesn't surprise me.

she took a jab at her teachers, so they followed "proper" protocol and she paid the price. its messed up, but unfortunately in some messed up world, she broke a rule.

[jpalamar]

She was looking for a settlement... and will probally get one if the parents push the issue.

[AWD GS]

She reflected on how the “white teachers” do not have enough control of the classroom to successfully teach the minority students in Rochester. While she herself is more literate than most, due to her own perseverance and diligence, she sees the fact that so many of the other “so-called ‘unteachable’” students aren’t learning to read as a form of modern-day slavery

is she referring to other students in her class? if so, im sorry but you should know how to read by 13 and blaming the teachers is ridiculous.

sorry i also had to laugh at "she herself is more literate than most, due to her own perseverance and diligence".

[AllMotor]

Just wondering did anyone open the link and watch the video where she was reading her essay? The essay was on a book that the school approved, which had racist content in it to being with.

The video IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK, with that being said don't be crying if you get offended by the quotes she uses.

[nuTinmuch]

Originally Posted by Slevin

sounds like another racist black kid, who if questioned, probably couldn't name the member(s) of her family that were enslaved. apparently all of the teenagers at her school don't know how to read and it's the teachers fault? maybe if her school wasn't filled with a bunch of ****ing wanna-be gangsters, rappers, thugs, and white-trash pieces of ****, they would know how to read. each kid goes through at least 10 teachers a year, so you're telling me that over 40 teachers, since kindergarten, have consistently failed at their duty to teach each and every kid to read and write? yea blame it on the teachers, that will solve all your problems. "her people are being neglected by white teachers" yepp that's exactly it. all the white teachers her entire life decided to communicate through telepathy since her birth and said "we refuse to teach this Jada Williams and "her people" anything for their entire lives." also, what is this bull**** about "telling her people to not just be a student, but become a learner." YOUR ROLE AS A STUDENT FROM A SOCIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT IS TO LEARN THE PRESENTED MATERIAL. the fact that she realizes HER PEOPLE can't read properly is because they are TOO ****ING LAZY to fulfill their role in society as students.

racist spotted

inb4 reverse racism, bet is racist, and ranting about black history month with quotes from morgan freeman~

just so you know, the things she is saying are actually supported by quite a bit of academic research -- it isn't even controversial (outside of car message boards which are the ultimate discussion ground for race and pedagogy I guess????)

[HatchSurfer3]

Originally Posted by nuTinmuch

racist spotted

inb4 reverse racism, bet is racist, and ranting about black history month with quotes from morgan freeman~

just so you know, the things she is saying are actually supported by quite a bit of academic research -- it isn't even controversial (outside of car message boards which are the ultimate discussion ground for race and pedagogy I guess????)

What exactly is reverse racism? Also, please post up the academic research that specifically blame white teachers for the illiteracy of children.

[gdmbat85]

I'm sorry, but if you have a vast population of students who don't know how to read, there is no way it isn't the educators fault. I don't necessarily believe that it's just the "white teachers" fault, but it definitely is the fault of both teacher and parent. And to segregate and persecute a student because she's bringing out the blame is just an admission of guilt.

[04BlueSRT4]

Lets not put any blame on the parents in all this, I mean I guess it's not their responsibility to raise the kids right...If my son doesn't learn how to read I'm sure as hell gonna find out why. Instead lets ignore the kids then blame everybody else later in life about it. Nobody is held accountable for their actions anymore
This is becoming typical America.

[AWD GS]

this reminds me of an article i read a couple weeks ago and why black students arent getting the proper education.

Article

[HatchSurfer3]

Originally Posted by gdmbat85

I'm sorry, but if you have a vast population of students who don't know how to read, there is no way it isn't the educators fault. I don't necessarily believe that it's just the "white teachers" fault, but it definitely is the fault of both teacher and parent. And to segregate and persecute a student because she's bringing out the blame is just an admission of guilt.

To an extent, the teachers do have to take some blame. But blaming it specifically all on white teachers is what I do not agree with. Are there no black teachers there?

Originally Posted by 04BlueSRT4

Lets not put any blame on the parents in all this, I mean I guess it's not their responsibility to raise the kids right...If my son doesn't learn how to read I'm sure as hell gonna find out why. Instead lets ignore the kids then blame everybody else later in life about it. Nobody is held accountable for their actions anymore
This is becoming typical America.

I believe a lot of the blame should go to the parents. My parents used to sit me down and work with me on reading and writing as a child. Parents play a very important role in a child's education.

Originally Posted by AWD GS

this reminds me of an article i read a couple weeks ago and why black students arent getting the proper education.

Article

He has some interesting points. I think he's a little disallusioned though. It's not as easy as he's making it out to be.

The points he made about the teachers in the districts were a bit off in my opinion as well. The whole learning the culture thing is not really a solution. My teachers knew nothing about WWF, surfing, scooby doo or whatever the hell i was thinking about in grade school, but I still learned what they were teaching.

Also, the reason the teachers leave these schools after a while is because maybe they fear for their safety. I've seen it first hand, teachers are not always safe in schools they're talking about.

[jpalamar]

My ex went to UPenn for her MAED. She did the Teach for America program. Needless to say, she quick her inner city teaching job and decided to just pay for her schooling. Wasn't worth it.

From her first hand expereince in a Philly school. She said some of it was the blame on the budget and MOST was the parents just not caring.

[Slevin]

Originally Posted by nuTinmuch

racist spotted

inb4 reverse racism, bet is racist, and ranting about black history month with quotes from morgan freeman~

just so you know, the things she is saying are actually supported by quite a bit of academic research -- it isn't even controversial (outside of car message boards which are the ultimate discussion ground for race and pedagogy I guess????)

lolwut. you are usually pretty intelligent, and i have never trolled you, so use your head here.

i'm racist against dumb people, and this little bitch is one of them. even when i was her age i accepted responsibility for my actions and never blamed anyone else for ****. as for the "racist" nonsense, i'm part cherokee, so technically i'm more of a minority than she is, or anyone else posting in this thread. so **** off with your "HE'S A RACIST" just because you decided to believe a racist 13 year old who doesn't want's everything handed to her without actually doing any real work. also, show me all of this extensive academic research. actually, just show me a few abstracts. if nothing you read even has an abstract, well then you research is a lost cause.

[nuTinmuch]

Originally Posted by jpalamar

My ex went to UPenn for her MAED. She did the Teach for America program. Needless to say, she quick her inner city teaching job and decided to just pay for her schooling. Wasn't worth it.

From her first hand expereince in a Philly school. She said some of it was the blame on the budget and MOST was the parents just not caring.

I've had a few friends in TFA. I could rant about that program for hours, but needless to say it's horribly corrupt and generally terrible in every way. It's management killing education. But that's neither here nor there.

lolwut. you are usually pretty intelligent, and i have never trolled you, so use your head here.

This is a nice way to say "I usually agree with you, but I don't agree with you now!"

First off, it's pretty clear that a good number of people in this thread haven't actually read the article -- or the OP. I'm guessing even you, as while you are quick to attack the girl for being lazy/not accepting responsibility, you apparently completely missed the point.

This was a straight-A student that suddenly started getting bad grades after criticizing the teachers that she apparently thought had little to no control over their classrooms, primarily due to race issues. The evidence supports her point.

Seriously, did you read the article? At all?

This was the reason I called you out in my first post. What you were saying was ridiculous. You saw "white" and "racism" and started flipping ****, along with the other posters in this thread. Literally nothing you said in your first post had a single thing to do with the OP. I called you racist because knowingly or unknowingly, you bandwagoned on some common arguments used to devalue arguments about race, such as the very first thing you said:

sounds like another racist black kid, who if questioned, probably couldn't name the member(s) of her family that were enslaved.

Ad hominem, has nothing to do with the article, has nothing to do with the girl mentioned, etc.

The girl isn't attacking her teachers as racists. She's saying that because they are white, they don't understand the situation that many of the students are dealing with, so they don't know the best way to teach them -- therefore, they aren't doing the best job that they could be doing. Because of this, complicit or not, they are assisting in a system that devalues black students.

If you don't understand privilege in regards to race, you're not going to understand why -- so if anything I've said confuses you, look it up.

And as I said before:

the things she is saying are actually supported by quite a bit of academic research

In other words, "Teachers who understand minority students will have more success teaching them than those that don't."

This is what I was speaking of, and it is not something that requires citation or me pulling up abstracts. I'm not going to pull up a hundred studies on something that is well-known in the fields of pedagogy and sociology. If you'd like though, fire up JSTOR or Google Scholar, or whatever, and search for "racism, class, inner city education, teachers."

Have fun!

[Slevin]

you make some good points from an opposite perspective of mine and i thank you for taking the time to exchange with me.

it doesn't take a black teacher to understand what black students are going through. however, it might take a black teacher to make a black student understand that someone has gone through the same things they are going through in this point of their life. why is that? because racist (lulz). the fact that this black student disregards her white teachers by saying "they don't know how it is" is racist in itself. yes they ****ing do. they have probably been teaching there longer than she has been alive, so yes, they understand. now i will say, there are some teachers out there that shouldn't be teaching, and i will say there are some teachers that actually don't understand nor care to. why they became teachers, or still teach, is beyond me. most teachers out there, regardless of race or gender, understand.

the fact that she called out her white teachers by saying they were the ones who don't want to teach black kids because they will learn to "think for themselves, and that would mean they would become unmanageable" is also racist, which is quoted in the article that i clearly read. "Miss Williams quoted Douglass quoting Mr. Auld: “If you teach that ****** (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.”
Miss Williams personalized this to her own situation. She reflected on how the “white teachers” do not have enough control of the classroom to successfully teach the minority students in Rochester."

saying she was a straight-A student is worthless. ANYONE can be a straight A student in any high school in america. i rowed, swam, played soccer and baseball and worked 1-2 jobs and still got mostly straight-A's. saying she was a straight-A student nothing worthy of note, especially at the ****ty schools she must have attended if "no white teacher ever taught her anything." i won't believe she was a straight-A student until i see her transcripts anyway, but that's besides the point. also, she was a straight-A student until she wrote this, and the schools started to ruin her unjustly. good, she unjustly tried to tarnish the reputation of the schools she attended and more specifically the white teachers, or should i say "modern day slave owners." if she didn't think that sort of unjust rebuttal was going to happen then shes a moron. high school in america is about the closest structured system in society to a dictatorship as you can get.

to me, the point of the article was to expose the schools for the unjust they did to this poor little innocent girl that is just trying to get a good education. i disagree with that. i think she deserved the unjust that was brought upon her for the unjust she tried to bring on the school. now in a perfect world, the school administration should not be the one giving the punishment to the student, but in america, what other choice do they have? it's an oligarchy plain and simple. the population is ruled by a privileged few, and when the privileged say "you're fired if we get bad publicity from this" then they have to do what they have to do to keep their jobs. should it be like that? absolutely not. is it? sure is.

feel free to correct me in my thinking about the point of the article, but the point is usually based off perspective unless parameters are placed upon it. this had none, therefore my point was stated.

[HatchSurfer3]

I read the entire article. Also, I'm still waiting for a definition of reverse racism.