Happy Summer to all Charleston Public School Students & Staff
As public schools empty for summer, I reflect on my three years working in public education before moving to Canada to begin pursuing a PhD in history, focusing on the intersection of medicine, the environment, and decolonization. As I stare out the window at what smells to be smoke rolling in from the Northern Alberta/Saskatchewan wildfires, I am finishing reading As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. The needs of BIPOC communities in achieving equality in education are not that of the white community. It is rather refreshing to read an academic author who has no interest in catering to white readers and is rather interested in demonstrating Indigenous knowledge production techniques. While working as a long-term substitute teacher at Wando High School during the 2022-2023 school year, I desperately hoped to get a full-time job. With the experience so drastically different in effect on my nervous system compared to a day at R.B. Stall in North Charleston. As it became increasingly clear, I would not get the job, even after interviewing the Principal, Mr. Wilson, for 3 hours in an attempt to work myself in…I devised a project to place Charleston County Schools in perspective, I wanted to use oral history to document the divide in Charleston schools. I knew, heading to North Charleston High School, that I was in for the opposite end of the Charleston County spectrum. What with the 83% white Wando and North Charleston High School, with a total minority enrollment of 97%. Wando is known for rich parents…and NCHS is known simply as “Naughty”. I learned to call the building “Knotty” because of the literal knots the stress of the building put in my body. Leave a day at Wando and I felt like a Rock Star, leave a day at NCHS and sometimes I literally wept for my students. What I didn’t expect was to connect with each and every student I taught. Music allowed me to reach every student. Whether it was me singing and playing guitar for them, or curating the vibes…Even the ones who didn't speak English. Singing in Spanish for them is something I'll never forget. Working with the students, faculty, and staff at Wando and NCHS (and inhabiting the buildings) within two years taught me lessons about race, Charleston, and public education that I'm still unpacking. Thinking about what these kids have in common (and what they don’t) lights up a world of what needs to change. I interviewed the principals of NCHS and Wando, as well as a host of faculty members at NCHS, and have all of their stories rolling around inside of me as I study history here in Canada. I have been working on releasing these interviews in book form, but the program has to come first now, and this project is on pause. Stay tuned.
Chris the Social Studies MAN
In Charleston County/ American schools are perpetuating the process of colonization through their curation of classes that require cultural assimilation on the part of BIPOC students. In the 2025-2026 school year, students will still be treated with an antiquated one-size-fits-all system of assimilation only disparately connected to ideas of equity. Sure, in Title One schools, there are recent changes in curriculum designed to align culturally with the interests of urban communities, but this does not set these kids up for college. These changes in literature exposure likely hamper students' abilities to achieve mainstream success. I'm not advocating for returning to forcing Shakespeare on Spanish-speaking students, but more needs to be done to ensure these students have access to college. Some of my students received huge scholarships, but I would secretly wonder if they were prepared enough to succeed. What needs to change to ensure that they do? Instead, these Young Americans become cannon fodder for the American system of racial capitalism, destined to work in fast-food, retail, trade jobs, illicit enterprises, and in an office if they are lucky. Listen to Mr. Darby, the principal of NCHS’s TED Talk. You will get a sense of the systemic levels of inequality in the realm of public education facing BIPOC communities. The goal of my future work is to highlight this continued reality in our “postcolonial” world.
Congrats to my former students who just graduated! Happy summer, CCSD staff and students!
If we listen to marginalized voices, it is the only way to achieve equality through equity.
P.S. Indigenous people around the world had methods to control wildfire. Westerner’s encountering Aboriginals thought that these fire tactics were devilish and banned the intentional lighting of fires by Indigenous peoples. This disrupted a key mechanism of humanity in the maintenance of the planet. Through white imposed hegemony on BIPOC bodies in relation to natural elemental processes environmental harmony ceased to exist everywhere in the world.
Spread peace & Love,
Will