YES WE CAN

Expectations?   As I have pondered Justice (?) Scalia's now infamous slower colleges for "the blacks" versus the University of Texas, I hit on what should be obvious.

We have been trained as teachers that setting high expectations are critical to academic achievement.  A teacher's  high expectations and guidance with students is critical to how they perform.

It is true that students from poor schools, and bad backgrounds will struggle in elite colleges.  I had that experience at Stanford.  Shasta High, now a first class school, was not so in 1965.  I had a World History teacher who taught from the book with worksheets that everyone copied.  I read the text and because of my avid interest in history got a little out of the course. But, when faced with the History of Western Civilization my freshman year at Stanford, I was in deep trouble.  I did not have the background in Western Civilizations that my preppie peers had.  

It was the only class I asked to tutoring for, and pulled a C working my tail off.  

You see the Preppies were way ahead of me.  The privileged class shined in "Western Civ".  The years of privilege made a difference.  Many of the "Preppies" had traveled to Europe.  Many had gone to plays, concerts; etc.    And being a poor kid from Redding, I struggled.

I often have said the first major college football game I saw was the one I played in!  

But then I joined the ATO, a fraternity that had just been kicked out of the national for pledging men of color and Jews.  At the time I knew I was part Native American but had never acknowledged it.  I knew I was behind many of my freshman peers at Stanford; one being a friend named Mitt Romney, a very nice guy who was a preppie.

My lifelong best friend was also a preppie.  Our sophomore year, as I worked twice as hard to "get it" in classes, he pulled me aside and taught me how to write.  Both of his parents were teachers at an exclusive prep school in Minneapolis.  

He explained it was a code, that once you knew it, then let your passion take over.

Now this was while I was fighting my ass off trying to make the Stanford Varsity Football team, spending four to six hours a day, working for my board and room, AND going to class and doing homework.

It meant I could not go out and drink with the boys at the Goose, in season (?) and I just didn't have the time.

But I roomed with a guy named Al Wilburn, the first African American captain of the Stanford Football Team, an All American, pro football bound who instead decided against all our pleadings to become a .....DOCTOR.  This young man from the Fresno area, whose father was a sharecropper, and poorer than hell told us all he was going to UCLA med school and was going to be a doctor.

He was 6 foot four and weighed 245 pounds and could run like a damn deer.  I had to block him my freshman year, he almost tore my head off.

But someone along the line had raised his expectations and he was going to be a doctor by God.  And he was one of the first African Americans to pledge ATO.

And the place raised expectations for all of us.  We played against USC and UCLA when they were the best in the country; and got beat.  But my senior year, with Jim Plunkett as our QB, we almost got them.  

Raised expectations by John Ralston, one of the greatest men I ever knew, drove us, we worked and worked and worked, practicing twice as long.  I probably got beat deep  by Gene Washington and Plunkett more than any other cornerback in football.

But  the high  expectations built success.  In the classroom and on the athletic field football players were EXPECTED to be students FIRST AND athletes SECOND; so what if you studied 20 hours a day in both, we did it.

And we succeeded.  And we won.  But WE did it.  In the ATO we were brothers, we learned about each other's culture, preppies, poor part Indian kids from Redding, African Americans from L.A., Jews from New York, and Latinos from Los Angeles, we learned together; and the place drove us always expecting excellence.

So don't tell me Justice Scalia,  that African Americans need a "slower track", don't you dare.

I have seen it at the highest level.  I also was trained as a teacher to never accept excuses.  If a kid came in and said I can't, I said no...you can.  And many times they could.

Finally there was Steve Anderson.  Steve had been struck by a car when he was a toddler.  He was brain damaged and his motor skills put him in a wheel chair.  Back then we were just starting mainstreaming so he was placed in my Resource Specialist Class; I went into Special Education, that's right from Stanford to Special Education because I care about the wonder of human capacity and potential; unlike Scalia.

Scalia and his ilk would and did put students like Steve in special school, away from the privileged, away from a chance.  

Steve's parents were insistent that Steve experience a regular student's existence.  So we tried.  We tried so hard that one day, when Steve's personal aide was sick, I assigned two of my kids to push his wheelchair to PE.  They lost control of the chair and Steve rolled down a hill and suffered some minor cuts on his face.

The parents came to school to check him out.  I held my breath waiting for a lawsuit: they just laughed and said, other kids fall down don't they, we EXPECT him to be treated like everyone else.  We expect him to fall and to get up and try again!

That is what Scalia doesn't get.  That is what this country of white privileges doesn't get.  People of color don't want a handout, they just want a fair shot and to be pushed for excellence like the privileged. You delegate them to inferior schools and "slow" colleges and you don't get achievement.  AND, we lose human capital and capacity that can add immeasurably to America.  I have always thought that some poor Native American on a reservation somewhere, who will die of alcoholism, has the capacity to cure cancer; but white supremacy America is in the habit of not just wasting human achievement but crushing  it!  

Finally, when Steve graduated his parents demanded that he WALK  across the stage.  They EXPECTED HIM TO WALK ACROSS THAT STAGE!  Steve could not walk except with considerable help.  

Now Steve fell a lot.  I mean a lot.  So we tried to talk them out of it...they would have none of it.

So we practiced the walk, they call the last walk for the football seniors to the stadium at Stanford the WALK as well.  I did that one too many times.  And this WALK was only ten steps or so.  But ten steps in front of thousands of people.  

One Walk with thousands rooting you on, the other....the same!

So we practiced.  His parents expected him to make that walk. They had high expectations.  

And that graduation I hooked my arm underneath his and we walked those ten steps.  And as we walked the entire stadium erupted in applause, they rose to their feet and Steve, smiled, then laughed and mumbled,  "I did it".

DO NOT EVER SAY YOU CAN'T.  DO NOT EVER LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR ANYBODY.  STOP WHITE SUPREMACY BY TEACHING WITHOUT BIAS AND EXPECTING EVERYONE, I MEAN EVERY SINGLE ONE TO SUCCEED AND TO REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL.  AND THAT MEANS INVESTING WAY MORE IN EDUCATION THAN WE CURRENTLY DO!

THAT IS WHY I AM ANGRY AT JUSTICE SCALIA AND EVERY OTHER CONSERVATIVE WHO HIDES THEIR RACISM BEHIND THE HE/SHE CAN'T.........

YES....WE CAN!