(Minus the segue jokes!:-)

Good morning graduates, I am able to stand before you this morning, even though I was in the IND Borough Hall train station, and not really sure if I was in the right place. I saw a young lady in a SSCHS cap and gown (Jasmine Braithwaite); and I decided to follow her. And fortunately she led me to this building. If you are pursuing a right purpose, you are never really lost, for a ‘helper’ will always show up to properly guide you. That could be my entire lesson for this morning. (1) Only follow someone who you strongly believe is moving (and showing through example), in the right direction. And (2) be a leader who is moving (and leading through good example) in the right direction. (3) Always assume wherever you go in life that although you may not be aware of it, someone who can provide you with a resourceful blessing, is watching you, and so now I owe Jasmine a spiritual debt, and I am responsible for helping her in any way that I can…

(The author and Jasmine Braithwaite)

5 Quick Points and I will take my seat…

1. No disrespect to any ‘moving up’ ceremony you have attended in the past. But one important significance of your high school diploma, is that it is the only official legal graduation document you can earn that is granted by the NYCDOE. This victory can’t be reversed; neither can the memory of this day be forgotten. It becomes your struggle and challenge transformed into success base line reference. This graduation should be a metaphor for your entire life. It says, I have achieved a great and difficult victory once, and that means I can do it again, and again, and again, and…

2. You are about to enter a world where the rules and consequences are radically different from what you have experienced in the K-12 environment up to this point. The world will not adjust for you, you must make the adjustment. Be excellent in whatever task, job, school, and personal-social endeavor you undertake. Leave nothing to chance, but lean on your own preparedness to effectively respond to any unanticipated opportunity that might show-up. Your parents, teachers and elders are going to get ‘smarter’ as you get older. Meaning a great deal of what they have warned you about will come true. This is a truth that maybe your teenage ‘all-knowing’ mind (as was the case with me), can’t fully comprehend now. Things like an excellent character, stick-to-itness, graciousness, a good name, honesty, reliability, decency, picking friends who are moving in the right direction, etc. will essentially define who you are and what you will accomplish in life….

3. Life is not fair. The sooner you accept that reality, the sooner you will encounter less suffering and more success. You should also develop the proper attitude that will inspire you to ‘upset and overturn’ our nation’s (and world) political culture of unfairness. Build a good reputation— Many in the world outside of this auditorium will make a judgement about you based simply on the fact that you are Black, Latino, Asian, a Muslim, a Women, etc. You can only do your best, produce at your best, give every effort your most sincere and best work. Don’t give anyone the opportunity to act on their pre-judgments concerning who you are and what you are capable of accomplishing…

4. Now this going to sound counterintuitive (does not make sense) based on what I just said about life being unfair. But you must define “wining” in the most positively spiritual, highly ethical, and the greatest of goodness terms. Even as people around you may appear to be ‘wining’ by cheating, lying, mistreating and deceiving and stealing from others. Even if the top most powerful political leaders in this nation advocate for selfish, ugly, dismissive, racist, demeaning and discriminatory policies; you must not lose sight of your good behavior-good works and kindness compass, for it will always, no matter what is going on around you, guide you onto the best path. Practice bad habits and they will naturally become part of your personality; practice good habits daily and they will become a natural part not only of your personality, but they will also guarantee a real and meaningful successful life.

5. One of the most important things you can do in life is to find your unique and special calling; what you have been singularly gifted to bring to the world. No one is an ‘accident’, it does not matter the circumstances that brought you into this world. You are special and important to our species. With the billions of people born before and after you, there is only one you, forever. One definition of the condition called ‘human suffering’ (and those humans who inflict suffering on others), could be explained as never ever discovering your special reasons for being sent into our world. You will know your ‘calling’ because you will be extremely good at it. You really won’t feel comfortable doing something other than what you are called to do. If you only settle for a ‘job’ or ‘career’ outside of your calling, you will feel a never-ending unsettled restlessness. It may express itself in different areas of activities, but your fundamental call-theme will remain the same. Your called contribution to history will be something that brings you great personal joy, as it also brings joy, beauty and peace into the world; it may be hard work, but it will never feel like a ‘job’. Once you find that work that brings happiness, meaning and fulfillment into your life; the next step is to find a way to make a living income for engaging in your works of called-service. In short, find a way to ‘get paid’ to do those things for which you were born-called to love doing…

Good Blessings and Sincere Congratulations on Your Wonderful Achievement!

Michael A. Johnson has served as a public school teacher, Science Skills Center director, principal, and a school district superintendent. He also served as an adjunct professor of Science Education in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He recently completed a book on school leadership: Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership… http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/

You stepped into that moment when you fully realize that the ‘system’ is ‘rigged’ (philosophically and structurally) to produce winners and losers; and the designated losers look like you!

And being true to yourself means that you can never turn your back on that knowing…

It’s that identifying, defining and self-realization moment when you understand that you share every under-expectation, the many stereotypical dismissals, and all of the nullifying thoughts that are visited on the children. Perhaps, you realize that when staff persons are ‘making fun of’, or talking negatively about the children, their parents, or the community where they live. They are also talking about you, your parents, and your community where you live (or once lived) with the parents and children.

An under and graduate college degree, professional licenses, and certifications don’t ever seem to certify and officiate your humanity, or justify your leadership position.

There are moments that seem almost hopeless:

In one majority Black school a transferred White teacher with a history of bigotry and discrimination in preventing Black kids from gaining access to his AP classes (the reason he was transferred); was voted in by the Black and White staff in his new school as the building union chapter leader…

It’s the loneliness of the politically aware principal. You set a ridiculous (and ludicrous if it were not sad and tragic) standard of expectations; you want your children to be treated like the entitled children (in the district) of America; and Both Black and White stakeholders work hard to frustrate your efforts…

Maybe it is even your White (or simple-minded Black) principal colleagues who speak of the ‘Principalship’ as an occupation or job; when you are thinking of it as a life-line, a lighthouse in a societal storm, a conscious call to service on behalf of an endangered people for whom society has rejected and forgotten.

It would come early for me as a reminder in my first year as principal, before the start of school. I (dressed in a jacket and tie), standing in the hall talking to the White custodian (dressed in jeans and a T-shirt); when a White delivery man walks over to the custodian for a principal’s signature. My custodian is so painfully embarrassed by his White brother’s behavior, and then he sadly points to me: “He’s the principal”.

It is that ‘tipping-point’ moment when the principal gets that he or she is no different from the Black and Brown students in their school. And after that moment you cannot just be a ‘company-kept’ school leader.

And as with many self-actualizing moments, the price of ‘self’ knowledge is suffering, but it is a redemptive suffering that frames your work with a meaning and purpose.

An excerpt from chapter 2: The Educational Philosophy of the Principal.

“Neither a title nor position will allow me (even if I chose to try) to escape from my own existential American reality. I am Black and born in a nation where my skin color is a societal identifier and constant underestimation of who people believe I am and what I am capable of becoming…”

Michael A. Johnson has served as a public school teacher, Science Skills Center director, principal, and a school district superintendent. He also served as an adjunct professor of Science Education in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He recently completed a book on school leadership: Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership…

http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/

By Michael Johnson – Our Time Press-June 8, 2018… http://www.ourtimepress.com/on-education-black-and-latino-students-can-compete-to-gain-entrance-to-nyc-specialized-high-schools/

Part 1: The dangerous under-expectations of the ability of Black and Latino students to compete with any group of students.
By Michael A. Johnson

Let me assert a strange and perhaps not well believed (or at least not presently popular) position; and that is, I believe that Black and Latino students, in NYC, and anywhere else on the planet; can effectively compete with any other students on the planet. Further, I believe that these students can perform well on the NYC Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), given the resource opportunities and the proper preparation. There is nothing inherently wrong with the brains of these children, all they need is a quality K-8 educational experience, courageous, strategically-smart, and imaginative principals, and highly-skilled teachers who are willing to efficaciously ‘leave it all’ on the classroom ‘playing field’!

Doing well on any form of assessment, is all about what happens prior to the student encountering that assessment model. And that is why professional educators know (even if the public does not); that testing a child on concepts and skills for which they have not been taught, is fundamentally unethical. Also unethical is the solitary use of standardized exams to deny admission to a quality learning experience, rather than using them for diagnostic purposes, to inform instructional practices, or to improve and expand the child’s learning opportunities. Parents of color may want to be careful of a demoralizing message sent to their children that says they can’t compete, simply because of who they are.

The SHSAT should be eliminated because it is ‘ethically challenged’. The exam proponents claim it is a fair measure of the principle of meritocracy; but in fact, that is a lie. The majority of students of color in NYC have not received the prerequisite skills training, information and knowledge that would allow them to do well (or less well) based on their own personal educational merit.

If the governing stakeholders want to change the present admissions system, then change it. But change it because it is flawed for all children (including non-affluent White students), not because of the subtle or overt reason that it is impossible for Black and Latino students to compete and win under the present rules. They in fact could compete, if only the conditions leading up to those rules were fair, which they are not, and thus one of the major flaws. A single criterion admissions process is always problematic in any educational context (K-Graduate School), and it is worthy of an informed debate among knowledgeable professional educators. But with ‘politicians’ leading the ‘admissions’ conversation, what could possibly go wrong? Well, everything!

There is always the problem in public education, of political concerns overtaking educational concerns, of utilizing symbolism instead of substance. There is this recurring bad idea in public education, that we must always sacrifice one group of students for another, We know (and have known for a long time), how to adequately educate all students to their optimum potential, we even know how to successfully educate the children of poverty, the offspring of illiterate and/or non-English speaking parents, we just choose not to do so, for political reasons. The main one being that NYC Black and Latino parents lack the political entitlement power that would demand that their children receive the education they deserve.

We also know that in the absence of a strong ‘parent-push’ informal education (out of school) component in a child’s life, the odds are that they will struggle in school (and on standardized exams); and therefore the school must step up and step in as an informal educational parent, if that child is to be successful. This would include offering students real and serious test prep, after-school, weekend and summer learning opportunities. And of course, the best test-prep being a rigorous K-8 learning experience. But that takes a systemic financial investment matched and created by political will.

Part 2: The school Integration, Diversity in Specialized Schools and Programs Debate: The wrong conversation, the wrong conversationalist leading that conversation, leads to and guarantees poor outcomes.

Michael A. Johnson has served as a public school teacher, Science Skills Center director, principal, and a school district superintendent. He also served as an adjunct professor of Science Education in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He recently completed a book on school leadership: Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership… http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/

Graduations at the very least, represent our much-needed symbols of hope. Perhaps the period leading up to that graduation created an opportunity for a creative encounter with a word, idea, concept, picture, poem, essay, or novel; something that caused the graduate to examine their ‘interior-selves’, to the point that their intellectual, moral and spiritual literacy levels are irreversibly raised… Continue reading →

“The leader of Michigan’s largest school district says a key reason why Detroit schools are in crisis is this: Racism.”

This is causing me to painfully ask the question: what if White educators said what many of us Black educators have been saying for years (to Black and White Audiences) without much success; would the public then be more open to hearing and accepting these objective truths? The list of ‘truth-tellers’ stretches far back into history: Carter G. Woodson, Elijah Muhammad, Manning Marable, Asa Hilliard, Ron Edmonds, Barbara Sizemore, Jitu Weusi, just to name a few. And the tragedy is that their words are as relevant today as when they first spoke them many years ago. How can that be?

“Detroit schools chief Nikolai Vitti says ‘racist’ policies led to crisis in Detroit schools
By Erin Einhorn – Chalkbeat.org

His comments were greeted with applause.
A spokesman for Gov. Rick Snyder, who appointed most of the emergency managers, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”— Source: https://www.chalkbeat.org/ny/

Michael A. Johnson has served as a public school teacher, Science Skills Center director, principal, and a school district superintendent. He also served as an adjunct professor of Science Education in the School of Education at St. John’s University. He recently completed book on school leadership: Report to the Principal’s Office: Tools for Building Successful High School Administrative Leadership… http://reporttotheprincipalsoffice.net/