Today’s post is the latest in a series highlighting the impact of ICE crackdowns on schools, teachers, their students, and families.
The previous two posts, and this one, focus on how Minnesota educators are dealing with the impact of thousands of federal immigration agents being sent into their communities and the recent shooting death of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents.
‘Trust Their Own Eyes’
Suzanne Blum Grundyson has been in the Twin Cities for the last 10 years as a secondary special educator. Prior to that time, she taught internationally in Bangkok, Thailand, and in Mexico City:
What to say? What to say? What do I say when my community is being repeatedly targeted and harmed. I am the special education building coordinator at a large high school in a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis. In our school, more than 50% of our students have English-learning status, and more than 75% of students are of color. We are a Title I school. Along with working with students with disabilities, I also run our GSA (Gender and Sexualities Alliance).
So, looking out for kids from marginalized, historically excluded, and targeted communities is part of my everyday considerations. I am always reviewing and alert to policies, budgets, etc., that impact them and I am a vocal advocate in our school and district.
Since the last presidential election, our students have done the check-in. You know the one. Kids ask you a question that is neutral enough to give you room to let them know you are an ally or to defer. I have had several kids ask me straight out how I feel, what I value, and what I believe. I never talk about how or who I vote for or political parties. What I do tell students is that being a public school teacher in a diverse Title I school is a political choice.
I tell them that I believe that EVERY CHILD deserves a free and appropriate education that helps them reach their highest potential. I remind them that EVERY human being has intrinsic and infinite value. I remind them that all major religions admonish us to welcome the stranger, love our neighbors, and do unto others as we want done to us. I tell them that those beliefs guide me in all areas of my life.
This last week, many students asked about the discrepancy between what the federal government is reporting and what we are seeing and experiencing in our community. I remind students that they KNOW what they see with their eyes. I remind them that they can see the blue sky clearly over our beautiful, crisp, snowy city and that if I or anyone else tells them the sky is yellow or polka dotted, that they can trust their own eyes and gut. No matter who tells them (the government, a teacher, a parent, etc.) that they see something different, they know truth.
Students have shared with us that they have family members who are detained. Students have told us that they witnessed abductions by ICE in their neighborhood. They have been boxed in by ICE in their cars at gas stations. They are carrying their passports with them and telling ICE they are citizens (and often minors) and are being harassed, intimidated, and followed. Many are being questioned about their families. On Friday, 1,100-plus students were absent from our roughly 2,000 student population.
All week, our school has had the crisis care room staffed for kids who need support. Some kids share their fears. Some color, grab a snack, use a fidget, and then go back to class. I’ve received and given exponentially more hugs this week than I usually do.
Students who attended school staged a peaceful walkout on Friday. The administration and student leaders agreed to use the media center because the outside is not safe for many students. Students made signs, chanted, and shared stories. Then some marched around our second floor. Many staff members have come together in our preps and before and after school to coordinate care for families, including grocery runs, carpools, and more, for those who feel unsafe.
We are trying to teach our classes, run a school, and maintain some normalcy. Our community is working to organize itself in all the ways that we can to reduce harm, accommodate the needs of individuals and families, and create some continuity of care for folks who are living in the most precarious of times.
At the end of each day, each educator here is trying to teach the most important lessons to students: They are important, loved, held by the community, and there will always be helpers even in the darkest of times. The poster above my desk quotes Amanda Gorman, and it has become my truest mantra. “For there is always light if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it.”
‘There Is Nothing Quite Like This Moment’
Becky McCammon is a lead teacher at a suburban elementary school in the Twin Cities:
This past week, my daughter, a high schooler at a St. Paul school, received the nongraduation-required but safety-essential lessons in washing pepper spray out of her eyes should an ICE agent stop her or her peers or if she was attacked when being a peaceful protestor or ally for her friends.
For weeks, my daughter has worried for a dear friend as she and her loved ones are pulled over again and again as ICE pursues contact with adult members of her family.
This past week, my friend, a school social worker at a nearby high school, broke down during a voice note shared with me as she described the work to find guardian care for a scholar whose parents were both abducted by ICE.
Last week, at a community-building circle among staff, our principal asked if staff could stand protective watch at school bus stops to ensure students could safely travel to school and head to their respective homes and families.
There is nothing quite like this moment.
I came into teaching on the heels of Columbine. Watched 9/11 on three-foot thick televisions in my classroom. Achingly lost count of the countless school shootings. Philando Castile’s death (my daughter is a scholar at the school where he worked). George Floyd.
I’ve never looked at any of that aching, wretched history and thought, “That’s an accident” or an “isolated incident.” I’ve never fed myself any fictional tale of “If this, then … ” I know our big hurts emerge from volumes upon volumes of history and hurt and hatefulness.
And even for all of that collective, accumulative horror across my professional life and my children’s lives, the organized calculation of brutality sanctioned by the federal government right now represents the greatest constancy of deliberate community harm that I’ve ever known.
The English teacher in me wants to close this with a haiku poem, but I keep getting stuck on five-syllable lines: Is there anyway, How do I explain, Such tender heartbreak.
Thanks to Suzanne and Becky for contributing their thoughts!
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