Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

I am not going to quote statistics, references, etc, even though I could. I want you to access the information yourself and believe me it is very easy to find. I am not taking sides, just pointing out some facts because as an educator that is what I do. Let us start with race: it is a social construct, and the racial divide was created early in American history to keep black folks and poor white folks from uniting against the rich overlords. Guess what? It worked, and it is still working. There really is no such thing as the black race or the white race, there is only the human race. Poverty creates and perpetuates crime, not skin color. Yes there is a lot of crime in “black” neighborhoods but that is because most of these neighborhoods nationwide are poor (some extremely poor). However, if you look at “white” neighborhoods of similar poverty, you will find the crime statistics are just as high. How many of you are often one paycheck away from becoming homeless? When po...

 I hope you all take sometime to enjoy moments with your family and loved ones, and to be thankful for what you do have and not to worry about what you do not have. Be blessed. Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

I know this is a repetitive topic, I know I have talked about this before, but I feel it is worth mentioning again: politics have no place in the classroom. When political agendas are injected into education kids suffer because they are getting mixed messages and sometimes misleading information in an already mediocre school system (for the most part that is true we have to be honest). “Majority of Texas Social Studies Textbooks Approved Despite Controversy” “Nearly all of the social studies textbooks that were being considered by the Texas board of education—and causing an uproar from both conservative- and liberal-leaning advocacy groups—have been sanctioned for use next school year.” “Of the 96 books being reviewed, 89 were approved by the Republican-controlled board this afternoon, reports the Associated Press . Six books were defeated, and one publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, withdrew a government text.”  “As I wrote yesterday, groups fr...

I have often written about how this country has a long way to go with race relations partly because the sins of the past are still within “living memory” of people. I heard this story this morning, which further proves my point. Can you believe there are people alive whose parents fought in the Civil War and who had met Abraham Lincoln? “Numbers Dwindle Of Living Children Of Civil War Veterans” Listen here: http://www.npr.org/2014/11/18/364889051/numbers-dwindle-of-living-children-of-civil-war-veterans “Children of Civil War Veterans Still Walk Among Us, 150 Years After the War” Read here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/special-features/2014/11/141111-veterans-day-150-anniversary-civil-war-memories/ The last “known” children of slaves was reported to have died in 2011, which mean there are many grandchildren of slaves alive and well. You cannot understand the present unless you understand the past, and the past always influences t...

Every so often, I read something or encounter a situation of supreme ignorance about the continent of Africa that boggles my mind. When I was younger, I used let the folks wallow in their ignorance or sometimes add to it with extremely bad and funny information (I did not think they would take it seriously but they did). Nowadays, as an educator, I feel I must try and truly educate the individual(s) because I realize it is not their fault. We do not teach a true and rich curriculum about the continent, in fact, you will be surprised how many people know nothing about the continent beyond the latest Ebola fear story in the news. Case in point: “ Teacher Told to Stay Away on Return From Africa” “A teacher in a Roman Catholic school was told to take a leave of absence for 21 days when she returned from a mission trip to Kenya, even though the country is thousands of miles from the center of the Ebola outbreak.” “The school, St. Margaret Mary in Louisville, Ky., told rel...