Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

I am going to approach this as an educator, because that is what I am and that is what I do when trying to make a point. Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from combat, accident, starvation, and disease during the Civil War (this is just soldiers mind you, not civilians so the numbers are much larger). No other war in our history killed so many:   This was a war that deeply divided a nation, and whatever your ideology, those divisions were not good for the country and some areas never recovered.      I have heard people from the south refer to the civil war as “the war of northern aggression”, I still find that amusing, but my point is the war is still a sore point with people even today.   The confederate flag is called a battle flag to some, and people want to use it to remember their war heroes; we are all entitled to our thoughts and beliefs, and quite frankly it does not bother me but I have an advantage of being a first generation A...

We have another awful incident in this country today, and unfortunately it will not be the last. However, how we approach and talk about it can change right now. These were American victims killed, so they were all our victims, and there will be more victims before this is all done including the family of the shooter. Do not concentrate on sound bites, approach this with love and compassion, not hate and more hate. We need to come together to solve future incidents, and we need to do it now before each story fades away as old news. Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

This is worth a read and thoughts: The War on Thugs How propaganda fuels our prison problem By Jason Stanley “I n 1980, there were 500,000 Americans in prison or jail . By 2013, there were more than 2.3 million. The explosion in incarceration has fallen disproportionately on the descendants of slaves. White Americans are 77 percent of the U.S. population, and black Americans 13 percent. Yet more blacks are incarcerated than whites. There has scarcely been a time in history when one group has composed so much of the world’s prison population; black Americans may only be 13 percent of the U.S. population, but they are 9 percent of the world’s prison population.” Read the whole thing here: http://chronicle.com/article/The-War-on-Thugs/230787/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en Keeps this conversation going because it is an education problem.   Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

If you look at the title of this piece, and nothing jumps out, then you are missing the point. We still divide people in this country into various races, as if we are genetically different. Yes I know race is a social construct, but many people do not ; they really believe there are different races. I have said this before, and I will say it again; when a country as young as the United States, that is built upon oppression of poor people and people from different lands, and we do not acknowledge this sordid past, then we will never be post-racial. Also, there is a difference between bigotry and racism, but that is a different subject. From a simple numbers perspective look at the facts: ·          Law enforcement and legal punishments are extremely skewed when it comes to people of color. It so happens poverty is higher in this group, and so those same stats are skewed against poor people in general ( http://apps.washingtonpos...

Have you ever tried to incorporate social media into your classroom? I often hear the argument that it is important to use the tools students are using in order to reach them; trouble is what if the students are using the tools badly in the first place? Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam