Walking In My Shoes

Final Paper

EDUC 403

12/9/13

Walking In My Shoes

“In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky—her grand old woods—her fertile fields—her beautiful rivers— her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slaveholding, robbery and wrong,— when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing, and led to reproach myself that any thing could fall from my lips in praise of such a land. America will not allow her children to love her. She seems bent on compelling those who would be her warmest friends, to be her worst enemies. May God give her repentance before it is too late, is the ardent prayer of my heart. I will continue to pray, labor and wait, believing that she cannot always be insensible to the dictates of justice, or deaf to the voice of humanity.” – Frederick Douglas

            I start this paper with this quote knowing that I am part of the healing process this country needs to go through and that I relate deeply to Frederick Douglas’ love and loathing of this country.  Like him I find myself called to leadership to “labor and wait” for justice and humanity in education.  It is my stance that a spiritual renewal around leadership is needed and therefore I am using spiritual terms of growth (borrowed from my church, East Bay Church of Religious Science) This paper will use four stages of “spiritual growth” and how I have been contemplating their roles in my leadership growth.

To Me

By Me

As Me

Thru Me

“These are the four stages of our God in this life,” Reverand Eloise stated as I sat and listened with my congregation last month, on a Sunday early morning service.  This paper will reflect my understanding of my current educational leadership journey and how it has cycled in and out of leadership roles sometimes public and formal and some in the private shadows.  In this journey my relationship to “God” or “Higher Spirit” has always been my guide.  When thinking about leadership and education I felt I could only express it using these four stages to define my philosophy and beliefs about leadership. Through these stages I always found myself refocusing  on the context of the mission and purpose of schools and education.  Finally I hope to show in my concrete examples a working application of my understanding around human learning and the role of teaching in advancing that learning and how it is not only my current career and parental choice but one that is a spiritual choice as well.

“To me” phase

At one point I felt the educational system was happening to me, I had a victimized point of view.  Similar to the introductory quote from Fredrick Douglas, I felt for many years this country had wronged my people (Mexican, Native American and Irish) in a wide variety of ways.  For example, as a female student of color who came from a low income family, most of the time public schools and “the academy” was a struggle; socially, financially, culturally, and spiritually. However to me it was just a struggle to push under the rug.  I now see how wrong I was in trying to push my past behind me and to think I don’t bring that past to my current leadership especially to my educational leadership. 

As a public educator I became very frustrated when I felt that the system was starting to “happen to me” as a teacher and in an urban public school as well as to my daughter involved in that system.  As Sinclair and Wilson state in  New faces of leadership, “Outsiders” or Biculutralism in adaptive leadership bring those viewpoints and values to leadership practice; “identities which do not rest on membership of a single social group or tribe but are able to inhabit multiple groups and cultures without feeling threatened or paralyzed,” have a different lens of leadership. In this moment of not wanting to be a victim or have my daughter “suffer” a type of situation I went through  I decided to take on every type of leadership role SFUSD offered in my school site as well as outside.

“By Me” phase

In this phase where I decided to take on the system I never felt such frustration at times as well as supreme success.  I now realize after really looking at the various organizational frames I was trying to balance and juggle many roles.  Not only did I have an intention to keep people at the center of my choices specifically students and teachers, or teaching and learning, but I realize I was also trying to change structures and political frames.  The multiple cultures became a huge struggle for me to balance.  Not only was I holding multiple roles as a teacher leader on site but I became heavily involved in teacher leadership in the political frame or with various Teacher Unions.  I wanted to tackle bureaucracy nationally and state wide and became a part of AFT and CTA in a variety of capacities; CFT Common Core Teacher Leader, CTA Proposition 30 Release Time Member, CFT Teacher Leader for Policy Change in San Francisco.  During this time however I was also doing teacher leadership by becoming Nationally Board Certified. However as Wilson states in his text, “Bureaucracies in which 2 or more cultures struggle for supremacy will experience serious conflicts as defenders of one seek to dominate representatives of the others.”(p.101)

            This conflict that was so made so clear to me as Union Representative and then National AFT leader as well as CTA leader was made controversial when I was not only trying to defend teachers but sticking up for my students as an advocate.  I knew that the various cultures I was surfing in and out of as well my past points of view were all valid voices.   Yet  being pulled in many directions I felt I needed more concrete understanding of what all these leadership conflict/choices I had taken on meant.  I felt a leadership disequilibrium and “The Call” I had needed clarification if I was going, “To be the change I wanted to see (Gandhi).          

The various ‘cultures’ surrounding leadership and education became a whole different culture in and of itself and I felt I needed a clearer “mind map”. This is what has led me to research Educational Leadership especially here at Mills which has a social justice, feminist lens.  Being aware of “the system” and that I was now a part of that system (that I at times felt victimized from) I felt needed to be able to make educated choices. Until now I refer to these leadership dilemas as “culture” however can relate to Bolman and Deal when analyzing how the conflict of structures and human resources as different frames and lens of how organizations function.

“The assumptions of the structural frame reflect a belief in rationality and a faith that the right formal arrangements minimize problems and increase quality and performance.  Where the human resources perspective emphasizes the importance of changing people (through training, rotation, promotion, or dismissal), the structural perspective focuses on designing a pattern of roles and relationship that will accomplish collective goals as well as accommodate individual differences.” (p.101) Now  after a year and half of my Masters program at Mills I feel like I am once again transitioning as well as see a different side of my leadership in education manifested.

“As Me” phase

            Now that I am truly understanding the roles in educational leadership and how it has affected my choices as a leader, parent and teacher I find myself in a metacognition about education.  I used to dread conversations around problems of learning and now through the help of various Professional Learning Communities including my Union leadership I find myself actively engaged and not emotionally overwhelmed.  For example, when brainstorming with teacher leaders from SFUSD (chosen by AFT for a year long team approach to educational policy) some of my main concerns when deciding how I wanted to engage in public policy in education. I brainstormed this picture.

 In this AFT “think tank” of teacher leaders we were asked to think of an “ideal” world in the land of educational decisions.  I felt and do feel that multiple stakeholders need to find ways to communicate and listen to one another in order to make decisions that are taking all points of view into consideration. This perspective was definitely influenced by the idea that I am modeling the type of leadership I want to see.  Through participation in Mills Ed. Program, my teacher leadership as well moving to a new district this year I am finding myself ready for the next phase of my leadership as well as my understanding of decision making.

As I am moving forward through the stages of my leadership I find that I am no longer victimized but educated in and by my experience.  I no longer attract conversations that feel isolating in intention or demoralizing in its victimized viewpoint of  bureaucratic systems. There are many leaders out there doing the work and modeling that commitment in bureaucracies as well as in their day to day decisions.  I too am that walking and breathing entity in which teaching and learning is more than a task or goal, but is a way to empower humanity especially this country that my more than half of my ancestors have been a part of for thousands of years.

“Thru Me” phase

A reflection question was once posed to us in our class, how and why should a leader nurture relationships in an organization? I emphasize this question in this part of my paper because I believe that a phase I am approaching will require me to not only recall this question but many I have had here at Mills with automaticity or leadership messages working “thru me”.

I  remember what my classmates had to say about it that day…..

My classmates key words:

·      Healthy communication

·      Nurturing strengths

·      Being aware of your weaknesses

·      Reflection in Action

            This question for me was obvious – organizations are made of people. According to Bolman and Deal, one of the frames of looking at organizations through human relationships has the metaphorical symbol of “Family”.  Boleman and Deal make that point that central to a good organization noting that when positive human resources needs are met, skills and relationships are valued organizations thrive.  I agree with this image of leadership as EMPOWERMENT.  I would like to take it one step further and say that thru my understanding of education and community we can’t help but know that we are a “family” working together to make our society better. That education doesn’t happen to us, by us, or as us, but thru us.  And as I manifest that leadership truth as a career choice in education, a parenting choice, and spiritual choice

I echo the words of many of my spiritual partners and guides when I say….

I let it go

I let it be and

So it is.

-sd

On Poverty and Systemic Collapse: Challenges to Education Research in an Era of Infrastructure Rebuilding by Gregory K. Tanaka

note: for educational purposes only 

copyright Greg Tanaka 

On Poverty and Systemic Collapse:

Challenges to Education Research

in an Era of Infrastructure Rebuilding

by

Gregory K. Tanaka

Mills College

American Educational Research Association

September, 2012

In this essay I argue the economic inequities of today carve out a very large social condition that is orders of magnitude greater than can be conveyed by the term “poverty.” This condition derives from a massive theft of public wealth and abandonment of the principles of representative democracy.

There is a silver lining: on encountering “systemic collapse” (a breakdown of society’s largest social institutions), we as education researchers are presented with a challenge for which we are uniquely well suited. We do applied work and as such, are predisposed to building something new. But will we be ready to make contributions that match the human need in an “Era of Democratic Renewal?”

Most Americans have become poorer and not as a result of a four-year cyclical downturn. This is systemic. From 1972 to 2012, U.S. hourly earnings adjusted for inflation dropped from $20/hr to just $8/hr (Nielson, Bullion Bulls Canada, 2/7/11). While social welfare benefits made up 10% of all salaries and wages in 1960, today it is 35% (Economic Collapse, 4/16/12). Where in the 1970s the top 1% earned just 8% of all income, this year they earned 21% (Id). In 1950, household debt as a percentage of disposable income was 30% but by 2011 rose to 120% of personal income (Tanaka Capital Management, August, 2011). By 2011, 100 million out of 242 million working age Americans were not working (Seabridge Gold Annual Report, 2011). Today, one-fourth of all children in the U.S. are enrolled in the food stamp program (Economic Collapse, 4/16/12). And since being established in 1913, the Federal Reserve (representing the largest U.S. banks) has destroyed 96% of the dollar value of U.S. family savings by printing money (Economic Collapse, 2/9/12).

Meanwhile, the 1% has truly become “the elites” by boldly stealing from middle and working class Americans. During the 2007-2010 financial crisis, $27 trillion in bailout money was given to U.S. banks that was “off-budget,” meaning it was not derived from taxes but rather taken from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid accounts paid into by taxpayers over a 40-year period (Catherine Austin Fitts, 9/4/12). In 2009-2010, 93% of all new U.S. income went to the top 1% (U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, 6/29/12). A simple solution is available but Congress won’t act: a return to the tax rates of the 1950s-1970s would result in a 50% tax on the top 96-99% and 75% tax on the top 1%. This alone would cover ¾ of the current U.S budget shortfall.

The net result is that the U.S. is stuck with $150 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities, leaving U.S. taxpayers with more debt per capita than citizens of Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain (Economic Collapse, 7/14/12). Worse, the global overhang from debt, derivatives and contingent and unfunded liabilities and pension accounts is now a whopping $1.5 quadrillion (Greyerz, King World News, 7/20/12). With global GDP at $50 trillion, the financial “overhang” is systemic and unredeemable.

Is this the end of democracy as we knew it? All three branches have certainly failed the American people. It was Congress that reduced the elites’ income tax from 75% to just 15% (for long-term capital gains). The White House authored NAFTA (exporting millions of manufacturing jobs offshore), launched two oil wars and gave trillions to bankers. Most appalling, it was the U.S. Supreme Court that sanctioned in Citizens United the ability of the super rich to “buy” U.S. elections, thus bringing to an end the “representative” characteristic of representative democracy.

To restore democracy, a massive project of social change is now needed that can model the contours of a democracy that is participatory and might include the following kinds of ideas. (I invite others to offer ideas of their own.)

·Exempting full-time preK-12 public school teachers from having to pay federal

  income taxes;

·Paying off the U.S. bonds with low yield (and later, cheaper) dollars, followed

  by a re-linking of the dollar to gold at $300/ounce, absolving U.S. citizens of

  all debt (Iceland model), letting banks restart as utilities, seizing illegal

  accounts held for Americans in the Cayman Islands, etc, and closing down the

  Federal Reserve;

·Paying for this renewal by deploying already available technology that can

  produce far cheaper, clean energy—e.g. artificial photosynthesis, splitting water

  molecules to create ethanol, and passing cars over electromagnetic rods in roads

  (like charging an electric toothbrush);

·A second Constitutional Convention that is, this time, “by, for and of the

  people,” redefines a “person” as a human being, includes term limits, and enacts

  a participatory democracy; and

·The creation of independent think tanks that are in the public interest and can

  conceptualize, operationalize and evaluate initiatives like those above.

To renew this country, and its democracy, education researchers will need to do several things differently. We will need to broaden our work from a tendency to perform narrowly at the “mid-range level” of change in organizations, schools or programs—to a concerted effort to combine three registers in one analysis (“macro” systemic change in the largest social institutions, “micro” reformulations of the self, and “mid-range” change in organizations).

We will also need to shift from “assessment overdeterminism” to an emphasis on infrastructure rebuilding. This will mean more large scale, longitudinal, participatory projects; theorizing the connection, if any, between performing social change and development of the self; replacing NCLB/RTTT with policies that teach critical thinking, creativity, science, history, the arts, and coming into being by helping others also to come into being; new epistemologies that unite a diverse country; and change in reward systems to prize the above.

The question, then, is whether we as researchers in the public interest will be caught in a propitious moment worshipping old research epistemologies and methodological registers—or be willing instead to alter the reach and aim of our work to match the magnitude of the task before us. 

Med. Students with 1st Graders! Thanks for bringing a real brain!

Ms Dawn & Mr. Rubio,

It was a pleasure meeting you and your delightful students today.  Thank you for inviting a group of talented medical students to engage with the children.  This was a great opportunity for advancing their professional skill development and hopefully in return they added value to your important work as educators.

To be effective as either an educator of children or a physician of children requires an understanding of age related development.  Today’s activities offered the medical students a chance to see Piaget’s Stages of Development in action, that is, transitioning from Stage 2, Preoperational (ages 2-6 yr) to Stage 3, Concrete operational (ages 6-11 yr).  they also saw examples of how teachers promote the children’s developmental transition from magical thinking and explanation of scientific phenomenon to reasoned deductions based on facts.  Example:  Did anyone overhear Ms Dawn point out to one child that a part of their response to a question about the brain was “pretend”?  Then she skillfully re-directed him back to the point of divergence from fact to “fiction” and had him start his explanation again.  This time he was able to finish his reasoned though completely based on the facts.

The exercise today gave the students a chance to practice deductive reasoning (head injury v. head injury protection using helmets), objective causality (hand hygiene gets rid of germs that cause illness), de-centering or seeing another’s perspective (giving shots to aid in health rather than to be mean), and mental reverses in thinking to help gain understanding (protecting the egg by using softer scrunched up paper v. the harder mass when scrunched up smaller).  The latter was also an exercise in understanding mass, volume and linear time.  The children demonstrated the variation in conceptual thinking and processing time as well.  We use all of these concepts daily as pediatricians in structuring our interactions with children and assessing their responses to our medical interviewing questions and during the clinical reasoning process.

Thanks again for opening up your classrooms and sharing your amazing and beautiful children.

Carol A. Miller, MD

Hip Hop Pedagogy: Class 1

Professor KRS ONE (part 1 of 2 Temple University) Video

See Powerpoint notes below

NOLAN JONES, M.ED. 

SABRINA KWIST, M.ED. 

Hip Hop Pedagogy!

Introductions "! 

!  Who are you? 

!  What degree are you pursuing at Mills College? 

!  What do you want out of this course? 

!  Fun Fact 

!  Answer one of these questions: 

1.  What movie or TV character would you most like to be? 

2.  What two people dead or alive would you like to have lunch with? 

3.  If you could go back in time – what period of time would you go 

back to?  

The Cypher!

   WHAT SHOULD WE INCLUDE IN 

THE COMMUNITY RULES? 

 HOW DO WE CREATE A SAFE 

SPACE FOR EVERYONE? 

Community Rules!

   WHO ARE YOU?  

I am Poem!

 Discussion! 

!  Why is Hip Hop important to you? 

!  What is your understanding of Hip Hop 

pedagogy? 

!  Think of the best course you have ever taken.  

What made the course great? 

Problem 

Stereotype 

Threat 

Lack of 

Culturally 

Relevant 

Pedagogy 

Deficit Model 

Thinking 

Essentializing

A Solution 

Hip Hop 

Pedagogy 

Hip Hop 

Cultural 

Capital 

Culturally 

Relevant 

Pedagogy 

Universal 

Appeal

Syllabus Review! 

!  Attendance 

!  Participation 

!  Assignments/Late Assignments 

!  Academic Integrity 

!  Project Presentation 

Response Papers! 

!  One page only! 

!  1.5 spaced, 12 Font, Times New Roman 

!  Must submit on Blackboard 

!  Must use the following format: 

•  Descriptive (Who, What, When, Where, Why, how?) 

•  Personal Interpretive (Use personal life experiences) 

•  Critical Reflective (Does this apply to me, culture, etc.) 

•  Creative (What actions will I take to transform?) 

Break!

Notable Quotes! 

 People treat hip-hop like an isolated phenomenon. 

They don’t treat it as a continuum, a history or 

legacy. And it really is. And like all mediums or 

movements, it came out of a need. 

          

  - Mos Def 

What is Hip Hop? 

Hip Hop Images 

Hip Hop Images 

Afrika Bambaataa 

!  Hip Hop Pioneer 

!  Got the gangs to stop 

fighting and channel 

energy to Hip Hop 

!  First coined phrase Hip 

Hop 

!  First to describe “the 

Elements” 

Hip Hop’s Visual &  

Performing Arts 

Hip Hop 

Elements 

Rap 

DJing 

Graffiti Art Break 

Dancing 

Music 

Composition 

Visual Arts 

Poetry & 

Prose 

Performing 

Arts

DJ Kool Herc 

!  Hip Hop Pioneer 

!  Introduced the break 

beat in turn-tabling 

!  Earliest DJ  

Grandmaster Flash 

!  Hip Hop DJ Pioneer 

!  Created Mixing & Cutting 

!  Scratching 

The Hip Hop Elements 

!  Rapping (MCing)  

!  Graffiti Art (Aerosol Art) 

!  Break Dancing  

!  Deejaying (Djing)  

Added after the 1990s 

!  Spoken Word 

!  Beatboxing  

!  Street Fashion  

!  Street Language 

!  Street Knowledge 

One More Time 

!  Artistic Youth Culture 

!  Cultural Movement 

!  Three Pioneers 

!  Created in 1970’s African American & Latino youth 

!  Four Original Visual & Performing Arts branches 

are called the Elements 

END!

Reflections of Union Teacher turn Administrator

Reflections of Union Teacher turn Administrator

Human Resources Management, Mills College Education Leadership Program

EDUC 407 Final Paper

Sunny Dawn

May 6, 2013

‘Are you on crack?’ I asked. Weingarten stormed out. ‘I’m done negotiating,’ I said…..’I think we can you give you both what you need, though,’ he said…It was brilliant. I could implement pay for performance, but because it wasn’t going to be defined specifically in the contract, the union was free to rebuke it, since it had not actually agreed to it. No one said a word, but we all knew it would work. –Excerpts from Michelle Rhee autobiography, Radical: Fighting to Put Students First,  2013.

            I share this very recent 2008 collective bargaining story from a newly released book to show the national issues surrounding human resources in education.  Throughout the semester of this class I have been reading many texts on human capital and how it plays out in the educational setting and the workplace of educational institutions.  In this paper I will address conflicting theories I have been engaging in around teaching and learning in school leadership.  I will also demonstrate my understanding of the course work in Human Resources Management with an emphasis on the polarity of Teacher Unions versus District Administration philosophies and how the two political agendas are impeding student success.

            I would like to emphasize the term ‘political agenda’ when looking at the philosophies of administration versus teacher organizations.  Although both groups would say they have teaching and learning at the center of their concerns I have found, (through the course work in this class my work experience as a union leader, as well a parent) that both parties have long and complicated political and cultural history.  I think it is important for me to share my insight as I have been heavily involved with my union in my urban district at the same time I have been enrolled in a year long program at Mills College to receive my Administrative Credential for a future principalship.  The two conflicting interests have shaped how I will deliver administrative decisions as well as how I will communicate with teachers at a site level.    I pose that districts and teacher unions are asking the same questions but no one is willing to really sit down together (beyond collective bargaining) and answer these questions around curriculum delivery and seek out positive strategies to implementation especially with the new common core standards. 
 

            Throughout this course when we were learning about AI and FRISK.  I was thinking three things;

1.     Too bad AI and FRISK is not listened to by unions and teachers as a serious threat (it can take up to 3 years and sometime longer to get a bad teacher out of a classroom).

2.     Where is FRISK for some of these ineffective Central Office Administrators or mediocre to “F” rated principals?

3.     Why do Unions take on teacher evaluation as its main battle? 

The only real answer I could come up with was “political or cultural agendas”.  When I first started teaching in the public school system I tried to shut my door, keep quiet with internal issues, and just do good teaching.  I didn’t care about political or cultural agendas, I wanted to just be a hard working educator.  As an educator with a child in the same school I quickly realized that was going to be impossible.  I’m glad I didn’t become that “type of teacher” who just tunnel visions on their class because now I am faced with what “type of principal” will I be as I move forward.  I wish I could say I’m just  going to shut my door, keep quiet with internal issues, and just do good administration but that is not the type of good leadership I have displayed in the past nor will it be the type I will display in the future. The beginning of my union leadership came when I saw the horrible teaching that my daughter received at my “low income school”.  I started working with my union and the principal to get this teacher support and then out of the educational system.

Everyone can skew the research to their point of view of why a person deserves to keep their job.  However I must admit that while I have a serious distaste for the way in which Michelle Rhee went about her time as Chancellor in DCPS, I must say her firing of over 400 total educators(including principals and Central office employees) in that failing system seems about right to me.

            I believe that with the wave of education reformers including Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan, public education is under a mirocscope in a new and critical way.  Not just on the East Coast but all over the country even here in the Bay area.  Obama’s Post NCLB administration is openly putting money and support into charter schools and have created a public education which is now test obsessed pedagogically. And if public schools do not show they can teach to the test the entire school might be shut down. 

My principalship will keep these issues at the forefront: teachers will know that I am very aware of teacher unions philosophies and that I came to educational leadership through my union leadership.   However my teachers will also know that I became a principal because I felt colleagues of mine were failing their students and that I felt the best way to advocate for children beyond being a good teacher and great parent was to be an amazing administrator.

            As I stated before I believe the only common denominator that will glue unions and administration together is to focus on positive outcomes, so I use the words “amazing administrator” with complete consciousness.  What I have learned from this human resources management class from the panels, the required text, as well my own additional inquiry on professional capital (Fullan, 2012) is that at the heart of difficult situations or conversations are feelings.  You ever heard that joke, “So a teacher walks into a party….” No? Yeah, neither have I.  Joke, Party and Teacher are not words people put together too often because we all have deep feelings about teachers for a variety of reasons.  Why is that?  Teachers are supposed to be are “angels” on earth.  They are here for us right? They are in the job for the children, right?

Wrong!  We can not say all teachers are in it for the children.  Maybe they all tried to start out for that but anyone who has tried to teach in a classroom for longer than a year will tell you it so much more than a job that is just about playing with children.  But the Elaine K. McEwan Text: How to Deal With Teachers Who Are Angry, Troubled, Exhausted, or Just Plain Confused has helped me understand challenging teachers and focus on myself as a “character builder”.  Or as she states, “You don’t have to figure out what’s wrong with your troubled teachers. Your only job is to confront their inappropriate behavior when you become aware of it, present options and opportunities for moving forward positively, support them in their efforts to change if they are willing and able, and take steps to protect the students in their classrooms if they can’t.” (p.74)

            If I become an administrator I will also take a keen awareness that not all administrators are “in it for the children” either.  Many administrators were burnt out teachers who knew the system well enough to float easily into an administrative roll.  I will remember that Central Office is actually a very small world and politics are very transparent and no matter who interacts with me they too will know that I was a parent first, teacher second, administrator by default to a calling of conscious leadership.

            I will bring to this “political table” a deep commitment to teaching and learning and open discussions about how true teacher evaluations should be learning conversations.  I do not agree we can fire our way out of the achievement gap as Rhee did in D.C. or as top down administration would have you believe.  However I do believe administrators need to be to become more competent on evaluation practices.  My administration inquiry will be focused on the topics found in the Daresh text: Leading and Supervising Instruction, for the next year before I start to apply to schools as Principal. Specifically issues on a local, state and national  level discussed in Chapter 7: Exploring the How and Why of Teacher Evaluations.
 

            Lastly I want to thank you, Ms. Forrester, for this highly engaging class.  The role plays of difficult conversations were very hands on and reminded me of how easy it is to play or be the angry teacher. However to be on the other end or a diplomatic leader takes a different kind of commitment to goals of communication and problem solving.  I am proud to have taken this class from Mills College and learned these skills from a social justice centered university, thank you for reading and your time.