Editor’s note: Seattle teacher Carl Chew, who was suspended for two weeks without pay for refusing to administer the WASL test to his students, was the subject of an April 24 column by Peter Callaghan, “Teacher’s protest over the WASL is just petulance.” On April 15 I refused to give the WASL to my students at Eckstein Middle School in Seattle. Since then there has been a lot of uninformed and negative criticism directed at me and my value as a teacher. Not to worry, I know who I am and what a great job I do with my students.
To those who have found it necessary to attack my character and my right to exercise civil disobedience, I have the following to say.
• Attention, adults. Remember, there is no name calling in class. (Somehow my sixth-graders can do this and still have stimulating and important conversations at the same time. When did adults forget the rules?)
• Each of us has the right to civil disobedience whenever we feel inspired or forced to do so. Period.
• I did not ask to be removed from my class. In fact, I recommended to the principal that she simply reassign me during testing times. It was the school district which ultimately levied my punishment – unpaid suspension from my classroom – and by so doing brought this to the attention of the public. I even asked if I could volunteer in my class and was told that I could not step on school property until the suspension was over.
• My students did not know what I was doing. I wrote on my blackboard, “I have something important to do, and you probably will have a guest teacher. Treat them with respect. Do your best on the WASL.” The students only learned of my act a week later from the media.
• I did not plan at the beginning of the year to refuse to give the WASL. I think it is a normal human reaction to forget painful events quickly. I would always tell myself, I won’t do this again, but then forget about my discomfort. This year, I guess I had had enough experiences with the WASL to understand its full impact. I felt I had to act.
• Of course there are other ways to oppose the WASL. I have been to Olympia to protest. I am a member of organizations that are working to change or eliminate the WASL. Educators have been protesting the inequities of the WASL for years in all the appropriate places.
Guess what? We can no more count on our leaders to listen to us and change the WASL than we can convince them to follow the law and fully fund education in this state.
• A few people have vociferously condemned my point that the WASL is written in white middle- and upper-class English, leaving a huge number of children at a disadvantage.
Imagine for a moment that your child has to take the WASL in Spanish. Would you feel that was fair? The kids in our schools speak in many different languages.
I am a teacher who believes that learning white middle- and upper-class English does help them navigate the world more successfully, but I also respect and value their home languages. Not to do so would be unconscionable, immoral and a slap in the face to the students, their parents and communities.
So, let’s consider Ebonics or black English or whatever you want to call it. If you are brave enough, read “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” This essay is a wonderful defense of my position by one of America’s most esteemed writers, James Baldwin.
You know who he is, right? Good; go to the front of the class.
Carl Chew is a middle-school science teacher in the Seattle School District.
