Oak Park teacher named Regional Teacher of the Year
There are two kinds of teachers, Ashley Kannan claims. There’s the one particular who relished heading to university and was a by natural means very good pupil. Issues came uncomplicated. That instructor, he claimed, is like the Michael Jordan of the classroom and retains the exact same expectations for pupils, wanting to know why some “don’t get it.” The 2nd kind is the complete opposite, the one who experienced a rough time in school and has vowed to make absolutely sure no one particular else goes via the identical point.
Kannan, a longtime instructor at Julian Middle Faculty, is the latter. In spite of currently being named Regional Instructor of the Calendar year for Prepare dinner County and a finalist for Illinois Instructor of the 12 months — which in the education and learning environment is like snagging an MVP award — Kannan nonetheless remembers what it was like currently being the only “Brown kid in class” and growing up Indian in Oak Park.
“When I was at Hatch, my very first working day consuming lunch outdoors, I experienced a couple of fifth-graders knock in excess of my lunch box and get in touch with me a ‘dot head’ and a ‘sand N-phrase,’” recalled Kannan, as he leaned again on his chair within his classroom on Julian’s fourth floor. He can even now picture the adults who stood close by and didn’t intervene.
That’s why Kannan was ecstatic to hear about the choosing of Ushma Shah, District 97’s new superintendent.
“From becoming named a ‘dot head’ and a ‘sand N-word’ to now acquiring a single of [our] men and women operate the district and to be equipped to say that you’ve noticed that knowledge, which is f–ing liberating,” he mentioned, including he initially did not anticipate to be moved by the news. “But once Amanda [Siegfried, the district’s communications director] despatched that electronic mail, I stated, ‘Holy s–. [She’s] an Indian. It’s one of us.”
For Kannan, Shah’s arrival in the district is not just about illustration (“We could have a emphasis team with the five Indians [educators at D97] and the superintendent now,” he joked). It’s about generating a house for learners — and even staff members — to be found, heard and valued.
Kannan, who teaches humanities, was the first to design and pilot the district’s class on African American experiments. The notion for the course came from two former students, he reported. They achieved out to him for the duration of the early days of the pandemic and were being struggling to grapple with the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless other innocent Black adult males and ladies. These students, who had extended been out of Kannan’s course, returned, searching for a put to share their inner thoughts.
That started him considering. The spring of 2020 proved to be a tumultuous time, as people today wrestled with the onset of COVID-19 and the constant information of lives lost to racial injustice, law enforcement, and white supremacy.
“It’s not just a passing stage,” reported Kannan, who, apart from teaching, has also worked on the district’s equity mission by numerous teams and committees.
Virtually right away, Kannan took apart his personal heritage training course and constructed a new just one. This new course, he claimed, would concentration on the this means of getting “othered.” He centered the course about The usa to Me, the 2018 documentary sequence that adopted the life of academics and students at Oak Park and River Forest Superior School and examined the intersection of racial, class and financial problems.
Class discussion and project-based mostly assignments, guided by current gatherings and other themes, rounded out the course’s make-up.
Kannan reported lecturers — or grownups in general — are typically seen as the individuals who know everything, but the truth is, they really do not. Kannan does not possibly.
“I cannot demonstrate why the police officer knelt on [Floyd’s] neck for nine minutes. I simply cannot make clear why 16 bullets had been pumped into [Laquan McDonald] although he was walking away. I just can’t make clear that, and I cannot pretend to reveal that,” he reported. “We have to have to be capable to parse by this with each other.”
Kannan advised Wednesday Journal that the African American Reports system, which first introduced during the 2020-21 college year and is now an elective, serves as a way to retain those people difficult discussions going ahead. He explained he normally leaned on America to Me as a way to open those people conversations. Aside from the docuseries’ assessment on the school’s accomplishment gaps, it also showed the everyday struggles of remaining a teen. Even Kannan, who graduated from OPRF, remembered how he healthy into the school’s “track” process he was a stellar student in English but “atrocious” in math and science.
“The plan of ‘misery loves company’ is the only thread that binds eighth grade,” Kannan stated laughing, introducing that the position of sharing the documentary was also to clearly show students that there is a much larger globe than center school and it “does get much better.”
He’s on a mission to make sure the planet of middle college is also a very good 1. The moderator of Julian’s LGBTQ+ club, Rainbow Tribe, reported the group arrived together pretty much five several years in the past and shaped out of just one of his trans students’ encounters. That student, he explained, opened up about her knowledge by means of an on the net dialogue publish.
“‘I just wish I could not feel so much like a freak in my college,’” Kannan remembered of what the college student wrote. He attained out to her, and from there, they established the Tribe and welcomed extra college students in. He remembered those people first few conferences wherever they checked in with each other. Other times they talked about additional serious issues like coming out to beloved ones or navigating discussions with household users throughout the holidays. About five yrs later on, the team has now amassed about 45 users.
Talking about Rainbow Tribe, he turned psychological. He imagined about the pupils who beforehand attended Julian when the club did not exist nevertheless and the purpose that he performed — or didn’t — in encouraging individuals pupils feel observed or listened to.
“God appreciates how many kids have long gone through this place and just not had a location,” he mentioned. “If you are the voice of institutional memory — and there aren’t quite a few individuals around who can set in 23 a long time at Julian — you have to consider duty for wherever memory is excluded.”
The issue about Kannan is he doesn’t fail to remember. He listens and learns.
On a student’s desk, Kannan stretches out one particular of his fingers, every single finger donning what he phone calls his “Hindu bling.” He slips these rings on every day, bringing with him the spirit and fight of Mahalakshmi, the goddess of prosperity Lord Mahavishnu, the protector and Lord Hanuman who evokes righteousness. Like them, his purpose as a instructor is to be a “buffer” for his students.
“You’re just striving to make sure someone else doesn’t have as crappy an encounter as you did in university. You want to be the buffer so that the establishment doesn’t inflict the identical pain it did on you.”
