 Once he got a hold on you, he would hold you tight and never let you go. A few years ago, I was at an NEA Awards in Exxon's Teaching Gala. And one of my fellow awardees who's here today, Dr. Melissa Collins, brought me her father, Coach Collins. Now Coach Collins was a high school football coach from Memphis, Tennessee. And since I had family out in Memphis, I said, let me engage him and ask him a couple of questions. And so I asked him about his career. And if he ever coached a young guy who was an offensive lineman, right around maybe in the 70s, and Coach Collins took maybe a second, that's all, and said, oh yeah, you're Parker's boy. I said, oh my goodness. Within a second, he saw my father's face in mine. And his quote of him was, once he got a hold of you, he never let you go. What's surprising was that he remembered it that quickly, quite honestly. But what wasn't surprising was how he described my father. My father was tenacious. And it's that tenacity that led him to be the only person in his whole family to leave Memphis, Tennessee with a bachelor's degree and later a master's degree. And when he got that degree, it was almost like he was making a promise to the family that he hadn't seen before, namely us. Education was a centerpiece in our experience as children. And with his promise and my mother's example, that's what fueled me to become an educator. But it's about the promise. So here's what I'd like you to do. And I'm glad that Linda really queued this up for me. I'd like you to think about another child today. So I want you to think and get a child in your head for the duration of this talk. Here's the deal, it could be yourself when you were younger, it could be someone that you know, it could be someone that you taught. But I have two rules. One rule, they must be black or brown. Second rule, they must be, and you're remembering, 10 or younger. So I'm gonna give you about 10 seconds or so to get that child in your mind. Now, hopefully the child is in your mind. And I want you to imagine a look of terror on that child's face. That was the look that I made as a child when in seventh grade, my teacher was so angry with me that he almost left an entire bruised ring around my arm as he pulled me to the principal's office. I made a promise in my heart at that time to never ever make a kid feel that way when I became an adult. Now imagine that child with a look of joy on their face. That was me in the 10th grade in Ms. Dew's class. Oh, it was amazing. I remember writing a journal article describing Thanksgiving in my house. And before that time, I always kept my writing to myself, but she read it and she affirmed me and I was so happy. That was one of the first times that I was perceived as an asset in a classroom and not a threat. So I remember that and I made a promise in my soul that I would always live to make people feel like that. And so today I wanna talk to you about your heart. I wanna talk to you about your soul. I wanna talk to you about your impact and how the promises we make and the actions we take can either connect all three of those or disintegrate them. It's all about the promise. And the promise is a declarative statement that you either making your heart, you screaming your soul, or you state through your actions. It is the mark that you leave in this world and the standard by which people judge who you are. That's what a promise is. As I reflect back on my whole life and education, I'm so happy about all the promises that I kept. I remember the faces of kids when I told them after seven years of education where they were educated below their capacity, that we were gonna put them in gifted and talented education. I can remember their faces right now as I'm talking to you. But I also remember the promises that I broke. Remember, angrily yelling at Raquel in sixth grade who would not stop talking. I was literally near rage. I remember that feeling of looking at her, feeling my rage and almost being near out of control. I broke that promise of safety. I remember the times where I thought that the only language arts content that I needed to learn was to pass the practice exam. And so I would stay up, I passed the exam, but then I wouldn't prepare the right way for the kids that are right in front of me. That's a promise broken. I remember times in class where I would ask a difficult question and then when they showed confusion, I would rephrase the question and take all the difficulty out. I would ask and answer my own questions and do the thinking for kids, thinking that I wanted the smooth class and the happy kid, but the results didn't match my intent. That's a broken promise. I have broken promises. And if we are all honest, we might have them too. So I want you to examine that today as we go through this talk because the way to restore promises is not hashtags and blogs and school improvement plans. All that's nice, but the best change is changed actions. Actions matter. So I wanna talk to you about three concrete things we can do to restore promises that have been broken to black and brown kids throughout this country. That is my focus. First, let's commit in our heart to being anti-racist. So in 1954, Brown versus Board Education, we said we are all about integration. 2018, we were as segregated as we were in 1954. Our words have not matched our outcomes. Now today, everyone wants to talk about equity. Everyone is an equity champion. Yet the gap remains the same. Words, actions, when you commit to being anti-racist, you're not just talking about what you're for, you're talking about what you're against. You're against separating and excluding kids from education that they need on a daily basis. You're against not giving black and brown kids high quality resources, access to complex texts and tasks every day in every class. When you commit to being anti-racist, it's a heart commitment. You say, we're not gonna say these kids can't or these kids won't. We'll take these out and we'll say these are our kids. The great author James Baldwin said, for they are all our children. We will either profit, buy or pay for what they become. So the first thing we do to restore the promise is to become and commit to being anti-racist. Not just equitable, not just inclusive, against racist practice. Then we anchor our soul in reflection. A great philosopher said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think the unexamined lesson plan isn't worth teaching. There are too many lesson plans that are not thought about with our kids' needs at heart. We gotta stop that. We have to reflect and be honest. We can't say that we didn't mean to, but the outcomes still remain the same. We can't say that we have had color blind intentions and yet still see color-coded results. So we have to reflect honestly across racial lines. We have to talk to our students and not be defensive when they answer. We have to accept that the community trusts us with their kids, no matter who they are or how they come to us. And that particular outcome is on us. It is so very critical that we strengthen our reflection with studying the works of all these authors in the literature around equity in classrooms and anti-racism. It's out there. What needs to stop happening is that people of color need to be the spokesman to help us stop being discriminated against. It's all of our work. We have to do our work. And as a teacher in the 21st century, with all of this information at our fingertips, it is not enough for us not to know anymore. We must know. And as a person who I love to watch, Yon LaVance Ann says, do your work. So we have to anchor our soul in reflection, honest reflection. So first, we commit to being anti-racist in our practice. Then we anchor our soul in reflection. And lastly, we take the action to be who we needed when we were kids. Think about that. When you were in school, who did you need when you were hurting? Who did you need when you were unsure of how you were gonna make it out? Are you that person to kids of color? Are you that person to the kid that you're thinking about right now? Have you been? Because the impact of that is long lasting. Do you remember what you said when you went into education that you would do? Do you remember what you said when you had your own school, your own foundation, what you said you'd do? Have you forgotten it? You can claim it back. Just do what you did before, but do it better. Always act in the interest of kids no matter what. Their future is on us. About two years ago, my six year old son and my daughter, Layla and Joshua, they were playing right in the ocean, right out near the sea, kind of on the shore, coming back and forth. It was such a picturesque day. It was beautiful. My wife was there. We were just having a great time. And so as I was watching them and was reflecting on how blessed we were, I looked at the skyline and I saw people all over the place just having fun, going out deep, some coming back. Saw the lifeguards everywhere. It was a beautiful scene. When I came back to look at my two children, only one came back. That was my daughter. So Joshua was missing. And in that moment, my wife and I froze because we knew that he didn't know how to swim. And so we tried to run after him. We went up and down. My wife frantically asked people near her, can you pray because we don't know where he is? Those seven minutes felt like a month. When we finally found him with a lifeguard, he was shaking and we were shaking. Now imagine an entire group of kids that look like my son that have been out to sea in public education for their whole lifetime. Given only the equivalent educationally of a life jacket and they see they have to manage after they leave us. While educators look the other way while they drift further and further away from standards, from the capacity to create their own choices and for the desire and the ability to be human. Imagine that. When we commit to being anti-racist, reflecting earnestly and sincerely and being who we needed when we were young, we not only hold on to them so tight that we never let them go, we not only find them safe with a lifeguard, we actually bring them home.