color learning and growth classroom directly affected in the distribution of resources for education and just in raising our voices and experiences as well as those of our peers we help to educate the general education equity partnership is an organization that advances race equity and education in minnesota we exist to promote a bad students of color american indian students in the cities k twelve and p secondary schools colleges and universities one of the first ways we have done this is through our solutions not suspensions campaign which addresses discipline disparities and the disproportionate suspension of african american males in minnesota as an african american male my brother's often pushed out of the classroom told that his opinion didn't matter he was suspended multiple times and not always sure about why he was suspended and often felt that it was because he was an african american male what we call that in education is that he's a contaminated student so everyone has this expectation of his behavior and he is still suffering the consequence of being pushed out through that suspension beginning of the school year across the country for the first time in the history of our nation students of color and american indian students are never going students where the majority of students enrolled in public schools across the country when it comes to race equity a lot of our teachers aminah still to have matt grown up in these communities if you have a lot of african american students in your in your state and most do but a small tiny percentage  there are african americans that a lot of raise questions we do have an under representation of teachers of color and so many of our teachers of color feel very isolated so when they do advocate or stand up for young students of color they are often push and a little corner saying well you're just defending those students of the things that we know about suspension is that once a student is pushed out of the classroom it is a disconnect there's a more appropriate manner than sending somebody out of the classroom which is a loss of instruction time and we're really trying to prevent that at the end of the day suspensions don't work for changing behaviors the research tells us suspending students at the end of the day does not do anything to improve classroom and school environments at the end of the day suspension perpetuate and increase school dropout and so all of these factors i don't think there could be much more of a compelling argument the ses says we need to have an alternative no so school to prison pipeline no no no i haven't the school to prison pipeline is when a young person maybe in their first referral or suspension is disengaged from the school system to one place where the school to prison pipeline is when people are young people are pushed out of the schools and into the streets they're picked up then and taken down to the jails and or the detention centers and that's where our record begins and once you have that tag on your name or on your file it will follow you for an explanation of a suspension is other what we found when we dug deeper into that other category is it often was subjective and by subjective i mean it was to the way i'm or the opinion of the teacher themself rather than having a metric or a system in place that said this is acceptable this is an acceptable or in this instance it is appropriate to do this this and this oh i'm a good student i don't hear that kind of an equitable scrutiny for example when you walk into a classroom there are some things that your eyes will naturally pick up particularly one of those things might be race and so you might automatically when you hear a sound you look up your eyes automatically are attracted to african american students they stick out in a classroom when you have predominately white population and therefore it might be that you are capturing an african american student that is in the midst of doing something but at the same time the same thing is happening over here but you don't notice it because your attention is drawn in another direction what do you think of suspension a slap on the wrist getting sent home possibly a criminal record you know that suspension rates course want to school arrests they're almost exact this means that taking students out of the learning environment and giving them marks on their school records it's just a school later arrest and the seizure of the student by the criminal justice system the significance of the similarity becomes all the more clear and we look at enrollment rates african american students make up on the sixteen percent of the student population but they face discipline and thirty one percent of school related arrests and thirty two percent suspension which means african american students get discipline at a for the past fifteen twenty years i never did any students to the principal's office i always dealt with whatever was going on in that class and always dealt with it in the classroom i've only had one student who was suspended and it was for physical violence suspicions for violent acts bullying arson drugs if there's a teacher who is a peer of mine who is having really strong conflict with a student i always just try to advocate for the student putting the question out there oh well have you asked the student how they're feeling or what do you think the student feels about the or why do you think they're doing this just so that teachers will remember that students are not just there to cause problems and they're not just inconveniences and i'm at a point now where because i' relationships with students i can sit and talk with them and i have relationships with teachers where we can sit down with the student and try to come up with some solutions that would allow them to keep the educational practices and me personally as a teacher i work hard to make sure that my students know that i respect them too and that they personally matter to me and it's not a i'm on top of the pyramid and they're down here we're all a community we're all a family we spend the first week of school developing roles as a class that students have ownership of a student will not work for you or do what is needed unless they know that you really care about them so building relationships with the teachers here in the building is paramount but also building relationships with community members like a mentoring is very very good for alternatives to suspension do think it's so important to be recognizing what stories we tell who we're letting our children be exposed to i'm making sure that it's representing the wide breadth of humanity and that all students are can see themselves in someone who's student was once considered a minority i strive to break the statistics presented to you in the dark just as hundreds and thousands of other students do across the nation there are people eager to change the lifestyles of future generations and the best way to end this problem is by building a community willing to end the issue relationships are key after all so parting words told to us by executive carlos it's not just about equality equality is very important equity is how you get to equality and how you get to equality in our society is that you have to do very specific things with very specific groups because not everyone has same advantages in terms of opportunity