This is an email from BRIGHT Magazine.
What to do if ICE comes to your door
Betsy DeVos has found her voice. She said little during the contentious runup to her appointment as education secretary, when there were nationwide protests and senators’ phone lines were flooded with callers requesting a no vote.
But this week DeVos has been rather vocal. About the protesters who blocked her way into a public school in Washington, D.C., she said on Feb. 15, “Friday’s incident demonstrates just how hostile some people are to change and to new ideas.”
Twenty-four hours later she had a different tone. “While some have characterized the flurry of attention around my confirmation in negative terms, I view it as expressions of passion, passionate parents and passionate advocates who care deeply about their kids and about education,” she told community college leaders.
But in an interview published the same day on Townhall, a conservative website, she said, “I don’t think most of those are spontaneous, genuine protests. I think they’re all being sponsored and very carefully planned. We’ve seen enough written that they want to make my life a living hell. They also don’t know what stock I come from. I will not be deterred from my mission of helping kids in this country.”
One way she could help kids would be to offer schools guidance on how to comfort and advise students who are scared they’ll be deported.
Austin teachers hand out flyer: ‘What to do if ICE comes to your door’
By Melissa B. Taboada in the Austin American-Statesman
“Don’t sign anything.” “Remain silent.” Two suggestions in a flyer written by Education Austin, the school district’s teachers’ and employees’ union. “This is an issue that is affecting our students. As educators, it is our moral and ethical responsibility to provide them information that can help,” a union member said.
“Crying is an everyday thing”: life after Trump’s “Muslim ban” at a majority-immigrant school
By Jenée Desmond-Harris in Vox
The headline says it all. Children are terrified they’ll be deported. According to a New York City school administrator, “Kids were sobbing, especially immigrant children, saying they were going to get sent back to Guinea, Senegal, Yemen. They were totally distraught. And then one kid would try to explain to another kid about deportation and it would turn into an argument about, ‘You’re going to get deported.’ ‘No, you are.’”
Study: A quarter of Texas public schools no longer teach sex ed
By Cassandra Pollock in The Texas Tribune
And “nearly 60 percent of districts used abstinence-only education programs over the same period,” Pollock writes. In 2009, the state stopped requiring students to take a health education class before graduation. Texas ranks fifth highest in the nation for teen birth rates. Alarming.
Asking For Help is Humiliating: So I started a mental health website for teenagers by teenagers.
By Nadia Ghaffari in Bright
An opinion piece by a 17-year-old high school student who wanted to do something after her friend threatened suicide. Teenagers need a way to easily find mental health help, Ghaffari decided, and that meant a teen-run website. Students from more than 20 countries have contributed videos.
On Wednesday we hosted a Twitter chat to let Betsy DeVos know how you feel about her appointment: Here’s what happened.
By Luis Miguel Echegaray in Bright
Our new engagement editor has hit the ground running. He organized a Twitter chat in conjunction with the Huffington Post, so we could hear what you had to say about the new secretary of education. Turns out you had a lot on your mind. Thank you, all who participated!
DeVos’s Education Department misspells name of NAACP co-founder in tweet — and the apology had a mistake
By Valerie Strauss in The Washington Post
It’s “Du Bois”…and “apologies.”
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