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January 22, 2017 Lessons on the Black Lives Matter movement will be incorporated into some but not all Philadelphia classrooms this week.

Teachers who choose to take part in the optional weeklong event to discuss and learn about the movement, developed by a local group of activist educators, are encouraged to introduce a range of activities and curriculum into their teaching. For example, organizers say, materials include "The Revolution Is Always Now" coloring pages for very young students, and science lessons about the biology of skin color for high schoolers.

Philadelphia's Black Lives Matter (BLM) week, while not mandatory nor sponsored by the school system, has become a point of controversy among local teachers and has renewed debate nationwide on how best to discuss race in the classroom, as the United States continues to grapple with questions of racial inequality. Educators and activists who support bringing BLM into lesson plans and classroom discussions say it provides students with an opportunity to learn about, and engage with, relevant social issues in a more thoughtful and informed way. But others argue that celebrating the movement in schools only teaches students one side of the story.

"This is a critical issue of our time in our society, but also in our students' lives," said Charlie McGeehan, an English and history teacher and member of the Caucus of Working Educators, an activist group within the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, to the Philadelphia Inquirer. "It's important for us to dive in."

Christopher Paslay, an English teacher at Philadelphia's Swenson Arts and Technology High School, disagrees. He told the Inquirer that while he supports equal rights and justice for all students, regardless of race, he feels the movement encourages divisions in society.

"It challenges nuclear families, and our justice system," Mr. Paslay said. "I don't think kids should be taught that Western society is perpetrating a war on black people."

The Philadelphia teachers are not the first to ignite debate over the place of Black Lives Matter in schools. In the 2014-15 school year, a group of teacher librariansin theSan Francisco Unified School Districtcreated an online compilation of resources related to the movement for teachers to use in the classroom, including grand jury documents, poetry, videos and graphics, readings, and lesson plans and activities for students of all ages.

Last October,hundreds of educators in Seattle, Wash., woreBlack Lives Matter shirts to school in a coordinated effort. Many of those teachers also taught lessons about institutional racism on that day, the blog "I Am An Educator" reports.

"This is a consciousness-raising event," wrote educators from Seattle's Washington Middle School and the group Social Equality Educators in an online FAQ."School is part of society, students and staff are part of society, and so what is happening within our societydeserves and demands our attention.This is a 'teachable moment' for the Seattle Public School community."

Opponents of such events say that educators cross a line by promoting controversial political stances that not all Americans agree with. But others argue that schools inherently shape and influence the perspectives of young people, no matter what the lesson content.

"Classrooms are never neutral sites. They are contested spaces, where the imbrications of competing interests wrestle daily for ethical real estate," writes David Kirkland, an associate professor of English and urban education at New York University, for The Huffington Post. "They have the power to move our assumptions away from the stale and negative deficit assumptions that strip away Black humanity and toward those complex narratives of people that build humanity and nurture sensitivities toward that humanity in ways that abolish pre-existing internal and external contracts of bigotry and violence."

Taking some time to discuss BLM protests and high-profile police shootings can be highly beneficial to improving students' understanding of the world around them, advocates say and at a time when teenagers are increasingly plugged into social media and other online news sources, they argue that it's increasingly important for young people to have a healthy, safe outlet to discuss the videos they see on television or in their Facebook feed.

"They're reading it in their social media platforms, they're reading it on Facebook and Instagram and they're seeing what's happening," said Jinnie Spiegler, the director of curriculum for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), to The Atlantic. "But theyre not having the opportunity to really talk about it, to read about it, to learn what actually happened and think critically about it."

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Philadelphia teachers plan 'Black Lives Matter week': Does ...

by Nina Shepherd

Black lives matter, Well, I have to admit. The first time I heard these words I thought they were silly. I couldnt believe that after all these years people now decided to be interested in the wrongdoings my people faced daily. But as the hashtag grew, and the sympathetic bystanders decreased, and the activism rose, I began to become optimistic. I thought to myself, maybe black lives really do matter. I mean from the moment I came into this world the standards for me to meet were basically nonexistent. I want to small charter school, yes, but was extremely good at math.

I was blessed as an upper-middle-class child and never understood what it was like to be that black person. I always had an identity. I was Nina Shepherd, younger sister of Chris and Jazmyn Shepherd.

Everyone knew how I was. I was important.

Until I moved.

I moved and went to a rather prestigious elementary school called King and thats when I became nothing. The school was named after Martin Luther King, a hero to the black race, a hero to America. But why was it when I looked around I saw no one like me or that hero? There were a total of twentyof us in the whole school from kindergarten to fifth grade. I was now that black child. At my charter school I was three years ahead in math but when I went to this place I was put in math support. It was obvious that they didnt even look at my transcript. I was a straight A student. I was in advanced classes. But they decided based off my skin tone that I was dumb. I must have been like all those other black children struggling just to keep up and so there I stayed, even through middle school up until the very last year. And if being underestimated and demeaned, wasnt enough I had to watch my mother cry as my brother who was 64 roamed around the streets at night to show how gangsta he really was. He went to school were the large majority of the kids were black.

And he was that black kid that betrayed his race to fit in with the enemy. So he had to prove himself. So he started acting like a fool staying out late, then mom got worried.

Mom cried, mom held on tight.

Mom tried to keep up the fight.

But what can you do when your child is being rebellious?

You just have to wait, and hope they grow out of it.

You just have to be patient.

But Momma couldnt be patient,

Momma didnt have the time.

Because when a white man is acting up, they get escorted home,

But when a black man is slightly defiant, they get shot.

When a black man gets pulled over, they get shot.

And when a black man has his hands up in surrender, they get shot.

So now,

Now when I watch the TV and I see these young black men on the news day after day

get shot, by the police, the people who are supposed to protect us, I cant help but think what if, what if that was my brother? But then why are we even surprised? I mean since when have the authorities been on our side? They allowed us to become slaves. They allowed for us who were free to be sold to slavery. They allowed for us to be segregated, treated unfairly for years. Chased us through town as though we were vermin. Called their beast to feast upon our flesh. They oppressed and oppressed and oppressed us, for hundreds and hundreds of years. So why all of a sudden did we believe that we were part of these society that we never chose in the first place? That we were welcome in the towns we fucking built? That we were equal? We are not equal, we will never be equal. Theyve fooled us time and time again. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. When will the ignorance fade? When will reality sink in? That to them we will never be more than dumb, naive, shady, little niggas.

Nina Shepherd attends Huron High School in Ann Arbor. She is fifteenyears old. About herself, to contextualize this spoken word poem, she says: I am a black teenager surrounded by people of different pigments, but few are like mine. I have an elder brother who is black as well is six feet tall and well, scary. So this is something that was really important to me, which is why I wrote it all down.

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Chrissy Teigen, John Legend, More Attend Obama's Farewell Party Bryan Cranston Nails Donald Trump Impression Jessica, Jerry Seinfeld Pay Emotional Tribute to Garry Shandling

Not quite LOLing. Jerry Seinfeld was slammed for an insensitive Black Lives Matter tweet he sent out on Thursday, January 26, in conjunction with his Crackle series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

New! the 62-year-old Seinfeld alum wrote. Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Lewis Black. Blacks life matters. The tweet follows the same format that the comedian uses for all his guests. (The tweet from one week prior read: New Comedians. Cars Getting Coffee! Cedric The Entertainer. No affiliation with Cedric The Regular Person.)

Twitter users were quick to spot the distasteful joke and call Seinfeld out on the thoughtless blunder.

Seinfeld has been a proponent for loosening up censorship on comedians in the past. In June 2015, he told ESPN Radios Colin Cowherd that he chose to no longer perform on college campuses because students were too hyper-sensitive to perceived sensitive material.

I dont play colleges, he told Cowherd at the time. I hear a lot of people tell me, Dont go near colleges. Theyre so PC. Seinfeld added that eve his own pre-teen daughter was starting to call him out on his sometimes inflammatory remarks.

"I'll give you an example: My daughter's 14... My wife says to her, 'Well, you know, in the next couple years, I think maybe youre going to want to be hanging around the city more on the weekends, so you can see boys,'" he said of his wife, Jessica Seinfeld, and the couple's eldest daughter, Sascha. "You know what my daughter says? She says, 'That's sexist.'"

"They just want to use these words 'Thats racist,' 'That's sexist,' 'Thats prejudice,'" he added. "They don't even know what the f--k they're talking about.

As of Saturday morning, Seinfelds controversial tweet remains on his page.

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Poverty, economic mobility to be discussed at Black Lives Matter Charlotte presentation Charlotte Observer Black Lives Matter Charlotte will host a free discussion of poverty and economic mobility at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Plaza United Methodist Church, 5600 The Plaza. Nikkea Wiler and Bob Simmons of the Race Matters For Juvenile Justice leadership team will ...

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Poverty, economic mobility to be discussed at Black Lives Matter Charlotte presentation - Charlotte Observer

Throughout his campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump vowed to stand up for Americaslaw enforcement community.

Immediately after President Trump took office, the White House website scrubbed severalIssue pages that were featured by the Obama administration. Among other issues, the Civil Rights page was replaced with a tab literally titled: Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community.

The description of the topic totals more than 300 words and boldly declares:

The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump administration will end it.

President Trump does not outline specifically how he plans to end what he terms the nations anti-police atmosphere. During a GOP debate in January last year, Trump said police officers were the most mistreated people in America. We have to give them more authority and we have to give them far more respect, Trump said in a Facebook video last February. The countrys largest police union endorsed him.

Trump has largely the opposite relationship with activists and protesters who have railedagainst police officers mistreatments of minorities, policies like stop and frisk and the lack of accountability for those involved in deadly force.

Last July, Trump floated the idea of having the attorney general investigate Black Lives Matter. He said the group has essentially called for the death of police and contributed to what his administration now officially refers to as an anti-police atmosphere in America.

Black Lives Matter told theGrio.com in a statement:

Whether or not the [White House] website language is directed at us, both the Trump administration and policymakers have made clear they dont respect the first amendment, a cornerstone of real democracy. Punishing people who disagree with you is not only anti-democratic, it teaches our children that dissent is inherently dangerous.

During President Trumps campaign, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the organization anti-American and inherently racist. Giuliani, an avid Trump supporter, was previously on a short list to become Attorney General but was later not offered the cabinet post.

BLM leaders tell theGrio.comthatunder Trumps leadership, their mission remains the same, and they have no plans to let the administration compromise their existence.

Time and again, police have proven incapable of being unbiased and non-prejudicial toward Black people, so its fitting that our communities are in direct conflict with them and their deadly approach. However, calling us anti-police for voicing our dissent against police brutality is like calling free speech anti-American.

According to records by the Washington Post,black males made up 34 percent of unarmed persons killed by police in 2016 despite only representing about 6 percent of the total U.S. population.

These statistics combined with increasing attention on cases involving officers use of deadly force have led to more scrutiny of police departments by federal agencies and national protests of policing methods and policies. The BLM movement in particular has its roots in the aftermath of Trayvon Martins death and George Zimmermans subsequent acquittal. The deathof Michael Brown in Ferguson took everything to another level.

The Missouri town, its residents, racial resentment and police department immediately became a national story. Protests, riots and military-style police tactics dominated news coverage for months.

Born out of this was the so-called Ferguson Effect an unsupported theory that anti-police sentiment and the potential virality of police encounters captured on video had made officers jobs tougher to execute and therefore put their lives in danger. The theorywaspromoted by FBI Director James Comey in late 2015. Comey said the restraint some officers show out of fear of being disciplined or shamed was partly responsible for crime spikes in certain cities.

David Pyrooz, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, assembled a team of researchers attempting to find evidence a Ferguson effect exists. Pyrooz tells theGrio.com his team foundno measurable proof that was the case.

Theres so much speculation than there was evidence out there on the topic and you know you dont want to see policies gettingdriven by speculation, Pyrooz said. You want to see polices driven by the evidence thats at hand.

According to Pyrooez, his study collected and analyzed crime data from police departments across the country in cities with populations that exceed 200,000 people. Researchers looked at data one year before Michael Browns death and one year after to see if there was any discernible change in the crime rate and if the Ferguson Effect had any legs.

Something is happening, its just not happening on a national scale. Pyrooz said. When you look at violent crime, when you look at property crime, and the aggregate of those two and when you look at overall crime we just didnt see a redirection taking place in these large cities.

For theNational Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, representing more than 3,000 black law enforcement executives,the organization says it is ready to work with the Trump administration. NOBLEs President Perry Tarrant made it known policing is difficult in these times.

I would agree with the President that attacks on police are dangerous to civil order, Tarrant said. I further condemn assaults and ambushes of officers as wrong and not what we as Americans should accept.

NOBLE worked on Obamas Joint Task Force to offer solutions for 21st century policing that include improving hiring practices, additional training measures and community policing. As it relates to Black Lives Matter, the group is not placing blame on the organization.

The whole movement of Black Lives Matter has certainly made a number of folks uncomfortable which is great, Tarrant insists. Because its now positioned people to be a little more self-reflective about themselves on an individual basis, and more importantly about their organizations. And when it comes to police reform sometimes you have to be made uncomfortable to recognize and realize that change is necessary.

Trump Administration officials couldnt be reached for comment for this story.

Ashantai Hathawayis a reporter at theGrio. Keep up with her on Twitter@ashantaih83.

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Black Lives Matter responds to President Trump's pro-police platform - The Grio