Category Archives: Cultural Proficiency

I Choose Thankful

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November is traditionally a time of reflections on one’s blessings, and as I think about this school year, it has been full of ups and downs and in only been 13 weeks.  One of the biggest challenges is seeing children bear such heavy burdens. Whether it is a parent’s illness, today-i-choosephysical/emotional abuse or neglect, the loss of a parent through family separation or death, or just the stress of poverty and the worry that comes with it about one’s basic needs being met, it is hard to see children suffering.  Add to this mix teachers who have their own personal stressors and a nation of unrest in a highly polarized political climate. Forget the typical school challenges full moons and holidays, folks; we are talking about real trauma.

Supporting children living with trauma can be a challenge. They bring it in the door. Trauma may not be visible, but a child in trauma will let you know immediately if they are suffering.  With their actions, their words, their lack of connection, they will let you know. They fight, they run, they shut down. Children in the most need of love often ask for it in the most unlovable ways.  It can be exhausting for those responsible for providing “trauma care” much less a high-quality education.  One could easily lose hope.

However, I have learned so much from supporting children of today.  If you can make that thankful-people-are-happyconnection, create that bond, make the child feel safe, there is no better feeling in the world. When you watch a teacher persist to form a relationship despite multiple attempts by the student to push them away, there is a sense of pride to be a part of an organization that puts first things first.

I have learned that it is in the most difficult circumstances that the biggest blessings are revealed.  We can be grateful for the challenges and know that they are helping develop our character into who we are meant to be, or we can feel mistreated.  

We can choose to feel blessed knowing that we will never be given more than we can handle, or we can wallow in despair.
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We always have a choice.   We can feel wronged, or we can be grateful for the challenges and know that they are tied to a greater purpose.  We can worry about the difficulties we face, or we can choose to feel blessed knowing that we will never be given more than we can handle.  We can grieve the things we do not have, or we choose to see the abundance of our lives and all the opportunities that lay before us. Thankful isn’t something that happens, it’s something you do on purpose. And when we choose gratitude, it becomes you-have-a-choiceimpossible to feel stressed.  They are two emotions that cannot exist at the same time.

So while it is difficult to see children suffer, I choose to be thankful that I get to be a positive force in their lives.  While sometimes the behavior of these students can be beyond difficult, I am blessed to have a staff willing to learn about trauma and utilize trauma-sensitive practices to support these students. While there are many times I have pondered thoughts of “if I just had more… (time, money, staff, parent involvement, resources)”, I know that in my district and community, I have an abundance of support and trust to make decisions that are best for our children, not just a few, but all of them. While it would be easy to lose faith facing such challenging circumstances, I choose to have grit and hope in the future of public education and how we can teach children coping strategies and value for each other in addition to reading, writing, and math.  I am blessed.  I am thankful.  Are you? It’s your choice.

A Broken Filter

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I think one of the biggest problems our world faces today stems from the fact that we have become a nation with a broken filter. Please know that when I say this, I don’t mean this to be true of everyone, but in general.  Too many feel free to say whatever they want and apply it to all with little regard for unintended consequences. Social media perpetuates this because so often it lacks accountability. Then we hear someone else’s blanket statement and believe it applies to us, so more blanket statements occur. Even more troublesome is we often say things on social media we would not say to someone’s face. We know this lack of filtering makes us feel icky, but yet, it continues.try-to-be-a-filter-not-a-sponge-quote-1

At the same time, while we don’t filter our own thoughts and opinions, we often filter the perspective of others. We don’t spend much time thinking about why those who have different views of ourselves have those feelings. We forget that just because we may not agree, we can have empathy. We sometimes assume anyone different from ourselves has the extreme perspective that is plastered all over the news and social media and blindly categorize without filtering what is true and what is not.

The truth is blanket statements never truly apply to everyone.  The truth is the extremist views really are a small group of the population, and their statements are only true about a smallwithout-a-filter-a-man-is-just-chaos-walking-quote-1 group. I think we have to not take people’s “blanket social media” posts as personal and feel the need to respond or share to them publicly unless they were specifically directed to us. Public arguments on social media rarely end in harmony or positive resolution. As an educator, I still tell children “if you can’t say something nice…”, “just because they said it doesn’t mean it’s true,”  “try to put yourself in their shoes” . These are things I learned from my family and teachers, and I believe they still apply.

Thank you to all of my social media friends who continue to post joy and spread happiness.  That is always what this world needs:  patience, compassion, hope, joy, and faith.  Basically, a little less judgment, a little more restraint.  We need to fix our filter.  

This world needs patience, compassion, hope, joy, and faith…less judgment, more restraint. We need to fix our filter.
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Make it a great day social media friends; it’s your choice. 

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What If?

Best Practice, Cultural Proficiency, Education, Leadership, School Culture, School Funding, Transformation, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We seem to be at a crossroads in education.  If we go one direction, we will continue to judge schools and their success by a single test without giving consideration to the growth that has occurred. Teachers will feel it necessary to resort to test preparation as that is how they are judged. Our best teachers will avoid the demanding classrooms so as not to put themselves at risk of judgment, mandates, and additional paperwork. Students will be limited in what they learn because what is assessed on a test is only a fraction of what they need to know to be successful in life. Parents will become disillusioned with the progress and those with means will move them to other options. District will put pressure on school leaders and will, in turn, pass this on to teachers with more paperwork and documentation. In the meantime, our society becomes more and more segregated. The ones left behind become angry and the ones who left become fearful of them because they can no longer relate to each other. What if this approach results in more violence in the future than what we see even today?

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But what if we choose a different future?

What if federal and state governments quit trying to define student success with a test? What if they quit trying to quantify complex human development by a test score?  What if they encouraged schools to use these assessments to improve their instruction and meet needs of students, but left the true definitions of school success to the communities where those schools reside? What if special interest groups took “special interest” in our schools and pledged support rather than trying to find out ways to take the public funds that they haven’t yet been able to touch?

What if communities stand behind their schools?  What if when they feel the school is struggling, they step up to help, provide support for students, staff, and families? What if those with criticisms couldn’t sling mud at public education without having direct
knowledge of the situations with which they are passing judgment?  What if wanted to speak about a school and it’s performance, you must first spend time there with the people volunteering?  What if you couldn’t lump schools all together but had to speak specifically about situations in which you had personal experience? What if our media spent as much time talking about all the accomplishments of public schools and didn’t just highlight the isolated negative examples?

What if schools don’t have to worry about spending funds to survive, but can use money in practices that promote “thrive”?
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What if school administrators don’t have to worry about spending funds to survive, but can use dollars in practices that promote thriving such as professional learning for teachers?  What if they felt free to restructure schedules to provide teachers with ongoing collaboration and professional learning so that they could be sure that teachers were always at the forefront of their profession, masters of the learning standards and best practice in instructional techniques? What if when they saw a teacher in need, they could provide that teacher with the support they needed to grow and improve rather than feeling pressure to get them out?

What if because schools feel supported, teachers feel less stressed and feel they have the time to stop and build strong relationships with students and their families? What if teachers feel they can develop innovative, meaningful lessons that actually apply to the future that our what-if-4-300x175students will live in because they aren’t scared about test outcomes? What if they could collaborate and share without the pressure to hold back so that they could ensure they weren’t the bottom performer?  What if we valued teachers as the creators of all other professions and compensated them as such?

What if parents didn’t abandon schools for homeschooling, private and charter schools in an effort to isolate their children from those with experiences that may be very different from their own?  What if they were adamant to model that when something isn’t what we want it to be, they stick with it and become a part of the solution?

What if we had children from all different backgrounds that learned to value each other and learned to live together without fear and without anger? What if these students were able to learn the skills needed in reading, writing, math along with skills like collaboration, grit, growth mindset, technology, and problem-solving?

What if?

I can say I am fortunate to be a part of a district where our school board fights for local control.  I work in a district where our district leaders don’t point fingers, but rather ask “what can we do to support you?” and give campuses the freedom to do what they need to let-be-what-ifdo to make a difference with their students.  I have parents walking my halls taking care of all students, willing to take part in conversations when they have concerns, rather than resorting to silence and abandonment.  I have teachers that are the epitome of lifelong
learners. They have become masters of state standards and design meaningful learning that is resulting in stronger students with each passing year.  I have students that are learning the value of diversity.  They are learning to work things out together and hold themselves accountable for high levels of learning and growth. My campus has gone from plummeting scores and declining enrollment to scores and enrollment on the rise.  I am one of the fortunate principals who has had the freedom not to be defined by a test and the feel the support of my district and community.

What if all schools had this?

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No, Your Child Shouldn’t Attend a Failing School

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There is lots of propaganda these days about vouchers and school choice.  A favorite line to stir the masses on the topic is to say how children shouldn’t have to attend failing schools.

I think we have to consider what a failing school in NOT:

  • A Title I school-“Title I” is just a designation that states a certain portion of the school’s population is economically disadvantaged.  Because of this, the school receives additional funds to train teachers and provide additional resources so that students who may have entered school behind because of lack of opportunity.  If a Title I school is considered “school-wide” than even those children who are not economically disadvantaged benefit.  It is actually a huge benefit to attending a Title I school because these teachers are highly skilled in making a difference with all students, not just the students who learn easily. I took my own child to a Title I screen-shot-2016-09-25-at-1-33-31-pmschool rather than his affluent neighborhood school because I knew they would grow him, wherever he started from.  Being economically disadvantaged is not contagious.  You can’t catch it by attending a Title I school.  Children in Title I schools learn the value of diversity and are more likely to learn to know how to function with others who are different than themselves in the real world.
  • A school whose state test scores are below ninety percent –Just because a school appears to have high passing rates doesn’t mean they are a great school. It may simply mean that the students walked into the school with a good amount of skills learned from home. Right now on the Texas accountability test, passing rates are fairly low.  The test has changed to reflect higher-level thinking, and they are gradually building the passing rate as schools make the shift from “strategies” to “thinking.”  
    A high passing rate (or a low one for that matter) doesn’t tell you if a school is adding value to students.
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    The score in and of itself doesn’t show you for sure if a student is performing higher than they were when they arrived.  Sometimes when a student enters school with large gaps, the score may not yet be passing, but it is showing astounding growth.  An overall passing rate doesn’t tell you if a school can make a difference with all students.  
    A great school should be able to teach any child, any day, and grow their academic ability and their social-emotional health.
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  • A school with diverse ethnicities, cultures, religions, and backgrounds- Our world is changing and becoming more and more diverse.  Groups that were once majority are finding that is no longer the case.  To prepare children for the 21st-century world, they need to develop the skills to value and collaborate with others from all backgrounds, including those that are significantly different from their own.  Students who attend “homogenous” schools are more likely to struggle in college and beyond because the haven’t developed the skill set to work with others besides those who are most like themselves.

Here is what I think a failing school IS:

  • A school that doesn’t put children first – Schools should filter every decision they make through what is best for their students.  If it isn’t making a difference for children in a school, it shouldn’t matter.
  • A school that doesn’t value partnerships with their families –Schools should always be working to invite their parents in, ask their opinions and build relationships so that they can partner in the child’s education.
    If parents don’t matter, you might be in a failing school.
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    Does your school provide opportunities to be involved other than fundraisers? Does it have a parent involvement policy?  If not, it should.
  • A school that doesn’t grow EVERY student – It’s easy to appear to be a good school if all the students are the same and performing on high levels.  However, if a child walks in the door with lots of skills, a school should be able to grow the student from that point, not rest on their laurels A failing school is one that takes advantage of the fact that students may already be able to perform skills and doesn’t attempt to grow them more.  They may also not be able to grow students that have more difficulty learning.  They resort to labels and excuses of why it is the child that is the problem, rather than accepting the challenge and ensuring learning happens.

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  • A school that doesn’t seek to teach problem-solving, higher level thinking, and 21st-century skills necessary to survive in a future that we cannot yet fully define – Our world has changed drastically, just since I was in school.  There are jobs and technology we couldn’t have even dreamed of at the time I was in elementary school.  We have to intentionally think about this world that doesn’t exist.  We have to make sure that our students are proficient readers, writers, and mathematicians, but we also have to make sure they are thinkers, problem-solvers, collaborators, and have skills to persist when things get challenging, while also being willing to grow.  Students can no longer live in a world of “perfection” because learning is messy and they don’t need to waste time memorizing things that they can access easily through technology.
  • A school using technology in learning only to consume information –To often schools have lots of technology available, but they are only using it to access programs that allow for practice of skills or looking up information.  Truly great schools are teaching students the programs that not only allow access to information but applications that allow them to create and demonstrate their understanding of concepts.  Research is showing that this type of creativity is critical for the future.
  • A school driven by high stakes testing and preparation –Too many schools these days are trying to prove their worth through high scores on high stakes tests.  The problem is that these schools are abandoning real learning for test preparation and cartoon5_2_13drills of skills rather than relevant learning grounded in real-life application.  Before you assume a good score means a good school, you may need to look deeper to find out exactly how those scores are being achieved and what may be sacrificed for the performance on a single day.
  • A school that doesn’t function as a learning organization –  A successful school is one where everyone grows and learns: leaders, teachers, students, parents, and community.  Administration and teachers should constantly be learning and evolving to meet the needs of the students and an ever-changing future.  They ways students are learning shouldn’t look like the ways we taught them 20, 10, or even five years ago.  There should be opportunities for parents and the community to participate in the learning as well. If the only learning is that of the students, there is definitely a problem.

Yes, no child should have to attend a failing school.  We just need to be careful to make sure we really know what a “failing school” really is.

It’s Not a Pep Rally, It’s a Hope Rally

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One of the most important things in my school culture is the time that the entire school spends together every Friday morning. I’d love to say I invented the idea of a morning assembly for elementary students, but I didn’t. I actually learned about it from my oldest son’s elementary principal. I remember her presenting it as a way to get students excited about school and ensure they were there on time.

I saw the idea evolve through several schools in that district. I didn’t necessarily buy into the idea at the time. They typically involved things that were usually done on the announcements, but now live and then expanded to student celebrations and a song.

When I came to my new school, one of the most urgent needs was the transformation of our school culture. They had been a campus where each team had a different school shirt, where they had never done anything with the entire school at the same time, and they were desperate to become unified.

I tried to follow the number one rule that they teach you in principal school (don’t change anything the first year!) but what could I do? They wanted this. They needed it! It became our tradition and weekly time together as a whole school. It became Eagle Shuffle.

I have heard our Eagle Shuffle referred to as a pep rally for elementary school. The thing is, I don’t think that is an accurate description. It’s really more of a “hope rally.”  During Eagle Shuffle the purpose is to be together, to celebrate our successes and to saturate our students’ minds with positive feelings about education.  I want them to have so much positive imprinting about school and hope for their future that it carries them all the way through graduation—from college!

Marketing agencies constantly play to children as consumers. They use bright colors, catchy jungles, and fun to sell their cereal, television shows, music, toys, and video games. Can we afford to do any less when it comes to education? I believe we must do the same thing with our students and public education if we hope to keep them as our clientele through 13 years of school. This is our product, and we only have ourselves to blame for poor marketing if nobody is buying it.

Some might ask how we can afford to give up the instructional time. I say this is the most powerful instructional time.
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 We are teaching our students who to stop and celebrate themselves and each other, we are teaching them about cultural proficiency and how to value one another. We are teaching them about grit and growth mindset and naming examples we have seen. We are teaching them there is always time to stop and sing and cheer. I need to know that when the day comes where they question whether education is worth it, they will remember their days at Degan and Eagle Shuffle and dig deep to find their grit and growth mindset and know that they can always make it a great day because it is always their choice.

A New Hope

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The concept of hope has become quite intriguing to me.  My campus uses the Gallup survey with our students and one of the measures is how much “hope” our students have.  Unfortunately, what we have seen is that the answer is not much.  It’s not just my school, but nationally, results show our students lack hope.  While I know that the world our children face is a challenge, their chances for success are minimal if they don’t have hope that they can overcome difficulties.  Gallup defines the opposite of having hope as being “stuck”.  Stuck means you can’t grow.  If you can’t grow and improve, you become more “stuck” and even discouraged.

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Gallup Survey 2015 National Results: Hope Index

As I have thought a great deal about this dilemma, I begin considering “hope” as a verb vs. “hope” as a noun.

  • Hope as a verb is just a wish left in the hands of fate. Hope as a noun is paired with the verb “believe”. You believe that what you desire will happen because you trust and believe that it can.
  • Hope as a verb causes you to hold back a little in case it doesn’t work out. Hope as a noun allows you to give it all because you KNOW it will work out.Screen Shot 2016-08-27 at 10.47.40 AM
  • Hope as a verb results in excuses for why it didn’t work. Hope as a noun results in facing brutal facts and making adjustments to move forward.
  • Hope as a verb makes you feel at mercy of the power of others. Hope as a noun gives you the power to accomplish your dreams.

 

I believe that being intentional in helping children develop hope is key.  That is why this year, as I enter my fourth year as principal (a.k.a. Episode IV), our theme is “A New Hope.”  I need to be clear jedi symbolthat it is not “Star Wars.”  Too often those attempting to make additional profit in high states testing attempt a play on words and market “STAAR Wars” products to educators. There is too much attention on this test which takes away from the focus on people.  Current accountability systems are often a vacuüm for hope. I have no fear of state assessment.  But “STAAR” is not what drives my school or our work with students.

On the contrary, my teachers are Jedi Master’s of Hope and work diligently to help  our young padawan cultivate their hope by helping them find pathways around barriers that stand in the way of the future they wish to create for themselves.  They do this using a Jedi

To prepare our students for a face-paced, ever-changing world, we must teach them to have hope.
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mindset and  building relationships, taking time for conversations to set goals, analyze progress toward those goals, and create new paths to achieve those goals to prevent becoming stuck.  They “feel the force” of  hope and help our students to do the same.

My campus has done intense training to become a “trauma sensitive” school.  Studies show one in four children are  to trauma prior to the age of four.  Trauma, especially ongoing trauma, can teach children at a very young age that they are stuck and have no control over their environment and thus create a mindset of “stuck”.  With much preparation and new tools, we will be a beacon of hope for these students until our students can find ways around their circumstances and stockpile some hope for themselves.

Public education is certainly different from when I was in school. It is even different from when I began my career.  However, we have to continue and adapt to prepare students for the world they face, which is fast-paced and constantly changing.  To do this, students must believe they can be successful in a world where the media floods them with stories that drain hope.  Yes, we must teach reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.  However, instruction in “hope” seems to be a new necessary course.

Obviously, hope is a important component for student success.  Ihopet is the precursor to other critical skills of grit and growth mindset.  Without hope, there can be no grit and willingness to stick to challenging tasks. Without the grit to stick to challenging tasks, there can be no growth.  Without growth and improvement, purpose is lost. Hope is not a wish or a dream, but the key to making dreams come true. Because of this, our schools have to be the source of a hope for our students, because our students are our new hope for the future.

Hope Resources:

Shane Lopez, The Hope Monger and Author of Making Hope Happen

 

You Matter

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you_matter-60919As we stand on the frontier of the new school year, after a tumultuous summer of racial division, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about where our country has been and where it is going. I worry for my children and my students and the future they face. I desperately want things to be better for them.

As I grew up, I believed that the civil rights issues of the 60s were healing because of the work of people like Martin Luther King.  He had perished, but maybe we had learned?  Then in the early nineties, we faced the O.J. Simpson trials and Rodney King incident to bring to the forefront that things had not improved.  Tension seemed to die down over time,  but now, we are once again faced with riots across the country and senseless lives lost.  People quickly categorized to make sense of things they didn’t understand without looking deeper. People on all sides of the issues feel invisible, devalued, and less than human.  As a result, there is anger. Lots of it.

We have to start having conversations..that are likely to be messy, but that will require grit, grace, and a growth mindset.
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 I’ve seen people react in anger to statements such as “Black Lives Matter” or even “Blue Lives Matter.”  The truth is, a simple statement of “____ lives matter” has nothing to do with saying that one group matters more than others.  The statement has more to do with the fact that there is a population of people who are angry, hurt, and feel like they are not seen.  They feel like they do not matter to others, so they say, “Hey, I matter! Notice me.  See me.  Respect me.”

Four years ago, I worked in a place that I did not matter.  Once, I was in a public restroom it-would-be-too-easy-to-say-that-i-feel-invisible-instead-i-feel-painfully-visible-and-entirely-ignored-being-ignored-quotewith a higher official who looked through me as if I was invisible even though she was two feet in front of me. She had even been someone who had previously mentored me and praised my work to move into a principal role a just a few weeks earlier. I would go to football games in this town where the leader of the district would walk up the stadium steps and greet everyone, shaking hands and kissing babies, if you will. Ironically, his big catch phrase was “You matter.”  Every time I heard those words come from his mouth, I thought “unless he decides you don’t.”  Others noticed this behavior and began to alienate me as well. Who could blame them? I mean no one wants to be in the “you don’t matter group.”  Being invisible made me both angry and depressed.  I swung on a pendulum of despair and rage.  I wanted to go up to these people and say “Look at me! I’m here!  I matter!”

When I left this place and was able to come to a new role as principal of a campus in another district, the staff at this school shared similar stories.  Their perceptions were that they were invisible.  People who lived blocks away didn’t even seem to know the school was there.  They said that when they were with others in the district and shared what school they were from, colleagues sighed and looked at them with pity. One teacher shared “we aren’t even on the map.” eyoreNo this wasn’t literally, but what it meant was they felt invisible as if they didn’t matter. Because I knew this feeling all too well, that became my mission.  To ensure that this amazing group of educators knew they mattered…to me, to others in the district… to everyone.  In one of our first meetings, I remember saying the words “We are Degan.”  It became our hashtag and has been in place going on our fourth year.  We put it on everything.  It doesn’t mean we were better than other schools (although I am particularly fond of this amazing school community).  It means Degan Matters!  We are here.  See us.

I am fortunate now to work for a district that values the concept of cultural proficiency. A district that recognizes we are all the sum of all of our experiences, not just one or even two.  I am grateful that they provide us with intentional experiences to begin crossing this great divide to see people  for all that they are and value them, not just tolerate, ignore, or even worse, dismiss them. They expect us to see things from the alternate perspectives so that we build the relationships we all need to grow and improve.

I don’t claim to be an expert in cultural proficiency or to completely understand perspectives from lives that I haven’t lived.

The point is, you cannot judge what you don’t understand. When anyone says they matter, they are not saying you don’t.
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 A statement like this comes from hurt.  From anger.  It probably isn’t anything about you, other than to say “Hey, see me. Value me.  I want to 7816351058_c0d63f07e2_zmatter to you.” It’s time to quit making broad brush, quick judgments.  It’s time to start looking at others and seeing from their perspective.  It’s time to do better and be better.  Yes, it will take grit to work through centuries of old issues.  It will take grace as we learn how to discuss these things with empathy and compassion,  and it will take growth mindset to truly heal and move forward so that we can make this place a better world for our children and where this history can finally stop repeating itself.