(bright music) - [Presenter] Tonight on "Rhode Island PBS Weekly:" - Even if it's hard, you can do it.
- [Michelle] Award-winning science teacher David Upegui says his job is to help students realize their potential.
- And one of the things that I always tell my students is the universe is not stingy with talent.
We can make the world better.
We can not only learn from it, but we can change it, we can manipulate it and create a society that's more fair, more just, more equitable.
- What they've developed is one that is racially and sexually biased.
- [David Wright] Denouncing so-called critical race theory, what they consider to be woke ideology invading schools.
So why are people freaking out?
- I think the shift into actually naming systemic racism makes people uncomfortable.
(bright music) (bright music continues) - Good evening.
Welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".
I'm Pamela Watts.
Michelle San Miguel is off.
Tonight, we begin with an unlikely story out of Central Falls.
Four decades ago, teacher David Upegui was just a boy when he became homeless in the war torn country where he was born.
Today, he's an accomplished educator, lauded by the White House, and although he's proud of the attention he's received, it's not what drives him.
Michelle San Miguel recently spent time in the teacher's classroom where he showed us what motivates him.
- [Michelle] It's become his second home.
(bowl bangs) - Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
- [Students] Good afternoon.
- [Michelle] Nearly 20 years after David Upegui graduated from Central Falls High School, he returned to his alma mater to teach science.
- But before we do, let me ask a question.
Krista.
- They have a very unusual eye color.
Could that be related?
- Yeah, you guys remember when we talked about people that have jaundice?
Could this be related to jaundice?
- [Michelle] His Medical Interventions class is a favorite among students.
- Oh, is this something that's progressively getting worse?
Is this some kind of progressive disease?
Good question.
- [Michelle] He begins each class by showing them a picture of a medical phenomenon and has students ask questions about it to try to figure out what caused it.
- Is this related to what's around it?
Good.
Let me go right across here.
- Is this person in a coma?
- Can this person see?
- Are they dead?
- Are they dead?
- [Michelle] After 10 minutes of nonstop questions, he reveals to students what they're looking at.
- But here's what happened.
This was a punch to the head that caused this man in Austria to actually have a star.
- [Michelle] He says it's an exercise in getting students comfortable with asking medical questions.
- When students ask questions, it is a way to recognize that they're engaged, but that they're also thinking deeper.
- [Michelle] Upegui wants his students to be problem solvers.
That mindset informs how he teaches.
- Just so you know, you have eight weeks left of school.
- Yay!
- What would you say is your teaching philosophy?
- My approach is that in front of me are the future stewards of the Earth.
They are going to inherit an Earth, a planet that is hotter than it's been since humans have been around.
It's an overpopulated planet, a planet with political turmoil, with wars, with famine, with huge ecological issues that need to be addressed.
I see what I do as empowering these children to solve those issues.
Because whether we like it or not, that's the planet they're getting.
How do we represent that if we're doing Mendelian problems?
- [Michelle] Upegui has received numerous educational accolades, including the Outstanding Biology Teacher Award for Rhode Island and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching.
But teaching wasn't the career path he initially envisioned.
- I went to school for biology and psychology.
But the universe figured out a way to bring me here, back to the same classroom where I stood and learned as a student.
- His interest in education began after his oldest son Isaac was born with Down Syndrome.
- And I thought, I need to take a class in education so I can help this young man have a fighting chance.
I know very little about our public school system and I know very little about special needs and learning.
So I took one class and one became two, two became four.
Next thing you know, I'm sitting with a teaching certificate.
- [Michelle] In 2010, he was working as a data manager at Brown University when he heard that all of the teachers at Central Falls High School had been fired.
The news quickly spread across the country.
- Just last night after the kids in one school kept falling behind, the teachers were fired.
- [Reporter] All 74 teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island were called out by name and fired.
- [Michelle] Upegui decided to leave his well paying job at Brown University and pursue a career in teaching.
- My pay cut was about $35,000 a year.
And I still, even 13 years in, I still don't make what I was making when I left there.
- Any regrets about that?
- Not at all.
None at all.
Heterozygous.
And hetero means different.
- [Michelle] He says his job as a teacher is to help students realize their potential.
- And one of the things that I always tell my students is the universe is not stingy with talent.
We can make the world better.
We can not only learn from it, but we can change it.
We can manipulate it and create a society that's more fair, more just, more equitable.
A parent that doesn't have a dominant can't pass it down.
- [Michelle] And students say Upegui walks the walk, giving them opportunities they otherwise wouldn't have had.
- I did participate in a week of medical school at Brown and that was an opportunity he opened up to me and that was an experience where I got to learn from doctors and students from the Brown Medical School.
- I feel like in that class I can really get out of my comfort zone and speak up in class and with him, it's like there's nothing you can't do and I feel like you really need that.
You really need that optimism.
- Even if it's hard, you can do it.
You can do it.
Take your time.
- [Michelle] Students in Central Falls or CF as they call it, are quick to point out Upegui has taught them a lot more than science.
- He makes it fun to be honest.
I don't know if you guys would agree on that.
- Like if you're panicked, he knows to makes you calm and stuff, and not to worry about everything.
- Yeah, like he's not gonna sit there and just talk the whole time and you're just there waiting for him to finish or whatever.
He makes it engaging.
- You guys got this.
- [Michelle] It's that engaging approach and his ability to relate to others that students say sets Upegui apart as an educator.
- So what I wanna do is I'm gonna give you about five minutes, work collaboratively to do page one and two and we'll stop right there.
- For many of the students in your classroom, you know what they faced because you faced it when you were that age.
- Absolutely.
- How does your own upbringing inform how you teach?
- They understand that I'm from CF.
I know what it was like to have those challenges.
And if you had asked any of us in 1993 when I graduated, what do you wanna do?
I think the answer would've been get out of CF.
But what we were really saying was not I want to get out of CF, what we were really saying and we didn't know how to pose it which is I don't want to be poor anymore.
- [Michelle] Upegui was born in Colombia.
He remembers watching the violence unleashed by drug cartels in the eighties.
His parents divorced when he was young and soon after his mom, a teacher, lost her job.
He found himself homeless as a child.
- One of the first real memories that I have is sleeping on the floor of a bus station.
And my older sister, who's always been my rock, not letting me sleep on the actual floor, but sleeping on her.
- [Michelle] His own upbringing has made him well aware of the struggles of others.
He knows some of his students are homeless.
He buys snacks for them every week.
But it reminds him of a promise he made to a mentor before he became a teacher.
- Promise me that you won't take the work home with you.
You do what you can, but you can't lose yourself in the midst of it.
When you turn the lights off in the classroom, leave the things there.
You can't solve everything for everybody.
(trumpet playing) - [Michelle] It's one of the many reasons why music has been healing for Upegui.
He sings and plays the trumpet for his band, Infusion Evolution.
He describes it as a mix of Afro-Cuban, flamenco and jazz.
(David Upegui singing in Spanish) - [David Upegui] Our music has sort of a rhythmic pattern that allows for people to sway and move.
When people are tapping or moving or nodding their head, that's when you know it's working.
(David Upegui singing in Spanish) - [Michelle] He encourages students to pursue hobbies outside of school.
- I've been really blessed to to play music with these gifted musicians and I get to just enjoy their company and we tell dad jokes and we play music, we get to create.
So that outlet has been tremendously important for me because it's oftentimes that one part of my life where I can be completely creative without the constraints of systems.
- [Michelle] But even in the classroom, he's found ways to be innovative.
He started the school Science Olympiad team and is the first person to teach AP Biology there.
- This is the evidence wall.
When I tell my students, you can do it, I say, yeah, here's the evidence, right?
- [Michelle] The front of his classroom is filled with photos of every AP Biology class he's taught.
- Maria Jose Escobar, who went to Tufts.
This is Aura Hernandez who works for Save the Bay.
- [Michelle] Every picture tells a story.
- This is this year, so this is my period two class right here.
Yeah, these kids are great.
So many of them.
- [Michelle] Over the years, Upegui has shared countless stories with his students, but he says it was a story about how he finds purpose in them that left a lasting impression on one particular student.
- And then she went on to say that, "I want you to know that the day you told that story, I was going home to end my life, but I didn't because of you and you saved my life and countless other people's lives.
You just don't know it."
And I thought, "Wow."
It was just one of those times where I thought, yeah, nevermind the $35,000 a year that I got less, you know?
Nevermind the long hours, because that was worth it, right?
Being able to see a human being and for them to recognize that they belong, that was just powerful.
- Last year, Rhode Island PBS named Upegui to a class of PBS Digital Innovator All-Stars for his work supporting students.
Up next, over the past two years, 44 states across the country have introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict how teachers can discuss racism and sexism.
The buzzword in this debate is critical race theory.
It's an academic theory traditionally taught in law schools, but today, the term is a catchall for lessons on race, especially in K through 12 education.
School board meetings have become battlegrounds, conservatives accuse teachers of brainwashing kids, progressives accuse conservatives of wanting to whitewash the curriculum.
As contributing reporter David Wright found when we first aired this story last May, it's a fight for the hearts and minds of young people taking place across the country and here in Rhode Island.
- [Principal Nkoli] Sherry, come in please.
- [David Wright] At Gilbert Stuart Middle School in the West End of Providence, Principal Nkoli Onye on has her hands full.
- Do you have the application?
- No.
- Go in the guidance office and get it now, fast.
- [David Wright] 92% of her students are economically disadvantaged.
- Yeah.
Can you complete as much as you can tomorrow?
- [David Wright] 96% are minorities.
- I'm proud of you.
- [David Wright] Gilbert Stuart has long been one of the lowest performing schools in the state.
Dr. Onye is trying to change that.
- Love you.
This is a one star school and our goal is to make this a two or three star school in the next couple of years.
And to do that, we have to stay super focused.
- [David Wright] It's an uphill battle.
- So this is really important.
- [David Wright] The building itself crumbling after decades of neglect.
The students say when it rains, that hole in the ceiling of the auditorium drips water.
- Does conflict have to become violence?
- [David Wright] On the day we recently visited, a group of student leaders in that auditorium were taking part in a training session.
The topic, non-violent conflict resolution based on the works of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Two different people who wanted two different things, but they still work together to get what they both wanted.
- Let's shake it up for that.
- [David Wright] This program is one of several ways Gilbert Stuart's trying to reengage students by inviting them into a deeper conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- It helps to stop solve conflict 'cause when you go out in the real world, you're going to see different people and to tell kids that, hey, it's okay that you see different people, that's okay that you don't get along with them right away.
- [David Wright] Dr. Onye is diversifying the faculty.
She's added 20 new teachers of color.
The school also offers social justice classes in every grade.
- We started off as an eighth grade class, but now we have one at every grade level.
It's a place where kids can talk about what's going on in the community and what they would do differently.
We wanna hear from them, what do they think the solutions are?
A lot of the things that adults talk about, if you listen to the kids, a lot of times they have some of the greatest solutions to things that adults are fighting over.
- I think that our schools are going really far off course.
- [David Wright] Rhode Island Representative Patricia Morgan takes a very different view.
- And at this time, we will hear House Bill 7539 by Representative Morgan.
Representative Morgan, welcome.
- [David Wright] Morgan has introduced a series of bills at the Rhode Island State House designed to steer Rhode Island Public Schools away from what she sees as an obsessive focus on race and racism.
- No child should be accused of being inherently racist or sexist or oppressed or oppressive because of their race, because of their skin color.
That we've forgotten what the purpose of education is.
And to me, that's preparing children for successful adult lives.
- In a diverse society.
- Absolutely.
- A multicultural society.
- But the building blocks are the same, right?
Reading, writing, comprehension, knowledge base.
- [David Wright] Morgan says since state standards changed in 2019, schools across the state are adopting misguided curricula.
- What they've developed is one that is racially and sexually biased.
And by that I mean all of the old textbooks, they're gone.
And instead what has come into classrooms is activist literature.
It's not literature that gives children the full spectrum of what American society is, it is centered on Black and Hispanic culture or experience.
So that's what makes it activist.
- [David Wright] She insists these new curricula among other things, shame white kids and patronize minority kids by focusing too much on the history of racism in America.
- I'm a Black child.
I get up in the morning, I look in the mirror and say, "Oh, I'm Black.
I can never get ahead because I'm a victim."
It's the skin color.
No matter how hard I work.
If I look at you and I say, "You are an oppressor."
Is that fair?
Who are you oppressing?
- No, absolutely not.
- Who are you oppressing?
Tell me.
And as a little nine year old, a victim just by his very presence?
They are to be judged and respected as individuals, not members of an identity group.
- [David Wright] Morgan, a Republican, has plenty of firepower in her corner.
- If you object in any way to the current obsession with race, the one subject no normal person really wants to obsess over, then you yourself are obsessed with race and you must be stopped because you're dangerous.
(chuckles) That's what they're saying.
- [David Wright] Conservatives, including cable news personality Tucker Carlson have been sounding alarm bells ahead of the midterms.
- Why?
- Well, it contradicts everything that Martin Luther King fought for.
It's hatred, Marxist ideology, and it places the child in a loophole of oppression, making them feel as a victim.
I can't stand for that.
- [David Wright] Denouncing so-called critical race theory, what they consider to be woke ideology invading schools.
- What does critical race theory mean?
What is it?
- Senator, my understanding is that critical race theory is, it is an academic theory that is about the ways in which race interacts with various institutions.
- I get death threats over it.
Yes.
- Jennifer Bergevine teaches at Barrington High School.
- I do ninth and 11th.
And the 11th grade course is Advanced Placement Language and Composition.
- How does race factor into your teaching curriculum?
- Well, heavily in language and composition.
It's a rhetoric study.
So everything we read is non-fiction.
We stick with what's happening in the world.
The whole curriculum is designed around four social justice topics and one is race.
- [David Wright] It's a very different population of kids than at Gilbert Stuart Middle.
And that's not just because they're older in high school.
But Barrington is not the most diverse community in the world.
- Not exactly what we're known for.
- Is critical race theory a factor in what you teach?
- It's not necessa- I wouldn't say it's a factor.
I think there's- - Is it an approach that you use?
- I didn't know what critical race theory was until people started talking about it being bad.
And then I realized that, I guess I kind of teach critical race theory, but it's really more about multiple perspectives.
So when we get into the race unit, we start by what are our own personal experiences with race, as individual, the students talk about it, they do some reflection.
We watch Ted Talks.
- [David Wright] Ted Talks like this one.
- I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature.
I realize that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.
- And I give them sets of texts that they pick from.
They could choose to read "A Hope in the Unseen," which is about a young man growing up in DC who's a young man of color in a really rough school and he wants to go to Brown University.
And it's his story and the kids love it because he gets to Brown and they hear about Thayer Street and all those things.
And what they then come back to the table with is a reading journal where they keep track of what stands out to them, what they're confused by, what they wanna learn more about.
And they meet in groups to talk about what they've learned.
- It doesn't sound that different from English class when I was in high school eons ago.
I mean, I remember reading "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, who's a Harlem renaissance writer, amazing writer, who's writing about race and identity and how he feels invisible.
- Correct.
- So why are people freaking out?
- I think the shift into actually naming systemic racism and saying this is a part of our history as a country makes people uncomfortable.
- [David Wright] There's a sense that at least part of what people object to is the idea that teachers are presenting an unflattering view of America, unpatriotic.
Pop quiz.
- Hmm.
- Thomas Jefferson.
What's the most important thing for our kids to understand about him?
- He was a founding father.
He was there at the beginning of our country and he set it on the course for us to be a democracy.
There was never before then a democracy in the world.
- The fact that he was a slave owner, relevant or not relevant in your view?
- You know, listen, he was a slave owner.
Was that the only thing he is?
Is that why we should be disparaging his memory?
- No, but when somebody- - And his contributions?
- I'm not saying disparaging, but understanding that his vision had limits, didn't it?
- Okay, we can defame his memory and that's fine if that's what's important.
And I guess that's what's I think is destructive, because he did so much more.
- Ask that same question to Jennifer Bergevine.
What is it important to teach our kids about Thomas Jefferson?
- The facts.
You know, you can't take a person and just say, "Okay, I'm only gonna look at this part of him" or her or them.
We need to look at the whole person.
- Warts and all.
- Yes.
- We are focusing on warts and not on the goodness of America.
- If you constantly give kids these larger than life figures who never made a mistake, that's not real.
Half of life is learning to kind of rectify the good with the bad.
- Unfortunately, with that group of people who want to push this ideology, this narrative, they give us no redemption.
There's no redemption for America.
- Just as you are concerned about that ideology infecting the curriculum, isn't it possible that the reaction to it also politicizes the curriculum in an unhealthy way for our kids?
I mean, our kids are caught in the middle, right?
- So would you suggest that I allow this racialized and sexualized curriculum to go unchallenged?
- If the latest bill passed, I don't know... We would have to completely restructure advanced placement language and literature and pull out whole units of instruction.
If we can't talk about race, that's a unit of study.
So we would have to reframe the whole thing, which can be done, but it will be to the detriment of the students.
- I don't think anybody's wrong or right in this conversation, I think everybody has their own perspective.
I can only speak from my perspective having been in schools for many, many years.
It's our job to empower our students no matter what color they are, whether they're Black, white, Spanish, male, female, doesn't matter.
We don't want any student to feel that they're victimized.
- [David Wright] One thing both sides agree on is that a good education is the best way to give kids of all races the opportunities they need to succeed.
And that if we as a society share Dr. King's dream, we still have some work to do.
- I think it's really important, and I think people don't stress this enough, that if we keep doing what we've been doing, the same result's gonna happen.
- [David Wright] Eighth grader Naya Asa Magassier told us the future depends on getting this right.
- I think that Gilbert Stuart is doing good things and we need to shine light on that and we need more help.
- Since our story aired, Principal Nkoli Onye has taken a new position as Chief of Equity and Belonging at the Providence Public Schools.
And in February, Representative Morgan introduced another bill looking to restrict lessons discussing race and ethnicity.
The Rhode Island House Education Committee has held the bill for further study.
Finally tonight, a sneak peek at a story we're going to bring you next week on professional ballroom dancers who are hoping to dance their way into the hearts of Rhode Islanders.
Meet Roger Romero and Arismel Naya.
Their love of dancing has come a long way.
Both Romero and Naya are from Catalonia, Spain.
They took their first steps on the dance floor as children at rival studios.
- We started when we are seven years old.
- So in the beginning when we were kids, we were competing against each other, let's say till we were 21, more or less, always competing against each other so we knew each other.
And then- - Did you like each other?
- Not really.
- Not really.
No.
We were just, yeah, kind of friends.
I mean like, hello Arismel, how are you doing?
- Hello, Roger.
- Fine.
So yeah, we were competing against each other, so of course.
- [Pamela] But at age 21, something changed.
Timing is everything.
It was summer and both needed new dance partners.
- I asked Arismel if she wanted to partner up with me for the summer to make some money.
And she was like yes.
And then we started dancing together in the summer.
Then I work my magic and...
So we also started a personal relation.
Four.
Now shaky, shaky, shaky.
- And that's our broadcast this evening.
Thank you for joining us.
We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly".
Until then, please follow us on Twitter and Facebook and visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly, or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.
Goodnight.
(gentle, bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues)
