The US Open began on Tuesday with Fan Week, six days in which the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens is free and open to the public for a variety of events and activities. Players that will compete in the Open, well-known music artists, celebrities of various cultural genres, and prominent chefs will be among those interacting with visitors.
Fan Week is highlighted by Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day on Saturday, celebrating the life of the late tennis legend who was an athletic trailblazer, inspirational humanitarian, and unwavering advocate for racial and social justice.
Fan Week ends on Sunday and gives way to the beginning of matches on Monday as the US Open is the year’s last Grand Slam of tennis’ four major championships, following the Australian Open in January, French Open in late May to early June, and Wimbledon in late June to early July.
There is palpable excitement on both the men’s and women’s draws as young stars Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff come into Queens at the top of their games. Alcaraz, 20, is the defending men’s US Open champion and the world’s No. 1 ranked male player, having defeated No. 2 Novak Djokovic in an epic five-set Wimbledon final last month (1-6, 7-6 (6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4), stopping the 36-year-old Serbian’s 34-match winning streak at the tournament.
“To stay good physically and mentally for five hours against a legend, making history like I did today, it’s the happiest moment of my life. I don’t think that’s going to change for a long time,” said Spain’s Alcaraz after his enthralling victory.
The pair may have foreshadowed another inevitable finals battle at last Sunday’s Cincinnati Open, in which Djokovic outlasted Alcaraz 5-7, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (4) to capture the title. Spanning three hours and 48 minutes, the match was the longest three-setter since the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) began organizing the world’s top men’s tennis tour in 1990.
The 19-year-old Cori Dionne “Coco” Gauff, who was born in Delray Beach, Florida, and raised in Atlanta, has never won a major but was a finalist in last year’s French Open, losing 6-1, 6-3 to current world No. 1 Iga Swiatek from Poland. She looks to make the US Open her first and is favorably peaking ahead of the tournament’s start.
On Sunday, in Mason, Ohio, Gauff became the first teenager to win the Western & Southern Open since 17-year-old Linda Tuero in 1968 by defeating Karolina Muchova 6-3, 6-4. Gauff is the world’s No. 6 ranked women’s player. Gauff’s doubles partner, American Jessica Pegula, No. 3 in the world in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) rankings, is also a leading contender to win the Open.
Pegula has reached the quarterfinals of all four majors but has yet to break through to the semifinals and finals.
The New York City (NYC) Reads school initiative is a major undertaking that Mayor Eric Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks promised would be transformational in terms of literacy, reading, and basic algebra instruction. Most teachers seemed to agree, but are a little unsure about the rollout so far.
“The most basic thing we can do at our schools is ensure that all our students learn how to read and have the resources to thrive, but with more than half of our city’s public-school students reading below grade level, now is the time to act—and that is exactly what we are doing today,” said Adams in a statement.
This year, 15 selected ‘phase one’ school districts will begin implementing the new curriculum and the remaining 17 school districts of ‘phase two’ will start next year.
Deputy Chancellor of Teaching and Learning at the Department of Education (DOE) Carolyne Quintana is confident that the NYC Reads program will be a singular city-wide curriculum that’s research-based curricula, supported by intensive coaching and professional learning for educators, and culturally responsive. Quintana said, at a recent town hall with NYC educators, that this spring teachers were offered training and there were make-up trainings held this summer for those that missed out or were new hires. Every teacher should have at least eight coaching sessions in addition to several professional hours of training on NYC Reads programming and materials before and during the school year.
There will be a set reading curriculum for every grade level, said Quintana.
Early childhood programs will use the ‘Creative Curriculum’ alongside ‘Teaching Strategies GOLD’ and ‘Ages & Stages’––a developmental “screener” that’s tailored to each child’s strengths, interests, and needs. Elementary English Language Arts (ELA) classes will have a choice between three curricula options: ‘Wit and Wisdom’, ‘Into Reading’, and ‘Expeditionary Learning.’
Kate Gutwillig is an elementary ELA teacher in Manhattan. She has been teaching for over 20 years. Previously, she said, city schools were using a theory-based approach to teaching reading designed by Lucy Calkins, a leading literacy expert at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. Calkins created this “balanced literacy” curriculum with independent study components decades ago, which city public schools chose to adopt in 2003.
“If you were really lucky and learned to read on your own and didn’t need any extra help and it just came to you, then this curriculum would work for you,” said Gutwillig. “But many, many children are not like that, especially working class in New York City. Their parents are working many jobs. Maybe there’s trauma. Maybe there’s a learning disability. Maybe you just immigrated here. There’s so many unique populations.”
Gutwillig said that people were too “enamored” with Calkins to realize that the curriculum wasn’t inclusive enough. “What would happen is that certain children would get stuck and there was no assistance in the curriculum,” said Gutwillig.
The new curriculum options will be more about the “science” of reading and phonics-based, she said, speaking from her experience teaching both styles.
Schools will also increase their focus on algebra with illustrative math, center students with disabilities and multilingual learners, and aim to incorporate more culturally diverse learning materials under the ‘Hidden Voices’ initiative. Hidden Voices spotlights narratives within the Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders (AAPI), LGBTQIA+, African diaspora, and Black American communities, said Quintana.
“Reading is a social justice and racial equity issue,” said Quintana.
About two-thirds of Black and brown students in NYC schools are not reading at grade level, she said.
According to national trends in a survey conducted by Educators for Excellence (E4E-NY), schools have “significant” staffing shortages across all positions, a constant need for teachers to give up their planning periods to cover classes, report having little say in selecting curriculum, and find curriculum doesn’t meet the academic or social-emotional needs of their students. Teachers of color, in particular, are far less likely to stay in education.
Teachers polled in the town hall by E4E-NY said that they thought the NYC Reads curriculum was critical. However, they also said that the implementation of the program could use more collaboration with teachers, timely data releases, year round coaching, more transparency, and a clearer timeline.
Gutwillig pointed out that the NYC Reads materials she’s seen could also be more culturally responsive and carefully include more figures and narratives of color that reflect students in the city.
April Rose is an elementary ELA teacher in Queens with over 20 years of experience. Her school pivoted during COVID to adopt a new reading curriculum. The school piloted the program in two classrooms and saw improvements in students. Rose said that the texts were insightful and rich, and cut down on the need for supplemental materials.
“The only thorn, which goes to the fact that no curriculum is perfect and that you have to do what’s in the best interest for students, is that we had to try out the writing part and found that it was a little too disjointed,” said Rose.
Jeta Donovan is a partner at The New Teacher Project (TNTP) and a former educator in New York City. She oversaw the implementation of a new reading and instruction curriculum statewide in Tennessee in 2019. Despite challenges with such a massive undertaking, Donovan said after a few years of staying the course and shifting mindsets, students showed marked improvements. She advised that new course materials are not enough and that teachers would need immense support from DOE.
“I think New York City is making a really historic investment in teacher professional learning and coaching as a part of this initiative and I can’t understate how important that will be to the success of this project,” said Donovan. “And I say this as a former DOE teacher myself, I know it’s important that teachers not only feel supported but will see the impact on student learning as a result of that ongoing professional coaching.”
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visitinghttps://bit.ly/amnews1.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw affirmative action in higher education is a cruel, racist, and deeply harmful attack on people of color in this country. Affirmative action has, over four decades, made a significant positive impact on the diversity of college campuses, allowing many Black and Brown students to overcome systemic barriers which restrict access to higher education.
We’ve already witnessed the dreadful consequences of various states eliminating affirmative action programs in years’ past—case studies which paint a dark picture of what may now happen nationwide, absent a major overhaul of how colleges conduct their admissions process.
For example, immediately after California outlawed affirmative action through a voter referendum in 1996, the number of enrolled students from underrepresented groups plummeted by over 60% at UCLA and UC Berkeley, with a 12% overall reduction across the University of California system, according to University of California’s own study. Fewer students of color in prestigious universities meant fewer high-earning job opportunities after graduation, and thus a long-term decline in wages after they entered the job market.
The notion promulgated by right-wing media and politicians that affirmative action somehow disadvantages white and Asian students over Black and Latino students is not based on reality. Black and Latino students already face major obstacles to accessing higher education—a reality which affirmative action was designed to help counteract. Students of color in low-income school districts, for example, often lack access to high school AP courses and extracurricular opportunities—elements of students’ resumes that colleges rely on when considering applicants.
The fact is, race-blind admissions do nothing to overcome racism—on the contrary, they reinforce existing inequities.
It is not just Black and Brown people who will suffer from the elimination of affirmative action programs in higher education. Take, for example, how it could impact our nation’s healthcare system, today in dire need of additional caregivers to rebuild a workforce depleted from three years of the pandemic.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out that “increasing the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds who join ‘the ranks of medical professionals’ improves ‘healthcare access and health outcomes in medically underserved communities.’” We cannot build a healthy society if we do not create a truly diverse and representative healthcare workforce able to provide equitable and culturally-competent healthcare. In a nation where only 5.7% of physicians are Black, it is essential that medical schools do more, not less, to actively recruit a more diverse student body.
The sad fact is, the attack on affirmative action is based on a strategy as old as history itself—those in power attempting to pit working people of different backgrounds against each other to perverse their own wealth and privilege, at the expense of everyone else. We must not fall into this trap. All working people have a mutual interest in joining together, across races and ethnicities, in common struggle to build a fair and just society. A corrupt Supreme Court must not deter us.
Urbanology The Art of War By W.A. Rogers I was introduced to Sun Tzu’s ancient Chinese classic, “The Art of War,” in 1968. I was in the United States Army stationed at Fort Hood, Tx. At this time, military intelligence was trying to find answers to explain how an army of farmers were about to
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