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"To Fight Systemic Racism, Social Studies Must Be a Central Part of School Curriculum." 

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"To Fight Systemic Racism, Social Studies Must Be a Central Part of School Curriculum." 

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In this article, Adina Goldstein gives a passionate plea for school administrators to back up their words on increasing cultural competency and fighting systemic racism in schools through curriculum by increasing support for social studies as a respected, separate entity in schools. Goldstein tell us that in many school districts/states, social studies isn't even a high-tested subjects and is thus regarded on the back burner of a child's education, with calls to focus more on reading and math than social studies. Goldstein says that if teachers and administrators really want their schools to serve as the epicenter for conversations on race and making society more equitable and educated on race, then social studies is going to have to be given the attention and funding that it deserves.

This article was a really interesting read and tied together the importance that social studies plays in addressing and fighting systems of oppression to the current peak of the Black Lives Matter movement. This is an important read for social studies teachers because it centers social studies as an essential piece of the puzzle of decolonizing schools, yet it details the paradox of social studies still remaining under-respected, underfunded and just not taken as seriously. All social studies teachers should take to heart Goldstein's call to restructure schools and putting social studies on par with other "core subjects."

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Throughout the past couple of weeks, many Americans have taken a good, hard look at their own roles (or lack thereof) as allies in the fight against systemic racism. Principals, superintendents, and government officials have spoken out, calling for wider curricular offerings that address systems of oppression and power and the teaching of narratives that have been neglected in favor of those dripping with white male privilege.

But some of these same leaders are maintaining significant barriers to the kind of teaching and learning that they say they're fighting for. That's because they are complicit in a system that neglects teaching social studies, a subject where students can learn about the oppression that they seek to dismantle.

In Philadelphia, Superintendent William Hite allowed his passion for justice to overtake him at the CASA-organized protest on June 4. "Stand up against racism, any time we see it in our schools," he cried.

He mentioned the future possibility of bias training and new "culturally competent" curriculum for schools as ways to stand up against that racism that is embedded in the country's public education system.

I could not help but feel frustrated as I listened to Hite, many other education leaders, and government officials as they called for similar "culturally competent" curriculum as a way to fight systems of oppression. None of them made any mention of what I, as a teacher of color, believe to be the most egregious microaggression that results from many of these leaders' policies: the complete neglect of a well-rounded social studies and civics education.

As of 2012, only 21 states mandated testing in social studies. To be clear: I am not making a case for expanding high-stakes testing. But the unintended consequence of having high-stakes testing in some subjects but not others is that the untested subject - social studies, in this case - gets tossed aside and deemed unimportant by state education leaders and school leaders alike.

The Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C., education think tank, conducted a that found that as high-stakes testing in math and reading rose with the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, students were spending roughly three times as many hours in reading and math classes by 2011 as they were in science and social studies.

As a middle school reading and social studies teacher, I see this reflected in my own teaching schedule requirements. I spent a year completing a master's degree in curriculum planning and teaching social studies in a state that does test social studies. Then I moved home to Philadelphia and found that there were virtually no positions at the elementary or middle levels where a teacher could specifically teach social studies. There were, however, many positions available for reading teachers with the auxiliary responsibility of social studies.

In my time in the District so far, I have met countless other teachers who - despite extensive study and qualifications in the teaching of social studies and civics - could only find positions in which reading was the primary focus.

Whenever I have spoken to education leaders and teachers about the fact that my students do, in fact, receive far more support and explicit teaching in reading, the overwhelming response I've heard is to "weave social studies into reading class." To be sure, teaching diverse texts is an important step in normalizing and encouraging conversations about race and power, but it is not enough.

As any teacher will tell you, just putting something in front of kids does not guarantee that they will truly engage with it or take anything away from it. If we only ask students to analyze a text's sentence structures instead of allowing them to engage with its greater social and political context, we cannot expect students to know that we are trying to teach tolerance simply by choosing texts that depict it.

So many undervalued voices have been fighting against systemic racism since long before George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, and many leaders have proudly declared their support in the last couple of weeks. But ultimately, if we hope to continue this powerful work, we must put as many resources into thoughtful social studies curriculum as we do into reading and math.

As so many civil rights are being trampled upon, it is imperative that students learn the history of oppression and the history of the social movements powerful enough to fight back against it. How can we expect students to stand up for their constitutional rights if they haven't ever learned what those rights are?

Until social studies is a protected learning period for students, until the state decides it must update and develop thoughtful standards for teaching and learning social studies, until the School District of Philadelphia invests more in its Office of Social Studies, and until professional training in teaching social studies is recognized and adequately valued, we will not be able to truly participate in dismantling systems of oppression in schools in Philadelphia.
Adina Goldstein is a 7th-grade English Language Arts and Social Studies teacher at Vare-Washington Elementary School. She is a proud product of the Philadelphia School District with a master's degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is in her third year of teaching.

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To fight systemic racism, social studies must be a central part of school curriculum | The notebook

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Throughout the past couple of weeks, many Americans have taken a good, hard look at their own roles (or lack thereof) as allies in the fight against systemic racism. Principals, superintendents, and government officials have spoken out, calling for wider curricular offerings that address systems of oppression and power and the teaching of narratives that have been neglected in favor of those dripping with white male privilege.

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This article takes a pretty academic approach to encouraging teachers + educators to study race and educate themselves, stating that in academic terms, "race is its own specialized field." This article instructs that academics should: self-assess their own knowledge of race and own internalized racism; read work by scholar-activists; reconsider course themes — give accurate/fair representation; dedicate sessions to discussing race an alert students about this beforehand—and ensure that students know one another in order to have productive conversations without tokenization

Though this article seems to be more geared towards professors and higher education, it still takes a practical approach to teachers and educators overall educating themselves by reading more and becoming the student, so that they can then be the best role model for their students for having challenging conversations about race.

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Caution is always necessary for professors when teaching about race and white supremacy in the United States. Even more care is required in this particular historical moment after years of lynchings and police brutality that have taken the lives of Black men and women.

This especially applies to people who haven't previously studied racism, yet it's also still true for those of us who are very accustomed to teaching about such tragedies. And as a white scholar with extensive training and first-hand experience, I know that I, too, always have to be mindful of how I approach such topics -- and rightly so.

Nonwhite people are burdened with routine oppressions that are impossible for those who benefit from white privilege to fully comprehend. Such a mental load already permanently elevates everyday stress for people without the political and social benefit of whiteness. Now in 2020, people of color are also hyper aware of political crises that threaten freedom as we know it (namely, the growing rise of fascism in the United States), while also hoping that they and their friends don't die from COVID-19 or suffer long-term health consequences.

Students who are Asian, Arab, Black, Chinese, Latin American, Pilipino or a racialized minority in any other way don't necessarily need to talk more about race. It's their everyday life. As one of my students put it recently, "Living in the United States is a nightmare." Nonwhite people shouldn't be forced into academic conversations about their nightmares. And when such conversations occur, we should remember that students of color are often effectively asked to "perform their trauma," which only increases their already heavy mental loads.

Given current events and how some people (wrongly) perceive discussions about racism and privilege/oppression and its histories to be attacks on white people, it's worth considering that some conversations in this specific moment should be paused. Even during times without simultaneous national emergencies and when things on the surface are more stable, large sectors of the population refuse to consider racism. And to be clear: I'm fully aware that civil-rights struggles are dotted with people saying, "Now is not quite the right time." But these times are unprecedented, as we face new cultural, economic, environmental, medical, political and social crises simultaneously.

All that said, however, maybe now is the perfect time: perhaps more people, including white individuals, are thinking about race than ever before in their life. Issues of race are on the news daily, and disgust at seeing videos of how cruelly Black individuals are treated has helped many people see the urgency of reform.

But in either case, when conversations occur, facilitators -- including faculty members -- must devote consideration to where audiences already are, and that involves a keen awareness of current events as well as knowledge of critical race theory. People without training shouldn't suddenly attempt to study or to teach about the Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist (Heteronormative Ableist Theistic) Patriarchy -- you can't talk about racism in isolation. Race is its own specialized field, just as biology and sociology are their own fields with experts, methods and theories. When economic reform is needed, we turn to economists; when racial reform is needed, we should turn to the experts -- with personal or academic experience -- not just anyone.

People who initiate or engage in such important conversations without the necessary preparation risk traumatizing audiences and reinforcing the mores they aim to challenge.
Some Steps to Take
Here are some safe, productive and more tangible steps that people can take when talking about race and racism.

Academe should invest more time and energy in honest self-assessments. Institutions and departments across the country have released antiracism statements of solidarity. Yet such statements tend to forgo discussing past histories with segregation as well as acknowledging specific needs based on local demographics. The statements of solidarity also tend to forget that only in rare cases do words alone -- such as, "I now pronounce you" at weddings -- have transformative power.

It also occurs to me that some of the same colleges that mere weeks ago released statements promising to promote inclusivity continue to demand that basically everyone return to campus in situations that will almost certainly guarantee deaths. Such "statements of solidarity" were clearly insincere.

University of Maryland Professor Thurka Sangaramoorthy's tweet -- "So every faculty member is an anti-racist now? Wow, I really missed that memo" -- made me remember all of the times in graduate school when I was criticized, sometimes even harassed, because of my antiracism activism and research. Now that it's suddenly "cool" to talk about race, everybody wants to participate without acknowledging any past efforts to discredit such work.

But without recognizing mistakes, sudden concerns about racialized minorities can come across as opportunistic. If the transformation is sincere, sharing that process might help others join the long fight for freedom and social justice.

In fact, we should all study and acknowledge our discipline's and institution's past misdeeds. Administrators and non-administrators alike should read or re-read works by scholar-activists such as Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Samra Habib, bell hooks, George Lipsitz, Audre Lorde and Cornel West. We should read about trauma-informed teaching. People must also remember race is much broader and more complicated than the Black/White Binary held in the public imagination and that "white" is a racialized identity, too.

Instructors might reconsider course themes in order to lower cognitive loads and to provide a measure of hope for the upcoming semesters. For instance, in a first-year writing class, instead of centering content around a theme of race, consider a theme of unity. A course could use texts such as the outstanding 2011 documentary Samsara that exemplifies how we're all connected.

It takes time and continuing updates to our curriculum, but an initial step toward talking about race is representations. Do the films and articles you assign represent a variety of racialized identities? Do you have discussions that encourage all of your students to share ideas -- knowing that you might have to specifically call on students of color and occasionally ask white students to just listen for a little while (similar to how sometimes male students talk over female students)? And it's important that these inclusions avoid reinforcing conceptions that might suggest nonwhite people only experience suffering. Such inclusion and conversation benefits all.

Representation is one step. Integration is another. Talking about race occasionally in a liberal arts or social science course is inadequate. Start planning changes. In my introductory queer studies seminars, for instance, every lesson is crafted to include representations of people from multiple racialized backgrounds and representations of cisgender and trans people. Every lesson covers various "isms," as well as how minorities have thrived. Topic integration is key.

When the national mood is stabilized and it's safe to return to campuses (hopefully in 2021), we need dedicated time for serious, all-hands and ongoing conversations about the social construction of race and systemic racism that are facilitated by experts on race. Ideally, however, they won't be in one-hour blocks! Proceeding with care is crucial. We should alert students in advance and have sessions planned beforehand.

In addition, if at all possible, people need to know one another at least a little before any discussions about race: a group of strangers will not have a productive conversation about white supremacy and its impacts. At the beginning of each specific, in-depth conversation ask students how they feel about the topic, what questions they have about discussing racism and what advice they have to make the dialog productive. Establish a safe word (my classes use "pineapple") that anyone can use at any moment to stop the current conversation and refocus. And, most of all, acknowledge your own privileges and oppressions.

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Advice for teaching about race and racism in class this fall (opinion)

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Caution is always necessary for professors when teaching about race and white supremacy in the United States. Even more care is required in this particular historical moment after years of lynchings and police brutality that have taken the lives of Black men and women.

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"Trump Claims Teaching Kids About Racism is 'Child Abuse,' Wants it Abolished From Schools And Replaced with a "Patriotic Education"

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"Trump Claims Teaching Kids About Racism is 'Child Abuse,' Wants it Abolished From Schools And Replaced with a "Patriotic Education"

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Trump's response to the NYT's 1619 project was calling it "toxic propaganda" and "child abuse" that "will destroy our country." Trump proposed something called the 1776 Commission which would encourage/(require?) teaching a "patriotic education."

This article relates back to class content in a few ways: first, the obvious federal overstep in dictating what teachers can/cannot or should/should not be teaching; an (illegal) overstep that clearly is dominated by nationalistic and racist ideology. Teachers should maintain a focus for teaching the complicated, complex, and full story of American history—particularly America's founding and American slavery. This article reminds teachers that they—as well as the schools they teach in and the curriculum they choose--are always political. Additionally, this article and the story behind it could provide interesting conversation in a classroom/among social studies students—can the president dictate what is being taught in classrooms? (answer: no.) Should the president use his office to criticize a newspaper like The New York Times? What is the relationship between a president and "patriotism"? What is the relationship between schools and patriotism?

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Something you may have picked up on over the last four years is that Donald Trump is a very sick man, not in the sense that his arteries are rotting after years of subsisting exclusively on KFC and Big Macs-though surely they are-but in the mentally disturbed, psychologically troubled way. At this point, there are thousands of examples underscoring the need to remove the president from society, but the most recent is his unhinged response to the New York Times' 1619 Project, which he wants abolished in schools and replaced with a revisionist history of America that teaches children how white people have only ever had their Black peers' best interest at heart, including when said white people literally owned slaves.

Speaking at the National Archives Museum on Thursday, Trump announced that he would be signing an executive order establishing the "1776 Commission" to promote a "patriotic education." Apparently attempting to reach his white nationalist supporters, Trump said that the left is "attempting to destroy [the] beautiful vision" that the founding fathers had for America, and that things like the 1619 Project, which teach children about systemic racism and reframe the country's history by examining the consequences of slavery, are "toxic propaganda" and "ideological poison" that "if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together" and "will destroy our country." Then he claimed liberals want to rip down Mount Rushmore:

Despite being the guy who defends neo-Nazis and has spent the last several months decrying the Black Lives Matter movement, Trump then insisted that it is the people attempting to tell the true history of the country-the one in which Black people have been treated like second-class citizens or worse-that are "prejudiced." He also argued that by constantly talking about race, the left is trying to "impose a new segregation, and we must not allow that to happen." Not surprisingly, as an abject racist whose father just happened to hang around KKK rallies, he insisted that America was always great, even when it was legal to buy and sell human beings, and that teaching children otherwise is, wait for it, akin to physically harming them. "Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words¯ he said, adding that "Patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country. American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at our work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. Not anymore."

Then he claimed that anyone caught destroying a monument will serve ten years in prison, even though that's not actually up to him. Anyway, if this whole "patriotic education" thing sounds troubling and creepy to you, you're not alone:
Oh look, the president has been accused of sexual misconduct by a 26th woman
For a second there we worried he would stall out at 25. Here's The Guardian:

A former model has come forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament more than two decades ago, in an alleged incident that left her feeling "sick" and "violated." In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, Amy Dorris alleged that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the tournament in New York on 5 September 1997. Dorris, who was 24 at the time, accuses Trump of forcing his tongue down her throat, assaulting her all over her body, and holding her in a grip she was unable to escape from.

Dorris, who lives in Florida, provided The Guardian with evidence to support her account of her encounters with Trump, including her ticket to the U.S. Open and six photos showing her with the real estate magnate over several days in New York. Trump was 51 at the time and married to his second wife, Marla Maples. Her account was also corroborated by several people she confided in about the incident. They include a friend in New York and Dorris's mother, both of whom she called immediately after the alleged incident, as well as a therapist and friends she spoke to in the years since. All said Dorris had shared with them details of the alleged incident that matched what she later told The Guardian.

Through his lawyers the president "denied in the strongest possible terms having ever harassed, abused, or behaved improperly toward Dorris," which would be more convincing if there weren't a recording of him saying that he forcibly kisses any woman he's attracted to and grabs them by the genitals whenever he pleases.
Trump again makes clear he won't accept the election results (unless he wins, natch) FBI director: Russia again trying to throw the election for its favorite little babushka doll
According to director Christopher Wray, Russia is trying to influence the 2020 election by "denigrat[ing]" Joe Biden, whom it sees as less supportive of Moscow's interests than Putin footstool Donald Trump. While Russia's 2016 focus centered around hacking Democrats' email accounts and state election systems, this time around the activity is thought to be focused on misinformation campaigns. Per the Washington Post:

"We certainly have seen very active efforts by the Russians to influence our elections in 2020," [Wray] said, citing the use of social media, state media, and other types of propaganda.... He said the FBI recently alerted Facebook and Twitter to fake accounts that traced back to Russia, and that the companies then took down those profiles. Wray argued that in the battle against political misinformation, it's important to act quickly before fake social media campaigns or accounts get big-because knocking down false accounts early, before they acquire too many followers, greatly diminishes their effectiveness. But the FBI director also warned that too much focus on disinformation could be debilitating, causing Americans to distrust the democratic process itself.

"In many ways what concerns me most is the steady drumbeat and misinformation" that could lead to "a lack of confidence of American voters and citizens in the validity of their vote," Wray said. The danger, he added, lies in the "level of noise" becoming so great that a sense of futility sets in among some Americans.

Trump, of course, has spent months trying to undermine Americans' confidence in the election, a tactic so similar to the strategy deployed by Russia that one might even get the sense he's sharing notes with his favorite authoritarian leader. In related news, earlier this week former NSC European Affairs director and impeachment witness Alexander Vindman said in an interview with The Atlantic that Trump is an "unwitting agent" of Putin, and that the Kremlin wouldn't even need to blackmail or manipulate him because Trump is so infatuated with the ex-KGB agent. "In the Army we call this 'free chicken,' something you don't have to work for-it just comes to you," Vindman added. "This is what the Russians have in Trump: free chicken."
Bill Barr: Stay-at-home orders almost as bad as literal slavery
If the Trump administration draws to a close on January 20, 2021, Attorney General William Barr will very likely recede from the spotlight (and into a wildly high-paying job at a white-shoe law firm). Before that day comes, though, he'd like to cement his legacy as one of the most evil people to work in public service. Last week he made significant headway by pressing federal prosecutors to charge protesters with trying to overthrow the U.S. government, and on Wednesday, he offered this:

During an appearance in northern Virginia Wednesday, Barr railed against state-issued coronavirus-related lockdown orders, declaring that they were surpassed only by slavery as a historic intrusion on civil liberties. "You know, putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. It's-you know, other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history," Barr said during a question-and-answer session following his remarks.

As Barr surely knows, slaves were literally restrained in chains, while people told to stay at home this spring to avoid the spread of COVID-19 were actually free to leave their homes so long as they weren't going to 500-person pool parties and spitting in people's faces. Barr also made sure to slander the Black Lives Matter movement, which is fairly unsurprising given his belief that systemic racism doesn't exist:

Barr also attacked the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that while he agreed Black lives matter, "They're not interested in Black lives. They're interested in props, a small number of Blacks who are killed by police during conflicts with police-usually less than a dozen a year-who they can use as props to achieve a much broader political agenda." A Washington Post tracker found that 250 Black Americans were killed by police last year. Black people are also killed by police at a higher rate than white people, the Post found.

Finally, just to round things out, the attorney general criticized people for discussing the fact that the president has likely committed multiple crimes, telling the audience, "Now you have to call your adversary a criminal, and instead of beating them politically, you try to put them in jail," claiming that the U.S. was approaching Eastern European-level status. Weirdly, at no time did he mention that his boss spent most of his time on the 2016 campaign trail demanding Hillary Clinton be locked up, or that he regularly tries to use the criminal justice system to go after his enemies. Barr did, however, manage to work in an attack on the free press. "If you're not in power, you're in jail," he said. "Or you're a member of the press." Which would be slightly more amusing if one didn't get the sense that Barr would imprison journalists if he thought he could get away with it.
Elsewhere!
Former Pence aide says she will vote for Biden because of Trump's 'flat-out disregard for human life' during pandemic (Washington Post)

DeVos's former top aide joins anti-Trump group ( Politico)

Schumer, Warren urge Trump to cancel student loan debt due to coronavirus ( CNBC)

How Everyone From Foreign Governments to Federal Contractors Is Lining Trump's Pockets ( Hive)

The Wild Summer of 2020 Turned Small Investors Into Whales ( Bloomberg)

Florida city repeals 13-year ban on saggy pants ( AP)

Martha Stewart, Blissed Out on CBD, Is Doing Just Fine (NYT)

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair

- Melania Trump Sounds a Lot Like Her Husband in Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's New Book
- Jesmyn Ward Writes Through Grief Amid Protests and Pandemic
- How Trump's Handling of White Supremacists Could Create a Homegrown Crisis
- Ashley Etienne May Be Biden's Deadliest Weapon Against Trump
- What's the Reality Behind Netflix Hit Selling Sunset?
- How to Abolish the Police, According to Josie Duffy Rice
- The Pandemic Is Creating an Endless Summer in the Hamptons
- From the Archive: The Perks and Perils of Being Donald Trump's Daughter

Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story.

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Trump Claims Teaching Kids About Racism Is "Child Abuse," Wants It Abolished From School Curriculums

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Something you may have picked up on over the last four years is that Donald Trump is a very sick man, not in the sense that his arteries are rotting after years of subsisting exclusively on KFC and Big Macs-though surely they are-but in the mentally disturbed, psychologically troubled way.

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"Effective Anti-Racist Education Requires More Diverse Teachers, More Training" 

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"Effective Anti-Racist Education Requires More Diverse Teachers, More Training" 

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Former students start petitions to advocate for more training among teachers in their former schools, as well as the hiring of a more diverse class of teachers. The folks interviewed in this article call for a "more perfect union" through ensuring teachers practice anti-racism among themselves and thus are more equipped to do that with their students.

Travis Bristol, an assistant professor at the University of California and Berkeley, says that ant-racist education doesn't center white people and the white experience. He calls for more Black teachers in schools, but he stresses that the burden should not be on Black teachers to address racism but rather should be on all teachers.

This article's insistence that white teachers should remember it is their duty to decolonize schools and to educate themselves on race is super important for social studies teachers to know.

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In the wake of ongoing protests for racial justice, young people in America are demanding change from their schools.

Petitions are circulating all over the country in support of creating anti-racist education. One petition, written by alumni of Xavier College Preparatory in Phoenix, Ariz., calls on the district to "review and advance its curriculum, goals, and objectives as they related to social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion."

"Education is the most valuable tool to dismantle racism and create a more equitable society," the petition reads.

Sumaiya DeLane, along with Khadijah Adamu and Samiza Palmer, started a petition in Montgomery County, Md., where they went to school.

"These are longstanding issues that need urgent solutions," DeLane says. "It needs to be total transformation versus reform."

Palmer says she doesn't think there can be "a truly anti-racist curriculum unless the teachers have gone through that same sort of training themselves."

Travis Bristol, an assistant professor of education at the University of California at Berkeley, agrees. He says that for students to receive an anti-racist education, teachers need better training and students need more diverse teachers.

All of this is in service to what he calls "the American project" of, in part, forming a more perfect union.

"I believe that to begin the work of forming a more perfect union requires us to enact anti-racist teaching, but it also requires us to prepare teachers to think about how to design anti-racist teaching," says Bristol, who is also a former New York City teacher. "And that is what gives me hope."

Here are excerpts from his interview on All Things Considered.
When we say anti-racist education, or anti-racist teaching, what does that mean to you?
So for me, anti-racist teaching means a fundamental disruption of the way in which teaching and learning happens in our schools today: It centers whiteness and white people. And so we have to start with the preparation of teachers.
You looked closely at how diverse teachers can reshape education and how, in particular, Black teachers can play a role. Why is having Black teachers inside classrooms important - not just for Black students to get a quality education, but for all children to get a quality education?
There is convincing evidence that Black children perform better in school, that they are able to persist through high school, that they are less likely to get suspended and expelled if they have a Black teacher compared to a white teacher. So there's clear evidence that for Black students there is this added value for Black teachers. There is a growing body of evidence that for white students, that there is a preference for having a teacher of color when compared to a white teacher.
But at the same time, I understand that you found school systems have a really tough time retaining African American teachers. Why?
In my own research, I have found that school districts have done a remarkable job of recruiting Black teachers. But they have, in many ways, placed at the feet of Black teachers the undue expectation that they can somehow fundamentally address 400 years of oppression.

School districts concentrate Black teachers in the most challenging schools, without giving those Black teachers the necessary resources to address the 400 years of marginalization and subjugation.

And so because Black teachers are placed in the most challenging schools without the necessary resources to teach Black children, Black teachers are leaving their schools, not their students. They're leaving the poor working conditions, the conditions that do not give them the tools, the resources, the ongoing training to teach Black children.

And so out of frustration, while doing good work, while raising test scores, while allowing Black children to persist, they also leave because they recognize, at the end of the day, that they do not have the tools and resources to do the work of teaching.
Listen to the full interview at the audio link above. Jonaki Mehta, Elena Burnett and Justine Kenin produced and edited the audio version of this story.

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Effective Anti-Racist Education Requires More Diverse Teachers, More Training

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In the wake of ongoing protests for racial justice, young people in America are demanding change from their schools. Petitions are circulating all over the country in support of creating anti-racist education. One petition, written by alumni of Xavier College Preparatory in Phoenix, Ariz., calls on the district to "review and advance its curriculum, goals, and objectives as they related to social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion."

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This article from a newspaper in Maine details the experiences Black and Brown high school students had with racism, and those who perpetrated that racism went unpunished despite reports from the students who experienced it. These students share that the administrators and teachers in this predominantly-white school district wouldn't follow school policy on these reports. These students share the emotional toll that this racism and abuse took on them, and that those experiences are inspiring them to fight back against the schools that condoned this behavior.

This article relates back to class content in that it centers the Black experience in predominantly white schools, an experience that is defined by racism and a feeling of not being welcome—by fellow students, teachers, and administrators alike. It proves that though there were likely plenty of faculty at the time that didn't consider themselves racists or perhaps thought they were doing anti-racist work, those teachers ultimately didn't prevent racism from negatively impacting the education and overall wellbeing of Black and Brown students in their schools—whether because they didn't know about these incidents or turned a blind eye /condoned them like so many were reported to have done. Social studies teachers should be reminded that as much as they think they themselves are anti-racist, the schools they teach in are not and the students they teach to are not either; this is a helpful reminder that anti-racist work is never finished. It is also a reminder to center the lived experiences of all students in classroom curriculum and to do everyone one can do to create safe spaces for students to share incident like this with them, and to always be on call to act in defense for one's students.

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Update: The Bangor School Department will order an outside investigation into Bangor High School's handling of racism that Black students have experienced at the predominantly white school. Read more here.
In Ijeoma Obi's first gym class in her freshman year at Bangor High School, she saw a white student wearing a Confederate flag belt buckle glaring at her. In her second gym class, he called her the N-word as she was in the middle of a ball game. Obi stepped back in shock, and pretended to be out of the game.

Whenever Obi ran into him after that throughout the school year - in health class, during gym and in the hallway - he pointed to his belt buckle and called her the N-word.

Obi dreaded running into him. She changed her routes to classes, avoiding hallways where she might find him. She sometimes skipped lunch.

"He never left me alone," she said. "Freshman year was one of the worst years for me because of that kid."

Obi reported the student four times, she said - twice to a gym teacher, once to a hall monitor and once to someone in the assistant principal's office.

She was told to simply ignore him, and that it was "just in his nature" to behave that way and wear his Confederate flag belt buckle. The harassment only stopped when the student left Bangor High at the end of Obi's freshman year.

That's one of many stories five Black students shared with the Bangor Daily News about their time at the predominantly white Bangor High School, where Black students make up less than 3 percent of the student body. They have regularly heard white students toss around the N-word in hallways, bathrooms and school buses. White students have sometimes directed the slur at them. They've heard peers in class defend white supremacy and slavery. And they've walked out of class, changed schedules or quit extracurricular activities out of frustration and fear. Close friends and family members verified the details they shared.

Three of the five students graduated from the school earlier this month, ending their high school careers following weeks of protests in Maine and across the country that have drawn attention to racism in many areas of life in the U.S., including education, and prompted institutions to confront their own biases and say how they plan to tackle racial injustice.

"Racism is my high school experience," said Kosi Ifeji, 15, who will be a junior in the fall. "I know it sounds bad, but it really is."

Bangor schools Superintendent Betsy Webb and Paul Butler, the high school principal, said they were unaware of most of the specific incidents the five students described, but said the school department does not tolerate racism or discrimination, even when meant as a joke or based in ignorance and not malice. They cited the school department's policy that outlines steps for students to report discrimination and harassment, and for administrators to investigate and discipline students.

Black students, however, said teachers and administrators often didn't follow the policy after they reported discrimination. Both Butler and Webb said the Bangor School Department needs to improve.

"I would be disappointed in a staff member if I found that something like that was reported to them and it didn't make its way to administration. I would be disappointed and I would have some work to do," Butler said. "I accept this responsibility fully. We have to commit to accepting the responsibility for students feeling safe and valued."

"Schools in general, and certainly the Bangor School Department, have been too silent," Webb said. "We cannot be silent anymore. We have to talk about these things, and we have to listen to our students, our employees and our families."

Ibby Konteh, who graduated from Bangor High School earlier this month, talks about experiencing racism at school. [Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN]

Small numbers, little voice

Ibby Konteh, who graduated this month, said friends and teammates have used the N-word in his presence even though he has repeatedly asked them not to. When he was a sophomore, a classmate started calling him the racial slur at lunch, and Konteh switched to a different lunch period to avoid the student.

"And every time I saw him in the hall, he just kept doing the same thing," Konteh said. "I went to administration but nothing happened, and it just really got to me. I've tried my best to stop it, but I don't know what I can do anymore."

The spring of his junior year, Konteh discovered the phrase "N word" had been written on his car while parked at school. He tried reporting it, but was told that the school couldn't take any action. With no cameras in the parking lot, he was told, there was no way to prove it happened on school property.

Being in such a small minority and continually experiencing discrimination has led Black students to believe they don't belong in Bangor, they said. That's a common experience for students of color in predominantly white schools, and especially in Maine, where nearly 95 percent of residents are white, said Emma LeBlanc, a researcher at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine who focuses on race in schools.

Ibby Konteh, who graduated from Bangor High School earlier this month, talks about experiencing racism at school, including a racial slur written on his car door. [Courtesy of Ibby Konteh]

"School districts where there are lots of kids of color and those kids organize, they might be able to assert their power better or they may become better advocates for themselves," LeBlanc said. "In a place where you feel like the overwhelming minority, it's really hard to have that kind of advocacy, and you don't have a stronger voice within the school district."

Obi, 18, and sisters Amara and Kosi Ifeji have all had to leave class and quit extracurricular activities that they enjoyed after hearing classmates make offensive comments, whether about white supremacy, slavery or other topics.

The experiences aren't just a blemish on their time in high school, but the most memorable aspect, they said.

Throughout their time in high school, the three have often broken down, feeling angry or helpless due to a lack of support from peers and administrators.

Based on their high school experience, Obi and Amara Ifeji said they have to leave Maine for things to truly change in their lives. Obi is headed to Columbia University in New York this fall, and Amara to Northeastern University in Boston.

"I love the state of Maine. It has afforded me so many opportunities. But I know to be the person that I want to be, I can't stay here. It's just not an option for me," said Amara, 18, who founded a multicultural student union at Bangor High School to give students of color a platform for sharing their stories with each other. "I can remember all the social injustices that I had to go through, and every racially motivated incident that I had to go through. And it's quite sad that those are the sentiments that I'm leaving Bangor High School with."

Amara Ifeji, who recently graduated from Bangor High School, dealt with racism throughout her high school years. [Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN]

'It's really taken a toll'

Like Obi, Amara Ifeji's experience with racism at school started a couple weeks into freshman year, during a civics class. While a student teacher conducted a discussion on slavery, he asked students to think about why white supremacy exists, why white people thought they were superior.

"And some white student said, 'because we are,' and he just went on to glorify white supremacy," Amara said. "And I was just 14. I didn't have any courage back then. I was really timid and shy, so I just started crying, thinking, this is absolutely horrible."

Kosi Ifeji had a similar experience last fall when a student brought up slavery during an English class discussion on "Of Mice and Men" led by a substitute teacher. The white student said that he didn't see a problem with it because slaves were given food and shelter.

As the only Black student in class, Kosi said it felt like a personal attack because he was addressing her while defending slavery.

Kosi left the class when the student didn't stop even after other students intervened. She reported the incident to the administration, which Butler confirmed. But she kept seeing that student in her other classes, and she wasn't sure he'd received any punishment.

"I felt ostracized from the class, and I thought, am I really that undervalued that nothing is going to be done?" she said.

On their drives home from school, Amara and Kosi Ifeji often screamed out of frustration if they'd had a particularly challenging day dealing with racism, Amara said. The last time she remembers a ride like that was in March, just before school closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"It is exhausting being a student of color at Bangor High School, so I was so happy to have had these last three months off because I physically can't deal with the students in my class anymore," Amara said.

Amara and Kosi's mother, Ifeoma Ifeji, said she lets her daughters handle racist incidents on their own, and she only intervenes if they ask her to.

But she sees how often they come home crying, and she said it's heartbreaking. Kosi told her mother one day that the idea of going to school and interacting with students made her physically sick.

"It's really taken a toll on my kids, but they're very strong," she said. "If they weren't, they would've withdrawn from school."

Ijeoma Obi (right) and Amara Ifeji, who recently graduated from Bangor High School, dealt with racism throughout their high school years at the predominantly white school. [Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN]

Typical for Maine schools

Obi said she had to quit playing clarinet, a lifelong hobby, when a student in the band kept insinuating that she liked and supported comedian Bill Cosby, a convicted sex offender, because they were both Black. The same student also made offensive comments about her hair.

"I tried to do as many activities as I could to feel included, but I always felt like the odd one out," Obi said.

Another Black student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of provoking more harassment at school, said classmates have told her multiple times to "go back where I came from."

Beyond school, Amara Ifeji's white classmates have posted racial slurs and made jokes about slavery on social media. When she's tried to explain why their posts are offensive, they've blocked her. When she brought them to an assistant principal, he told her to take matters into her own hands. The school department's policy on bullying only addresses racial slurs on social media if posts directly mention students, or if students are impersonating peers.

"I wish I could say I was surprised, and that this is an egregious exception to a culture of acceptance and celebration of diversity in Maine schools, but that's not the case," LeBlanc, from the ACLU, said. "This is exactly the kind of thing that I've seen throughout the state."

The problem isn't one of individual students who use racial slurs, LeBlanc said, it's a school culture that has let the behavior happen.

"You have to have a school culture where such things are not just unacceptable, but fundamentally unimaginable, that if one kid does something bad, it's not on the handful of kids of color to have to respond," she said.

Schools can improve the experiences of students of color and their culture generally, LeBlanc said, by changing curriculum to ensure it reflects the experiences of people of color, putting more minorities in positions of power and influence, and appointing a diverse slate of student representatives to voting positions on the school board.

"That sends a different kind of message, both to students of color in terms of the response that they will get from administrators, but also to students who are bringing their racism into school," she said.

The Bangor School Department is working toward a curriculum that is more inclusive, Webb said. It's also working on forming an advisory committee with people of color as members.

"In America we have a whitewashed curriculum," she said. "And we need to make sure that the curriculum includes trainings and education, but it's also representative of people of color, Black students, brown students, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, and that they see themselves in the curriculum and those who have made contributions to it."

Amara Ifeji and Ijeoma Obi, who recently graduated from Bangor High School, dealt with racism throughout their high school years at the predominantly white school. [Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN]

Last December, Obi and Amara Ifeji shared some of their experiences with discrimination at Bangor High at a joint meeting of the Bangor City Council and School Committee. They asked for changes so their younger sisters and other Black students don't continue to experience the racism that dominated their time in high school.

Six months later, on Monday, the two recent graduates made the same request of city leaders.

"There hasn't been a lot of progress," Obi said. "We're going to have more people like me who leave their school feeling unhappy because they weren't treated like everyone else. And no one should have to deal with that ever again, in Bangor schools or or anywhere else."

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Update: The Bangor School Department will order an outside investigation into Bangor High School's handling of racism that Black students have experienced at the predominantly white school. Read more here. In Ijeoma Obi's first gym class in her freshman year at Bangor High School, she saw a white student wearing a Confederate flag belt buckle glaring at her.

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"How to Create Anti-racist Virtual Classrooms: Strategies for Teachers and Families"

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"How to Create Anti-racist Virtual Classrooms: Strategies for Teachers and Families"

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This article provides foundational definitions for what anti-racist teaching is and how to accomplish it in a classroom: "anti-racist teaching is the idea of looking at instructional planning through an equity lens. It’s thinking about digital accessibility and making content accessible for students who may have cognitive disabilities." Accomplishing this in a classroom involves encouraging students to think openly and critically about race, as well as incorporating diverse perspectives through materials or even guest speakers to further this learning.

But this article is especially important for teachers to read because it gives a rundown of COVID/virtual learning in terms of anti-racist classrooms. Teaches are encouraged to remember that the diversity in each classroom is hard for students to see through virtual learning and thus to learn from one another, so teachers should incorporate opportunities for students to investigate things that are important to them and then share those things with the class. These types of assignments remind the class of the multiple diverse perspectives that students their age bring to class and gives students an opportunity to share parts of their identity with their peers.

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Going back to school this year means something different in homes across the country. And the new academic year requires an enhanced body of knowledge for families and educators facing both COVID-19 and ongoing racism.

The University of Pittsburgh School of Education's PittEd Justice Collective, a movement launched in June to center equity and anti-racist approaches in education, recently convened a panel of expert practitioners and scholars to provide insights on remote teaching and learning strategies. The webinar's focus: anti-racist teaching and learning.

About 225 people from across the country attended the mid-August webinar, including K-16 educators, school superintendents, principals, education consultants, college students and families.

Valerie Kinloch, the Renée and Richard Goldman Dean of Pitt's School of Education, moderated the panel, and recognized the urgency of the work that needs to be done to reach all students and the next generation.

"We have to have a deep love for what we do, and for the people we work with and learn from," said Kinloch. "The work of equity, justice and anti-racism is hard work, but it's the most important work we can do when we talk about engaging and learning."

The panelists featured in webinar spanned multiple disciplines and areas of expertise:

Tinukwa Boulder, director of innovative technologies and online learning, associate professor of practice in Pitt's School of Education

Detra Price-Dennis, associate professor of education in the teachers college at Columbia University

Cassie Quigley, associate professor of science education in Pitt's School of Education

Sharon Ross, assistant professor in health and human development in Pitt's School of Education

You can watch the full webinar here. Here are some highlights from the discussion:

What is anti-racist teaching, and what does it look like in practice?

According to Boulder, anti-racist teaching is the idea of looking at instructional planning through an equity lens. It's thinking about digital accessibility and making content accessible for students who may have cognitive disabilities, she said. A starting point in tackling those issues with social justice and equity is thinking of ways to encourage students to critically think about race and racism-and for educators, being comfortable to address the discomfort that comes along with discussing this topic, she said.

Ross views anti-racist teaching from a health, physical activity and human development perspective. She said it means being able to name racism and disrupt multi-level factors that contribute to health inequities. She said she brings in guest speakers to provide students with tools to build awareness about these issues.

Quigley, a science educator, said she asks her students to be open-or "permeable"-to conversations about race and racism.

"I ask them to acknowledge the past that was created, and what counts as knowledge," she said. "The science that is often taught in schools promotes and perpetuates racism and white superiority. It plays out in who is promoted as leaders in the field and who participates in risky medical trials. Anti-racist teaching asks us to question this history."

What is the relationship between equity and anti-racist teaching?

Price-Dennis said these terms come from the same place: They're about examining hierarchal power structures in our society. "If we don't have an understanding of that, it's hard to name what's anti-racist," she said. "It's about moving toward co-constructing relationships with families, and how those relationships can look more reciprocal-and more focused on the collective good. And inviting discomfort into this space."

Ross added that racism includes other "isms"-including sexism, classism and other systems of power. "To pursue anti-racist teaching aligns with the fight against oppression for any marginalized group, and the status quo reinforces privilege. It has to be this active posture and stance of pushing back," she said. "We need to make sure that we are creating a space where we have courageous conversations with students so they can go back and apply it themselves."

What are the implications for remote teaching and learning strategies? How can we construct curriculum during this moment?

Boulder noted that COVID-19 has also caused a "tech pandemic."

"There's a digital divide," she said, in regard to the issue of access to technology. "When we don't talk about that in terms of equity, there are a lot of families who don't have high-speed technology or access to online learning. We rely on the internet for social-emotional well-being too, so there are many issues beyond education."

Price-Dennis said that she thinks about classroom set up, which looks different now in a time of remote learning.

"With remote learning, how do our students know who is in a virtual classroom? I think about what the space looks like. It's our job to think about the way we use technology to encourage participation and give space for students to process their ideas," said Price-Dennis.

Quigley said that when constructing a curriculum, she thinks about ways to view learning assessments as the ultimate goal to find and promote student strengths. Rather than assign multiple choice exams, Quigley said teachers should think about implementing creative approaches to allow students to investigate issues that are of interest to them in their communities.

"This is a great opportunity to allow our students to engage in communities to discover and learn about environmental justice during this time that we're all at home," said Quigley.

For assignment ideas, Quigley suggested: "Maybe there's an infographic that can tell a story about the lead pipes in students' neighborhoods. Or maybe it's creating podcasts to talk about plastic pollution."

How do we de-center whiteness in the curriculum? What if school districts don't give teachers the freedom to do this work in the classroom?

For those working in K-12 public schools, Quigley said that the state education standards cannot be ignored, but she strongly encouraged teachers to ask students to be their guide.

"Students are really good at asking tough questions," she said. "They can give us opportunities to align course study to standards already in place."

How can we create a space for students to call us out when they're not represented in the classroom?

For Ross, while creating safe classroom spaces, it's important to acknowledge that having conversations about race can be uncomfortable-and educators need to practice having them. Working with higher education students who are future teachers themselves, Ross said she shares with students that it's a learning opportunity for her, too.

"I let my students know that this isn't going to be comfortable. You are going to be triggered, your heart may start racing. ... I am asking you in this moment to use that as an opportunity to learn and lean into that," said Ross.

What should we do when we receive pushback on anti-racist teaching from parents and others?

Boulder said to expect resistance, but to continue onward.

"If you set yourself this goal to engage in this conversation, then the idea is that we are maybe dragging people along kicking and screaming. But we should do our best to educate those who may be resistant," she said. "Part of it is educating, informing and having those conversations. It may require repetition and driving it through in different ways."

Check out a list of related resources recommended by the PittEd Justice Collective.

Join the PittEd Justice Collective

The next PittEd Justice Collective webinar, "From Linguistic Racism to Linguistic Justice and Liberation: Black Language, Literacy and Learning," will be held on Sept. 1 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Register for the webinar.

The webinar will discuss how and why African American Vernacular English should be respected and integrated as part of the literacy and learning of Black children during COVID-19 and beyond. It will also explore relationships between Black children's language and the development of healthy identities.

Anyone can join the PittEd Justice Collective. Head to the PittEd Justice Collective website, scroll down and submit your information. Contact PittEdJusticeCollective@pitt.edu with other questions.

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How to Create Anti-racist Virtual Classrooms: Strategies for Teachers and Families

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Going back to school this year means something different in homes across the country. And the new academic year requires an enhanced body of knowledge for families and educators facing both COVID-19 and ongoing racism.

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"It's Not So Black and White: Discussing Race and Racism in the Classroom."

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"It's Not So Black and White: Discussing Race and Racism in the Classroom."

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Dr. Beverly Tatum shares brief thoughts on teaching race/racism in the classroom in this Scholastic article. She calls for teachers to stray away from only teaching about Black history as it's concerned with slavery, and she encourages teachers to pull stories that highlight the complexity of race in American history—showing that not all white people are bad and that not all Black history is/ever was just Black suffering. Dr. Tatum shares that teachers should lean into discomfort when having challenging conversations to model appropriate and respectful behavior/dialogue to students, and she encourages teaches to help students "find hope" in history.

This article relates back to class because it reminds teachers that it is their responsibility to teach history in all its complexities and convolutedness, and to ensure that students don't walk away from challenging conversations hating one another but rather understanding one another and their privileges and histories. Navigating this is challenging but is an important job for social studies educators.

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Discussing racial issues can make students and teachers uncomfortable. Here, educator and scholar Dr. Beverly Tatum shares her wisdom on teaching about slavery and race-related issues.
Classroom teachers across the country are faced with explaining the central paradox of a democracy that declared all men equal but enslaved and oppressed one group to provide independence and prosperity for another. The task is difficult because your audience is children.

Slavery is a topic that makes many of us uncomfortable. Yet, black-white race relations in the United States have been forever shaped by slavery and its social, psychological, and economic legacy. It requires discussion. How should we approach the topic with children?

Too often I hear from young African American students that they feel embarrassment in school when slavery is discussed. Ironically, slavery is one of the few ways the black experience is included in their schooling, even during Black History Month, a time of celebration. Uncomfortable with the portrayal of their group as helpless victims, students squirm as they feel the eyes of white children looking for their reaction to this subject.

In my professional-development work with white teachers, they sometimes remark how uncomfortable they, too, are with this example (and others) of the painful history of race relations. As one elementary teacher said: "It is hard to tell small children about slavery, hard to explain that young black men were lynched and that police turned fire hoses on children while others bombed churches, killing black children at their prayers. This history is a terrible legacy for all of us. The other day [another] teacher told me that she could not look into the faces of her students when she taught about these things. It was too painful, and too embarrassing. . . . If we are all uncomfortable, something is wrong in our approach."

Something is wrong. While it is necessary to be honest about the racism of our past and present, it is also necessary to provide children (and adults) with a vision that change is possible. Where can we find this vision? We can look for it in our history, we can create it with our colleagues, and we can demonstrate it in our classrooms.

The Africans who were brought here as slaves were not just passive victims. They found ways to resist their victimization. All whites were not bad, and some black resisters found white allies. Concrete examples are critical.

For young children, examples can be found in picture books. One of my favorites is Faith Ringgold's Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky. This story is told from the point of view of a young black girl who travels back in time and experiences both the chilling realities of slavery and the power of her own resistance and eventual escape. White people are presented in the story as enemies (slave owners) and as allies (hosts on the Underground Railroad). This dual representation is important for all children, regardless of color.

A white friend of mine often told her young son the story of how Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus in 1955 and sparked her whole community to take a stand against racist whites during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. The story was one of the child's favorites when he was just four years old. Then one day he asked her, "Are all white people bad?" Now he was five, and already seemed to be feeling bad about being white.

I recommended talking more about what white people had done to oppose injustice. Jeanette Winter's book Follow the Drinking Gourd highlights the role of a white man and other white allies who offer assistance along the Underground Railroad.

When discussing a sensitive topic such as slavery, make sure all are treated respectfully as individuals. Follow the rule yourself, and don't allow children to be treated as if they represent an entire racial group.

When you feel uncomfortable or notice students squirming, acknowledge the discomfort. Let them know it is normal. You can say, "It is hard to talk about the time when there were slaves. It can make us all feel bad. Sometimes I feel ____." You can fill in the blank yourself; feelings of guilt or anger are common.

Let students see themselves as agents of change and healing. Although slavery ended a long time ago, we still face racism today. By treating one another with respect, students are fighting racism.

Encourage them to note examples of bias and stereotypes in their reading. Children can learn to question whether derogatory depictions of other people are stereotypes. They can learn to ask who is doing what in the story's plot, and why; who is in the role of leader and who is taking the orders; and who has been left out of the story altogether.

Social studies and history curricula rarely emphasize examples of black or white resistance to slavery or racism. You're not alone in your discomfort with the topic, or your search for solutions. Share your concerns, frustrations, success stories, and resources with colleagues and friends.

Coming to terms with past and present injustice is often cause for anger and guilt, frustration and despair. All children, regardless of color, need to find the hope in this history. We must not insensitively sanitize the pain of those caught in the bind of oppression. We need to celebrate the strength of the human spirit to go beyond the roles of victim and victimizer. In doing so, we may inspire one another to do likewise in the struggle against the contemporary injustices we face.

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It's Not So Black and White: Discussing Race and Racism in the Classroom | Scholastic

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Discussing racial issues can make students and teachers uncomfortable. Here, educator and scholar Dr. Beverly Tatum shares her wisdom on teaching about slavery and race-related issues. Classroom teachers across the country are faced with explaining the central paradox of a democracy that declared all men equal but enslaved and oppressed one group to provide independence and prosperity for another.

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"Amid COVID and Racial Injustice, Teachers Matter More Than Ever"

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"Amid COVID and Racial Injustice, Teachers Matter More Than Ever"

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This article provides a compelling overview of the power that teachers have in shaping students's perspectives of the world around them—particularly during tough times like the coronavirus pandemic and the national reckoning with race in the United States. This author and student at Teachers College shares that teachers should include what she calls intentional relevance/intentional and relevant teaching that speaks directly to the lived experiences of students that "strengthens our civic empathy for each other, delivers academic rigor and knowledge...and models engaged listening in all of our schools." This article calls for empathy for those that are different than us while maintaining that harming others is unacceptable, especially in a classroom.

This article is important for social studies teachers to read as it empowers teachers to meet the moment, whatever it may be—a pandemic, systemic racism, etc.—and teach with these stresses and current events in mind rather than pretending they don't exist within the confines of the classroom. This kind of teaching incorporates the experiences students are having outside of the classroom and ensures they feel they are being treated as a whole person rather than just a student passively learning. This article gives teachers the agency to create culturally-relevant pedagogy that engages students and gives them a safe place to discuss hard things, no matter what they might be. This article perhaps is idealistic in the sense that she doesn't necessarily give a roadmap for accomplishing this kind of feat in a classroom, but she shares a compelling story with important big ideas nonetheless.

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By Amra Sabic-El-Rayess
With an uncertain new school year upon us, it has never been clearer that schools provide us with critically important services, from imparting knowledge and skills to providing a theater for socialization and friendships, to furnishing meals and health care for many poorer students, to simply giving parents a place to send their children during the workday.

Yet our society continues to under-value and even denigrate the single most precious gift our schools give us: teachers.

Research has demonstrated the extent to which our communities have devalued teachers relative to other professions and even teaching relative to research. More recently, many voice are arguing that schools' forced conversion to online learning marks a new era of cyber education, in which teachers are superfluous. Others unfairly blame teachers for the shortcoming of virtual instruction.

V ALUING SAFE SPACES As a teenager, Sabic-El-Rayess survived ethnic cleansing in Bosnia as a teen, thanks in great part to the stability her teachers provided. (Photo by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess)

Of course, those of us with access to computers and the internet are completely lucky that technology platforms enable us to both teach and learn from the safety of our homes.

But as both a scholar who studies the radicalization of politically marginalized people and a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) who grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s, I have seen firsthand just how important direct teacher-student interactions are during dark times like these.

As both a scholar who studies the radicalization of politically marginalized people and a Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) who grew up in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the ethnic cleansing of the 1990s, I have seen firsthand just how important direct teacher-student interactions are during dark times like these.

Back then, we went long months with no school, because the Serb military sought to exterminate, demoralize and dehumanize us by shelling civilian targets - including schools - to kill as many children as possible. But, when school was held, no one failed to attend, because we treasured those moments - for the distraction from the war, for the chance to see one another, but above all, because of our teachers.

I will always remember my literature teacher walking into a classroom only hours after she had lost her husband and reading, through tears, a poem on love, loss, and forgiveness she had previously assigned to our class. Every word applied to our shared experiences, every expression brought us closer together, and every tear deepened our student-teacher connection. There was an undeniable permanency to that moment's effect on building our collective resilience and determination. Our teacher, along with others, ensured that what we learned, we also lived.

That memory has become more vivid during the COVID crisis - and especially so since the police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests in this country and around the world. It is at precisely such a moment that our children need the intentional relevance of my long-ago teacher, whose love and concern for us outweighed the lack of pencils, textbooks, and nutrition.

It is at precisely such a moment that our children need the intentional relevance of my long-ago teacher, whose love and concern for us outweighed the lack of pencils, textbooks, and nutrition.

That kind of teaching fosters understanding and knowledge - not in a social, political, or emotional vacuum but instead, by doing the messy work of negotiating conflicts and compromises as we incorporate more of our lived experiences into our math, literature, history, and science lessons. As our youth process their experiences of this pandemic and of the public images of racist violence and public protest, we must make our post-COVID19 classrooms into physical "safe spaces" that allow them to confront their traumas, losses, and fears about their futures.

If we fail to do so, particularly at this moment when growing numbers of far left and far right movements are putting forth competing narratives to pull us away from each other, we will witness a continued rise in the marginalization and radicalization of American youth.

Consider a young person who holds a view based on bias against a particular ethnic group or religion. There are ways to address the logic that underlies that bias - but not if the student feels prohibited from expressing it or unwelcome in class to begin with. A few years back, I received a threat from a Columbia alum whom I never met. He did not think a Muslim should be allowed to teach. That same week, I used this individual's letter in my radicalization course. My students were challenged to decode this person's path to radicalization by applying theories we had covered in class to a lived moment. It was in that moment that everyone in the class understood how consequential learning can be to our immediate wellbeing. Creating a network of such moments ultimately builds one's resilience, critical thinking, and adaptability to a changing world.

We need to invest more in our teachers -- in what we pay them, in their professional development, in how we mentor them to counter the racial, religious and ethnic stereotypes in our schools, in the resources we give them, and in how we esteem them for the courageous work they do.

We need to invest more in our teachers to do this kind of work - in what we pay them, in their professional development, in how we mentor them to counter the racial, religious and ethnic stereotypes in our schools, in the resources we give them, and in how we esteem them for the courageous work they do. This also includes investing in and diversifying the teachers who teach teachers - meaning us - because we have the privilege of influencing teaching and education around the world through our own work at one of the most globally renowned schools of education, Teachers College. But, no meaningful change can ever occur without adequate funding. Right now, our elected leaders are slashing school budgets even as many teachers are risking their own health to work in poorly ventilated buildings and/or working longer hours to accommodate online students.

At education schools like Teachers College, we are best equipped to leverage our research-backed expertise and prepare engaged teachers who can simultaneously grapple with youths' engrained beliefs and their changing emotional and academic needs. We have the interdisciplinary strength to create a fully integrated SEA (social, emotional, and academic) model of learning that strengthens our civic empathy for each other, delivers academic rigor and knowledge through intentional and relevant teaching, and models engaged listening in all of our schools. And we have the policy scholarship and advocacy skills to tilt education away from the testing mania and towards expanding opportunities for discussions and activities that would enthuse youths to act beyond their Twitter activism and achieve beyond a perfect SAT score.

We can't undo the damage inflicted by the twin pandemics of COVID and racism. But we can make sure that we act on one of the most important lessons they teach us: that it is time to reshape education to meet our children's deepest needs, and to restore the primacy of teachers, our schools' and society's greatest asset.

Amra Sabic-El-Rayess is Associate Professor of Practice in Teachers College's Department of Education Policy & Social Analysis. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival (Bloomsbury, 2020). To purchase Professor Sabic-El-Rayess' book, please visit: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49127643-the-cat-i-never-named

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.

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Amid COVID and Racial Injustice, Teachers Matter More than Ever

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By Amra Sabic-El-Rayess With an uncertain new school year upon us, it has never been clearer that schools provide us with critically important services, from imparting knowledge and skills to providing a theater for socialization and friendships, to furnishing meals and health care for many poorer students, to simply giving parents a place to send their children during the workday.

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"California schools launch anti-racism plan, flouting Trump's threats"

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"California schools launch anti-racism plan, flouting Trump's threats"

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As a response to Trump's 1776 Commission, California schools developed a plan to ensure that they are continuing to work toward decolonizing schools—a superintendent with the state education department says he is
reminded that "education continues to be one of our most powerful tools to countering hate." This article reminds teachers that Trump "does not have the power to mandate state school curriculum."

This article also shares that California is working on making ethnic studies courses mandatory for high school graduation by 2030, and that soon all UC system college students will have a similar requirement.

This article relates back to what we've learned in class in that it shows that schools/state departments can and should fight back against attempts to redefine state/local curriculum and incorporate racist, nationalist propaganda to accommodate white comfort. Teachers should be encouraged by these efforts and feel encouraged to similarly make anti-racist changes in their own curriculum.

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An empty classroom is seen at Hollywood High School in Hollywood, Calif. | Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

SACRAMENTO - The California Department of Education announced new anti-racism lessons and teacher training for school districts on Monday, days after President Donald Trump decried the notion of teaching slavery as a founding tenet of the U.S. and called for a more "patriotic education."

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond pointed to the police killing of George Floyd in May, bullying of Asian American students amid the coronavirus and a spike in anti-immigrant rhetoric and antisemitism since the 2016 election as reasons for the project.

"We have continued to watch unspeakable acts of racism play out on our television screens, whether it be police brutality or those who want to hold on to symbols that represent hate against African Americans that go back to slavery," Thurmond said at a news conference announcing the optional materials. "At times, it just is so heartbreaking. Sometimes I'm not sure what to do. But in those moments, I'm reminded education continues to be one of our most powerful tools to countering hate."

Last week, Trump said he would sign an executive order to establish a "1776 Commission," a nod to the 1619 project, a New York Times Magazine production named after the year that the first slaves arrived in Virginia. The project has been adapted into a curriculum guide for schools to use, and focuses on the history of slavery as the root of systemic racism in the U.S.

Trump and other Republicans have tried to discredit the project and called similar teachings in schools a "twisted web of lies." The president threatened to defund California schools that teach the 1619 Project in a tweet earlier this month.

Thurmond dismissed those threats on Monday, and supported the use of the 1619 Project in California schools. Trump does not have the power to mandate state school curriculum.

"I don't know how else to say it, I thought that the president's tweet was just ridiculous and reckless and irresponsible to in any way suggest that schools would somehow have their funding threatened for simply teaching the history and the facts that racism has existed in this country and that there are deep impacts from slavery," he said.

The California Department of Education is also developing the nation's first statewide ethnic studies curriculum model. A bill headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk would make that curriculum a graduation requirement for California high school students by the 2029-30 school year. Another bill signed by Newsom last month will require all undergraduate students in the California State University system to complete an ethnic studies course before graduation.

The new Education to End Hate initiative announced on Monday is designed to empower California's more than 6 million K-12 students and teachers to "confront the hate, bigotry and racism rising in communities across the state and nation," according to the state Department of Education.

The initiative will include a virtual classroom series on how schools can combat discrimination and provide districts up to $200,000 to support teacher training regarding anti-racism and bias. A handful of Democratic lawmakers have signed on to create additional paths for schools to address racism.

"While President Trump and Secretary DeVos try to implement some sort of revisionist history propaganda program in our schools, California is leading the way in using education to end bigotry, hate and racism," Rick Zbur, executive director of Equality California, which will help offer professional development for teachers, said at a news conference.

Chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), accused Trump on Monday of trying to indoctrinate kids with his 1776 Commission. "We know that in 1776, Black people were generally slaves, women had no legal identity beyond their husbands and being LGBTQ was a capital offense," he said.

The S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation will fund the school grants, while the National Equity Project and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance have also signed on to help.

"We know that racism and hate are taught. We know that children are born loving everyone," said Sen. Connie Leyva (D-Chino), chair of the California Legislative Women's Caucus. "You learn what you live, and unfortunately racism and hate are still being taught in living rooms across the state of California and across this country."

This article tagged under:

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California schools launch anti-racism plan, flouting Trump's threats

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SACRAMENTO - The California Department of Education announced new anti-racism lessons and teacher training for school districts on Monday, days after President Donald Trump decried the notion of teaching slavery as a founding tenet of the U.S. and called for a more "patriotic education."

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"I Was a Racist Teacher and I Didn't Even Know It."

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"I Was a Racist Teacher and I Didn't Even Know It."

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This article written from the perspective of a teacher with experience working in the US Department of Education is a telling story of a teacher's realization that she isn't doing all she can as a white ally and still upholds/perpetuates systems of racism in her own classroom. After a Black parent was upset over the class watching the movie Glory which subjected her Black daughter to watch the dehumanization of Black people with a crowd of white peers, this teacher realized that she was not the ally she thought she was and was in fact harming her Black students instead when she thought she was doing things that were "on their side." She writes of more realizations: "My reluctance to criticize White literary greats, like Jack London, to call them out over racist writing. My inability to connect with Black boys in the classroom and sometimes my fear of them. My over-the-top habit of portraying myself publicly as someone who is “definitely not a racist.”

This article is important for social studies teachers because, like others in this Padlet, is shows that even those with the best intentions and the most "well-read" of folks on race still, practically, may fall short. "Anti-racism is more of an action than a feeling," the author points out, and this article encourages teachers to re-evaluate their allyship and do more to genuinely decolonize one's classroom in ways that have meaningful impact on the lives of students of color.

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Laurie Calvert is a National Board Certified Teacher who taught for 14 years in Asheville, North Carolina. She was a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education and the Department's first teacher liaison. Full profile →

I was a racist teacher and I didn't recognize it.

At the time that I taught, I would have argued that I was the opposite. I was a progressive, a Democrat. I campaigned in my progressive town in Western North Carolina for the first Black man to run for the U.S. Senate against a notorious racist from our state, Jesse Helms. I voted for Obama, even volunteered in his office during the 2008 campaign.

As a teacher, I went out of my way to introduce Black and Brown authors and civil rights leaders into my English lessons. Frustrated that I hadn't been exposed to many multicultural books appropriate for middle school, I started a book club with middle school teachers and got funding for us to read books by Black and Latino authors and talk about how we might use their works in our classrooms. I showed an approved-for-school version of the film "Glory" to my eighth-grade students and pointed out, as the Massachusetts 54th regiment endured bigotry and racial slurs from townspeople, that "it's a mistake to believe that all the racists are in the South."

Moving to Washington, D.C., in 2010 changed me. Working for five years in the Obama administration in the U.S. Department of Education, I began to become aware of a more insidious side to myself. I won't say I was "woke." It wasn't that fast. But over time I began to recognize a latent racism in me, one that had been hidden even to myself.

My boss at the time, Arne Duncan, talked often about the need for transparency in education, arguing that truth serves as an antiseptic by bringing issues into the open, into the light. He believed that we should examine ourselves and make sure that the equity we were promoting in education policy was present in us as individuals and in the U.S. Department of Education.

To accomplish this, Duncan's team brought into the Department a team of racial bias experts to lead his senior staff and political appointees through a series of "Courageous Conversations About Race," facilitated by Michelle Molitor of the D.C. Equity Lab. The progressive in me couldn't wait to participate, to have my values affirmed and to be seen as one of the good guys who gets it. Definitely not a racist.

From the beginning, though, I could sense something was off inside me. During the first day of training, Molitor taught us to listen to each other's stories without judgement, which is tougher than it sounds. Then she asked us to describe to a partner a time when we first recognized the skin we are in. Though I hadn't planned to, I went into a semi-rant about anger I still felt for parents of Black students who had over the years implied that I was a racist.

One mother had told me it was "insensitive" for me to show "Glory" in school, that her daughter felt demoralized seeing how African Americans were treated while sitting in a class of mostly White students. When the mother had said over the phone, "I know that you want me to believe you care about students of color," I went ballistic! How dare she? Didn't she know I was on her side?

Molitor introduced a range of concepts that were new to me: microaggression, White privilege, and the difference between prejudice and racism. But it was listening to others' stories that shifted my thinking the most. Colleague after colleague-people more educated and influential than I-described events that I did not realize still happened in the United States.

Patrice described her husband being pulled over by police while jogging in their wealthy Atlanta neighborhood. Bill, a Native American, recounted having his long braid pulled by women who made comments about wanting to be with "a savage." The stories challenged my assumptions about race relations in this country and about my complicity.

I began to see myself as part of the problem. Could those parents who criticized me have been partly right? Was I supporting structures and systems that kept White people in power?

Looking back, there were tells that I can now see more clearly: My reluctance to criticize White literary greats, like Jack London, to call them out over racist writing. My inability to connect with Black boys in the classroom and sometimes my fear of them. My over-the-top habit of portraying myself publicly as someone who is "definitely not a racist."

As a teacher I was aware of disparities in how both Black and White educators discipline students. Black kids are more likely to be suspended for the same infraction that does not put a White kid out of school. When education reformers raised this issue, I often felt frustrated. "Black kids escalate when you call them out," I said to them, "when White kids often don't." I fell into a defensive position to protect myself. Instead of worrying about being right, I should have asked, "Is there anything in the way that I call out Black students that causes them to push back?" Are my actions, in fact, racist?

I became more aware of my tendency to stereotype, fear and blame Black people. I know better now, but I am not "cured." I know that voting for Obama and driving up from North Carolina to see him inaugurated does not mean I don't still have racist tendencies. I see with new eyes the huge advantage I've been given by being born White, how it has opened doors for me, but I harbor some irrational fears that if people of color win, I will somehow lose.

One strategy that has helped is noticing when I feel like this, when a racial issue makes me feel angry or defensive. That is often a sign that I am protecting my own White power at the expense of someone else and I need to reflect and pray.

Many of my White friends and family are going be uncomfortable with my views, and some will feel the same kind of defensiveness I've felt many times. That's okay. I get it. To see that what you have believed for so long is actually a lie is hard. It's like the map of the world that I've been using to make my way is wrong, and I am lost without it. I don't know where to turn for a new map.

It's difficult to look at oneself objectively. The inside work is the hardest when the stakes are high and our habits of mind intractable.

I am learning to think of my views of race as moving along a spectrum toward greater understanding of myself and my part in racial inequity. I started as someone who theoretically objected to racism. Over time, I have moved toward humanity. I have learned that it is not enough to not be a racist. It's not enough to hate the Klan or denounce white supremacists. I am learning to become anti-racist.

Anti-racism is more of an action than a feeling. I'm learning to take action to promote equity and to call out injustice. I am learning to lean into doing my part to help this country that I love I become true to our promise of justice for all.

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I Was a Racist Teacher and I Didn't Even Know It

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Laurie Calvert is a National Board Certified Teacher who taught for 14 years in Asheville, North Carolina. She was a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education and the Department's first teacher liaison. Full profile → I was a racist teacher and I didn't recognize it.

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"New book helps teachers, principles confront their own racism."

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"New book helps teachers, principles confront their own racism."

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This article is an interview with Sarah Fiarman and Tracey Benson, two former school principals writing a book on how school leaders should address their own racism and the racism they reproduce in schools. Some of the ways that they highlight teachers and school leaders practicing racism—even if they think they are not—include, unintentionally not encouraging Black + Brown students from participating in class, not taking Black/Brown students seriously or having the same expectations for them as one does for other students, and being more "judgmental" of Black/Brown parents. They admit that though there are plenty of white teachers who say they"care about kids and want to ensure more equitable outcomes," those teachers nonetheless "might be causing harm because of the unexamined unconscious biases that are influencing our behavior every day." They remind teachers that "we have to approach this in a way that we’re all on a racial learning continuum, and that there are folks out there who aren’t knowledgeable enough about how racism affects them and how they promote it, even inadvertently."

This article relates to class themes in the same way that other articles presented here do—that antiracist work is never done, even if one believes that they've completed all the trainings and done all the readings so they must have it all figured out. This article is geared towards school leaders but nonetheless has practical implications for social studies educators.

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GAZETTE: What was your motivation in writing this book?

FIARMAN: I was confident that I cared about my students, that I was deeply committed to equitable outcomes for all of them and to the academic success of my Black and brown students. But I saw evidence that I was, as Tracey said, favoring white students and viewing Black and brown students as more suspect and less capable. And when I saw that evidence in myself, I felt enormous urgency to get the word out to school leaders who are leading teachers who look like me and who I imagine care about kids and want to ensure more equitable outcomes, but might be causing harm because of the unexamined unconscious biases that are influencing our behavior every day. I feel a personal responsibility to share my part of the story. I hope that white teachers will see themselves in that and leaders will see their teachers in my example and come up with strategies to support and intervene.

BENSON: For me, it came from an immense frustration. As a Black student who attended a predominately white school, I experienced very intense, overt racism and also unintentional racism from teachers, from being placed in classes that were not the advanced classes even though I was smart. Nor were any of my Black counterparts seen as smart.

From a very young age, I understood what racism was and how it affected me, even though I didn't have the language. As I worked my way up from elementary, middle school, high school, to college, I continued to experience intense racism from my instructors. When I got the opportunity to become a principal, I saw the same behaviors of my white teachers toward Black and brown students, and I actually made changes for students of color, but never directly addressing racism. The reason I wrote the book is because I had the experiences of a student who had dealt with racism, but also, as a principal, I wanted to help principals and district leaders talk directly about the impact of racism and name it as it should be.

GAZETTE: What challenges do school leaders face to start conversations about race in schools, and what can they do to overcome them?

BENSON: The biggest issue we have to deal with is the entitlement to racial comfort, especially with white teachers, principals, professors, and white folks at every level. White folks have a very low threshold for racial discomfort. To really dive into the complexity of racism we get a lot of pushback, because white folks are uncomfortable talking about race because they simply don't have the experience. We need to start at a very low level because if we push too hard, they get uneasy and there's a lot of resistance. White racial comfort, coupled with white racial arrogance, is something that Robin DiAngelo talks about in her book "White Fragility." Many white folks, especially after the George Floyd protests and the nationwide reckoning around racism, feel they need to do something, but they don't understand they have very low racial literacy. Some people rush to make a statement on their website or their social media page, or might tear down a monument, but those are very superficial interventions; the real work is to understand the depth of racism and how it affects both society in general and people of color. We have to fight against the propensity for white folks to want to do something now, and step back into racial literacy. We have to approach this in a way that we're all on a racial learning continuum, and that there are folks out there who aren't knowledgeable enough about how racism affects them and how they promote it, even inadvertently.

FIARMAN: Some of the challenges that spurred us to write this book took place when we worked with graduate students who were aspiring principals. Many students had a deep desire to practice antiracism in their school leadership, and they felt stymied either because of their own discomfort or their fear of blowback from white teachers who are typically uncomfortable with conversations about race. For us, the way to overcome these challenges is to stop thinking about racism as an issue of personal character, which immediately gets people defensive and shuts conversations down quickly, and instead, to think about this as an unconscious process that we're all involved in, where we all absorb racism. It's really about helping build skills for leaders to create the conditions for people to be able to name race at the school in mixed-race settings and understand racial biases and how they are disconnected from character and intent. We want to help school leaders build skills around understanding racism the same way educators learn skills around social and emotional learning or around literacy.

GAZETTE: What is the best approach to start conversations about race in schools? And what are the consequences of doing nothing?

FIARMAN: I think the most important way to start is to recognize that this is a lifelong work, and it's not technical work; it's work that is really adaptive. White leaders in particular need to adopt a real stance of racial humility to understand that we are usually the biggest barrier to our own progress. The more we can understand that we don't know what we don't know, the more we will be able to help ourselves achieve our intentions of being antiracist leaders.

The consequence of doing nothing is that we perpetuate a system that is systematically denying Black and brown students access to a quality education and a fully realized life. We'd also be teaching white students to hold the very same biases that are currently holding their Black and brown peers back. In other words, we're reinforcing the structures that will ensure that Black and brown students and adults continue to be treated as less than fully human. This is fundamentally a moral issue, for all of us and for white people in particular. Every day that I am complacent about the fact that my Black and brown neighbors and fellow community members are being denied their rights while I'm granted mine is a day when I am not living in full moral integrity.

BENSON: The best way to start the conversation about race and racism in schools is to increase racial competency. Folks often get off track when they have a conversation with no aim and target; they will hire a consultant who's usually Black or brown to talk to the staff, assuming that a talk will change behavior. That's simply not true. School leaders need to reach out for support to increase racial competency; they can work with a consultant to decide what they're doing and why they're doing it and then move forward with that. That should be the primary goal. There's such a want to be seen as anti-racist, and this is a big problem because we want to do something to say we're doing something.

If school leaders do nothing to address racism in schools, that'd be equivalent to continuing oppression. This is something that we've been doing, for example, when we accept that Black and brown kids can't achieve as well as white kids, which is a fallacy. And yet we've created as part of our collective consciousness that this is normal. We've even accepted terms such as the "school-to-prison pipeline" or the "achievement gap" as if it's normal. Just because your skin color is brown doesn't mean you're less capable or competent. Now that we've come to the realization that police brutality is rooted in historical and structural racism, which means that if the color of your skin is Black or brown you're more likely to be stopped and brutalized by police officers. We need to transfer that same thought to schools. There is intense racism within the school walls, from kindergarten all the way through college and graduate school. The outcomes that Black and brown students experience is specifically linked to historical and structural racism in our everyday lives. Once we can link it to that, then we can begin to solve the issue.

GAZETTE: What impact do you hope your book may have at this moment of national reckoning on racial injustice?

FIARMAN: I feel really heartened that there is so much interest from so many educators to understand that part of their job is to understand racism and address racism in their schools. I'm predominantly talking about white teachers because I think most teachers of color understand racism at a fundamental level.

Our book is not a how-to book with a set of steps that people need to follow. We deliberately wanted to lay out the bigger adaptive challenges that people need to grapple with to fight racism in school. My hope is that school leaders will pick up some new tools to frame this issue as a developmental process, not a process of blame, and use the concept of "unconscious bias" as an entry point for teachers who too often have shut down in conversations about race.

BENSON: I wrote my first case study back in 2015 when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, and I've been writing case studies about police brutality for quite some time. Folks have written iterations of our book over the course of the past 40 years by different titles. We actually are not saying anything new. But at this moment of racial awakening, our book provides tools for teachers and school leaders around the world to do their part in the fight against racism. My hope is that folks can take one or two strategies and implement them in the classroom, because that could actually change the outcomes for Black and brown students.

GAZETTE: Finally, what would you like teachers and school principals, administrators, and also parents to take away from your book?

BENSON: I want people to understand that racism is real, and that the disparate outcomes in student achievement, attendance, and behavior are linked to the vestiges of racism in schools. I want folks to recognize that racism affects us all and that we all, white, Black, brown people, have a role to play in antiracism. That should be the big takeaway from our book.

FIARMAN: I would like white leaders to accept that as white people we are going to make mistakes because we've been so indoctrinated in unconscious racial bias, racism, and white supremacy. But we have to make a choice. We need to decide whether we're going to allow our Black and brown students and staff to bear the consequences of the racism that exists in our school communities or whether we are willing to humbly learn to do this work and make mistakes in the process. Because if we're committed to fighting racism in our schools, we need to be ready to make those mistakes and see each other as learners and support each other in order to address racism. But fundamentally we need to be unwilling to continue with the status quo and realize that our silence as white leaders is basically complicity in our Black and brown students bearing the brunt of racism every day.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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New book helps teachers, principals confront their own racism

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GAZETTE: What was your motivation in writing this book? FIARMAN: I was confident that I cared about my students, that I was deeply committed to equitable outcomes for all of them and to the academic success of my Black and brown students.

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"15 Classroom Resources for Discussing Racism, Policing, and Protest."

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"15 Classroom Resources for Discussing Racism, Policing, and Protest."

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This article from Education Week is packed with resources for educators on navigating discussions about race—everything from lesson plans from an organization called Black Lives Matter at School to the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Teaching Tolerance" archives. Social studies teachers should make active use of the work done by so many others already and shouldn't feel pressured to reinvent the wheel. They *should* however do the work/the readings and educate themselves with what's out there in order to facilitate the best learning experience for their students.

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As nationwide protests against police brutality continue, teachers in their virtual classrooms are once again searching for ways to help their students process the killings of black people in police custody in the United States.

Speaking with Education Week on Monday, teachers said that they and their colleagues have a responsibility to address these protests, which erupted when George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.

"Teachers cannot be silent during this time," said Patrick Harris, a 6th and 7th grade English and social studies teacher at the Detroit Achievement Academy. "Teachers have to take a stand. Students are absorbing this, [and] they're going to ask themselves later on in life or even now, 'What was my teacher doing during this time?'"

Talking with students about these events, as they experience them, is top priority right now, said Abdul Wright, who teaches 8th grade language arts in North Minneapolis. "I have to find a way to make meaning of this in a way that creates a better society for them," he said.

Some teachers whose classes have already ended for the school year are reaching back out to students, particularly their black students, giving them space to talk about their emotions and ask questions.

Other teachers in schools still in session are seeking materials and resources to teach about this moment, such aslesson plans that engage students in conversations about racism, policing, and protest.

On Monday, Chicago Public Schools released "Say Their Names," a collection of lessons and materials designed "to help foster productive conversations about race and civil disobedience."

The toolkit links to other organizations' resources on supporting black students' mental and emotional health, discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, and talking about anti-black racism with non-black students. And it encourages teachers to educate themselves on racism in the U.S. before broaching these topics with students.

In California, theLos Angeles Unified School District posted a collection of resources for teachers, for talking about race with children and addressing trauma. The superintendent of education in the state, Tony Thurmond, said the California Department of Education will also be releasing online materials and trainings.

For teachers looking for more classroom resources-for themselves and their students-Education Week has compiled the following list:

Resources about George Floyd's death and the current protests:

The Anti-Defamation League has created a short lesson on Floyd's death and police killings of black people, which includes a reading, discussion questions, and action steps for students aged 11 and up.

Resources for talking about race, racism, and Black Lives Matter:

In addition to addressing race and racism in lesson plans, experts and advocates have urged teachers to build a diverse classroom library with protagonists who look like their students.

The group Embrace Race compiled a list of 31 children's books that address race, racism, and activism. And the nonprofit Teaching for Change put together a list of social justice books for teens.

Joe Truss, the principal of Visitacion Middle School in San Francisco Unified and a consultant on racial equity in schools, has curated a list of books for teachers who want to engage in anti-racist work.

Starting these classroom conversations can be uncomfortable and challenging. But for black teachers, talking about police brutality and anti-black racism can be particularly emotionally draining. The Practice Freedom Project, founded by Atlanta educator Tamara Pearson, is hosting virtual meditations and reflections for black educators.

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15 Classroom Resources for Discussing Racism, Policing, and Protest

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As nationwide protests against police brutality continue, teachers in their virtual classrooms are once again searching for ways to help their students process the killings of black people in police custody in the United States.

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"Osceola County teacher under investigation for racial remarks."

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"Osceola County teacher under investigation for racial remarks."

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This article shares the story of a racist teacher sharing that she has the "right" to "dislike Blacks" because she claims she was attacked on the MARTA by a "gang" of Black people when she was a teenager. It is interesting in that she doesn't just say racist things like unfortunately thousands of other teachers routinely do, but she uses her personal experience to justify this racism.

This story relates back to the idea that teachers should educate themselves on race and learn from/listen to the experts on race. This woman shows that there are those educators who always come up with reasons to justify their behavior and that simply educating oneself isn't enough to decolonize schools/teaching, as there are those who willingly share their hatred and justify it with lived experiences (true or not), people who could/would derail a training on critical race theory. Teachers should be aware that there are always folks like this in schools across America.

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An investigation is underway regarding an Osceola County teacher who was recorded making racial comments during an online class.Video from the online class starts with a student talking about police misconduct. The student then gets interrupted by Poinciana High School social studies teacher, Tracey Brown. Brown then proceeds to tell a story about an experience she had as a teen. "What you don't know about me could fill a freaking swimming pool. I was 16 years old and I was attacked on a (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) train by a gang. And, yes, gang - wearing bandannas, gang signs, language of Blacks in metro Atlanta," Brown said in the virtual class. "I have as much right as anybody else to dislike Blacks for what happened to me. So you don't get to sit there and preach to me what I do and don't know."In an email we received from a student, they said this isn't the first time Brown has shown acts of racism and discrimination against minorities. Osceola County School District leaders say the district's human resources department is now investigating.The school has reassigned Brown to a position where she won't be in contact with students.We reached out to Brown for comment, but have yet to hear back.

An investigation is underway regarding an Osceola County teacher who was recorded making racial comments during an online class.

Video from the online class starts with a student talking about police misconduct. The student then gets interrupted by Poinciana High School social studies teacher, Tracey Brown.

Brown then proceeds to tell a story about an experience she had as a teen.

"What you don't know about me could fill a freaking swimming pool. I was 16 years old and I was attacked on a (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) train by a gang. And, yes, gang - wearing bandannas, gang signs, language of Blacks in metro Atlanta," Brown said in the virtual class. "I have as much right as anybody else to dislike Blacks for what happened to me. So you don't get to sit there and preach to me what I do and don't know."

In an email we received from a student, they said this isn't the first time Brown has shown acts of racism and discrimination against minorities.

Osceola County School District leaders say the district's human resources department is now investigating.

The school has reassigned Brown to a position where she won't be in contact with students.

We reached out to Brown for comment, but have yet to hear back.

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Osceola County teacher under investigation for racial remarks during online class

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An investigation is underway regarding an Osceola County teacher who was recorded making racial comments during an online class.Video from the online class starts with a student talking about police misconduct. The student then gets interrupted by Poinciana High School social studies teacher, Tracey Brown.

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"Social Justice and Anti-Racist Educator Resources."

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"Social Justice and Anti-Racist Educator Resources."

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This article details a ton of anti-racist resources for teachers, compiling everything from reading lists to people/accounts to follow on social media. This document is helpful for social studies teachers in navigating the wide world of resources available and even gives an easy "starting your journey" guideline.

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"'History of Us' Course Introduces Students to their Ancestors and the Role of Race in America's History."

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"'History of Us' Course Introduces Students to their Ancestors and the Role of Race in America's History."

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This article tells the story of a Tuscaloosa public school system class on Black history. Taught by University of Alabama Professor John Giggie, this course not only centered Black history for the students, but it also had students doing real historical work like sorting through historical documents and utilizing them in various projects—students even remarked how sad and unfortunate it is that there were no records kept on things like family backgrounds/relations, but records were kept on the most mundane of things otherwise regarding slavery.

This article is important for social studies educators because it showcases what perhaps is a teacher's perfect class. It seems that Dr. Diggie ultimately has free reign over what he chooses to teach and is able to center the type of history he wants his students who are predominantly students of color to know. This article stresses the importance of history that speaks directly to the histories of individual students, and it gives ideas for structuring one's own class in a similar way.

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The University of Alabama

Eighteen-year-old Delphia McGraw of Tuscaloosa says she loves history. But, growing up, she received little instruction on the history of people who looked like her.

"I went to a private school during my middle school years, and I didn't have any Black history taught to me," McGraw said. She said she knew she wanted in when her teacher at Tuscaloosa's Central High School told her about an elective course at Central the following year.

Its teacher was University of Alabama professor John Giggie, Ph.D. He directs UA's Summersell Center for the Study of the South. He taught a year-long Black history course called History of Us with UA graduate student Margaret Lawson.

History of Us is touted as the first Black history course of its kind taught in the Tuscaloosa public school system. The course asks students to be historians by researching major themes in Black history and framing those themes locally, to Tuscaloosa County. Students are asked to examine how their own voices, their families and their communities fit in the progress of history, Giggie said.

"We chose the name History of Us because we wanted students to think about several things," he said. "First of all, there's always been a tendency in educational circles to separate African-American from American history, and we wanted to show them that, actually, we have to integrate those vigorously to show the ways in which each of them informs the other."

University of Alabama professor John Giggie created the History of Us course.

"But more importantly, (we) wanted to demonstrate that the most important themes in Black history are also the most important themes in American history," Giggie said. "And, the History of Us is also meant to be personal. It's about all of us in history trying to find our place, our narratives, our stories."

Giggie said he got the idea for the History of Us class while teaching a local civil rights history course at UA and leading a research project to reconstruct the lives of lynching victims in Alabama. However, many of his students expressed dismay at knowing so little about Black history and the failure of their middle and high schools to teach the subject.

Those conversations led Giggie to talk with local school officials, including the principal at Central High School, which led him to develop the History of Us curriculum. Giggie said that, in developing the course, he consulted with the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery.

History Of Us

History of Us presents units on areas such as slavery, racial violence and lynching, segregation and mass incarceration. But rather than relying on textbooks and lectures, the students spend their class time researching sources including birth certificates, probate records, newspaper clippings, runaway slave ads and even Ancestry.com to learn how events and racist policies have affected Blacks nationally and in Tuscaloosa County.

"We had students looking through newspapers and databases to track down young men and some young women who were enslaved and who had attempted to flee Tuscaloosa," Giggie said. "We spent time puzzling over what the runaway slave ads told us about the nature of slavery in Tuscaloosa, as well as the ways in which these young Black men and women were portrayed to the public in general," said Giggie.

McGraw, now a freshman at Spelman College, said she enjoyed searching through archives. "It was really cool for me to see history, literally, in my hands," McGraw said.

But one of the most difficult aspects of the class that she and her fellow students encountered was searching for archived documents that humanized runaway slaves, she said.

"It was so surprising how hard it was to find records," she said. "We went through newspaper articles, archives and records. We looked at the census for Alabama and Tuscaloosa. We couldn't find much on these people, and when we did find someone in the census, they were listed as a 'slave' or a 'worker' under a white family, so you could never really find their family backgrounds."

Delphia McGraw of Tuscaloosa took the History of Us course last year and is now a student at Spelman College.

"It was disheartening," McGraw said. "We wanted to be able to say that he was a brother to this person or he was a father, and we weren't able to get that information."

McGraw said the course "has changed how I see America, how I see my family, how I see my family history."

The Central High students also examined the issue of lynching, the act of violence whites used in the period from after the Civil War to the mid-20th century to terrorize Blacks. The students researched 11 lynching victims from the Tuscaloosa area and created a digital memorial honoring the individuals, Giggie said.

One student, senior Brandon Walton, 18, of Tuscaloosa, recalled being especially moved by the story of Cicero Cage in the community of Ralph, in Tuscaloosa County. On March 13, 1919, a white mob kidnapped and lynched Cage. He was 17 years old.

"The first thought that came to my mind was, 'It could have been me,'" said Walton. "If I had been born in the wrong period and caught at the wrong time, I could have been another 17-year-old in the news with a headline saying that I had been lynched."

Brandon Walton, a Tuscaloosa senior, was particularly moved by the story of a teenager lynched in 1919.

Giggie said, "We talked a lot about what it was like to live during that time period when it was literally a crime to be a Black person and there was no faith in the criminal justice system or that a Black person could expect to be defended vigorously for crimes they were accused of." The students later examined the mass incarceration of Black men in the United States, where people of color often receive heavier sentences for crimes than whites.

In addition to classwork, the students took field trips. One place they went was the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery and its memorial dedicated to honoring lynching victims. They also toured Martin Luther King Jr.'s church and parsonage. Back in Tuscaloosa, they made visits to the University of Alabama to look through archives.

The Fight For Black Studies Acceptance

Giggie recalls his first day teaching the History of Us course at Central High School.

"I asked my students to draw the relationship between Black history and American history," he said. He said some drew the ideas pulled apart on a page and joined together violently through chains or through fire.

"What it told me was that these students, at one level, knew that Black history was being ignored or wasn't being fully treated," he said.

Carter G. Woodson understood the struggle to get Americans to recognize Black history. The Black, turn-of-the-20th-century historian and author, often called "the Father of Black History," said, "If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated."

Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which today is the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. He also is credited for starting "Negro History Week," which today is Black History Month.

"The mainstream social studies curriculum, however, largely ignored Black history or misrepresented the subject," wrote LaGarrett King, Ph.D., a professor of Black history at the University of Missouri, in his 2017 paper " The Status of Black History in U.S. Schools and Society " for the journal Teaching and Learning African American History.

"Some of the early textbooks used by white schools portrayed Black people as savage-like or animal like," King told BirminghamWatch. "They dehumanized them in different ways. Many texts portrayed Blacks as happy slaves and slave masters as benevolent and kind toward slaves." King said textbooks, however, began to change in the middle of the 20th century with efforts made to eliminate overtly racist language.

"The 1960s brought an explosion throughout the United States, where you had parents and students having protests about not having Black history in their schools," said King, "and that's when you started to have Black studies courses in many different school systems around the country."

That move continued through the 1980s and 1990s, King said. Today, the activism of the Black Lives Matter movement and national protests over the deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police - Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Eric Garner in New York City, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota - has sparked a renewed interest in Black studies.

"There has been a push because people are trying to understand what's happening now through history," King said.

The push for more Black history studies also is coming from a number of national organizations such as the nonprofit Diversify Our Narrative, which advocates for the inclusion of diversity and anti-racist texts in schools in the United States. Another organization called Black Lives Matter at School is calling for mandatory Black history instruction in K-12 schools, while other groups, such as Facing History and Ourselves as well as Teaching Tolerance, regularly publish teacher resources for Black history instruction and guides to help teachers address tough topics like racism and prejudice in history.

This past spring, U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio introduced H.R. 6902, the "Black History is American History" Act, to authorize the secretary of education to award grants to carry out educational programs that include the history of peoples of African descent in American life,

A few states, including New York, New Jersey, Florida and Illinois, mandate public schools to teach Black history, King said.

In Kentucky, the Jefferson County Public Schools recently adopted a Black history framework that King created for schools called "Developing Black Historical Consciousness."

Ryan New, Kentucky's lead for the school system's social studies instruction, said adoption of " Developing Black Historical Consciousness " is due in part to the system's racial equity policy, which it adopted three years ago. He said the work toward instituting a new Black history curriculum began long before the Breonna Taylor case in Kentucky captured national headlines this year. The Taylor case started in March when police in Louisville, which is in Jefferson County, shot and killed Taylor, a Black woman, in her home in what some have called a bungled raid.

Most schools, however, integrate broad topics such as the civil rights movement and stories of influential Blacks such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks into American history lessons or provide Black history instruction in February during Black history month.

As a matter of fact, in King's journal article, he cited a 2015 study, "Research Into the State of African-American History and Culture in K-12 Public Schools" by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, that looked at how 525 teachers in 50 states and the District of Columbia implemented Black history curriculum. The study found that, in U.S. history classes, teachers spent about 8% to 9% of class time on Black history instruction. In Alabama, the state Department of Education's K-12 course of study for social studies outlines topics and influential historical figures that teachers can discuss in class and at what grade level.

Nettie Carson-Mullins, a social science education specialist for the Department of Education, said the course of study is the minimum teachers are required to teach, but school districts can go beyond the minimum.

Black Studies Under Fire

Recent moves to offer more Black history and ethnic studies in schools has, however, come under fire. Several news organizations covering a White House event on American history in September reported that President Trump criticized The New York Times' 1619 Project, accusing the paper of distorting "the American story" and rewriting history,

"The problem is that when you start having Black history that challenges the curriculum or the American story, that's when people have issues with how Black history is portrayed," King said. King mentioned the "1619 Project" as an example. "People begin to say it's un-American. It's unpatriotic."

Giggie is not teaching the History of Us class this school year, but he is acting as an adviser to Central High School faculty who are teaching the course. He said he hopes eventually to take the curriculum to other public schools in the county.

"I always tell my students that, 'A good history class will help you to see the world differently, but a great history class will help you to live in the world differently.'"

When he taught the course, he said, he used the second semester to encourage students to share their research with people outside the classroom. As an assignment for Black History Month in February, Giggie asked the students to create Instagram posts about something they learned in the class.

One student posted a poem about a victim of racial violence.

"Others reflected on the runaway slave ads and wrote about the way in which the ads portrayed Blacks in the 1850s and how they bore a resemblance to the way young, African-American men are often described today in the media or in popular culture," Giggie said.

Runaway slave ad

McGraw said she began talking about her research with family members. This past spring, both she and Walton said they participated in Black Lives Matter marches in Tuscaloosa. McGraw said she recruited high school friends to make protest signs.

Looking back, she thinks she would have taken part in the marches even if she had not taken the History of Us class. "But it (the class) has pushed me into being a leader because I know what I'm talking about," she said. "And so, I can help others understand what's happening, and I can be confident in that position."

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'History Of Us' Course Introduces Students To Their Ancestors And The Role Of Race In America's History

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The University of Alabama Eighteen-year-old Delphia McGraw of Tuscaloosa says she loves history. But, growing up, she received little instruction on the history of people who looked like her. "I went to a private school during my middle school years, and I didn't have any Black history taught to me," McGraw said.

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"Amid a racial reckoning, teachers are reconsidering how history is taught." 

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"Amid a racial reckoning, teachers are reconsidering how history is taught." 

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This article shares how social studies teachers across the country reconsidered their curriculum and how they teach in response to the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests across the country. It highlights Professor King at the University of Missouri, who shares that Black history should be centered in classrooms in its full intersectionality. It shares that there are also teachers across the country fighting to get the authorization to teach electives centering Black history and the Black American experience. Teachers also share ways they've already incorporated anti-racism in their assignments—assignments that draw from the lived experiences of those in their classrooms and that highlight more culturally-responsive curriculum. This article does mention Native American and LGBTQIA history as well and mentions that their specific histories should also be included in social studies curriculum.

This article relates back to class in a lot of ways: it shares the practical approaches that teachers across America are taking to decolonize their classrooms and help their students learn about Black and Brown histories. This article is great because it mentions quite a few teachers who admit that this is the first time they've sat down to intentionally do anti-racist work in their classrooms, and it also shares thoughts on how this work cannot be done overnight—especially by "beginners" in this fight. This article is encouraging and informative and sheds light on helpful tips and tricks for educators of all backgrounds.

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Educators from around the country have been reflecting on what they teach and how they teach it in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the national protests that followed.

Some lessons up for reconsideration: the dismissive take that it was simply "the norm" that Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves in the late 1700s and language around Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of America.

"You're messaging that people were not here thousands of years before Columbus," said Stefanie Wager, a former teacher in Des Moines, Iowa, who is president of the National Council for the Social Studies.

As the nation faces a moment of racial reckoning, many long-held conceptions are being challenged, as seen in the toppling of Confederate monuments and the push to defund police. What's taught in U.S. classrooms is no exception. NBC News spoke with teachers around the country who said they were working to reshape lesson plans to better reflect the fullness of America's multicultural history.

Additions to history classes might include lessons on intersectional figures, such as Bayard Rustin, the Black man who organized the 1963 March on Washington but was largely shunned in the civil rights movement because he was gay.

"I did hear a lot of responses from teachers about their need to have more education around Black history because of George Floyd," said LaGarrett King, the founding director of the Carter Center for K-12 Black History Education at the University of Missouri.

Wager said: "I think that has been on the forefront of everyone's mind," along with how they're going to teach safely during the coronavirus pandemic. "These two big topics have been the talk of the summer for sure."
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That was reflected at the third annual Teaching Black History Conference, which King hosted last month. More than 1,000 teachers - about 700 more than last year - attended to hear educators from around the world and to discuss improving their lessons. Unlike the previous in-person events, this year's conference was held virtually with a series of video sessions.

King, who is an associate professor of social studies education, said it's important to understand intersectionality within Black history in terms of "exploring the full humanity of Black people," including women, LGBTQ people, the disabled, the poor and other groups.

Janella Hinds, a global studies teacher at a high school in New York City, said teachers also re-examined those topics at the recent convention of the American Federation of Teachers, a major teachers union.

"There are educators who in the spring started to think about anti-racist instruction and conversations about how to uproot acts of supremacy that students are experiencing," said Hinds, vice president for academic high schools at the United Federation of Teachers, a union representing New York City's public schoolteachers.

"It's not everybody, for sure, but we do have a lot of teachers, especially on the high school level, who have been doing some amazing work around incorporating the current events into the courses of study into our convention," she said.

Hinds said she was working with her school, Brooklyn's High School for Public Service, on creating an elective course focused on activism and movements against oppression, as well as linking current events into her global studies class.

"It's about thinking about this long history of oppression and resistance. This is part of the American experience," she said.

Adina Goldstein, a seventh-grade social studies and English teacher in Philadelphia, said she had been thinking about how to turn her social studies class into more of an ethnic studies course to reflect more African American and Latin American history. That would, in turn, reflect the identities of the majority of her students.

Goldstein, who is Chinese American and Jewish, said she recently spoke with a former African American history teacher, who said "something really insightful to me: 'We teach what we know.'"

Goldstein noted that while the majority of students are Black and Latino in Philadelphia, nearly 70 percent of teachers are white. She said she believes school districts should invest in giving teachers resources and continuing education so they can educate themselves and improve their curricula to better reflect their students' identities.

"I need to take that time, and that's what I've been doing a lot this summer, to learn about Latin America and really center not just on white academic voices but center on academic voices that are Latinx," said Goldstein, who teaches at Vare-Washington Elementary School.

Goldstein said that before the end of the academic year, some teachers had a virtual "learn in" in which seventh- and eighth-grade students studied George Floyd, police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The students undertook group activities, like writing letters to Congress and state representatives, creating art to express how they felt, and listing ways they could help and resources they could use to better understand what was going on, Goldstein said. They also discussed how the current situation applied to their community and school and how they could support the Black community within their school.

"That was something that was really, really powerful, and the things that my students wrote and the art that they produced was unbelievable," she said. "It never stops just making me so proud and excited to see how much kids are able to really think critically about the world around them."

Kimberly Rodriguez, an English language arts teacher at John Adams High School in the New York City borough of Queens, said she would be working with her school this month to shift lessons to relate more to their students' lives in the wake of the national moment.

She said she would be working with all departments to see how they could fit culture-responsive teaching into their curricula, which includes bringing more diverse backgrounds into their lessons and then relating them to students' experiences.

"It's great for them to voice their opinion on how they feel and what's going on in their life, and as educators, we need listen and be there," she said. "How can we let that live in our curricula? How can we let that live in our lessons? How can we take a break from testing and ask students their perspectives of what's going on in their lives?"

Anton Schulzki, a high school teacher in Colorado Springs, Colorado, said the state recently held a virtual conference at which dozens of social studies teachers discussed changing their approaches to their curricula to move beyond their own biases.

"Up front was the issue of race and how we need to change our approach," he said.

Schulzki said the conversation specifically covered how Native American history, LGBTQ history and the histories of other minorities groups are taught.

"There's a decided push for us to really begin to re-examine our own biases and how we approach things in our classroom. There's a push among a lot of teachers, period, across the country to really examine how we approach things," said Schulzki, who is president-elect of the National Council for the Social Studies.

That effort won't be easy for teachers everywhere, especially in districts where progressive changes probably wouldn't be well-received, he said.

"For some, it will be easy to jump into. For others, I can understand their caution, because there are a lot of things that teachers have to deal with. There are some school districts across the country that don't look favorably on changing an established curriculum, and that's hard," Schulzki said.

Still, he said, "we need to have these conversations, and it needs to start with the colleagues in your school."

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From Columbus to slavery, teachers are re-examining how history is taught

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Educators from around the country have been reflecting on what they teach and how they teach it in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the national protests that followed. Some lessons up for reconsideration: the dismissive take that it was simply "the norm" that Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves in the late 1700s and language around Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of America.