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The beginning of the "replacement theory"

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The Origins of Eugenics in America | The U.S. and the Holocaust | PBS

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Race: The Power of an Illusion (The Story We Tell)

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If Microaggressions Happened to White People | Decoded | MTV News

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by

Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA

1. Introduction

Microaggressions are subtle verbal and non-verbal slights based on social group membership, and they are ubiquitous in the lives of racial minorities, women, and LGBTQ individuals ( Sue 2010). Microaggressions differ from overt forms of discrimination as they are often unintentional or meant in joking manner; nevertheless, they are associated with a host of negative outcomes for individuals who experience them ( Sue 2010). For college students in particular, microaggressions have been linked to anxiety, depression, binge drinking, and poor academic performance ( Blume 1971; Brown et al. 2015; Ong et al. 2013; Solorzano et al. 2000; Torres et al. 2010; Wong et al. 2014). Since 2007, research on microaggressions has grown exponentially ( Wong et al. 2014), and schools and workplaces have sought ways to address them. The current paper describes a research-based role-play workshop designed to teach targets and bystanders effective responses to microaggressions.

The current study draws on two previous studies that described role-play exercises to teach students how to respond to prejudiced comments. First, Plous ( 2000) described a session in which psychology students were given (or made up) a scenario involving a prejudiced comment where participants rotated through the roles of speaker, responder, and coaches. The speaker would say the prejudiced remark, the responder was instructed to respond in a way that was likely to reduce future prejudice, and the two coaches would give feedback on the response. Plous ( 2000) reported that students in a seminar on prejudice and discrimination rated the exercise as very valuable and all recommended using it in future classes.

In 2010, Lawson and colleagues ( Lawson et al. 2010) evaluated whether a similar workshop would increase students' ability to describe effective responses to prejudiced comments in written scenarios compared to two control groups who did not participate in the exercise. All students were in psychology classes and 87% were White. The findings showed that students in the experimental class increased their number of effective responses from pre- to post-test, while students in the comparison classes remained the same or decreased.

The current study builds on these findings by presenting a modified exercise. The workshop in the current study was modified in several ways: first, the focus on the workshop was specifically on microaggressions rather than prejudiced comments in general. Because microaggressions are subtle, they can be more difficult to respond to than overt comments, and the strategies take this into account. Second, situational factors are discussed as moderators to potential responses. Third, since Plous ( 2000) and Lawson et al.'s ( 2010) studies, a large amount of research on how to confront prejudiced comments has emerged, so workshop participants are instructed on effective responses based on a review of this research literature. Fourth, the "coach" role became a "bystander" who could also influence the interaction if they chose, either on the side of the target or the aggressor.

1.1. Barriers to Responding to Microaggressions

In this paper, the term "target" is used to refer to the individual whom the remark is directed toward and who is a member of the group(s) stereotyped in the comment (i.e., the target group). An "aggressor" is the person who says or does something that the target interprets as biased. A "bystander" is any person who witnesses the situation but is not the direct target or the aggressor. Bystanders can be targeted or non-targeted. A non-targeted bystander is a bystander who witnesses the situation but is not a member of the stereotyped group, whereas a targeted bystander shares a group identity with the target.

When experiencing microaggressions, targets often feel confused and uncertain about how to respond ( Ashburn-Nardo et al. 2008; Czopp et al. 2012; Nadal 2013). Ashburn-Nardo et al. ( 2008) have identified five barriers responding to discrimination: (1) interpreting the incident as discrimination; (2) deciding whether it is serious enough to warrant a response; (3) taking responsibility for confronting; (4) deciding on a strategy; and (5) responding. Microaggressions have even higher barriers than more blatant forms of discrimination. First, because they are so subtle and ambiguous, microaggressions are especially difficult to notice right away. Additionally, because microaggressions are often said in a joking way or are unintentional, targets may frequently feel that they are not serious enough to warrant interrupting the conversation. Targets may also discount the negative continuing effects of microaggressions, especially if others have told them in the past that they are too sensitive or should just "let it go". Thus, targets may downplay the harm they feel and not confront.

The third barrier of taking responsibility may be similar for microaggressions compared to other forms of discrimination. However, the fourth barrier is raised for microaggressions, because, while individuals may be aware of official procedures for reporting overt discrimination and feel comfortable using them, most organizations do not have similar protocols for reporting microaggressions. Additionally, methods for responding to overt discrimination, such as involving an authority figure, may be seen as inappropriate for microaggressions. Finally, the final barrier for confronting microaggressions is similar to other forms of discrimination. The target must worry about negative repercussions of their actions immediately or in the future. They may also perceive that the confrontation will have little usefulness in changing the aggressor's attitudes or behavior.

In sum, there are many barriers to responding to discrimination, and some of these are heightened for microaggressions. Thus, teaching targets how to respond will likely be seen as valuable; but what strategies are best? Though few studies have examined microaggressions in particular, the prejudice reduction literature does offer some potential strategies for effective responses to biased comments more generally. These are reviewed in the following section.

1.2. Effective Responses to Prejudiced Comments

The following review focuses specifically on "in the moment" responses to biased comments rather than other strategies intended to reduce the potential for bias or discrimination (e.g., Focella et al. 2015; Schmader et al. 2013) or to cope long-term. Strategies for responding to prejudiced comments generally fall into two categories: active and passive. Passive strategies include ignoring the comment or withdrawing from the situation. Active strategies include responses such as confrontation and reporting to an authority figure. Research on discrimination in general and microaggressions in particular suggests that active coping strategies are associated with greater well-being later on ( Dickter 2012; Grier-Reed 2010; Miller and Major 2000; Solorzano et al. 2000; Torres et al. 2010). In particular, studies on confrontation have found benefits for feelings of competence, self-esteem, and the psychological well-being of the target and the reduced prejudice of the aggressor ( Czopp et al. 2012, 2006; Czopp and Monteith 2003; Gervais et al. 2010). When they fail to confront, targets may feel guilty and engage in rumination ( Sechrist and Swim 2008; Shelton et al. 2006). Bystanders also feel better about themselves when they confront ( Dickter 2012; Dickter and Newton 2013). Therefore, the self-defense workshop promotes confrontation as the primary strategy for responding to microaggressions.

For the purposes of the workshop, confrontation is defined as when the target verbally or non-verbally expresses displeasure with the aggressor's behavior ( Focella et al. 2015). Confrontation can be especially effective when the goal is to reduce the potential of future prejudiced comments in aggressors and bystanders. Individuals who are confronted over prejudiced remarks are less likely to make biased remarks later ( Czopp et al. 2006) and are better able to detect prejudice ( Mallett and Wagner 2011). They may also attempt to compensate for their behavior to repair their relationship with the target ( Mallett and Wagner 2011). Confrontation is effective because it induces negative self-directed affect such as guilt and concern over discrepancies between the aggressor's self-concept (i.e., egalitarian values) and behavior ( Czopp et al. 2006; Monteith et al. 2002). Such feelings can lead the individuals to try to be more aware of their bias and to correct their behavior to be more consistent with their self-concepts ( Czopp et al. 2006). Furthermore, the positive effects of confrontation are not limited to aggressors: bystanders also reduce their likelihood of prejudiced responding when overhearing or witnessing confrontation ( Blanchard et al. 1994; Monteith et al. 1996).

Some types of confrontation are more effective than others. Generally, angry and hostile confrontations are likely to be seen as violating norms of politeness and may increase the chance of backlash ( Czopp et al. 2006; Hyers 2010). One study found that men imagining themselves as aggressors were more likely to rate hostile confronters as irritating and unlikeable than confronters who used less hostile strategies ( Saunders and Senn 2009). Additionally, describing an incident as discrimination may also provoke a stronger negative response than milder forms of disagreement. In one study, participants imagined witnessing one of three responses to a racist or sexist joke: (1) labeling the joke as racist/sexist; (2) saying the joke was not funny; (3) ignoring the joke. The participants rated the appropriateness of the response and how much they liked the target. For the racist joke, labeling a joke as racist or saying it was not funny was seen as more appropriate than ignoring it. There was no significant difference between the two confrontation styles and the confronter was equally liked. Nevertheless, for a sexist joke, saying that it was not funny was rated as more appropriate than calling it sexist (or ignoring it) and confronters were rated as most likeable when they gave that response ( Woodzicka et al. 2015).

Additional research suggests that confronted aggressors feel less anger and irritation when confronted with messages focused on fairness (e.g., "Maybe it would be good to think about Blacks in other ways that are a little more fair?") rather than a message focused on prejudice (e.g., "You should really try to think about Blacks in other ways that are less prejudiced"), although both messages were associated with less prejudiced responses later ( Czopp et al. 2006). Therefore, the most useful confrontation strategy may be to focus on positives, such as calling attention to the aggressor's egalitarian values.

The literature on confrontation is limited because it does not consider microaggressions in particular and the samples are mostly White college students in experimental situations ( Czopp and Ashburn-Nardo 2012; Focella et al. 2015). Few studies examine responses in naturalistic settings or how responses vary according to situational parameters. Nevertheless, when the goal is prejudice reduction, the literature suggests that targets should use strategies that are (1) active, (2) do not violate norms of politeness, and (3) focus on positive qualities rather than accusations. The next section will explain a workshop that can teach effective confrontation.

1.3. The Microaggressions Self-Defense Workshop

The self-defense workshop is designed to be conducted in an hour to an hour and a half and in groups of almost any size. The handout in the Appendix A can be used as visual aid. The workshop begins with an introduction to microaggressions: what they are, examples, and what research says about their effects (see Appendix B). While acknowledging that most people do not confront aggressors, the facilitators highlight reasons why confrontation may be a useful strategy.

1.3.1. Your Goal

Before presenting the strategies, facilitators note two situational factors to consider when thinking about when and how to respond to microaggressions: (1) your goal and (2) your role. Goal refers to what kind of resolution the individual seeks. For example, targets who merely want to interrupt a situation in which a microaggression is expressed may choose humor as a response compared to those who want to educate the aggressor. Some other reasons that individuals confront prejudice are to release anger or frustration, to affirm their own values, to manage impressions to present themselves in a favorable light, to gain information about others' (i.e., bystanders') views, and to avoid feeling guilty or ruminating later. Since the research on responding to prejudiced comments universally considers reducing the potential of future bias as the goal, some responses may not be appropriate for other goals.

1.3.2. Your Role

Role refers to considering the relationship between the target, the aggressor, and bystanders. For example, employees may feel more threatened when deciding to confront their boss compared to a co-worker. Friends may both be more effective confronters (because the aggressor is motivated to preserve the relationship) or less effective (because the confrontation is perceived as less serious) ( Czopp and Ashburn-Nardo 2012). It may be easier to confront as a target than as a bystander who overhears a microaggression because the target is already involved in the interaction. However, a confrontation from a bystander who shares the aggressor's identity can be more effective because targets are expected to confront and are seen as less credible and less persuasive ( Czopp and Ashburn-Nardo 2012). Other factors are also at play in the situation, such as the aggressor's level of prejudice and personality factors like agreeableness ( Czopp and Ashburn-Nardo 2012). However, these are not likely to be known by the target or bystanders. The type of bias (i.e., racial, gender) could also be considered, as one study has found that gender bias is perceived as less worthy of confrontation than racial bias ( Czopp and Monteith 2003).

1.3.3. The Strategies

(1)

Appeal to values: for example, saying "I've always thought of you as an open-minded person who wouldn't say things like that." Appealing to the aggressor's positive values, particularly of fairness and egalitarianism, feels counter-intuitive because the aggressor is displaying behavior contrary to those values. However, research suggests that making the aggressor aware of this very discrepancy induces feelings of guilt and motivation to make their behavior more in line with their values ( Czopp et al. 2006; Dovidio et al. 2000; Monteith 1993; Monteith et al. 2002). This strategy may be most effective for those lower in prejudice, because high-prejudiced individuals are less likely to find their behavior problematic ( Czopp et al. 2006; Dovidio et al. 2000; Monteith 1993). One the other hand, a study of high-prejudice individuals that had the participants reflect on their values before reading a personal website about the discrimination an Arab-American faced increased behaviors such as wanting to get to know the person better compared to a condition where participants did not reflect on their values ( Stone et al. 2011). This study did not examine direct confrontation, however.

(2)

Express your feelings, particularly of hurt or disappointment: this strategy can also induce the value-behavior discrepancy, especially when the target and aggressor have a close relationship and/or the remark is meant as a joke. This approach can also call for perspective-taking and create empathy, which has been shown to reduce stereotyping and denial of discrimination ( Todd et al. 2012; Vescio et al. 2003). This approach has the potential to backfire, however, with high-prejudice individuals and if the perspective-taking requires a high amount of effort ( Stone et al. 2011; Vorauer et al. 2009).

(3)

Get the aggressor to explain, for example, asking "What did you mean by that?": "playing dumb" and asking for further information can be useful for highlighting logical inconsistencies in the aggressor's words or uncovering unconscious bias. It can also provide an opportunity for the confronter to introduce information to correct a false belief.

(4)

Empathize with the underlying feeling, for example, by saying, "I know it's hard to find a job after college, but affirmative action isn't the problem": using empathy can help the aggressor see the target as having similar values and promote inclusion of the other in the self, where another's attributes are seen as part of one's self-concept ( Tropp and Wright 2001). Affirming the aggressor can also reduce feelings of threat, which has been shown reduce bias in intergroup interactions ( Fein and Spencer 1997; Greenberg et al. 1997; Spencer et al. 1998) and make aggressors more willing to acknowledge guilt after a biased action ( Gunn and Wilson 2011). Some studies suggest that affirmation is more effective for high-prejudice individuals than other strategies (e.g., Sinclair and Kunda 1999).

(5)

Give information that contradicts the aggressor or gives a new perspective on the issue: for example, if a White aggressor assumes that a Black target grew up in a single-parent family, the target can explain that they grew up with both parents. Providing counter-stereotypic information about one's self is a form of individuation than can be effective for reducing prejudice ( Blair and Banaji 1996; Blair et al. 2001; Dasgupta and Greenwald 2001). However, by presenting oneself as counter-stereotypic, a target may resolve prejudice against them in the moment but reinforce prejudice against their group ( Focella et al. 2015). Alternatively, the target can present statistics or data that contradicts the aggressor, for example, by explaining wage disparities between men and women. This strategy requires a high level of preparation, as the confronter will need to be familiar with relevant data.

(6)

Use humor: humor may reduce defensiveness compared to more challenging approaches ( Swim and Thomas 2006), but also strongly relies on the confronter's personality.

(7)

Involve others: when no one responds to prejudiced comments, a community norm allowing those comments is set. By confronting, targets and bystanders set the opposite norm ( Monteith et al. 1996; Stangor et al. 2001). Involving others can be a strategy to invoke "safety in numbers" to highlight the norm violation to the aggressor.

(8)

Non-verbal response: finally, a non-verbal response such as a look or sigh may still be impactful without requiring a high level of preparation or energy from the confronter.

1.3.4. Role-Play Practice

After learning about the strategies, participants are given a list of scenarios or asked to generate their own. Example scenarios and potential responses are in Appendix B. They then divide into triads and role play each scenario, with the target (and bystander, if they choose), using one of the taught strategies to respond. The groups discuss the effectiveness of the response(s) and rotate through each role. After about half an hour, the facilitators lead a large group discussion focusing on participants' reactions to the role play and their ideas about which strategies would be most successful when. Facilitators should encourage participants to fit the strategies to their own circumstances.

2. Discussion

The Microaggressions Self-Defense Workshop is a useful strategy for preparing participants to respond to microaggressions. It can be used in a classroom setting to teach about prejudice and discrimination or as a workshop in work settings. This workshop differed from previous demonstrations ( Lawson et al. 2010; Plous 2000) because we utilize research on confronting prejudice to teach the students effective strategies. Using these skills can help college students protect their own well-being as well as reduce the prevalence of microaggressions on their campuses by setting positive norms ( Monteith et al. 1996; Stangor et al. 2001). Other strategies may also be successful, but the eight presented here represent a manageable set to remember and a range of types of confrontation.

Research remains to be done on the effectiveness of different responses and on how best to teach targets and bystanders to respond. In the meantime, however, the Microaggressions Self-Defense Workshop shows promise as a teaching method and intervention that combines active-learning strategies with the latest psychological research to help reduce prejudice and promote environments of inclusivity and acceptance.

Funding

This work was funded by the University of California, Santa Cruz Committee on Research.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Appendix A

Responding to Microaggressions Handout

Figure A1. Workshop Handout.

Appendix B

Definition of Microaggressions, Examples, and Effects

Definition: Microaggressions are subtle and often unintentional verbal or nonverbal slights that demean an individual based on their membership in a marginalized group ( Sue 2010).

Examples of Microaggressions

Being stared at in the dining hall

Someone asking to touch your hair because it is "exotic"

Being told you speak English well when it is your first language

Being mistaken for someone in a service role

To an Asian person, "You must be good in math, can you help me with this problem?"

Someone crosses to the other side of the street to avoid a person of color

A gay/lesbian person being told "You don't look gay"

Effects of Experiencing Microaggressions

⚬

Lower feelings of belonging

⚬

Lack of confidence in abilities

⚬

⚬

Table A1. Examples of Responses.

Microaggressions

Strategy

Response

References

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AMA Style

Byrd CM. Microaggressions Self-Defense: A Role-Playing Workshop for Responding to Microaggressions. Social Sciences. 2018; 7(6):96. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7060096

Chicago/Turabian Style

Byrd, Christy M. 2018. "Microaggressions Self-Defense: A Role-Playing Workshop for Responding to Microaggressions" Social Sciences 7, no. 6: 96. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci7060096

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Microaggressions Self-Defense: A Role-Playing Workshop for Responding to Microaggressions

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Microaggressions are subtle verbal and non-verbal slights based on group membership, and they are ubiquitous in the lives of racial minorities, women, and LGBTQ individuals. The goal of the current paper is to introduce a role-playing based exercise on effective responses to microaggressions. The workshop draws on two previous prejudice responding workshops but integrates research-based strategies.

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"That's so gay." "You'd be pretty if you lost some weight."
Microaggressions-the brief statements or behaviors that, intentionally or not, communicate a negative message about a non-dominant group-are everyday occurrences for many people. In a study published in Educational Researcher in 2015, for example, psychologist Carola Suárez-Orozco, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, observed microaggressions in almost a third of the 60 community college classrooms she and her team studied, most committed by instructors.

"No one is immune from inheriting racial, gender and sexual orientation biases," says Derald Wing Sue, PhD, a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College of Columbia University, who studies multicultural counseling and racism. "Everyone, including marginalized group members, harbors biases and prejudices and can act in discriminatory and hurtful ways toward others."

The fact that microaggressions are often subtle can make them harder to shake off than more overt forms of discrimination, says psychologist Dorainne J. Levy, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University's Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society.

"There's uncertainty about whether or not your experience was due to your race, for example, or due to something unrelated, such as the other person being in a bad mood or having a bad day," says Levy, a visiting assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences. "That uncertainty is distressing."

It can also "consume cognitive resources" as you try to figure out what just happened. In a 2016 literature review in American Psychologist, she and co-authors found that the increase in stress hormones and sleep disruptions elicited by race-based stressors may even contribute to the achievement gap between white and minority students.

Given the ubiquity of microaggressions and the harm they cause, how can you help stop them? Here's advice, whether you're the target, a bystander or the perpetrator.

When you're the target

Consider the context. If the person committing the microaggression is someone you don't care about maintaining a relationship with, respond however you see fit if it seems safe to do so, says NiCole Buchanan, PhD, an associate professor of psychology who leads workshops on microaggressions at Michigan State University and beyond. But if the microaggressor is someone closely connected to you, you don't want to burn bridges by being overly blunt. Keep the initial conversation short and schedule a time to talk about it later to give the other person time to think things over, Buchanan suggests. Since such confrontations can be nerve-wracking, she says, plan what you want to say and practice with friends.

Be sure to criticize the microaggression, not the microaggressor, suggests Kevin Nadal, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Instead of accusing someone of being racist or homophobic, explain how the statement or behavior made you feel.

Of course, you can also choose not to respond, says Mengchun Chiang, PhD, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at William James College in Newton, Massachusetts. Maybe you don't want to confront antagonistic people who may become angry or supervisors who could retaliate against you, she points out. If you decide to confront someone despite worries about repercussions, document it and have witnesses.

Take care of yourself. Microaggressions can be shocking and make you think you don't belong, says Levy. Fight those feelings by talking things over with peers who are members of the same group you are, she says. "A big part of social support is having your experiences validated," she says. It's also important to cultivate a positive sense of belonging to your group, says Levy, suggesting that individuals expose themselves to role models, books and other resources. It's also important to practice healthy sleep habits and other self-care strategies, such as mindfulness meditation.

Don't be fooled by microaggressions packaged as opportunities. When a particular group isn't well-represented on campus, at work or anywhere else, well-intentioned authorities may keep turning to the same members of that group to speak on panels, serve on committees or mentor other members of their group, thereby overloading the minority students or staffers with all the minority-related work. While these opportunities can feel good to begin with, it's easy to become overwhelmed, says Chesleigh Keene, a Navajo doctoral student in counseling psychology at the University of Denver. Ethnic minority students, she points out, often have fewer resources than other students when it comes to money, mentors and other factors, yet may be asked to take on these extra responsibilities.

To help stop such microaggressions, those in power should take it upon themselves to learn about the diversity of their students and staff and to learn more about them than their ethnic identity, Keene recommends. "By spending more time with under-represented students and staff to discuss personal interests, hobbies and, of course, professional trajectories, administrators and faculty can further reinforce a respectful and inclusive environment," she says.

It's also important for students and early career professionals to get comfortable with saying no, says Keene. Although declining opportunities can be scary, especially for people just building their careers, Keene suggests that students and early career professionals express thanks for the opportunity while explaining that the tasks don't fit their schedules or current priorities. Keene also suggests that they might add that they'd be delighted to participate in future opportunities focused on particular topics-a positive way to decline participation while helping to ensure that future offers align with one's research and clinical interests.

When you're a bystander

Be an ally. "It's really important for allies to know that sometimes their voices can be heard even more powerfully than those of the people directly affected by microaggressions," says Nadal. When the targets of microaggression complain, the microaggressor may dismiss them as biased or over-sensitive, he says.

Speak for yourself. Don't try to speak on behalf of the person who has experienced the microaggression since doing so can itself be a form of microaggression, says Nadal. "I don't think people should ever speak on behalf of others, especially for historically marginalized groups," he says. "Having someone speak on their behalf can be unintentionally dehumanizing." Instead of saying, "You hurt her feelings," he suggests, say, "Here's why I'm offended, upset or hurt."

When you're the microaggressor

Even those of us with the best intentions can inadvertently commit microaggressions, says Vincenzo G. Teran, PsyD, president of the Clinical Psychology of Ethnic Minorities Section of APA's Div. 12 (Society of Clinical Psychology) and a psychologist at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School.

"Committing a microaggression is not indicative that we're bad people," says Teran. "It's more indicative of a society where the dominant world view tends to be Eurocentric, masculine and heterosexual."

Even people who are members of marginalized groups themselves can hurt members of other marginalized groups, says Sue. "Because people of color, for example, don't wield power and privilege, the insults and invalidations they deliver to others are technically not considered microaggressions but expressions of implicit bias," he adds. "On an individual level, nevertheless, they are equally harmful." An African-American lesbian, for instance, might succumb to a common microaggression against people with disabilities. People often assume that people with disabilities are disabled in all aspects of life functioning, Sue points out, which can lead to such scenarios as people raising their voices when speaking to a blind person as if they're also deaf.

What should you do if someone accuses you of a microaggression?

Try not to be defensive, says Teran. Take stock of your feelings, thoughts and behaviors, whether it's fear of appearing racist, anger about being confronted or attempts to minimize the situation. "Keep in mind that the person is taking a risk in sharing this information," he says.

Acknowledge the other person's hurt, apologize and reflect on where the microaggression came from and how you can avoid similar mistakes in the future. Then take responsibility for increasing your understanding of your own privileges and prejudices, Teran says.

Whatever you do, don't fool yourself that you are not doing harm, adds Buchanan. "It's death by a thousand cuts," she says. "All these seemingly small events accumulate over time and can leave you just as bloody as if someone had stabbed you."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"That's so gay." "You'd be pretty if you lost some weight." Microaggressions-the brief statements or behaviors that, intentionally or not, communicate a negative message about a non-dominant group-are everyday occurrences for many people.

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It was in 2010, in a class about the Civil War and the period surrounding it. Part of her lecture was about the bias that African Americans in the 1850s sometimes exhibited toward Chinese immigrants. In an attempt to connect to the subject, a white student raised her hand and then quoted a joke from the movie Blazing Saddles that uses both that epithet and an epithet describing Chinese people. Pryor froze. After getting through class that day, she asked all her students never to use the word itself, even when citing texts. But she knew it wasn't that simple. This American word is too historically important, violent and complex to be banned without explication.

"This is a word that gets harnessed and used when Black people move through the body politic. It is an attack on Black freedom."

So began Pryor's long, thoughtful process about how to engage with the N-word-as an educator, as a biracial woman and as a daughter of the legendary comedian Richard Pryor (who had his own journey with the incendiary word, which he describes in the concert film Richard Pryor: Live on The Sunset Strip). After the classroom incident-and following much thought and study-Pryor decided to no longer use the word herself, though she doesn't censor it in materials where it appears. Over the years, she's taken her thinking-and that of her students-far beyond the simple response of "just never say it." In her Smith colloquium The History of the N-Word, she digs deep into the history of the word and the ways in which it has been weaponized. She makes room for the emotions that are stirred up whenever it appears. She believes that the deepest learning happens through this brave engagement and rigorous examination.
How did you develop your attitude about dealing with the word when it is present in a pedagogical setting?
It wasn't an overnight matter for me. People are very polemical about it, and I'm never polemical with my students. Some people [say that not using the word] is an attack on freedom of speech. I actually think that what the N-word does is make everybody slow down and pay attention. So I don't see [choosing not to use the word] as an issue about freedom of speech. Quite the contrary. I actually think it promotes free speech in the sense of creating an intellectual environment where as many people as possible want to and can participate in that environment.
So, when you encounter the word in a text, what do you do?
I tell students, you're going to hear it. I'm not going to X it out of [the film] 12 Years a Slave, because it's in the movie. There are articles and books that we read where it's present. But I don't use it in my PowerPoints anymore. I do "n***er" in my PowerPoints.

That's a decision that I came to after teaching my first iteration of the course. What I heard over and over again from students was that they wanted to be able to engage with the ideas without having to get in the muck of what the word was actually doing. Sitting in a room with that word shining in their faces prevented some of the deeper work that they actually wanted to do.
Do you believe it should never be used by anyone?
People often say to me, "Should there be a no-tolerance policy about saying the word?" That stuff scares me, because that's when you end up with people not teaching James Baldwin and people not teaching my father, and that is not what we want. The idea is not to foreclose on people who have ever said the N-word. The idea isn't that students can never hear it. But I'm trying to model a kind of practice around it. It has everything to do with the fact that students of all races come to me underqualified to talk about racism and race in the United States. The history is very understudied and important for people to understand, that really it is not an attack on enslaved people. This is a word that really gets harnessed and used when Black people start to move through the body politic. [It] is an attack on Black freedom.
What do you think about the argument that it's sometimes used subversively, like in hip-hop?
In those cases, what I really think is happening is that the word is doing work in opposition to white racism, and that instead of getting rid of the word from hip-hop songs, or from Black art, that perhaps instead there should be equity and social justice, so that the word no longer has meaning for Black people. It wouldn't be subversive to use it because there would be social justice and equity.
What scholarship are you doing beyond teaching?
I'm writing a pedagogical historical memoir, framed by my experience as a biracial woman in the United States who is also the daughter of comedic icon Richard Pryor. And I've made the decision not to use the word in the book. Part of the reason is because I think what jams people up [in teaching] is that when they see Baldwin, or Junot Díaz or others [using the word], they don't want to change the words of these authors. They want to be true and authentic to that literature, and I understand it, but I didn't want people to necessarily have to grapple with that with my new work. So it's just an experiment, honestly, because my feelings around the word are ever-changing and evolving.

Martha Southgate '82 is the author of four novels, most recently The Taste of Salt.

This story appears in the Spring 2021 issue of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.

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It was in 2010, in a class about the Civil War and the period surrounding it. Part of her lecture was about the bias that African Americans in the 1850s sometimes exhibited toward Chinese immigrants.

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It's a question that comes up again and again in discussions of race: Why can't white people use the n-word, even as many black people use it, particularly in rap songs and other media?

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer at the Atlantic and author of We Were Eight Years in Power, has perhaps the best explanation I have ever heard on the topic, given during an event last month at Evanston Township High School in Illinois.

Coates first pointed out that it is normal in our culture for some people or groups to use certain words that others can't. For example, his wife calls him "honey"; it would not be acceptable, he said, for strange women to do the same. Similarly, his dad was known by his family back home as Billy - but it would be awkward for Coates to try to use that nickname for his father.

"That's because the relationship between myself and my dad is not the same as the relationship between my dad and his mother and his sisters who he grew up with," Coates said. "We understand that."

The same concept applies to different groups and their words. "My wife, with her girl friend, will use the word 'bitch,'" Coates said. "I do not join in. You know what I'm saying? I don't do that. I don't do that. And perhaps more importantly, I don't have a desire to do it."

Coates pointed to another example - of a white friend who used to have a cabin in upstate New York that he called "the white trash cabin." "I would never refer to that cabin" in that way, Coates said. "I would never tell him, 'I'm coming to your white trash cabin.'"

Coates added, "The question one must ask is why so many white people have difficulty extending things that are basic laws of how human beings interact to black people."

He gave a potential answer: "When you're white in this country, you're taught that everything belongs to you. You think you have a right to everything. ... You're conditioned this way. It's not because your hair is a texture or your skin is light. It's the fact that the laws and the culture tell you this. You have a right to go where you want to go, do what you want to do, be however - and people just got to accommodate themselves to you."

"So here comes this word that you feel like you invented," Coates said. "And now somebody will tell you how to use the word that you invented. 'Why can't I use it? Everyone else gets to use it. You know what? That's racism that I don't get to use it. You know, that's racist against me. You know, I have to inconvenience myself and hear this song and I can't sing along. How come I can't sing along?'"

Coates concluded that white people should use this sense as a lesson: "The experience of being a hip-hop fan and not being able to use the word 'ni**er' is actually very, very insightful. It will give you just a little peek into the world of what it means to be black. Because to be black is to walk through the world and watch people doing things that you cannot do, that you can't join in and do. So I think there's actually a lot to be learned from refraining."
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Ta-Nehisi Coates has an incredibly clear explanation for why white people shouldn't use the n-word

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He said that white people could learn something from not being able to use the word.

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Ask Dr. Dani: How Do I Respond When A Student Says The N-Word?

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Recognizing and Responding to Microaggressions at Work

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Microaggressions, the insensitive statements, questions, or assumptions aimed at traditionally marginalized identity groups can happen to anyone, of any background, at any professional level. The research is clear about the impact seemingly innocuous statements can have on one’s physical and mental…

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Conversations with coworkers, friends and family are essential to pushing back against racism. While it's important to understand the history and systemic factors that play into racism, it's important to also confront what's known as "microaggressions." These are the thinly veiled, everyday instances of racism, homophobia, sexism (and more) that you see in the world. Sometimes it's an insult, other times it's an errant comment or gesture.

Kevin Nadal, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has spent years researching and writing books on the effects of microaggressions. He says as big structural issues play out, it's important to confront the small stuff, too.

"We navigate all of these things in our lives," Nadal says. "For many of us on a daily, hourly basis. And for some of us where we might not even recognize that we are navigating them or even perpetrating them."

To be clear, the "micro" in microaggression doesn't mean that these acts can't have big, life-changing impacts. They can, which is all the more reason to address them when you see them. If you can, that is. I spoke to Nadal about how.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity and was originally published in June 2020. Andrew Limbong: What exactly is a microaggression?
Kevin Nadal: Microaggressions are defined as the everyday, subtle, intentional - and oftentimes unintentional - interactions or behaviors that communicate some sort of bias toward historically marginalized groups.

The difference between microaggressions and overt discrimination or macroaggressions, is that people who commit microaggressions might not even be aware of them.

Someone commenting on how well an Asian American speaks English, which presumes the Asian American was not born here, is one example of a microaggression. Presuming that a black person is dangerous or violent is another example. A common experience that black men talk about is being followed around in stores or getting on an elevator and having people move away and grab their purses or their wallets.

Oftentimes, people don't even realize that they're doing those sorts of things. And in fact, if you were to stop them and say, 'Why did you just move?' They would deny it because they don't recognize that their behaviors communicate their racial biases.
If someone says something racist to me, what does their intent matter?
At the end of the day, if somebody says something racist to you, it's racist. And if it hurt your feelings, it hurt your feelings, so it doesn't really matter what we define it as.

But it is important to understand that a lot of times people who engage in microaggressions will not believe that what they said was racist or sexist or homophobic. And so calling them racist or sexist or homophobic would make them very defensive and make them unable to even recognize what their impact was.

We're all human beings who are prone to mistakes, and we're all human beings who might commit microaggressions. And it's not necessarily that you're a bad person if you commit a microaggression, but rather that you need to be more aware of your biases and impact on people. We all need to commit to working on these things in order to create a more harmonious society.
So let's say you get into a conversation about current events. And the conversation turns toward police and racism and police brutality. Maybe the conversation gets a little tense and you can sense that a microaggression might be coming. What are your options then?
I think there are a lot of things that people need to consider when having what we would call difficult dialogues. First, think about whether or not the person is worth talking to. Is this somebody that you care about? Is this somebody who you think would actually have the capacity to hear what you have to say? A lot of times people get into arguments with people they don't need to necessarily be emotionally invested in because they don't have that sort of relationship.

If you are close and if you do have a relationship it might be important just to say, 'Look, I feel like we're both getting really emotionally charged right now. I don't feel like I'm able to hear what you're saying. I don't feel that you're able to hear what I'm saying. So maybe we need to table this and talk another time.' Or maybe offer to give them something they could read - that could be more helpful or effective than a conversation that might just turn into yelling and hostility.
Is there a risk of this feeling like homework?
Yes. Oftentimes people of color are asked to educate white people on issues that the person of color has lived with and thought about for their entire lives. That can be very psychologically and emotionally exhausting for a person to then have to care about the white person's feelings and to take those extra efforts so that they can learn something that they should have - and could have - learned throughout the duration of their life.

You don't have to do that if you don't want to. Or you could provide them with resources or a book to read before they even come to the conversation.

At the same time, if you're a person with privileged identities and you want to be a true ally, maybe you do have to do that homework. Maybe you do have to engage in those uncomfortable emotions because you know that it's your job and responsibility to have those conversations so that other people of color or women or LGBTQ folks won't have to have those conversations for you.
There can also be a certain amount of discomfort if you're talking about a group that isn't involved in the conversation, right? Here we are talking about police brutality against black people and neither of us is black.
You don't have to be of a certain group to understand that something is unjust. It's really about learning how to be empathetic to people. And also just to be really aware and knowledgeable of history. This country is founded on racism toward indigenous people and racism toward black people, and that's not new.

Even if we might not necessarily understand exactly what it means to be a member of the targeted group at that moment, we certainly rely on our knowledge and our awareness of history and of the lived experiences of people of those groups.
Let's assume that we're close friends and talking about being brown in New York. And then I say something homophobic, but we're friends and you know that I could be better. Where do you go from there?
So what I might say immediately is, 'What do you mean by that?' So somebody says, 'Oh, that's so gay.' And then I say, 'What do you mean by that?'

And if we're friends, that means that I trust that you do care about social justice issues - that maybe this is just a slip in that moment that that person will say, 'Oh, I'm sorry.' I didn't mean that. Because asking someone what they mean by that is giving them that opportunity to explain themselves.

And for some people, they say things just because they've been so socialized to say certain things. But when they're really asked to explain what they're trying to say, that's where, you know, they have to think about it and sometimes even retract what they originally say because they don't want to perpetuate something that isn't actually who they are.
So what would you say are three quick bits of advice on having these difficult dialogues?
1. Do your own work before you even get there. Read blogs and personal essays, understand the lived experiences of historically marginalized groups, watch documentaries and try to think outside of your own perspective.

2. Set realistic expectations of what you want from these conversations. Also think about, is this actually helping? Is this a conversation that I view as being helpful in any way, shape or form? It's important to acknowledge that no one is going to learn everything in one conversation overnight.

3. Always be aware of yourself and your mental health when having these conversations. In a world where we all fought for social justice all the time, we would be getting into productive arguments and fights and having protests every day and changing laws, but we don't and we can't because we're also human and we need to rest.

But again, think about your role and your positionality, because if you're a person with privilege and you could fight a little bit longer, then do it. But if you're a person of a historically marginalized group, we want you to be alive and we want you to be healthy in order to continue this fight toward justice.
The audio portion of this story was produced by Andee Tagle.

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Microaggressions are a big deal: How to talk them out and when to walk away : Life Kit

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Microaggressions are the everyday, thinly veiled instances of racism, homophobia, sexism and other biases that come across in gestures, comments or insults. But the "micro" doesn't mean that the acts don't have a big impact. While there's no one right way to address a microaggression, we have some pointers for ways you can begin to respond.

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No. You Cannot Touch My Hair! | Mena Fombo | TEDxBristol

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Dr. Neal Lester talks the N Word and race relations - Arizona PBS Horizonte (18 Feb 2016)

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Sponsored by CoderZ and Edulastic

Any Lauryn Hill fans out there would instantly recognize the opening chords to her classic hip-hop song, "Doo Wop (That Thing)," but how many of us could explain the line, "Don't forget about the deen/ the Siratul Mustaqim" without googling it? If you're not familiar with the term, I can save you the search: Siratul Mustaqim is Arabic for "the straight path." But why didn't she just say that? It's not by accident-she's code-switching.

What is Code-Switching?

Code-switching. Some of us have heard of it, most of us have witnessed it, many of us do it on a regular basis. But what is it, exactly? Why do people code-switch? And what does it have to do with teaching?

Code-switching is the act of alternating between languages during conversation. (For the purposes of this post, language is used as an umbrella term encompassing forms of speech including formally recognized languages, dialects, and nonverbal communication.) Code-switchers seamlessly switch back and forth without pause, often starting a sentence in one language and ending it in another. Sometimes they insert words from another language in the middle of a sentence, a behavior referred to as code-mixing. And it's not just words that change-when code-switching, people might speak faster or slower, louder or softer, mix up the pitch of their voice, change their laugh, and even vary their facial expressions and body language.

Why do people code-switch? Well, it depends. Code-switching is a very personal and complex behavior that occurs for a number of reasons. It's used to clarify or emphasize a point, and at times, to elude eavesdroppers. Strong emotions can prompt a switch, as does a sudden change in topic. Sometimes a word simply comes to mind faster in one language. Other times it's just simpler to say one word in another language ( deen) than produce an English approximation on the spot ("living according to one's religious principles").

Code-switching helps us express ourselves in a way that makes sense for us at that moment. Some people code-switch in every conversation, while others use it more strategically, depending on the situation. For example, your children might speak one way with you but sound totally different when they're off with their friends. People who code-switch are experts at navigating social situations and determining how to use language to our advantage. It helps us stand out; show who we are, unequivocally and unapologetically. It's how we establish community-a greeting of ¡Hola! or Assalamu Alaikum instantly signals cultural or religious solidarity. Conversely, people code-switch to assimilate, downplaying or modifying their natural speech to fit in where they're made to feel they don't belong.

Code-switching is both art and tool, subtext and premise, bridge and platform on which we build a conversation. Code switchers use language to deliver ideas with efficiency and style. When Ms. Hill called in her Muslim fans in that lyric, she chose the language of Islam to speak directly to them. That choice served her both lyrically and linguistically, expressing a complex idea to a specific audience in a single word. And with it, she reminds us that because we matter, so do our words.

Why Language Matters

Language is identity. It shapes and informs our thinking, our values, and our relationships. It binds us to our roots and informs how we interact with the world. This should be reflected in our teaching. Gloria Ladson-Billings says, "The goal of cultural competence is to ensure that students remain firmly grounded in their culture of origin (and learn it well) while acquiring knowledge and skill in at least one additional culture" ( Ladson-Billings, 2014). Code-switching is a feature of that multiculturalism, a skill set to be nurtured and developed. Language-affirming practices help us better understand what our students need to learn and grow.

The trouble is that not all students feel they can bring their whole selves into the classroom. Even the most well-meaning teachers can unwittingly do more harm than good. Many bicultural and bilingual children report experiencing a sense of loss when they acquire their second language ( Casesa, 2013) and it's not by coincidence that their educational setting plays a part in this. Over and over again, students are interrupted, corrected, and told to speak proper English by their teachers. This seemingly benevolent practice has long-lasting negative effects on many of them long beyond their school years.

Black English and the Culture of Power

Often when we think of multilingual learners (MLLs) we think of immigrants or children of immigrants who speak languages other than English, but many code-switchers actually speak a dialect of English as their heritage or home language. Despite there being no official national language in the U.S., one particular version of English has become so synonymous with academic language that not only is it the preferred dialect for reading, writing, and speaking, but other dialects are viewed as inferior. This has mostly to do with how dynamics of race and culture affect our perception of language.

In her 2020 book, Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy, Dr. April Baker-Bell explains how racism and linguistic injustice are linked. She says the white mainstream dialect known as Standardized English is held up as a model language while Black English or AAVE (African-American Vernacular English)-though widely spoken-remains underutilized and underappreciated in academic settings. Even though Black English and other racialized dialects do not exist in opposition to academic language, the students who speak them are discouraged from speaking their heritage languages in school, and their bilingualism is rarely viewed as an asset.

Why are certain languages treated differently? For one, it's still widely believed that Black English is simply slang or informal speech, when the fact is it has its own grammar, syntax, and vocabulary like all other languages ( Kamm, 2015). Another common line of thinking is that Black students need to code-switch to better navigate the academic or corporate world later on ( Baker-Bell, 2017). This is a response to what Lisa Delpit describes as "a culture of power," in which marginalized people learn to code-switch for survival instead of as a means of self-expression, feeling they have to speak a certain way if they want to get ahead ( Delpit, 1988).

Though code-switching can be an effective way to gain access to traditionally white-dominated spaces, the downside of this type of survival code-switching is Black children are being taught to leave parts of themselves behind when entering academic or professional spaces, and by continuing to uncritically affirm the dominance of Standardized English ( Lippi-Green, 1994), we reinforce it as the norm.

Here's where examining our own implicit biases is crucial. Do we think of language in terms of "right" and "wrong?" Constantly fight the urge to correct people's grammar or dismiss someone outright because they sound "uneducated"? Equate English speaking (especially non-accented English) with being American? A bulk of this harmful thinking is the result of our own schooling which we now as adults have to work to unlearn.

We should want better for our students. The fact is, code-switching is not a sign of linguistic incompetence, but a normal occurrence for a multilingual brain. ( Yuhas, 2021). Rather than attempt to micromanage how they use their language, we can guide students to the realization that they can decide for themselves when and how they code-switch.

Setting the Record Straight: Common Questions About Language in Schools

Let's be honest. Sometimes it feels like as soon as we've begun to master this teaching thing, another element gets thrown into the mix that has us feeling like a rookie all over again. Adding strategies that specifically address equity of language into our repertoire may seem like a daunting task, but if we know it can help our students, it's worth a try. Hopefully in time it will become clear that even small changes can have a big impact.

My students need to learn English, and fast. Won't code-switching slow down their progress?

Short answer: it won't.

If you want to create a language-inclusive classroom for your multilingual learners, don't expect or enforce "Standardized English only" policies in your classroom ( Ethical Englishes, 2019). It's fine to encourage them to take risks, but actively limiting or making rules about how they're allowed to talk will shut down communication and damage your relationship with them.

It's a myth that allowing students to speak their home language in school slows down their acquisition of English ( Kamenetz, 2019). Regular practice of both languages will help maintain their bilingualism. In the beginning stages, use scaffolds to make the material more accessible. They'll eventually transfer their conceptual understanding to their new language once they have the vocabulary.

If I don't correct my students when they make an error, how will they learn?

Short answer: It's fine. Just let them talk.

Some believe we should take every opportunity to address errors. We even have a term- teachable moment -for stopping to correct a student in the moment. But cutting someone off in the middle of a thought is not only an ineffective instructional tactic, it's disruptive to the flow of conversation. It's unnecessary to interrupt their train of thought just because they said "goed" instead of "went." They probably won't remember the correction anyway, and their classmates who were listening attentively also have to refocus. If it truly is an error (and not a language difference) you can always make a mental note to do a lesson on it at another time.

What about the standards?

Short answer: Yes, you still have to teach the standards.

While it's true we have English language standards in our curriculum, we don't need to prioritize Standardized English at the expense of all other forms of language. Making space for linguistic diversity doesn't mean eliminating what already exists; it's about creating a balance. Teachers can teach the standards without asking students to compromise their identities, and ultimately, language-inclusive instruction will only advance rather than jeopardize their academic growth.

I only speak English-won't that limit my ability to do all of this?

Short answer: Start with a curious mind.

You don't need to be able to speak every language in order to support students who code-switch in our classrooms. Showing genuine interest in your students' language skills can go a long way. Also, demonstrate an appreciation for languages in general. Whether you teach history, music, or algebra, there are plenty of interesting and fun connections you can make to your subject area.

Instructional Practices that Support Multilingual Learners

Multilingual learners (MLLs) are often assumed to be at a disadvantage in a school setting, but this cannot be further from the truth ( Bialystok, 2011). Nor are they a monolith: Every one of them comes to us with unique strengths, needs, and gifts. That's why there's no single strategy that works for everyone: Some of the following suggestions will feel more appropriate for learners of English as a new language while others make sense for more fluent speakers. As always, do what makes sense for your particular class.

Get Them Talking

MLLs need lots of opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations in class. This can be challenging if they tend to sit quietly during discussions and let others do the talking. Sometimes they're just listening, but other times fear of critique or correction truly stops them from participating. If we want everyone talking, we need to build inclusive talk structures into our lessons.

To do this, vary the different types of discussion. Students who never raise their hand in whole class discussions will open up once they're in a small group, while others prefer to share their thoughts with a trusted partner. Offering variety in talk structures increases student-to-student interactions and generates opportunities for us to informally assess understanding, but most of all, it lets students talk in ways that are comfortable for them.

Processing ideas can take longer for students used to speaking two or more languages, so we need to make effective use of "think time." That's when you ask a question and pause. Don't rephrase the question. Don't call on anyone. Let students absorb the question and formulate an answer. This is especially helpful for MLLs because they often have to mentally rehearse their response before saying it out loud. If they appear hesitant, see if they need more time and then circle back after the next speaker. Once they do start speaking, resist the urge to interrupt or speak on their behalf. If there is any confusion, you can always ask them to repeat or rephrase, but more often than not, those few extra seconds can be a game-changer.

Make Text Accessible

The literacy block is typically one of the most demanding times of the day for multilingual learners. Many encounters with texts end in frustration and confusion because students weren't properly supported throughout the lesson. Not only do they need multiple chances to absorb new information, three additional points to consider when making a text accessible are background knowledge, representation, and means of delivery.

Background Knowledge: If students are having trouble accessing informational texts, consider pre-reading activities that activate and build background knowledge. It may be useful to show a short video or have students click through a slideshow of images related to the topic. Have them preview key vocabulary words they'll find in the reading (ideas for building vocabulary are linked here). Take time during lessons to identify cognates or root words related to the topic. A multilingual word wall is also a great way to help MLLs share their word knowledge with their peers. New words can be collected in a personal dictionary as a side project.

Representation: Part of making texts accessible is choosing stories our students can relate to both in terms of language and message. We should be regularly selecting culturally diverse texts, especially those that use languages or dialects other than Standardized English. In addition to learning about other cultures, students should see themselves reflected in the literature they read. We also need to vet our instructional materials for potential issues with the representation or portrayal of cultural and racial groups. There are a lot of questionable resources out there-be vigilant!

Means of Delivery: Multi-modal instruction makes content engaging and accessible to all our learners. Station teaching is a perfect way to differentiate for MLLs using varying levels of text complexity. One way this could work is while one group reads a grade-level text, another group can have a simplified version of the same text. (Newsela offers texts in multiple languages and on differing Lexile levels for this exact purpose). Combine that with a video station and a vocabulary station and you have a robust multi-modal work session that can be repeated at any time with a new text or topic.

Additional Scaffolds: If students are not yet proficient enough in English to follow along, they can still participate in other ways: Providing translations of text or subtitles in a video can help students keep up with the material, and offering credit for work in languages other than English is always an option, too. They may benefit from a paired text or video or some other way to reconnect with the material. Later, have students review what they've learned using retrieval techniques (listed here) to solidify concepts and help make new words stick.

Be Flexible with Assessments

When so many assessments require a level of English proficiency that may not even be relevant to the assignment, how do we ensure we're getting an accurate snapshot? By using a variety of assessment formats such as open-ended prompts, performance tasks, or projects and adjusting our own assessments to ensure they're culturally relevant.

You can also employ flexibility in reviewing and grading students' written work. Focus the majority of assignments on content, not conventions, and remember variations in language shouldn't result in a lower grade. Obviously, every language has grammar, syntax, and spelling conventions that can be taught, practiced, and mastered, so this is not to say conventions don't matter. It's just that not all assignments need to be graded against the conventions of Standardized English. If a student shows consistent need for explicit instruction with grammar or spelling, you can always offer targeted instruction during small group lessons.

Finally, progress-based assessment criteria such as checklists and rubrics clarify your expectations for each task and make feedback actionable. It's especially helpful to co-create those with your class. Not only will they have a better idea of what you're looking for but they'll be encouraged by seeing what they already can do.

Translanguaging

If you're looking for a bolder way to incorporate students' existing language abilities into your lessons, translanguaging is a great way to develop literacy skills in multiple languages (España & Yadira Herrera, 2020). That's the practice of designing activities to allow students agency over their languaging practices. For example, students might read a text in Spanish and respond to a discussion prompt in English. This gives them access to the material while supporting their conversation skills. Or, they might watch a video in subtitles, discuss what they learned, and write a response, all using both languages. The idea is that alternating between forms of input, processing, and output supports fluency in multiple languages at once. The advantage of translanguaging (Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015) over code-switching is that it eliminates any artificial or teacher-controlled separation of languages.

Other Inclusive Practices

In addition to the instructional strategies outlined above, there are a handful of other practices that might happen more casually alongside the pedagogy. Creating language-inclusive classrooms is more than a technique; it's a mindset.

That mindset means we never mock or criticize anyone's accent or grammar. It means we support our students' languaging practices. It means moving away from the idea that there's a right and wrong way of speaking, that Black English and other dialects are "slang" or "informal" versions of the true and proper English. It means affirming, not just tolerating, language diversity.

An inclusivity mindset also means expanding the walls of the classroom. Field trips, service projects, and community events are a great way to tie learning to the real world. It means inviting families to publishing parties and heritage celebrations. It means conversations without judgment and relationships that matter.

Inclusivity means we make space for diversity: diversity of thought, experience, culture, language, and more. It means we make sure our students know they belong.

"Respect is Just the Minimum"

As we commit to becoming more culturally responsive educators, we need to not only respect, but nurture and protect our students' cultural, racial, and linguistic identities. How we talk about language and what we allow (and don't allow) to go unchallenged in our classrooms is hugely influential and the choices we make as teachers carry weight. We may not always know the right thing to do in every situation, but as long as we make ongoing, conscious efforts to include all voices in the conversation, well, we're on the right path.

References

Baker-Bell, A. (2017). I can switch my language, but I can't switch my skin": What teachers must understand about linguistic racism. The guide for White women who teach Black boys, 97-107.

Baker-Bell, A. (2020) Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy. (1st edition). Routledge.

Bialystok, E. (2011). Reshaping the mind: the benefits of bilingualism. Canadian journal of experimental psychology = Revue canadienne de psychologie experimentale, 65(4), 229-235. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025406

Casesa, R. (2013). "I Spoke It When I Was a Kid": Practicing Critical Bicultural Pedagogy in a Fourth-Grade Classroom. Schools: Studies in Education, 10(2), 171-191. https://doi.org/10.1086/673329

Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280-298.

España, C. & Yadira Herrera, L. (2020). Heinemann Blog. What is Translanguaging? https://blog.heinemann.com/what-is-translanguaging

Ethical Englishes (2019, August). The Dangers of "English-Only" Policies (for ESL students) in School. https://www.ethicalesol.org/blog/hhryxasqrobl9b8gzcza24aj6x5w5q

Kamenetz, A. (2019). 6 Potential Brain Benefits Of Bilingual Education. Npr.org. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/11/29/497943749/6-potential-brain-benefits-of-bilingual-education

Kamm, O. (2015, March). There Is No 'Proper English' Wall Street Journal.

Ladson-Billings, G.J. (2014). Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84, 74-84.

Lippi-Green, R. (1994, January). Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts. Language in Society, 23(2), 163-198. https://rosinalippi.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Lippi-Green1994Accent-standard-language-ideology-and-discriminatory-pretext-in-the-courts.pdf

Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W. (2015, October). Clarifying Translanguaging and Deconstructing Named Languages: A Perspective from Linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(3): 281-307 https://ofeliagarciadotorg.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/otheguyreidgarcia.pdf

Yuhas, Daisy. (2021, November). How Brains Seamlessly Switch between Languages. Scientific American.

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Words Matter: Language-Affirming Classrooms for Code-Switching Students

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Rather than micromanaging how they use their language, we can guide students to decide for themselves when and how they code-switch.

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When is a circle more than just a circle? Middle school students can memorize the formal definition of a circle: the set of all points equidistant from a single point. But what happens when that single point is my middle school, and I need to figure out how far I need to walk in each direction to find the closest healthy grocery store option? Or when I compare my circle to the circles for schools located in neighborhoods with different socioeconomic and racial demographics?

By framing the definition of a circle within the controversial but relatable issue of community food deserts, we enhance student opportunities for deeper learning. But reframing your existing curriculum can seem unrealistic for those days when overwhelmed, under-resourced educators feel even more overwhelmed and under-resourced than usual.

For the last 7 years of leading thinkLaw, my team has been obsessed with solving this problem - helping teachers embed culturally responsive critical thinking into their existing curriculum so it doesn't feel like one more thing. Through this journey, we've developed a toolbox of powerful but practical methods to leverage what we call the "funk" - the emotional, thought-provoking connection that comes from relating academic content to issues involving drama, controversy, surprise, humor and conflict - to generate more critical thinking in the classroom. It feels obvious that this type of construct can improve authentic connections for learners, deepen learning outcomes, and have all sorts of other achievement-based benefits in the classroom. The benefits of finding the funk beyond the classroom, however, are a little less obvious.

Any time we give students the opportunity to not just analyze the world as it is, but use their knowledge to grapple with how the world ought to be, we explicitly permit them to not just be problem solvers, but to embrace their identity as problem finders. This is the fundamental premise of my second book, Tangible Equity: A Guide for Leveraging Student Identity, Culture, and Power to Unlock Excellence In and Beyond the Classroom( Amazon | Bookshop.org). Student success must include the academic achievement necessary for accountability metrics, but that success means very little if students do not also have the tools to lead, innovate, and break what needs to be broken, and to use what they learn in the classroom to impact the world beyond the classroom.

But enough about the why, let's get to the how!

3 Strategies for Finding the Funk

You do not need to be the most creative or innovative educator to find the funk in your instruction, and it doesn't have to be one more thing added to your list of things to do. Instead, regularly integrate culturally responsive critical thinking into the content you're already teaching with the following three strategies. Use these strategies to create provocative essential questions to start a new unit, integrate powerful class discussions partway through a unit, wrap up a day's lesson, or help students review at the end of a unit, just to name a few.

Strategy 1: Making the Rules

Across disciplines, almost every new concept involves some set of rules, algorithms, procedures, or definitions. And when you introduce rules, you also introduce an opportunity for students to define that rule, break it, prove it wrong, extend it to the point of absurdity, evaluate it, or revise it.

Making a rule seems natural for patterns in math class. But how often do world language teachers allow students to create a rule for irregular verb conjugations based on those type of patterns? There is nothing stopping third graders from designing their own rubrics for what makes a good paragraph "good" based on their analysis of paragraphs written at various levels of quality. China recently banned children from playing video games during the week and drastically limited their access during the weekends. What might a rule need to look like in the United States to address the issue of video game addiction? Whether Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" is a country song depends on the rule for what makes a country song a country song. Similar lines of inquiry apply to the rules for what makes art or fossils part of a particular time period or what makes some words have long or short vowel sounds.

This is not limited to the learning happening in our schools. In the work thinkLaw leads to support families in nurturing and developing critical thinking at home, it has been awe-inspiring to watch parents lead students through our discussion cards to create potential rules for addressing the issue of pets who get petrified by 4 th of July fireworks or develop a rule in response to the real-life scenario of an aunt who charged her family $30 a person for attending her Thanksgiving dinner!

Rulemaking is an inherently funky process where the lesson goes far beyond developing the "right" rule. The true value comes from helping students hold a mirror up to themselves so they can see their own power to make sense of the world within and beyond the classroom. Just imagine your students in front of your mayor sharing a rule they developed for what they believe is the maximum justifiable radius for how far away a community's healthy grocery store can be.

Strategy 2: Breaking and Shaking the Rules

Breaking and shaking rules is equally - if not more - powerful. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use incomplete rules. A great example from Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students ( Amazon | Bookshop.org) involves an elementary school example of students learning the difference between prime and composite numbers. If I tell you 3, 5, 7, and 11 are prime numbers and asked students to define "prime," it seems likely they might say prime numbers are odd numbers. It does not take much to break and shake that initial rule by introducing 9, 15, 21 and 23, and informing students that 9, 15, and 21 are composite and 23 is prime. When they redefine this rule, they may now conclude that not all odd numbers are prime, but composite numbers are odd numbers that are divisible by three. When you add in 10, 18, 25, and 31, they again find themselves breaking and shaking their rules. They realize that even numbers can also be composite. They see that not all composite, odd numbers are divisible by 3. And just imagine the funk when we give them 0, 1 and 2 and tell them that 0 and 1 are neither prime nor composite and that 2 is actually prime!

Is there a more intuitive way to organize the periodic table of elements? Six Flags amusement parks had a decent set of rules for their unlimited meal plan until the arrival of ridiculous TikTok shenanigans. How could your students update these rules so that park guests do not abuse the all-you-can-eat option? You can do wonders in creating a classroom culture where students feel safe as advocates and leaders if you encourage students to suggest updates for classroom rules or improvements to the way you explain rules relating to academic content.

Throughout history, a lot of very bad things have happened because people were simply following orders. Breaking and shaking the rules helps students hone their ability to be disruptive on purpose and to be disruptive with a purpose.

Strategy 3: The Most, Least, Best or Worst

You see a social media post listing the definitive list of the top ten movies of all time. Why do you click on it? You know you won't agree with it, at least not with all of it. But every time you see lists like this, you cannot help but invoke your own beliefs, identity, values, experiences, education in school, and education outside of school.

This is why finding the funk with The Most, Least, Best or Worst is a highly practical tool for embedding culturally responsive critical thinking into your classroom. Reading a novel? Rich character analysis comes through so much more seamlessly if students need to rank the main characters from the most shady to the least shady. If my Algebra I students recently learned how to solve systems of equations by the substitution, elimination, and graphing methods, there's no need to do a played-out Jeopardy game for test review. Instead, I can have students work in groups as lobbyists for each method, competing for an exclusive contract for math teachers across the country to teach only their method and explaining in detail why their method is superior and why the other two fall short.

And as I wrote for this blog before, The Most, Least, Best or Worst can also be a powerful way to leverage the magic of mistakes. Even standardized test prep practice questions can be enhanced by having students go beyond "What is the right answer?" by asking "What is the MOST wrong answer?" (the one that is the most off-base from what the question was asking for) and "What is the BEST wrong answer?" (the one most students would likely select as the wrong answer).

A word of caution: asking students to rank the most significant dates of The Revolutionary War - or to use any of these subjective ranking activities discussed above - can sometimes be a huge challenge for students who are used to questions with clear right and wrong answers. You can make the funk less funky by intentionally hooking the funk to our students' world. Who is the most significant person in your household? In our school? What is the most significant location in your community? What date is the most significant date of your life? When students can use who they are and how they are to deepen their connection to learning, it builds their ability to make these connections as a habit.

We Need the Funk. Gotta Have the Funk.

Content mastery will always be important for educators. So will effective formative assessment, purposeful academic vocabulary integration and all the other tools of the trade. But finding the funk provides so much value to students in a wide range of achievement levels. Students who excel in traditional measures of academic achievement benefit from the nuance, depth, and complexity of integrated funk. Struggling learners often surprise their teachers with their ability to navigate these critical thinking challenges because their struggles built their often-overlooked expertise in learning how to learn. Engaging students who are academically behind their peers with rigorous critical thinking prompts is a much better strategy than drill-and-kill remediation and intervention.

Lastly, consider what instruction grounded in funk, drama, controversy and conflict does for students who frequently get the "behavior problem" label. This is personal, because I was one of those students. I was never student of the month. But I graduated top of my law school class because it turns out that a lifetime of telling my teachers some version of "well, what had happened was" whenever I got into trouble was an essential foundation for the critical thinking necessary for me to slay achievement in law school. We have the power to create classrooms where funk is so welcomed that asking lots of questions is not disrespectful but is instead expected for what it means to be curious and inquisitive. We have the power to create classrooms where students telling teachers "they shouldn't do it this way; they should do it that way" is not defiance but an exemplar for what it means to be a leader, an advocate, and a well-educated person. Finding the funk in your day-to-day instruction gives you a sustainable pathway to help students go beyond studying the world as it is to a place where they are frequently thinking critically about the world as it ought to be.

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Finding the Funk: 3 Ways to Add Culturally Responsive Critical Thinking to Your Lessons

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Critical thinking should not be reserved for only advanced classes. Here are three ways to add it to any lesson.

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Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate.

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An analysis of teaching standards in all 50 states to better understand whether states incorporate culturally responsive teaching.

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When asking students to explore issues of personal and social identity, teachers must provide safe spaces where students are seen, valued, cared for and respected. It is also important that students have opportunities to learn from one another's varied experiences and perspectives. To create this learning environment, teachers need to skillfully draw on student experiences to enrich the curriculum.

Teachers can show they value students' lives and identities in a variety of ways. Some are small, like taking the time to learn the proper pronunciation of every student's name or getting to know young people's families. Others require more time and investment, like building curriculum around personal narratives or incorporating identity-based responses into the study of texts. At the community level, it is important to understand neighborhood demographics, strengths, concerns, conflicts and challenges. Like students themselves, these dynamics may change frequently.

For teachers whose experiences differ from those of their students, it is critical to exercise sensitivity. They must bring the following to the effort:

An asset-based view of youth and unfamiliar identity groups

A commitment to avoiding and challenging stereotypes

A sense of openness and cultural humility

A willingness to let students define their own identities

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Honoring student experience supports three of the four anti-bias domains: Identity, Diversity and Action. Students who feel their experiences are unwelcome, judged, stereotyped, disrespected or invisible find it extremely difficult to engage in meaningful discussion of identity and justice issues. Those whose stories and voices are heard and reflected in the classroom are more likely to engage with anti-bias curriculum and translate their learning into action.

Knowing and valuing students' lives provides other benefits:

Ability to identify potential "hot spots" on key topics.

Development of caring student-teacher relationships that support effective identity-based learning.

Development of intergroup awareness and understanding.

Direction in the selection of texts that are relevant to a particular class.

Appreciation of student contributions to discussions.

Strategies

Classroom-Reflective Texts Coupled with Nonjudgmental Dialogue

Choosing texts that reflect classroom demographics and following the readings with discussions or reflective writing assignments can provide teachers with powerful information about their students' hopes, concerns, strengths and life circumstances. These practices also open channels of understanding among students. Successful conversations about issues of identity frequently lead to deeper dialogue about students' own backgrounds and the experiences of others.

Share Stories That Make Room for Student Sharing

Personal anecdotes-respectfully and thoughtfully shared by teachers-have great power. Stories should be chosen carefully, kept brief, and told at a level that invites appropriate student sharing.

Community Study or Student-Led Walking Tour

Community studies usually address up to three questions; structure can vary greatly and may involve research, interviews, art, writing, video or other media. A walking tour should also focus on a few themes and ask students to highlight neighborhood places they find meaningful in relation to a relevant social issue. Student age and physical limitations should be taken into consideration when planning a walking tour.

Without saying a word, classrooms send messages about diversity, relationship building, communication and the roles of teachers and students. Consider the different messages sent by these two classrooms:

Classroom 1

Desks are arranged in a U shape. The teacher's desk is in the front center of the room. On the wall is a poster of U.S. presidents, a copy of the Declaration of Independence and inspiring quotes from Winston Churchill, Robert F. Kennedy and Albert Einstein. Students are working quietly on an independent assignment.

Classroom 2

Desks are arranged in clusters of four with students facing one another. The teacher's desk is in the back corner of the room. On the wall is a display of student self-portraits, a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and inspiring quotes from Maya Angelou and César Chávez. Students are working with their table-mates on a group project.

Classroom setup should be student centered. Specifics will vary from teacher to teacher and class to class, but common elements include these:

Classroom milieu. Classrooms should be decorated with multicultural images that mirror student backgrounds and showcase the diversity of our society.

Arrangement of furniture and supplies. The arrangement will look different depending on age group and subject, but all teachers can draw on these goals when setting up a classroom: supporting collaboration, fostering dialogue, encouraging ownership and ensuring comfort.

Student roles and responsibilities. Classrooms will be most effective when structured to maximize student voice and participation.

Classroom norms. Norms and expectations should take into account different cultural and communication styles, as well as gender differences, language needs and the desire to challenge stereotypes. Students should be involved in setting classroom norms to generate buy-in.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Thoughtful classroom setup and structure supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Diversity and Justice. A welcoming class space sets the tone for participatory engagement. Diverse images affect students' conscious and subconscious understanding of classroom values. Expectations and practices that honor diverse backgrounds also create a more just and equitable educational experience.

Strategies

Classroom "Audit"

A (nonjudgmental) classroom audit involves "reading" the messages conveyed by the images on the walls, the books on the shelves and the arrangement of the furniture with an eye toward diversity, equity and student empowerment. The audit also includes considering the types of interactions that teachers have with students and that students have with one another.

Student Jobs and Ownership of Classroom Space

Many daily tasks can be done by students who, given the opportunity, may create new and interesting ways to approach them. Real-world lessons related to work and responsibility can be reinforced in a classroom. Students can apply for a position and be rewarded or promoted for a job well done. Some classroom jobs might involve passing out materials, documenting or taking notes, managing a classroom library, filing papers or helping with a bulletin board. The job of "peacemaker" can work nicely in classrooms where students have been trained in conflict resolution. Jobs in a responsive classroom can accommodate multiple learning styles such as artistic, kinesthetic and verbal.

Gender-Neutral Practices

Many teachers, especially at the elementary level, seat or group students along gender lines. However, not everyone fits traditional gender categories. Some students may feel they are truly a different gender than their physical bodies suggest; others might not fit neatly into either the male or female identity category. Using gender-neutral categories or allowing students to choose the group with which they identify affirms the experiences of all students.

Differences shape who we are and what we know. Life, history, society and power cannot be understood from a single perspective; we need multiple viewpoints to truly see the world. Because of this, inclusive classrooms must function as learning communities built on shared inquiry and dialogue.

Dialogue is more than conversation. It is also different than debate, in which someone wins and someone loses. Dialogue requires openness to new ideas and collective learning. This is not an easy practice; for students (and teachers) to engage in dialogue, they must build and exercise specific skills:

Listening. Deeply listening to what others say and to the feelings, experiences and wisdom behind what they say.

Humility. Recognizing that, however passionately we hold ideas and opinions, other people may hold pieces of the puzzle that we don't.

Respect. Trusting the integrity of others, believing they have the right to their opinions (even when different from your own) and valuing others enough to risk sharing ideas.

Trust. Building a safe space to explore new ideas and work through conflicts, controversy and painful moments that may arise when talking about issues of injustice and oppression.

Voice. Speaking the truth as we see it and asking questions about things we don't know or understand, particularly on topics related to identity, power and justice.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Shared inquiry and dialogue support two of the four anti-bias domains: Diversity and Action. Building the skills necessary to explore multiple perspectives fosters critical thinking, complex textual understanding and appreciation for diversity. Dialogue also supports active listening, respectful sharing and conflict resolution. A culture of shared inquiry offers a lived example of meaningful collaborative work and a model for community building.

Strategies

Naming Shared Inquiry as a Goal

Because many students experience classrooms that do not value shared inquiry and dialogue, it is important for teachers to create a safe environment before asking students to engage in this work. Safety can be established by discussing principles of engagement, demonstrating the teacher's commitment to collective learning or creating a set of discussion agreements.

Teaching Active Listening Skills

Active listening is a way of hearing and responding to another person that requires the listener to stop thinking about his or her own ideas and focus on the speaker. Active listening behavior includes asking good questions, listening without judgment and paraphrasing. These behaviors can be modeled through the use of talking circles or ordered sharing. Short practice activities can also strengthen active listening skills.

Rethinking Participation Norms

To most teachers, class participation means contributing to discussions, volunteering to answer questions or otherwise engaging in verbal exchanges. However, participation does not have to be verbal; gender, culture and ability may affect student comfort levels with verbal communication. Modeling equity and inclusiveness calls for a broader definition of participation that includes active listening, written response, artistic response and involvement in small groups. These options should all be valued as classroom participation.

Addressing Conflicts and Hurt Feelings

Teachers need to prepare for possible conflicts or hurt feelings when exploring personally or politically sensitive material. Teachers can encourage students to publicly or privately name "ouch moments"-times when comments or reactions (usually unintentional) cause upset or discomfort. It is also helpful for teachers to check in with students who seem upset as a result of a class activity or conversation.

Social-emotional learning, respect and safety are as important as literacy and critical thinking skills when exploring an anti-bias curriculum. Research shows that students need to feel both physically and emotionally safe to learn. This includes safety from stereotype threat, harassment and exclusion.

Creating a safe climate takes time and work. These are some of the most important components:

Active teaching of social-emotional skills

Attention to creating positive relationships

Bullying prevention and intervention

Community building

Explicit focus on understanding and appreciating differences

Meaningful conflict resolution

Teaching students to challenge bias and exclusion

Upstander training

Work on classroom climate and social-emotional learning cannot simply focus on empathy, kindness and inclusion. Social difference and bias underlie many unsafe and exclusionary behaviors; these issues need to be discussed explicitly. Appreciation for multicultural perspectives is also critical when teaching about relationship building, conflict management and community. This helps students learn to draw on many traditions and experiences and address social divisions in the classroom.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Prioritizing social and emotional safety supports three of the four anti-bias domains: Identity, Diversity and Action. This practice supports a classroom community in which students feel secure enough to engage in respectful, productive conversations about identity and diversity. This work also models actions necessary to nurture inclusive, respectful connections across lines of difference.

Strategies

Classroom Contracts

A contract of norms and behaviors can help define the classroom community as a socially and emotionally safe place. Students should participate in shaping the contract, identifying a list of agreements about how class members will treat one another, talk together and so on. Issues such as identity, difference and power should be addressed explicitly. For example, a contract could include "Listen with respect to the experiences of others," "Try to understand what someone is saying before rushing to judgment" or "Put-downs of any kind are never OK."

Explicit Anti-bullying or Community-Building Curricula

Many powerful anti-bullying and community- building curricula, when integrated into the regular school curriculum, can build social-emotional skills and teach students to manage conflict. Below are a few suggested resources. Not all address diversity or bias issues specifically; be sure to add these issues to the existing materials if they're missing.

Tribes Learning Community. Research-based approaches to classroom and school-wide community building, social-emotional education and the development of positive learning communities (all grades).

Respect for All Project (GroundSpark). Award-winning films, curriculum guides and teacher training on issues of bias-based bullying, family diversity, gender role expectations and LGBT inclusivity (all grades).

Steps to Respect/Second Step (Committee for Children). Research-based social-emotional learning and bullying-prevention programs (pre-K through middle school).

Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case That Made History (Learning for Justice). Documentary and teaching guide about one student's ordeal at the hands of anti-gay bullies and his fight against hate and harassment (middle and high school).

A Guide to the Film Bully by Lee Hirsch (Facing History and Ourselves). Film and discussion guide on bullying and its profound impact on several different students and families (middle and high school).

Participation in Mix It Up at Lunch Day

Mix It Up is a Learning for Justice program designed to help students identify, question and cross social boundaries. Launched in 2001, Mix It Up recognizes that some of the deepest social divisions in schools are found in the cafeteria. Each fall, Learning for Justice sponsors a national Mix It Up at Lunch Day when schools around the country encourage students to move out of their comfort zones and share a meal with peers who are different from them.

Discipline and behavior management are central to classroom culture. How are students encouraged to treat one another? What happens when they make poor choices or present behavioral challenges? What shapes student-teacher interactions? And what happens when conflicts arise?

This critical practice asks teachers to think about behavior management in light of five key principles:

Belief in the dignity of every person

Community building

Equity and fairness

Respect for cultural differences

Respect for the safety and inclusion of all individuals and groups

These values can be creatively infused into disciplinary practices. However, in general, responsive classrooms address three key aspects.

First, behavior management systems must support safe, inclusive communities by enforcing high standards for respectful interaction; incorporating student-generated discipline policies; teaching conflict resolution; and actively addressing all instances of bias, bullying, exclusion or disrespect.

Second, disciplinary incidents must go beyond punishment and be treated as opportunities for growth, restitution and community building. This is not to say that rules violations should not be met with consequences. However, if community respect is to be a core classroom value, students should not be cast out of the group, even if they struggle to live up to expectations.

Finally, behavior management practices must reflect fairness, equity and cultural awareness. Research shows that students of color and special education students face disproportionate rates of discipline, suspension and expulsion. These patterns have devastating social consequences. Applying disciplinary rules fairly requires self-awareness and willingness to suspend judgment (positive as well as negative) about individual students. Culture also plays a role in disciplinary judgments; in some cases, "inappropriate behaviors" may reflect a cultural mismatch between the norms of the school and the norms of a student's home culture. Teachers can better understand the relationship between culture and discipline by working on a related critical practice: self-awareness and cultural competency.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Taking a values-based approach to behavior management and discipline supports one of the four anti-bias domains: Justice. This practice exposes students to community-building goals and to a system of justice that values all people and builds connections rather than creates divisions.

Strategies

Student-Generated Agreements and Contracts

Involving students in the design of classroom discipline policies can go a long way toward establishing buy-in and shared ownership of classroom culture. Ideally, students will work on the policies as a class, but teachers can also work individually with students who need extra support.

"Zero Indifference" but Not Zero Tolerance

Although zero-tolerance policies are popular, mounting evidence suggests that this approach does not make schools safer. An alternative (recommended by the American Civil Liberties Union; GLSEN; the Anti-Defamation League; the Respect for All Project; and Learning for Justice) is taking a "zero-indifference" approach to bullying, harassment and other disciplinary issues. Zero indifference means never letting disrespectful conduct go unaddressed; school staff always name and respond to behaviors, but they do not implement automatic suspension, expulsion or other punishments.

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is an approach to school discipline (and criminal justice) that emphasizes repairing harm and restoring relationships rather than simply punishing those who have engaged in misconduct. Restorative justice spans a wide variety of practices and strategies, including peacemaking circles, peer jury processes, mediation, conferencing and classroom discussions focused on building empathy.

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Critical Practices for Anti-bias Education

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Students consider the question "Who am I?" and identify social and cultural factors that shape identity by reading a short story and creating personal identity charts.

This resource is intended for educators in the United Kingdom.

Culture & Identity

Democracy & Civic Engagement

Using the strategies from Facing History is almost like an awakening.

- Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif

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Students consider the question "Who am I?" and identify social and cultural factors that shape identity by reading a short story and creating personal identity charts.

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Things Not To Say To Someone With Afro Hair

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How Ageism Impacts Young People | A Problem We Can't Keep Ignoring

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Are young people discriminated against for being young? | A-Z of ISMs Episode 25 - BBC Ideas

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Psychologists are examining the age discrimination that pervades American culture and helping people to reimagine healthier relationships with their older selves

Cite this

Weir, K. (2023, March 1). Ageism is one of the last socially acceptable prejudices. Psychologists are working to change that. Monitor on Psychology, 54(2). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/03/cover-new-concept-of-aging

From "antiaging" face creams to wisecracking birthday cards about getting older to "OK, boomer" memes, the message is clear: Being old is something to avoid. Never mind that, if we have the good fortune to live a long life, inaccurate stereotypes about aging will harm all of us.

Ageism is defined as discrimination against older people because of negative and inaccurate stereotypes-and it's so ingrained in our culture that we often don't even notice. Most organizations now have diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) departments to tackle issues such as racism and gender bias. Even in those departments, age bias is seldom on the radar. "Ageism is this odd '-ism' in that it's still socially acceptable in many ways," said Joann Montepare, PhD, director of the RoseMary B. Fuss Center for Research on Aging and Intergenerational Studies at Lasell University in Newton, Massachusetts, and past president of APA's Division 20 (Adult Development and Aging).

It is clear, however, that ageism has a host of negative effects, for people's physical and mental well-being and society as a whole. What's more, the negative stereotypes that fuel ageism often get aging all wrong. "When we say aging isn't all negative, it's not that we are putting on rose-colored lenses. This is based on rigorous science," said Manfred Diehl, PhD, a professor of human development and family studies at Colorado State University who studies healthy aging.

Researchers and activists, including many psychologists, are drawing on that science to reframe attitudes toward aging. In 2020, APA adopted a new Resolution on Ageism (PDF, 127KB) that recognizes age as a risk factor for discrimination, encourages more emphasis on aging in psychology training, and advances a more productive public narrative about the benefits of longer life spans. "The question is, what can we do as individuals and also as a society to promote more positive aging?" Diehl said.

Aging stereotypes, busted

Ageism is a stubborn prejudice. People of all ages show bias against older adults, though the way they express it changes over the life span. Among younger people, the preference for other young adults is more explicit. In older adults, that preference becomes more implicit ( Chopik, W. J., & Giasson, H. L., Gerontologist, Vol. 57, Suppl. 2, 2017).

Either way, the attitudes that underlie age bias are often rooted in falsehoods. While it is true that the risk of some chronic diseases and dementia increases with age, most older adults maintain quite good health and cognitive functioning. "Aging is a very diverse process, and there are great differences between individuals," Diehl added. "Things usually aren't as bleak as most people expect."

Becca Levy, PhD, a professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and of psychology at Yale University, works to chip away at age stereotypes with a fact-checking approach for public awareness. In her recent book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live, she took aim at more than a dozen beliefs about getting older. "In every case, I found information that not only contradicted the negative stereotype but also highlighted a strength that comes with aging," she said. Take the stereotype that people become less creative as they get older. Researching her book, Levy found a host of examples of artists and musicians who became more creative and more generative later in life.

Levy also upends the stereotype that all types of cognitive abilities inevitably worsen with age. It's true that some cognitive skills, such as reaction times, tend to slow a bit over time. But other functions remain robust and even improve. One study of older adults, for instance, showed they were better than middle-age adults at orienting their attention and ignoring distractions ( Veríssimo, J., et al., Nature Human Behaviour, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2022).

Getting older affords other benefits. As people age, they tend to become more agreeable and more conscientious. Older adults also tend to be better at regulating their emotions. "These are positive changes that can lead to overall greater social maturity," Diehl said. "These changes often mean we get along better with others, and we may pay better attention to health or put ourselves in fewer risky situations."

Such changes may be partly responsible for another observed phenomenon, known as the paradox of aging, said Karl Pillemer, PhD, a sociologist and professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University. "Older people tend to report greater happiness and life satisfaction compared to younger people," he said.

Some researchers have debated the evidence for this so-called happiness curve, a U-shaped trend in which happiness levels are lowest at midlife. But in a recent analysis, economist David Blanchflower took a comprehensive look at data from 145 countries and concluded that, in fact, happiness sinks to a low-water mark in middle age before increasing again through later adulthood (Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2021). Other research suggests that, contrary to popular belief, mental health also improves across the life span ( Thomas, M. L., et al., Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Vol. 77, No. 8, 2016). "This view that old age is all negative decline just doesn't seem to be the case," Pillemer said.

How ageism harms

The negative view of late life isn't just false. It's also dangerous. "The narrative that age is decline, age is burden, hurts everyone: individuals, families, communities, and society," said Nancy Morrow-Howell, PhD, a professor of social policy and expert in gerontology at Washington University in St. Louis. "Some older adults do need support, but mostly they're giving it," she added. "They make important contributions to the workforce, including paid work as well as volunteering and caregiving. Those contributions to society are a resource, not a luxury."

Ageism in the workplace affects hiring and promotion decisions. In medical settings, stereotypes associated with aging may influence treatment decisions. People may incorrectly assume older adults are too frail for more aggressive cancer therapies, for instance. In the mental health field, most psychotherapists don't receive adequate education in geropsychology, and age bias and stereotypes can influence their attitudes and practices. In a chapter on ageism and mental health, evidence revealed that many psychotherapists exhibit a preference against working with older patients, assume less favorable prognoses for older patients, and believe that depression is a natural consequence of older age ( Bodner, E., et al., in Contemporary Perspectives on Ageism, Springer, 2018).

Internalized messages about aging also influence a person's health and well-being-a connection Levy has documented in numerous studies. As a graduate student, she took a research trip to Japan to explore why the Japanese had the longest life spans in the world. "One of the first things I noticed was how differently older people there were treated," said Levy. "They were celebrated in families, on TV shows, in comic books."

Today, Levy's research explores how societal messages about aging impact a person's health and well-being. Experimental research, longitudinal studies, and cross-cultural comparisons of age-related beliefs all point to one conclusion: "People who take in more negative age beliefs tend to show worse physical, cognitive, and mental health. But the good news is that those who are exposed to or develop more positive age beliefs tend to show benefits in physical, cognitive, and mental health," she said.

Age-related beliefs affect health in multiple ways, Levy has found. Those who have more negative feelings about getting older are more likely to experience higher levels of stress, which has been linked to many diseases of aging. Also, people who feel fatalistic about getting older may be less likely to engage in healthy behaviors such as staying active or taking prescribed medications.

Together, those mechanisms can have significant impacts on health. In one study, for instance, Levy and her colleagues showed that positive beliefs about aging protect against dementia, even among those with a high-risk gene (PLOS One, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2018). But the effects extend beyond dementia. She has also found that negative self-perceptions of aging are associated with a higher prevalence for all of the eight most expensive health conditions among Americans, which include heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders, and injuries. She calculated that the cost of ageism in the United States was $63 billion per year-one of every seven dollars spent for those eight conditions (The Gerontologist, Vol. 60, No. 1, 2020).

Challenging ageist stereotypes

Given the stakes, there are good reasons to challenge age-related stereotypes and age bias. Such efforts are beginning to bear fruit. In a systematic review, Pillemer and colleagues found that interventions to reduce ageist stereotypes and prejudice are often effective ( Burnes, D., et al., American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 109, No. 8, 2019).

The most effective interventions combine education about aging with efforts to increase intergenerational contact, Pillemer found. "One of the biggest threats to reframing attitudes toward aging lies in the increasing age segregation of American society. We're in the midst of a dangerous experiment where young people have almost no contact with older people outside of intermittent contacts in their own families," he said.

Yet contact alone is not always enough to challenge false ideas about late life. "You often see events that bring young people into nursing homes to give concerts or do activities with older adults, for example. But if young people aren't prepared for interpreting that experience, they can actually leave with more negative views of aging," Pillemer added. "It's important for younger people to interact with older adults who are active and engaged, and also to educate younger people about the aging process."

To that end, he designed an intergenerational intervention that pairs high school students and older adults for intergenerational wisdom sharing. In a randomized trial, he found that youth who participated showed improvements in their attitudes toward older people and in their sense of life purpose (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol. 19, No. 7, 2022).
[Related: The Reframing Aging Initiative aims to change the narrative around getting older]
Diehl, too, is developing an intervention to change attitudes toward aging. His approach targets middle-age adults in hopes of improving their outlook toward their own aging process. "We want to show people that we have opportunities to shape that process, by choosing what we eat and drink, how physically active we are, and how we manage stress," he said. His four-week health education program addresses beliefs about self-efficacy in aging and encourages participants to be more physically active-a factor strongly associated with health across the life span. Diehl is still analyzing the results, so he can't yet say whether the intervention led to measurable changes in physical activity. But in a preliminary analysis, he said, "our data clearly show that the intervention is effective in changing people's negative attitudes toward their own aging."

Interventions don't just improve attitudes for youth and younger adults. In a randomized controlled trial with older adults, Levy found that strengthening positive age beliefs led to more positive self-perceptions of aging, which in turn led to significantly improved physical function (Psychological Science, Vol. 25, No. 12, 2014).

Reframing ageist systems

Looking beyond individual-level interventions, researchers and advocates are also turning their attention to the cultures and systems that perpetuate ageism. Morrow-Howell, for instance, is in talks with her institution's DEI office to include age as a diversity issue. "Once people start talking about it, they start seeing it. Awareness within organizations is so important," she said.

She and Montepare are also active with the Age-Friendly University (AFU) program, an initiative to change the culture of higher education to expand opportunities for older adults. (Read more about the AFU program in " Embracing Learners of All Ages," in the June 2022 Monitor.)

Moving forward, there's a need to continue studying the factors that support productive aging. "In an increasingly aging society, people have to be willing to do this work," Pillemer said. "We really need a translational science in aging: We need psychologists to engage in this flow between research and implementation of these ideas in real-world settings," he added.

Clinical psychologists, too, can do more to address ageism in their own practices. For one thing, they can help patients address their own internalized beliefs about getting older, said Gregory Hinrichsen, PhD, a clinical psychologist and professor in the department of geriatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. "People highly overestimate the problems of later life and underestimate the resilience of later life. We can integrate notions about ageism into clinical practice with older adults," he said.

Hinrichsen uses cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy to help clients challenge the underlying assumptions they have about aging, and to begin to think of aging as a role transition. People often discover they're treated differently in older age, he said. They might be dismissed or assumed to be incompetent. Often, older adults are addressed in "elderspeak," a demeaning manner of speech that typically includes a high-pitched voice, speaking more slowly, or using overly familiar terms of endearment like "sweetheart" or "dear." Clinicians can help people navigate the feelings that come along with being treated differently because they are perceived as "old," Hinrichsen says. "It's helpful for people to understand how to handle those challenges."

In collaboration with Erin Emery-Tiburcio, PhD, ABPP, at Rush University in Chicago and colleagues, Hinrichsen helped develop a continuing-education certification program to teach foundational competencies in adult mental health, offered through the E4 Center of Excellence for Behavioral Health Disparities in Aging. The program helps clinicians better understand the unique presentations of mental health problems in older adults-and, importantly, helps them identify and challenge their own personal and systemic stereotypes of aging.

Though misconceptions and negative beliefs about aging are often deeply entrenched, they are not immutable. Levy, for one, is optimistic that antiageism efforts are gaining ground. "We're on the verge," she said, "of a social movement to bring about a more age-just society."

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Ageism is one of the last socially acceptable prejudices. Psychologists are working to change that

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Psychologists are examining the age discrimination that pervades American culture and helping people to reimagine healthier relationships with their older selves.

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My Black Is Beautiful (Official Music Video)

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7 Examples of Positive Masculinity from Ted Lasso - Dudefluencer

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Who would have thought that Ted Lasso would provide a roadmap for men with examples of positive masculinity throughout.

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How are language and identity connected?  | Big Think

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religion identity videos - Google Search

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Religion can be a central part of one's identity. The word religion comes from a Latin word that means "to tie or bind together." Modern dictionaries define religion as "an organized system of beliefs and rituals centering on a supernatural being or beings." To belong to a religion often means more than sharing its beliefs and participating in its rituals; it also means being part of a community and, sometimes, a culture.

The world's religions are similar in many ways; scholar Stephen Prothero refers to these similarities as "family resemblances." All religions include rituals, scriptures, and sacred days and gathering places. Each religion gives its followers instructions for how human beings should act toward one another. In addition, three of the world's religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-share a common origin: all three trace their beginnings to the biblical figure of Abraham.

There is incredible diversity within each religion in terms of how members define their connections to it. For some, a religion's theological beliefs and rituals of worship are central to their lives. Others are more drawn to a religion's community and culture than to its beliefs and rituals. Many even feel part of a religion's culture but choose not to participate in its rituals at all. Some people feel free to choose a religion for themselves, or to reject religion entirely as a part of their identity. Others feel that they have been born and raised in a particular religion and are unwilling or unable to change it. Some governments grant privileges to one religion and not to others, while other governments protect citizens' freedom to follow any religion without privilege or penalty.

Different people have different experiences with their religion. In the following reflections, teenagers share parts of their religious experiences. While each belongs to a particular religion, each one's experience does not fully represent that religion as a whole.

Rebecca, then age 17, explains the influence that her religion, Judaism, has on her life:

In the Bible, in the Torah, there are 613 commandments. They involve everything from how you treat other people, to Jewish holidays and how we observe them, and the Sabbath, which is every week, and how we observe that. It's like a guide how to live.

There are also a lot of dietary laws. The dietary laws say we can only eat certain kinds of meat that are killed and prepared in a certain way. We can't eat meat at nonkosher restaurants. My parents like to remind me of this funny story. One time when I was two, we were driving past a Burger King. I saw the sign, and I yelled out, "That sign says Burger King. No burgers for Jewish people." I picked up on those observances. It was always something that was part of me. I recognized that it was important.

We set the Sabbath aside as a day of rest because God rested on the seventh day after creating the world. Because of this, there are lots of rules for things you can and can't do . . . It's supposed to be a day of rest-you're not supposed to do any type of work, or watch television, use the computer, use electricity, any of that stuff . . . For me it's very spiritual. It really separates the day out from the rest of the week.

I spend a lot of time with my family-from Friday night at sundown until Saturday night. I go to prayers at my synagogue in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. It's just a really spiritual experience. It makes it more of an important day . . .

I haven't gone to see a movie on a Saturday or Friday night ever.

It's weird being in a public high school because you're faced with being in a school where there's lots of activities on Friday nights and things to miss out on. Like all the school plays are on Friday nights. I have to give up trying out for school plays. And sports-I used to play softball. But there are games every Saturday, so I couldn't play those.

A lot of people look at it like, "How can you give up all of this stuff because of your religion?" It's just a matter of how you look at it. You can look at it as being a burden-that you have these religious obligations, so you're not able to do your school activities. But I look at it as a more positive experience. It's something that I choose to do.

Often, the way individuals relate to and practice a religion changes over the course of their lives. Maham, age 19, explains how her Muslim faith and practice has changed as she has grown older:

When I was fifteen, I was really super-religious actually. Then I fell into this not-so-religious stage-that was between the end of junior year of high school and freshman year of college. I started praying less and hanging out with my friends more. I believe that spirituality is a roller coaster and that you're going to have your ups and downs, because when you're up, there's nowhere to go but down. That's how life is.

I went down, and now I think I'm heading right back up. I still am not back praying five times a day because of my schedule (I try to pray as much as I can), but I believe that true spirituality transcends ritual worship, so I try to live my life with the philosophy that Islam teaches-of compassion, peace, submission, tolerance, and things like that. I try every day to fight the jihad of personal struggle to become a better person.

That's what Islam is to me now, more than just praying five times a day. When you're fourteen, that's enough. But as you mature, life becomes complicated and harder to categorize as just good and bad. The rules are not laid out in black and white anymore-you find a lot of gray area since you gain more independence as you get older. After all, you start to make your own decisions-some good, some bad-but life has to teach you its lessons somehow.

I do believe in rituals. Like Ramadan is coming up next week. Do I plan on fasting all thirty days? Yes, I do. Those things help me become a better Muslim. There are a lot of things that are taught in Islam, like wearing the headscarf and praying. Just as people eat food four or five times a day to nourish their bodies, prayers nourish the soul four or five times a day. It's a way for me to meditate. It's a way for me to tune myself out from the things around me that are bad influences. It's a way to remind myself of who I am so I have less chances of doing something I'll regret.

Sara, age 18, feels differently about the rituals and worship practices of her religion than Rebecca and Maham do:

I feel really connected with my Jewish community, but a little less connected to the observance factor of my religion. I don't keep kosher. I don't really feel that that's necessary. When I was little, my whole family would sit down every Friday night and light the Shabbat candles and say the blessings. We don't do that anymore. Now it's like, "It's Friday night. I'm going to go out with my friends."

I don't like organized prayer. Every once in a while I go to services, but I appreciate it a lot more when I do my own thing and say my own prayers . . .

When I was younger, I never really thought I was different 'cause I was Jewish. It didn't occur to me until high school when I started getting really involved with stuff. It's kind of weird when I really think about it. It's like I'm just like everyone else, except there's that little part of me that's going to be Jewish forever, and that makes me different.

Hesed, age 14, a member of the United Methodist Church, explains how he knows the Christian religion in which he was raised is right for him:

After confirmation [as an adolescent] I was getting stronger in the faith, but I still thought about it and said, "Well, what about other religions? Are they fake? And if they are, why are there millions of Muslims around the world who pray to Allah five times a day? And why are there Buddhists who make Buddhism their faith? Why do I think this one faith is real?"

And basically, to me, I just get a feeling. It's really hard to explain. Christianity just feels right to me. I go to church, and I see the cross, and we're at prayer-it feels right. And I can honestly say that I feel the presence of God in that place. And for me, Christianity is the religion where I feel that. To me that's basically what faith is-to just believe in what you think is right. And this is right for me.

Now I'm really secure in what I believe. And I don't know if it's wrong to say it-since I'm a Christian and we're supposed to go out and save the world and convert people to Christianity-but I truly do believe that there are a lot of people who feel that their religion, whether it be Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism, is right for them. And I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm not saying those are the right faiths, but you just get a feeling when something is right for you.

Connection Questions

1. How do the young people in this reading experience religious belief and belonging? What can we learn from the similarities and differences in their stories?

2. Based on your experiences and observations, what are some other kinds of experiences with religion that are not represented in these four short reflections?

3. How would you describe the role, if any, that religion plays in your identity?

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Four teenagers from different religious traditions reflect on their experiences of religious belief and belonging.

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1.1 Social Identity

Social identity is a nuanced concept that is important for not only understanding ourselves but also how we navigate the world around us. At its simplest, we can understand social identities as the answer to the question:
Who are you?
Social identities can be defined as groups that are based on the physical, social, and mental characteristics of individuals. They are sometimes obvious and clear- sometimes not-often self-claimed, and frequently ascribed by others. In other words, our social identity groups may sometimes be visible and obvious to others, and it may sometimes be less obvious or visible to others. They are also something that we create together as a society. I may claim specific language around my identities, and others may look at me and ascribe their own language on to me. When that language aligns, it can feel really validating, but when that language doesn't align, it can feel invalidating.

My group membership isn't something anyone can deny me, but it is certainly something we navigate with others both inside and outside of our social identity groups. In navigating our social identities, we are also navigating the historical and contemporary relationships of power and privilege between groups. When thinking of social identities, we also want to consider how that group relates to societal power. Examples of social identity groups might include: race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexual orientation, class/socioeconomic status, religious or spiritual affiliation, ability, citizenship, nation of origin, tribal affiliation, and age.

Personal Identity

Social identity is different from personal identity because of the emphasis on the individual rather than a collective group. Personal identity is what differentiates us from others within a social identity group, whereas social identity is how we categorize both ourselves and others. Things like my Myers-Briggs type, astrological sign, career choice, hobbies, extroversion, and position within my family are all very important ways I have of understanding myself as well as differentiating myself from others within my social identity groups, and we would likely think of these as personal identities.

Some of the common identity categories are explored below. This isn't an exhaustive list, and there are many additional social identity categories that are not listed here.

1.2 Power and Privilege

One of the defining characteristics between personal and social identities is the relationships of power, privilege, and oppression that exist within and between social identities groups.

Definition

Power can be understood as the ability to decide who will have access to resources; the capacity to direct or influence the behavior of others, oneself, and/or the course of events.

Power can be formal, like the kind of power a position, occupation, or role lends you. A professor has greater positional power their students, students on an committee may have greater access to power than those not on committees.

Power can also be informal and more subtle, however. A dominant identity group can influence the behavior of others through oppression or colluding with oppressive systems.

Definition

Oppression is the unequal and/or unjust treatment of a person and/or group of people through societal laws, policies, rules, norms, customs, practices, and institutions. These institutions can include government, education, religion, the media, and health care systems.

This can look like the direct or indirect threat of violence or harm or a lack of repercussions in the face of violence or harm. It can also look like social pressure such as casting non-dominant identities as other, exotic, abnormal, or inferior. For example, Black, Indegenous, and people of color (BIPOC) on a predominantly white campus may feel more noticeable, and therefore more watched, and as a result, they may change their behavior in small ways-a phenomenon known as hyper-visibility. It is important to note that feeling watched is not the same as feeling seen. A person who feels watched is more likely to feel othered or outside of the community; when someone feels seen, it is more likely to communicate a feeling of deep belonging to a community.

Some social identity groups have access to more power than others granting their members privileges others may not have.

Definition:

Privilege is unearned or earned advantages, rights, freedoms, or benefits given to a group of people based on group membership. .

Privileges and dominant group membership isn't a choice, and it's easy to be unaware of privileges we have access to that another person might not. Another way to think of it is that dominant groups are generally thought of as the default or the norm, framing anything outside of that ase abnormal.

Sometimes You're a Caterpillar

In the garden, there's a caterpillar and a snail, and they're basically best friends. They hang out 24/7, they do dinner, movie nights, crafts. Oh, and they're like, really into cosplay, on top of whatever else caterpillars and snails do, like eat leaves or something. Anyways, one day they're on their way to a party that's right outside the garden, and they have to go through the fence to get there. So the caterpillar goes right through, but the snail is stuck. Her shell is just too big and it won't fit under the wire. So she's like, "Crap! I can't get through. Maybe like, can you lift up the wire, or maybe we can build a little bridge or something?" And the caterpillar's like, "Dude, just go under." But she can't. There's just no way that the shell is going to fit. The caterpillar is like, "Go under, come on! We're going to be late and I'm trying to hook up with that super cute ladybug." But it's not happening. The shell will not fit under the wire, and at this point, Snail's getting kind of frustrated, because it's not like she doesn't want to go to the party, but for some reason Caterpillar just isn't getting it. "Yeah, it's not that easy for me. I just can't crawl under the fence like you can, so I would really appreciate your help here. Maybe we can like, go a different way, or the-" And this just, like sets the caterpillar off. "What the heck. Just because I can crawl under stuff doesn't mean that I have it easy. Do you even know what it's like to have sixteen feet? You don't. Because finding shoes is a complete nightmare." "Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not saying you have it easy, I'm just saying I can't go under the fence because of my shell, that's it. I have a shell and you don't, and there's some stuff that's easier for you that's harder for me, just like I don't know jack about finding shoes cause I don't have feet." Caterpillar thinks about this for a second and realizes the snail is right, and he's never had to think about shells or slimy trails, and that's a privilege that the snail has never had, because she has to think about that stuff all the time. That's part of being a snail. And it's kind of like that for everyone, right? I mean, we all have our own struggles and challenges, and some of them are small, and some of them are huge and really unfair and beyond our control. And a lot of the time it can be hard to see what someone else deals with because you've never been in their shoes or shell. Maybe you're gay, or trans, have a disability or different religion. Or of course, the obvious one, you're a member of a different race. I don't know what it's like to be you, and you don't know what it's like to be me. So it's really important to stop and try and see the other side so we can help each other overcome those obstacles. Together. It's like, sometimes you're the snail, and sometimes you're the caterpillar. Oh yeah, then the snail and the caterpillar figure it out. They went to the other side of the garden. They could get through a little break in the fence. And while it took a little longer to get to the party, they did the trip together, which is what made it so great. So they got to the party, the caterpillar hooked up with the ladybug, Snail taught everyone how to do the Wobble, and the party was everything. The end. This video was illustrated by the very talented and lovely Kat Blaque, and written and narrated by yours truly, Chesacaleigh. Please check out Kat's channel, and don't forget to subscribe. Bye!

Privileges take many forms, and we are all in possession of identities with varying levels of privilege. In her well known piece, White Privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack, Peggy McIntosh outlines some of the privileges she has identified for herself as a result of her racial identity. Some of these privileges include:

I can be sure my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race [or otherwise exemplary or exceptional],

I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

Privileges are something that all of us have. We are all composed of some identities that have greater access to power than others and some identities that have less access. Privilege isn't something that we should feel shame or guilt over, but it is important that we're able to acknowledge the places in which we have greater privilege as well as the places were we lack privileges.

Intersectionality

While it can be tempting to tease our identities apart and treat them as isolated aspects of our experience, social identity is far more complicated than that. The purpose of naming and reflecting on identity is not to seperate them out from each other so much as to apply a framework of thought. It is also important to consider the ways in which our identities impact each other.

Intersectionality is a way of understanding the various social identities covered above. This term was first introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a legal scholar, to describe the ways that individuals experience dimensions of empowerment or oppression as a result of their many social identities. Coined in response to feminist theory and movements that centered the female identity to the exclusion of other categories of identity, intersectionality was intended to include other experiences as well like women of color, women who are poor, women with disabilites, and women who are immigrants.

In the video below, Kimberlé Crenshaw goes into further detail on what intersectionality is and why it's important to us

The Urgency of Intersectionality

I'd like to try something new. Those of you who are able, please stand up. OK, so I'm going to name some names. When you hear a name that you don't recognize, you can't tell me anything about them, I'd like you to take a seat and stay seated. The last person standing, we're going to see what they know. OK? (Laughter) All right. Eric Garner. Mike Brown. Tamir Rice. Freddie Gray. So those of you who are still standing, I'd like you to turn around and take a look. I'd say half to most of the people are still standing. So let's continue. Michelle Cusseaux. Tanisha Anderson. Aura Rosser. Meagan Hockaday. So if we look around again, there are about four people still standing, and actually I'm not going to put you on the spot. I just say that to encourage transparency, so you can be seated. (Laughter) So those of you who recognized the first group of names know that these were African-Americans who have been killed by the police over the last two and a half years. What you may not know is that the other list is also African-Americans who have been killed within the last two years. Only one thing distinguishes the names that you know from the names that you don't know: gender. So let me first let you know that there's nothing at all distinct about this audience that explains the pattern of recognition that we've just seen. I've done this exercise dozens of times around the country. I've done it to women's rights organizations. I've done it with civil rights groups. I've done it with professors. I've done it with students. I've done it with psychologists. I've done it with sociologists. I've done it even with progressive members of Congress. And everywhere, the awareness of the level of police violence that black women experience is exceedingly low. Now, it is surprising, isn't it, that this would be the case. I mean, there are two issues involved here. There's police violence against African-Americans, and there's violence against women, two issues that have been talked about a lot lately. But when we think about who is implicated by these problems, when we think about who is victimized by these problems, the names of these black women never come to mind. Now, communications experts tell us that when facts do not fit with the available frames, people have a difficult time incorporating new facts into their way of thinking about a problem. These women's names have slipped through our consciousness because there are no frames for us to see them, no frames for us to remember them, no frames for us to hold them. As a consequence, reporters don't lead with them, policymakers don't think about them, and politicians aren't encouraged or demanded that they speak to them. Now, you might ask, why does a frame matter? I mean, after all, an issue that affects black people and an issue that affects women, wouldn't that necessarily include black people who are women and women who are black people? Well, the simple answer is that this is a trickle-down approach to social justice, and many times it just doesn't work. Without frames that allow us to see how social problems impact all the members of a targeted group, many will fall through the cracks of our movements, left to suffer in virtual isolation. But it doesn't have to be this way. Many years ago, I began to use the term "intersectionality" to deal with the fact that many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice. Now, the experience that gave rise to intersectionality was my chance encounter with a woman named Emma DeGraffenreid. Emma DeGraffenreid was an African-American woman, a working wife and a mother. I actually read about Emma's story from the pages of a legal opinion written by a judge who had dismissed Emma's claim of race and gender discrimination against a local car manufacturing plant. Emma, like so many African-American women, sought better employment for her family and for others. She wanted to create a better life for her children and for her family. But she applied for a job, and she was not hired, and she believed that she was not hired because she was a black woman. Now, the judge in question dismissed Emma's suit, and the argument for dismissing the suit was that the employer did hire African-Americans and the employer hired women. The real problem, though, that the judge was not willing to acknowledge was what Emma was actually trying to say, that the African-Americans that were hired, usually for industrial jobs, maintenance jobs, were all men. And the women that were hired, usually for secretarial or front-office work, were all white. Only if the court was able to see how these policies came together would he be able to see the double discrimination that Emma DeGraffenreid was facing. But the court refused to allow Emma to put two causes of action together to tell her story because he believed that, by allowing her to do that, she would be able to have preferential treatment. She would have an advantage by having two swings at the bat, when African-American men and white women only had one swing at the bat. But of course, neither African-American men or white women needed to combine a race and gender discrimination claim to tell the story of the discrimination they were experiencing. Why wasn't the real unfairness law's refusal to protect African-American women simply because their experiences weren't exactly the same as white women and African-American men? Rather than broadening the frame to include African-American women, the court simply tossed their case completely out of court. Now, as a student of antidiscrimination law, as a feminist, as an antiracist, I was struck by this case. It felt to me like injustice squared. So first of all, black women weren't allowed to work at the plant. Second of all, the court doubled down on this exclusion by making it legally inconsequential. And to boot, there was no name for this problem. And we all know that, where there's no name for a problem, you can't see a problem, and when you can't see a problem, you pretty much can't solve it. Many years later, I had come to recognize that the problem that Emma was facing was a framing problem. The frame that the court was using to see gender discrimination or to see race discrimination was partial, and it was distorting. For me, the challenge that I faced was trying to figure out whether there was an alternative narrative, a prism that would allow us to see Emma's dilemma, a prism that would allow us to rescue her from the cracks in the law, that would allow judges to see her story. So it occurred to me, maybe a simple analogy to an intersection might allow judges to better see Emma's dilemma. So if we think about this intersection, the roads to the intersection would be the way that the workforce was structured by race and by gender. And then the traffic in those roads would be the hiring policies and the other practices that ran through those roads. Now, because Emma was both black and female, she was positioned precisely where those roads overlapped, experiencing the simultaneous impact of the company's gender and race traffic.The law - the law is like that ambulance that shows up and is ready to treat Emma only if it can be shown that she was harmed on the race road or on the gender road but not where those roads intersected. So what do you call being impacted by multiple forces and then abandoned to fend for yourself? Intersectionality seemed to do it for me. I would go on to learn that African-American women, like other women of color, like other socially marginalized people all over the world, were facing all kinds of dilemmas and challenges as a consequence of intersectionality, intersections of race and gender, of heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, all of these social dynamics come together and create challenges that are sometimes quite unique. But in the same way that intersectionality raised our awareness to the way that black women live their lives, it also exposes the tragic circumstances under which African-American women die. Police violence against black women is very real. The level of violence that black women face is such that it's not surprising that some of them do not survive their encounters with police. Black girls as young as seven, great grandmothers as old as 95 have been killed by the police. They've been killed in their living rooms, in their bedrooms. They've been killed in their cars. They've been killed on the street. They've been killed in front of their parents and they've been killed in front of their children. They have been shot to death. They have been stomped to death. They have been suffocated to death. They have been manhandled to death. They have been tasered to death. They've been killed when they've called for help. They've been killed when they were alone, and they've been killed when they were with others. They've been killed shopping while black, driving while black, having a mental disability while black, having a domestic disturbance while black. They've even been killed being homeless while black. They've been killed talking on the cell phone, laughing with friends, sitting in a car reported as stolen and making a U-turn in front of the White House with an infant strapped in the backseat of the car. Why don't we know these stories? Why is it that their lost lives don't generate the same amount of media attention and communal outcry as the lost lives of their fallen brothers? It's time for a change. So what can we do? In 2014, the African-American Policy Forum began to demand that we "say her name" at rallies, at protests, at conferences, at meetings, anywhere and everywhere that state violence against black bodies is being discussed. But saying her name is not enough. We have to be willing to do more. We have to be willing to bear witness, to bear witness to the often painful realities that we would just rather not confront, the everyday violence and humiliation that many black women have had to face, black women across color, age, gender expression, sexuality and ability. So we have the opportunity right now - bearing in mind that some of the images that I'm about to share with you may be triggering for some - to collectively bear witness to some of this violence. We're going to hear the voice of the phenomenal Abby Dobson. And as we sit with these women, some who have experienced violence and some who have not survived them, we have an opportunity to reverse what happened at the beginning of this talk, when we could not stand for these women because we did not know their names. So at the end of this clip, there's going to be a roll call. Several black women's names will come up. I'd like those of you who are able to join us in saying these names as loud as you can, randomly, disorderly. Let's create a cacophony of sound to represent our intention to hold these women up, to sit with them, to bear witness to them, to bring them into the light. (Singing) Abby Dobson: Say, say her name. Say, say her name. (Audience) Shelly! (Audience) Kayla! AD: Oh, say her name. (Audience shouting names) Say, say, say her name. Say her name. For all the names I'll never know, say her name. KC: Aiyanna Stanley Jones, Janisha Fonville, Kathryn Johnston, Kayla Moore, Michelle Cusseaux, Rekia Boyd, Shelly Frey, Tarika, Yvette Smith. AD: Say her name. KC: So I said at the beginning, if we can't see a problem, we can't fix a problem. Together, we've come together to bear witness to these women's lost lives. But the time now is to move from mourning and grief to action and transformation. This is something that we can do. It's up to us. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. (Applause)

Reflective Question
To align with the iterative nature of learning on this topic, below is a reflective question.

What language would you attach to your own social identities?

What are some of the privileges that are afforded to your identities?

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(Credit: Alamy)

And why does concern about it matter? Bel Jacobs explores the cultural collaborations that work well, and why a 'spirit of equal exchange' is essential in fashion.

In 2019, a major Italian fashion house launched a collection of maxi dresses and skirts in cotton poplin, broadly edged with contrasting ethnic prints of distinctive swirls and star shapes. Only if you'd visited the small Oma communities in northern Laos, would you have noticed that the designs were simply digital prints of the tribe's traditional clothing: handspun, indigo-dyed garments with vibrant appliqué and embroidery. Lauren Ellis, at the time an employee of Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre, had. "They had copied the patterns exactly," she told the Laotian Times. "I couldn't believe that this major brand would sell such blatantly stolen designs."

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Working with the Oma, the centre launched a campaign highlighting the situation. "The handmade textiles of the Oma are incredibly detailed, taking a huge amount of time, skill, and patience," said co-director Tara Gujadhur. "To see them reduced to a printed pattern on a mass-produced garment is heart-breaking." Dr Marie-Pierre Lissoir, the centre's ethnomusicologist and researcher, added: "Communities and their traditions are in constant change. They adapt themselves and get inspired by other cultures." However, this was not a case of a brand being inspired by motifs, and reinterpreting them, she says. "They simply scanned a handmade piece and printed it on clothes without even mentioning the existence of Oma community. This is not cultural appreciation. This is not creative interpretation."

The Akha Oma of Phongsali province, Laos, create exquisite traditional dresses and headdresses (Credit: Getty Images)

The fashion industry is no stranger to such controversies. Just the year before, D&G's tone-deaf campaign showing a Chinese model attempting to eat pizza with chopsticks led to an eruption of fury on China's social media platform Weibo, and a public apology from the designers. Pre-pandemic, pre-Black Lives Matter, the fashion house Comme des Garçons was taken to task after white models wore wigs of what appeared to be cornrows during its men's autumn/winter 2020 show. And of course, there is the ongoing trend at music festivals for tribal accoutrements, including Native American headdresses, in an attempt to ape the mystic of indigenous tribes, if only for a weekend.

Why does our concern about cultural appropriation matter? Designers and artists have been drawing inspiration from each other for millennia. Cut off that blood supply of creative exchange and communities would be left, not only with a smaller palette of ideas but far narrower views of the world and the other ways of being on it. Plus, the difference between cultural appropriation and appreciation can be thin; after all, why copy something if you don't love it?

This magpie mentality, where all of culture and history is up for grabs as 'inspiration', has accelerated since the proliferation of social media - Tamsin Blanchard

However, for many cultural commentators, the nature of the relationship continues to be problematic. Tamsin Blanchard is curator of Fashion Open Studio, an initiative by campaign group Fashion Revolution showcasing the work of ethical designers. This year, working with Not Enough, a collective of South American women looking at how art and design have worked to perpetuate colonialism, Fashion Open Studio is co-curator of the prestigious State of Fashion Biennial in Arnhem. "Traditionally, designers were taught at fashion schools to pick and mix from the world around them, be that from an art exhibition, film, the natural world, or the culture and heritage of global communities," reflects Blanchard.

"We're all drawn to an exquisite piece of embroidery, a colourful textile or even a style of dressing that might have originated from another heritage. [But] this magpie mentality, where all of culture and history is up for grabs as 'inspiration', has accelerated since the proliferation of social media," she continues. "Where once a fashion student might research the history and traditions of a particular item of clothing with care and respect, we now have a world where images are lifted from image libraries without a care for their cultural significance. It's easier than ever to steal a motif or a craft technique and transfer it on to a piece of clothing that is either mass produced or appears on a runway without credit or compensation to their original communities."

Knowledge matters. How many white people wearing cornrows (hello, Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry) know that, in 15th-Century Africa, hair was a way to distinguish a person's age, religion, social rank and marital status; that braiding took hours, even days, to complete, and were times of great bonding; or that, during the slave trade, heads were shaved, tearing from the African peoples not only their hair, but also their identities? How many festivalgoers are aware that Native American headdresses are made from eagle feathers, symbolic of the Great Spirit, only gifted to wearers when they have done something of note for the community? How many know that the bindi, another festival favourite, is thought to enhance the powers of the third eye, by facilitating one's ability to access their inner wisdom or gurus.

Blending influences, but not appropriating, the brand Anciela draws on its Colombian heritage and folklore, along with traditional British tailoring (Credit: Olga de la Iglesia)

And how many would have known that in the past - and even now - the originators of the cornrows, the headdresses, the bindis, would have been persecuted for wearing them? In a 2018 BBC Stories documentary Cultural Appropriation: Whose Problem is it?, interviewee Ayesha says: "When you are part of a society that has told you how you look is wrong, for someone in that society to then say, 'well, I'm going to do it because it's fashionable, and it's a music festival so who cares', is very ignorant to the people who have had to go through those things." Interviewee Karisha adds: "When one racial group in their history has taken from a different racial group, and then in the future, wears the same things, it's like a slap in the face."

Cultural anthropologist Sandra Niessen has researched Indonesian Batak weaving for more than 40 years. In 2020, she wrote a paper called Fashion, its Sacrifice Zones and Sustainability. Inspired by the concept of the "sacrifice zone", Niessen dug deep into the colonial underpinnings of the industry, going far beyond whether black models were included in a catwalk show to an exploration of the way the traditions of the indigenous peoples have been simultaneously plundered and erased. "Sacrifice zones are resource-rich lands, generally associated with minority communities that are considered dispensable, and exploited for economic gain," Niessen explained in the paper.

"Rather than expendable physical landscapes, fashion sacrifice zones are dress traditions, and their makers, associated with fashion's 'other half', that are destroyed for, and by, the expansion of industrial fashion. These zones facilitate industrial expansion because they are a source of cheap labour and also indigenous design (commonly appropriated) important for style change." This catalogue of injustices continues: "[These sacrifice zones] also serve as markets when indigenous dress is replaced with industrially produced dress. Finally, they are the major sites of waste disposal, including second-hand clothing." The paper is a searing critique of fashion's wilful systems of inequity, and remains seminal to those seeking to address cultural imbalances.

"All peoples everywhere derive inspiration from elsewhere," says Niessen, by email from her home in the Netherlands. "The problem is the hierarchy, with designers at the top and indigenous clothing at the bottom, to be pillaged from but not acknowledged. The system is skewed, not the creative work of designers per se. To recruit indigenous people to make luxury fashion acknowledges their skills but not their right to their own clothing systems. And to reduce their clothing systems to design and skill is to do it a fundamental disservice; it's a form of erasure. Working within the fashion system is the problem, not the exciting process of cultural contact."

Textiles designer Ellen Rock works in close collaboration with artisans in Nepal, exchanging ideas and skills (Credit: Ellen Rock)

What would she like to see? "The fashion business supporting the needs and desires of indigenous dress makers and not the other way around," she says. "To place 'them' first would be a restitution, perhaps revival, of 'their' systems. It's time to ask what fashion can do for them, not what they can do for fashion. They need the chance to be able to live their own cultural lives. They need their lands revitalised, their systems respected, self-determination. They need clean air and clean water. Our debt to their health and their way of life can't even begin to be tallied up."

The issues of respect and of concern for other cultures - of which Niessen's paper is such a nuanced expression - has become more marked in a world still battling a global pandemic, jolted awake by Black Lives Matter, and damaged beyond recognition by global warming, itself directly caused by consumption. Within this context, many are questioning whether the extractive model of infinite growth, born from a history of colonial exploitation, is all it's cut out to be; whether it may, in all that matters, actually be one of the worst ways of moving forward. Attention is turning, with a renewed humility, to indigenous practices, tried and tested for millennia, for stewarding the Earth.

And it is turning to what other practices - of organising communities, of exchanging skills and of making clothing - may have to offer as alternatives to the hyper-industrial, hegemonic Western fashion industry. "The Black Lives Matter [movement has led to a] mass realignment and re-education, and an understanding of how our colonial past and empire-building was built on the exploitation of people and theft of indigenous land and resources," says Blanchard. "There's a new awareness of cultural imbalances and the inequalities within the fashion industry, where a thousand-pound dress has been made by garment workers who are not paid a living wage, or where a motif has been taken from a community's cultural textile heritage without permission."

Increasingly, the industry is asking itself: what are the new systems that can take us into the future? And what are the ways of working across cultures that ensure that each party is adequately represented and recognised? "For cultural collaboration to exist, a shared vision needs to be established," muses Kerry Bannigan, executive director of the Fashion Impact Fund. "Collaborative collective leadership is necessary along with assessment of all processes in the project. Designers and brands need to understand that they have a responsibility to value the skills that bring their collections to life, and that support is required across the full value chain and fashion community globally. Respect, inclusion, consent, and communication are key to ensure that brands are not diminishing something of intrinsic cultural value when adopting elements from another culture."

Groups are working hard to address imbalances. The Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative (CIPRI), founded by Monica Moisin, connects designers with traditional textile artisans within a framework that ensures that the artisans' cultural intellectual property is respected with what CIPRI describes as the "three Cs": consent, credit, and compensation. Meanwhile, the British Council's Crafting Futures Community Couture project brings together designers from different cultures to create collaborative garments that can be rented. Digital resources capture the garment's evolution, making sure its full story, beyond the physical, is told. "This is the future of craft and community, where projects like this allow techniques to evolve and be relevant to new generations in a spirit of equal exchange," says Blanchard.

Slow fashion label Welana highlights the beauty of Ethiopian artistry - and works alongside the communities that create it (Credit: Welana)

While in an imperfect world, no example is perfect, some designers are coming close. "Indonesian designer Toton Januar, one of the designers in residence at the Biennial, has a very respectful exchange with Indonesian artisans, bringing their craft into contemporary fashion, while their work is fairly compensated," offers Blanchard. "Through her brand, Anciela, Jennifer Droguett mixes her Colombian heritage and folklore with traditional British tailoring to create her own sartorial language." Ethiopian fair trade company Sabahar and textile weavers Maraki together source and produce fabrics for slow fashion label Welana, using traditional weaving techniques. "Our whole concept revolves around shining a light on the beauty of Ethiopian artistry, and empowering the community responsible for it," says Berlin-based co-founder Welella Negussie.

Award-winning Syrian-British designer and course leader at the London College of Fashion, Nabil El Nayal, was invited to develop a new type of embroidery stitch with refugees living in the Za'atari refugee camp, a stitch that would symbolically connect Syria with Za'atari. "All planning including workshops and presentations went out the window as soon as we met the women," El Nabal told Fashion Trust Arabia. "You have to get good at picking up on the invisible, listening to the inaudible, and seeing solutions to problems as they arise. The women we worked with had the most incredible and diverse range of abilities. We became the students who would go on to learn from them all." The project aims to help support the development of a self-sustaining business for the women, who have already faced immeasurable challenges.

My approach to fashion is about the collision of cultures, past and present, distant and close - Nabil El Nayal

In 2018, after being granted the Artists International Development Fund by Crafting Futures, artist and textiles designer Ellen Rock was invited to work with the Janakour Women's Development Centre (JWDC) in Mithila in Nepal, by the foothills of the Himalayas. From the start, her approach was careful and considered, first spending two months as an artist-in-residence, observing and immersing herself in the art, to create a platform of trust and a foundation for collaboration. "I asked the centre what they might like to learn from my practice, what they felt they were missing and what they might like to share with me," she says. "From this, we developed a workshop plan where we could exchange skills and knowledge which gradually led us to textile development."

Screen printers printed Rock's original designs, before the embroiderers and hand painters added detailing on top. "My work focuses on graphic symbols as communication while Mithila art is rooted in cultural identity such as fertility, religion, love - and, more recently, daily activities such as bicycling to work, owning a mobile phone and working as an artist," says Rock. One of the prints, titled Eye See You features a combined illustration of a daily cycle with Rock's signature illustrations, integrating Mithila hands - a key motif in Rock's own work - adorned with tattoos and featuring embroidery interpretation of the print. "Ellen showed us how to apply our designs on to clothes and textiles; she also helped us create a lot of new designs," says one of the artisans, Madhumala Mandal.

Rock and the artisans spent time thinking about the most beneficial skill that could be exchanged - and that had longevity. "The centre wanted to develop a product, both to apply their designs but also to generate income," says Rock. "We decided to focus on products, such as embroidered patches or bags, that could be re-produced, not only with our collaborative designs but with original Mithila patterns." The idea was to create a knowledge transfer that would last long after Rock had left.

Creating bold, graphic prints, Ellen Rock collaborated with Madhumala Mandal and other women hand painters of Mithila, Nepal (Credit: Ellen Rock)

Rock adds: "Appropriation usually involves the removal of origins and heritage, and a re-purposing in a way that only benefits the end company. Without dialogue, this can eradicate ancient wisdom and heritage whilst also removing income streams and livelihoods. A collaboration needs authentic connection, built up over weeks or months. But, I believe that, if designers set measurable impacts which directly involve and consult artisan groups, collaboration can be a powerful tool of amplification and preservation. Ultimately, at the heart of collaboration, is the core belief from both parties that the outcome is stronger."

For both El Nayal and Rock, cultural collaboration remains a rich source not simply of inspiration, but of equity and global rebalancing. "My approach to fashion is about the collision of cultures, past and present, distant and close. We are living in increasingly polarised times, and my work can speak to that while seeking connections through the medium of fashion; pursuing a highly contemporary outcome, while preserving traditional Syrian dress and textile history," says El Nayal. "But working with the community needs to be mutually beneficial. I'm keen to protect our combined legacy and cultural identity. Our rich textile culture goes back many centuries, and it's important to ensure it goes on for many more to come."

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And why does concern about it matter? Bel Jacobs explores the cultural collaborations that work well, and why a 'spirit of equal exchange' is essential in fashion.

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7 Myths about Cultural Appropriation DEBUNKED! | Decoded | MTV News

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My Culture Is Not A Costume | A reminder this Halloween: someone else's culture is NOT your costume. 📢 Watch as 6 brave women explain why racist Halloween costumes are so offensive. | By Teen Vogue | Facebook

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A reminder this Halloween: someone else's culture is NOT your costume. 📢 Watch as 6 brave women explain why racist Halloween costumes are so offensive.

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These posters were created as part of an educational campaign initiated in 2011 by Students Teaching About Racism in Society, a group of Ohio University students. The campaign, called 'We're a Culture, Not a Costume,' centered on critiquing the practice of wearing racist Halloween costumes, after the Ohio University students witnessed a fellow student wearing black face to a party. The campaign speaks to the larger context of racist Halloween parties and costumes, which have spurred protests and discussions on university campuses and beyond. The Ohio University students used media to preemptively encourage others to be thoughtful about the connections between costumes, stereotypes, and identity.

discussion

What message does this Ohio University campaign send through their posters? Do you think it is effective? Why or why not?

Have you ever worn a Halloween costume where you dressed as someone from a different cultural background? Do you think it may have offended anyone? Why or why not? Would you do things differently now?

Have you ever been offended by a Halloween costume you have seen someone else wear? How did you handle that situation?

What is cultural appropriation? How is it different from cultural exchange or appreciation?

Do you think it is possible to wear a costume of someone from a different background in a way that is respectful? Does it matter who you are and what your background is? In what way?

How did this campaign allow the Ohio University students to use media to assert their own identity? Are there ways you could use media to do something similar?

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"we're a culture not a costume" - Critical Media Project

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These posters were created as part of an educational campaign initiated in 2011 by Students Teaching About Racism in Society, a group of Ohio University students. The campaign, called 'We're a Culture, Not a Costume,' centered on critiquing the practice ... Continue reading →

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Jamila Lyiscott: 3 ways to speak English | TED

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast

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Today on the show, we're bringing you the stories of two families grappling with how to communicate across languages. In the first story, a young man sorts through how to talk to his parents about gender in Chinese, where the words for "he" and "she" sound exactly the same. Then, we follow a family who was advised to stop speaking their heritage language, Japanese, based on some unsound advice and outdated research.

These stories were reported by Elena Neale-Sacks and Isabella Bloom. Both are journalists and recent graduates of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

For more information on the linguistics of gender and pronouns in Chinese, check out the Gender in Language Project.
The Code Switch version of this piece was edited by Leah Donnella and produced by Kumari Devarajan and Leah Donnella

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Today on the show, we're bringing you the stories of two families grappling with how best to communicate across linguistic differences. In the first story, a young man sorts through how to talk to his parents about gender in Chinese, where the words for "he" and "she" sound exactly the same.

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What is social and emotional learning (SEL)? And how can schools ensure that English language learners (ELLs) are fully included and supported through SEL activities in the school setting?

This article offers an introduction to SEL along with helpful resources from organizations such as the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). In addition, this article also shares ideas on how to ensure that ELLs are able to fully participate in SEL lessons and activities.

To highlight those examples, we have mapped a few ELL considerations and strategies to CASEL's SEL framework. These strategies represent just some of the ideas that educators can try and they also detail important considerations when introducing new initiatives or ideas in a classroom or school community.

You will also find relevant examples and strategies in Teaching and Supporting English Learners: A Guide to Welcoming and Engaging NewcomersbyEugenia Mora-Flores and Stephanie Dewing.

What is SEL?

SEL is a process by which students can develop skills that help them thrive skills such as such as the ability to regulate emotions, form healthy relationships, manage stress, and contribute to a community. While many educators have incorporated SEL into their instruction for a long time, it has gotten more attention in recent years as schools and families continue to navigate the impacts of the long-term disruptions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and also look for ways to help students navigate other changes or challenges in their lives.

CASEL describes the big picture goal of SEL in the following way:
"SEL can help all young people and adults thrive personally and academically, develop and maintain positive relationships, become lifelong learners, and contribute to a more caring, just world."
How does it do that? The CASEL framework focuses on developing the following core competencies, which you can explore via CASEL's interactive SEL wheel:

1. self-awareness

2. self-management

3. social awareness

4. relationship skills

5. responsible decision-making

These are valuable skills that not only can help students today but set the stage for healthy and productive lives in the future.

Is SEL an "extra"?

While many schools may hesitate to "add on" SEL, the renewed focus on SEL offers an opportunity to reframe its role. In fact, schools who regularly incorporate SEL describe it as the foundation from which everything else grows. The more comfortable and secure students feel in the classroom, the more likely they are take risks, try new things, and contribute to the classroom.

For example, Principal Sue Stanley, whose elementary school has long prioritized SEL, writes, "We understand students cannot learn until they feel safe and connected." This is particularly true in schools where large numbers of students have experienced trauma, as in the case of her school where many students have experienced hardship and family separation due to the civil war in Yemen.

In addition, we have heard from multiple educators of ELLs in particular that the investment of time early on building relationships, getting to know students, and creating a welcoming culture and environment in the classroom pays off all year long.

Related resources

Related videos

SEL 101: What are the core competencies and key settings? (CASEL)

Looking at the whole child: Conversations with an award-winning social worker

Principal Sue Stanley: Why creating a calm, safe environment in schools matters

Teacher Christine Price: Showing students you care

SEL and ELLs: The CASEL Framework

What does all of this look like for ELLs? One way to share some concrete examples is by using the CASEL SEL framework. We have shared excerpts of the framework here and encourage you to look at the complete framework on CASEL's website. Please note that under "Examples," we have only highlighted a few skill sets that are particularly relevant for ELLs, but CASEL lists others as well.

You may also find it helpful to pull in free bilingual resources from Feel Your Best Self, a puppet-focused SEL program for children from the University of Connecticut that provides videos and related materials for educators and caregivers in English and Spanish.

Tips for lesson/activity planning

Before jumping in, we'd like to highlight some of the ELL recommendations that you will see throughout the rest of the article:

Look for opportunities to build relationships with students and get to know them.

Learn more about the unique experiences of special populations of students, such as refugees, unaccompanied minors, children in migrant farmworker families, and Indigenous students from Latin America.

Identify the key concepts and vocabulary words that will be the focus of your lesson or activity.

Pre-teach those concepts and vocabulary so that ELLs can engage meaningfully with the content.

Use visuals, hands-on objects, and other tools to make new concepts and words clear.

Look for connections to students' languages. For examples, English and Spanish share words that are similar called cognates. You can use these connections to support student understanding.

You can learn more tips from our article on lesson planning for ELLs.

1. Self-awareness

CASEL definition: "The abilities to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts."

Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets

Reflect on the following for your setting:

Welcome students' languages and cultures by:

Do ELLs' regularly hear the message that their languages, cultures, and experiences are assets and strengths?

Do teachers and peers respect ELLs' diverse perspectives and multilingual skills?

Identifying one's emotions

ELLs may still be learning:

Teach ELLs vocabulary words for different emotions. Ask them how to say those words in their language.

Give them lots of practice using emotion words, especially through check-ins like mood meters and feelings charts.

Ask colleagues who share students' cultures if there are cultural nuances you should be aware of.

Give young students or newcomers opportunities to draw pictures about how they are feeling.

Having a growth mindset

ELLs may be so focused on what they haven't learned yet that it can be easy to lose sight of what they have learned. It can be easy to become frustrated and feel behind and left out.

Focus on what students " can do" and also teach students targeted strategies for adopting a growth mindset.

Examining prejudices and biases

This complex topic can go both ways. Students may have experienced discrimination and bias against them based on a number of factors.

Look for ways to create safe spaces for talking about identity in your classroom.

If you note that additional support or communication is needed around these topics for your or your class, look for resources or colleagues that can support you in this work.

At the same time, students will likely have their own biases as well.

Principal Nathaniel Provencio: The gifts ELLs bring to school

CASEL definition: "The abilities to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations."

Managing one's emotions

As noted above, a first step in helping ELLs manage their emotions effectively is identifying and naming emotions.

If you are introducing emotion management strategies, be sure to:

clearly name and identify the target emotions you are addressing

provide students with lots of different hands-on way to show and practice the strategies through puppets, role play, stories, and more

In addition, students will benefit from:

learning how to manage different emotions

practicing new strategies they learn

Identifying and using stress management strategies

Students may have a wide range of stressors during their days, whether at school or at home.

If you are introducing stress management strategies, be sure to:

You may wish to introduce the concept of stress and ask students:

Note: For students who have experienced trauma, these conversations may be triggering. Plan activities with care and stay attuned to the needs of your students. Stay flexible and seek additional support for students if needed.

Setting personal and collective goals

As noted above, ELLs may be overwhelmed by what can feel like mountains to climb in terms of learning a new language, acclimating to a new culture, and keeping up in their classes. Reaching some smaller goals, however, can build confidence over time, as can doing activities related to their strengths.

Help ELLs set small, specific goals that they can reach to build confidence.

Incorporate activities that connect to students' interests.

When talking with the class about goals, offer the options of "collective" goals along with individual goals and encourage creative thinking about how to reach those goals.

Share examples of success stories, such as immigrants, ELLs, or others your students may relate to.

In addition, keep in mind that many ELLs may come from "collectivist" cultures that focus on the well-being of the group over the individual. Use this to your benefit in planning group work and setting goals for the class.

Jorge Bermudez, High School Math Teacher: How advisory periods are helping my students

CASEL definition: "The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts."

Taking others' perspectives

ELLs bring a rich diversity of perspective to the classroom. The opportunity to learn from those perspectives can be lost if ELLs aren't encouraged to share their ideas as part of a respectful class community.

Give ELLs scaffolds to support their participation in class discussions, such as sentence frames and sentence starters (e.g., "I agree that...because...")

Give ELLs lots of practice discussing informal topics so that they can become comfortable with using these structures.

In addition, ELLs have the opportunity to learn from their peers when classroom communication is working well.

Recognizing strengths in others

ELLs have numerous strengths, interests, and talents that may be overlooked. Provide frequent opportunities for all students, including ELLs, to share their talents and interests with the class and in personal ways.

Ask students to share special talents or interests as part of icebreakers early in the year.

Look for ways to incorporate students' interests in the classroom.

Demonstrating empathy and compassion

There are many ways to develop empathy in the classroom. Keep in mind that some of ELLs' life experiences will be shared, universal experiences; others will be very different from what their peers have gone through.

Introduce the concept of empathy and help students understand it before any empathy-focused activities.

Teacher Paul Barnwell describes an activity in which students write three statements about themselves. The teacher then reads them anonymously to the class and students begin to get an idea of the "range of intense experiences and perspectives (the) classroom community contains."

Regularly using questions such as, "What do you think that was like?" or "How do you think she's feeling right now?" can also help strengthen empathy muscles!

Using culturally responsive materials that reflect students' experiences can also open opportunities for students to share and provide teachable moments that develop empathy in peers. While it's important not to put students on the spot or force a point, being mindful of how your students see themselves in the classroom can open valuable doors.

Understanding and expressing gratitude

There are so many ways to express and lift up gratitude in the classroom. Asking students to reflect on when and why they feel gratitude is a valuable opportunity for growth.

Introduce the concept of gratitude and help students understand it before any gratitude-focused activities.

Invite students to share how they say "Thank you" in their language and make a poster board with signs of all of their translations!

We have lots of other ideas in our article Making Space for Gratitude: 15 Ideas for Schools During Challenging Times, which include appreciation boards, thank you note campaigns, and writing prompts.

You may be surprised at who in the school community or their own life is making a difference!

Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones

When it comes to social and cultural norms, there are a few different layers. First and foremost, students' own norms may be different, such as a cultural norm in which looking away from an authority perspective is a sign of respect, rather disrepect.

At the same time, different social norms may come up in classroom discussions. It is essential to create a culture of respect when discussing diverse experiences and perspectives. You may also need additional support if topics that relate to justice or differing expectations around concepts like human rights or women's rights are part of a discussion so that everyone feels safe within the discussion.

Teacher Omar Salem: My students' many talents

You Are Welcome Here: Preview

This preview of our award-winning film You Are Welcome Her e highlights what culturally responsive instruction can look like.

4. Relationship skills

CASEL definition: The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups.

Communicating effectively

Providing ELLs with lots of opportunities to interact in all kinds of situations and in different settings or group sizes will build their skills and confidence in communication.

Pay attention to whether ELLs are able to communicate their needs and ideas to you and to peers. Give them lots of practice to do so in both informal and formal settings.

When grouping students, you may sometimes wish to put students who speak the same language together so they can have an in-depth conversations and then summarize to the group in English.

Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving

Peer learning is a great opportunity to practice teamwork and problem-solving. Making sure that ELLs understand their role, the purpose of the activity, and the steps they need to complete to make these activities more successful.

You can learn more in our related article 6 Strategies to Help ELLs Succeed in Peer Learning and Collaboration.

Peer learning Problem solving

Encourage students to try lots of hands-on activities and clubs.

Make sure ELLs know about enrichment activities where they can focus on problem-solving, such as robotics clubs, Maker space, Odyssey of the Mind, quiz bowls, and games clubs.

Resolving conflicts constructively

Students will need practice not only with new conflict resolution strategies but also with the language they need to use those strategies.

Introduce the concept of "conflict resolution" and any related vocabulary as needed.

Show students models of any strategies you are using through videos, photos, or role playing.

Give students practice with new strategies through role play or stories.

Review the tips in 8 Tips to Protect ELLs from Bullying in Your Classroom and School.

There may also be some cultural nuances in how students approach conflict and you may wish to ask students for ideas of different conflict resolution strategies before introducing new strategies.

In addition, it's critical to make sure that all students and families have a shared understanding of what bullying is and why it is not acceptable under any circumstance.

Showing leadership in groups

ELLs often have hidden reserves of leadership potential. Many ELLs are resilient, resourceful, and creative students who have navigated many challenges in their life and bring a big picture view of the world to their classroom. If the teacher isn't looking for those qualities and experiences, however, they may remain hidden.

Encourage ELLs to take leadership roles in pair or group work once they feel comfortable doing so. (Some may be ready to try it even if they are newcomers, while others may want a lot more practice!)

Also ensure that ELLs have opportunity to participate in any clubs or activities that foster leadership. Don't limit their options by assuming they won't be interested!

Note: Every spring, we read about high school valedictorians who started off in U.S. schools as ELLs and have achieved great things in a short time within a supportive school environment.

5. Responsible decision-making

CASEL definition: The abilities to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations.

Identifying solutions for personal and social problems

As noted above, ELLs can show great resilience and resourcefulness when given the chance. They also understand the impacts of big social issues that may have touched their lives. For example, many ELLs were caregivers for younger siblings and relatives during school closures in the early months of the pandemic and continue those responsibilities now outside of school.

Give students choices to pursue topics that interest them where possible.

You may wish to try a project-based or inquiry-led approach where students can dive deep on a particular topic of interest.

Having lived through a range of situations (often in other countries) provides ELLs with different lens and perspectives that can enrich the class.

Anticipating and evaluating the consequences of one's actions

As with the other topics above, it's essential to ensure that students have the vocabulary and language they need to engage in conversations or activities related to sophisticated conversations about topics like consequences. Like their peers, ELLs will likely have meaningful examples to share when taking about the consequences of one's actions.

Note: An example of an English/Spanish cognate, or word that's related in two languages, is "consequence/ consecuencia."

Reflecting on one's role to promote personal, family, and community well-being

As noted above, ELLs may come from cultures that are focused on the well-being of the group, whether it's the family, community, culture, or country.

Be sure that students have opportunities to share how they are contributing to their families and community. Those activities and responsibilities may remain hidden otherwise.

Students may be caregiving, working for a family business, actively participating in a community or faith institution, and supporting their family through employment, translation help, and other ways.

Exploring these perspectives not only can provide interesting insights -- it can help your classroom run more smoothly and even improve family engagement, such as in the example of a teacher who switched to group parent teacher conferences with her ELL families and increased attendance dramatically.

Closing Thoughts

As you can from the examples above, considering ELLs' experiences and perspectives beforehand can go a long way in ensuring that they can fully participate in all classroom activities. Along the way, they and the rest of your class will also benefit from increased collaboration and communication around SEL and so much more!

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SEL for English Language Learners: What Educators Need to Know

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What is social and emotional learning (SEL)? And how can schools ensure that English language learners (ELLs) are fully included and supported through SEL activities in the school setting? This article offers an introduction to SEL along with helpful resources from organizations such as the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

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English Language Learners

Teachers can make small changes to amplify language opportunities that create pathways toward success for English learners.

Designing instruction that is accessible to English learners (ELs), or multilingual learners, is of the utmost importance. It's simply not enough to make content available to learners. That's like being given a car but no keys to use it. Equitable instruction is instruction that provides every learner with what they need for academic success.

In recent years, there has been a positive shift in the way educators view and teach multilingual learners-recognizing the linguistic, academic, and cultural assets they bring. The reality is that multilingual learners enter our classrooms with unique lived experiences and traditions that add value to instruction. Teachers face the challenge of ensuring that multilingual learners are gaining content and developing language without falling behind in either. Multilingual learners who experience grade-level instruction with additional linguistic support tend to do better in school and have a greater chance of mastery.

But how does that happen when we have mountains of content to cover and grades to gather? How do we create lessons that are accessible and meaningful for multilingual learners? What does that look like in the lesson plans and in instructional practice?

Methods That Make Instruction Accessible to ELs

Multilingual learners weren't talking even when I asked them to. Lack of linguistic support, uncertainty about expectations, fear or anxiety about speaking in a new language, and other factors seemed to contribute to their silence.

Sometimes the talk was uncontrollably loud.

Conversations often seemed to stray from the topic.

1. Infuse instruction with peer-to-peer discussion and exploration. This student-centered practice allows multilingual learners to build their listening and speaking vocabularies as they negotiate meaning. There may be much content to cover, but hiding it behind a lecture that multilingual learners may not comprehend does little good. It's important for multilingual learners to uncover their understanding through interacting with peers.

Using open-ended questions and posting them for students to see.

Providing sentence stems for responses.

Intentionally pairing students for discussion and modeling the routine.

When I began carving out more space for student talk, despite the fact that quiet classrooms were encouraged by colleagues and some administrators, it was challenging for a few reasons:

Provide a similar text in the student'sfirst language.

Do a side-by-side of the original text and an audio version.

Give them a side-by-side of the original text and a text a few reading levels lower.

You may be experiencing similar struggles. I found that structuring the peer discussion alleviated these problems and created an environment that controlled the chaos and provided routines and expectations that my students needed. My multilingual learners' voices were being amplified, and it began to surface in their confidence, comfort, and writing, so I knew we were on the right track. Most of the challenges that seemed to keep multilingual learners from participating in speaking with peers were eliminated by my intentional and planned routines for speaking, such as these:

2. Offer adapted or engineered texts when reading materials are dense. As multilingual learners get older, a common challenge is that content and reading selections become more complex. You can adapt or engineer texts, chunking them into pieces with annotations and synonyms, and even use a multilingual learner's first language. Sometimes, adapting a text looks like providing a side-by-side of the original text:

3. Provide daily opportunities for written expression in all content areas with the use of scaffolds and accommodations. Daily writing can be brief, such as quick pieces that are about 3 minutes or sketch notes using visuals and words. Multilingual learners benefit from seeing teachers model writing expectations and examples at various levels of proficiency.

Other scaffolds and accommodations for writing include offering sentence starters or paragraph frames and encouraging drawing, labeling, and use of the first language. Multilingual learners at beginning levels of English proficiency pull from all of their language repertoires to access their knowledge and demonstrate what they understand and can do.

Students will perform at different levels. It took me a while to realize that my students' products didn't have to be the same. I remember expecting all my students to write lengthy essays. One of my newly arrived multilingual learners could do that, but not in English yet. He wrote his first essay primarily in his language. Stepping outside of my comfort zone was at first a challenge. How was I going to assess writing that I was unable to read? Through collaboration with colleagues who could read the language, I was able to assess my student's writing. Some teachers in similar situations have used apps to translate students' writing.

When modeling academic language and effective communication, use words from the word wall.

When reading aloud, use and point to a strategy from a reading anchor chart.

When modeling writing, show how to use a translation dictionary, thesaurus or other dictionary.

4. Utilize classroom resources. Resources such as word walls, anchor charts, and translation dictionaries can enhance multilingual learners' understanding of concepts, especially when they include pictorial or visual support. The most effective resources act as co-teachers when we're unable to assist multilingual learners as they work independently. But even this doesn't happen by magic.

Teachers can directly teach students how to use these resources by referring to word walls, anchor charts, and dictionaries:

When we model for learners how to use resources and remind them that they can use them too, they are more likely to do it independently.

Sometimes my husband (who is quite a bit taller than I am) drives my car, and when I get back into the driver's seat, I silently thank the car designers for their efforts in assuring that I'm able to adjust the mirrors, move the seat up and forward, and even move the steering wheel-I need to see the road ahead of me. Everyone does. This analogy is how I visualize us as lesson designers for multilingual learners who need to see and have access to their grade-level curriculum. We design the lessons, and we can provide the access.

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4 Practical Ways to Make Instruction Accessible for Multilingual Learners

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Teachers can make small changes to amplify language opportunities that create pathways toward success for English learners.

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Vol. 78

No. 6

Abstract

"The English Will Come"

Scaffolding Up Learning

Multilingualism as a Strength

Doing Better: Changing Teacher and Student Roles

Scaffolding up the curriculum, rather than watering it down, is key for English learners.

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Abstract

"The English Will Come"

Scaffolding Up Learning

Multilingualism as a Strength

Doing Better: Changing Teacher and Student Roles

The landscape of schools today is increasingly multilingual. To achieve equity in culturally and linguistically diverse schools, we need not just new strategies but new roles-for both teachers and students. We need to recognize what meaningful engagement with rigorous content learning actually involves, and we need to understand that effective language interactions are at the heart of that engagement. Creating the

conditions necessary for such interactions goes well beyond what we have traditionally considered "good teaching." English proficiency cannot be seen as a prerequisite to meaningful participation in the curriculum because this limits engagement. Instead, language must be viewed as something that is developed in the process of learning when students are supported and have access to the richest curriculum our schools have to offer (NASEM, 2017).

Engaging multilingual learners means leveraging their energy and curiosity, their diverse experiences, and their creativity as communicators. Multilingual learners can no longer be the few students in the back of the room, whose ideas we'll tap into later when they're able to share them with us in English. Their participation in class discussions and critical thinking processes is an increasingly important element of our shared future. We will need students with the cultural, linguistic, and intellectual flexibility to be able to cross borders, bridge communities, and help solve the global crises we face- whether climate change, ethnic conflicts, or perhaps the next pandemic.

How, then, can we create opportunities for students to use all the tools in their toolbox, including home languages, to engage meaningfully with content and each other? First, we have to remove the barriers we impose, even unintentionally, on learning.

"The English Will Come"

Too often, students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds are asked to put their learning on hold to focus on English language development. Yet families should not have to choose between learning and language. Consider the following anecdote, based on a real exchange between a parent and principal:

A father walks into the principal's office to enroll his daughter in school. The family has recently arrived from Santiago, Chile. "Don't worry," the principal says, "we'll have your daughter speaking English in no time. I have good teachers, classroom aides, and even some parent volunteers who will work with her on learning English."

"So, what do the other students learn at this school?" asks the father.

"Oh, well, our math program is great. Our music teacher is the best around. And we have a new push to introduce STEM labs earlier and more effectively than before.

"The father pauses for a moment.

"Those are the programs I'd like for my daughter," he says. "The English will come soon enough if you help her with all of that."

This father's convictions couldn't be more on the mark: He believed that the most important thing for his daughter was the opportunity to learn through access to a rich curriculum. This was the school he wanted his daughter to attend; not one that lowers the bar for her to focus primarily on English acquisition. Indeed, research confirms that English learners develop English most effectively while also mastering the knowledge, skills, and literacies needed for college and career readiness.

We can no longer accept that fragmentation, tracking, and segregation of multilingual learners in separate pull-out programs is in their best interests. While we ostensibly "give them time to learn the English," multilingual students are losing out on opportunities for learning and enrichment. Recent national trend data illustrate that multilingual learners are not gaining access to experiences like gifted and talented programs or AP classes in nearly the same percentages as their peers (U.S. Department of Education, 2014).

We know that integration of language and content learning, along with effective collaboration and in-class support, provides opportunities for all students to engage with challenging, grade-level curricula. There is growing evidence that English language development specialists in schools cannot work in isolation; to provide the most comprehensive support for multilingual learners, all teachers need to collaborate to serve all learners (Boals, Hakuta, & Blair, 2015).

Fortunately, new approaches to curriculum and instruction build on the assets of both teachers and students. Today's classrooms leverage instructional technology to provide students with greater access to multimodal and multilingual resources. Professional collaboration with English language development specialists builds capacity for teachers to attend to language in all subject areas. And equity-focused curricula promote the use of language in deliberate ways to serve multilingual students. New standards and new teaching tools mean more students have authentic opportunities to learn.

Scaffolding Up Learning

Equality is not the same as equity, however, and access to curriculum without appropriate support is not enough. Consider another true story shared with one of the authors:

A high school counselor placed a newcomer student from Russia in Biology 1, thinking it would be easy since this student had advanced biology in his native language. The counselor went to see the teacher at semester's end when he saw an "F" as the final grade.

"How could this student fail your class? He knows biology."

"He doesn't know enough English to pass my test," the science teacher replied.

Because this teacher was either unwilling or unaware of the need to change the way instruction or assessment was delivered, the student failed the English, not the science. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of teachers nationally report they have not received adequate preparation to meet the needs of multilingual students (NASEM, 2017).

The dilemma is clear to see: Multilingual learners cannot benefit from an unsupported curriculum, and yet if "language support" means a remedial curriculum or simplified, inauthentic language, we have set up students for long-term failure even as they fall behind grade-level expectations. To protect multilingual learners from struggling with academic work, we might reduce task complexity or segregate students, inadvertently preventing some of them from engaging with complex language or content. As linguists Lily Wong Fillmore and Charles J. Fillmore pointed out:

One of the biggest roadblocks to learning is that [English learners (ELs)] never get a chance to work with complex texts. Why would that be a problem? Simply put, the easy texts schools give to ELs-given [...] as a safeguard against failure-actually prevent them from discovering how language works in academic discourse. Simplified texts offer no clue as to what academic language sounds like or how it works. (Fillmore & Fillmore, n.d.)

On the other hand, just putting a dense text or complex task in front of students without appropriate support is not effective either. Ambitious content standards deserve ambitious teaching. Equitably serving multilingual students who are learning both language and content requires intentional scaffolding. "Both macro- and micro-scaffolding practices are integral to scaffolding up-rather than differentiating down -in order to engage multilingual learners within challenging curriculum" (Daniels & Westerlund, 2018).

Macro-scaffolding practices require deliberate instructional planning before a lesson or unit, such as sequencing activities to bridge from familiar concepts to new ideas, and by doing so, decreasing the gap between known and new learning. For example, when asking 4th graders to write a theme-interpretation essay, it is important to sequence activities to move students toward the complexity of thematic interpretation. This may entail identifying themes from familiar picture books and comparing them to books on similar themes.

By contrast, micro-scaffolding, also called interactional scaffolding, happens during a lesson in the interactions between a teacher and students. In that same unit, a teacher might model the language of talking about how authors develop a theme. In the process, she might recast students' responses to help them articulate ideas more accurately. Similarly, when the teacher guides the students in deconstructing a mentor text, the conversations around text can be a powerful scaffolding for students' future writing.

Multilingualism as a Strength

Providing equitable opportunities to learn requires us to develop not only new skills such as scaffolding up, but also new, asset-based beliefs about multilingualism. This includes the value of translanguaging, where students use multiple languages to integrate and express their learning. By over-emphasizing not only English proficiency but "correctness" in English, we might inadvertently signal to multilingual students that their work isn't as good as their peers. Such mixed messages can confuse or frustrate highly capable multilingual students who may be struggling. In consequence, while their classroom peers begin seeing themselves as capable of taking on academically successful or career-oriented identities, multilingual learners wrongly surmise that they can't cut it, when the truth is they simply need supported, engaged opportunities to learn.

Building on the cultural and linguistic assets that multilingual learners bring to the classroom, even as they gain supported access to content, is key. Well implemented dual-language programs have the advantage of being able to fully connect to students' native languages as they begin acquiring English. Not all schools have that luxury, but all schools can practice assets-based approaches that are culturally and linguistically relevant and sustaining. Students can leverage translanguaging practices to co-construct their conceptual understanding, teachers can select texts that reflect the cultural diversity of the school community, and schools can ensure that multilingualism is valued in its communication with parents. English as the medium of instruction does not require English as the only language of learning.

We should aim for effective participation that builds on this asset of a rich linguistic repertoire, rather than focusing on speaking in complete sentences in English. Inviting students to write notes in any language and offering the chance to discuss with a home-language partner prior to a whole-class discussion in English can improve both confidence and comprehension. Likewise, encouraging students to sketch out ideas in multilingual and multimodal representations before writing helps all learners make deeper connections and organize key ideas. Mastery will come eventually with repeated scaffolding and meaningful opportunities for participation with feedback contingent on both content and language growth (Boals, Hakuta, & Blair, 2015; Pimentel 2018).

Doing Better: Changing Teacher and Student Roles

To accommodate contemporary academic standards, which emphasize students' ability to make and support evidence-based claims and to articulate their logic, teacher-fronted instruction is giving way to more participatory structures. Small group work, appropriately supported, provides important opportunities for the negotiation of meaning that aids language development. When students are invited up onto the stage, they are more engaged and in control of their own learning.

To leverage these new roles and participatory structures better, educators can consider questions such as:

Have I provided students multiple ways to express, clarify, support, build on, and challenge ideas?

Have I taken the time to expand students' language resources to add to what they already know? Can they adjust their language to be able to communicate in a variety of contexts and not only use technical language because it's in the book?

When will everyday language suffice, and when do students need discipline-specific language?

How can we provide opportunities for students to learn how to adjust language as the context calls for it?

By encouraging students to use their full repertoire of language, including everyday language, we provide opportunities for authentic engagement with content while simultaneously offering deeply contextualized and relevant opportunities for language development.

At the same time, we create openings to probe and strengthen students' reasoning. Through guided inquiry, we can help students learn patterns of disciplinary reasoning. For example: What qualifies as a valid argument in science? And how is that different in mathematics or social studies? Fortunately, learning activities that elicit, surface, and deepen critical thinking and collaborative reasoning also support English language development.

Indeed, in a report commissioned by the National Academy, experts in STEM education and English language development recommended that language development be understood as a product of meaningful engagement in instruction, not a prerequisite. They found that multilingual learners "develop science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) knowledge and language proficiency when they are engaged in meaningful interaction in the classroom and participate in the kinds of activities in which STEM experts and professionals regularly engage" (NASEM, 2018, p. 55). These experts agreed that language development and conceptual understanding are "inextricable" and "occur simultaneously."

Simple, everyday language can be sufficient for rigorous, inquiry-based learning and can provide a solid foundation for language development when students are given the opportunity to interact with academic content in authentic ways. For example, a student might share "it gets hotter when you mix them" which is useful in a scientific inquiry as lab partners co-construct meaning; we can recast the terminology by agreeing that "the reaction increases the temperature" to introduce specific language without invalidating the student's observation. By providing multiple opportunities for students to negotiate meaning in disciplinary conversation together, we can engage multilingual learners in the interactions that, over time and with appropriate modeling, enable them to become increasingly effective in expressing and exploring ideas.

In this way, equity equates to scaffolding up content rather than watering it down. The goal is to create a rich instructional environment that challenges all students to inquire, negotiate meaning, and articulate complex disciplinary concepts. This means creating the conditions for multilingual students to become protagonists of their own learning.

It is time to stop seeing English proficiency as a prerequisite to success and fully embrace multilingual learners for the journey of learning the "real" content in school in ways that engage and support all learners. Only then will we be able provide a full range of equitable and meaningful opportunities to all.

References

Boals, T., Hakuta, K, & Blair, A. (2015). Literacy development in academic contexts for adolescent English language learners: Policy considerations and future research. In D. Molle, E. Sato, T. Boals, & C. Hedgspeth (Eds.) Multilingual learners and academic literacies: Sociocultural contexts of literacy development in adolescents. New York: Routledge.

Daniels, J., & Westerlund, R. (2018, June). WIDA focus on: Scaffolding learning for multilingual students in math. Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Fillmore, L. W., & Fillmore, C. J. (n.d.). "What does text complexity mean for English learners and language minority students?" Stanford University, Understanding Language.

NASEM (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine). (2017). Promoting the educational success of children and youth learning English: Promising futures. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. NASEM (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine). (2018). English learners in STEM subjects: Transforming classrooms, schools, and lives. Washington D.C.: The National Academies Press.

Pimentel, S. (2018). Policy brief: English learners and content-rich curricula. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins School of Education, Institute for Education Policy.

U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). (2014, March). Data snapshot: College and career readiness (Issue Brief No. 3). Washington, D.C.: Author.

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What Does Equity Really Mean for Multilingual Learners?

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Scaffolding up the curriculum, rather than watering it down, is key for English learners.

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What Is the Goal of Restorative Practices in Schools?

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Restorative practices in schools can lead them to shift away from harmful traditional disciplinary models & into a more community-oriented culture.

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Restorative Justice | Compliance & Title IX - Division of Student Affairs | Rutgers University-New Brunswick

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Restorative Justice is a process used to address harm, hold others accountable, and build or repair community. RJ is derived from practices of the First Nation’s people of North America and Australia. It is used around the world in elementary schools, Institutions of Higher Education, Communities, a…

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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John: We've been engaged in a global conversation about race and racism. You've probably had discussions at home, at school or at work, and in those conversations you've probably heard the term white privilege. You maybe even had this term used in a way that felt like an insult or an accusation. Others will have told you that it's all just made up to make white people feel bad... and none of this is right.

Privilege is a hard concept for people to understand, because normally when we talk of privilege we imagine immediate unearned riches and tangible benefits for anyone who has it. But white privilege and indeed all privilege is actually more about the absence of inconvenience, the absence of an impediment or challenge, and as such when you have it, you really don't notice it, but when it's absent, it affects everything you do.

There are lots of types of privilege out there, the privilege of being born into a wealthy family versus a poor family is kind of obvious, but then there's the privilege of being able-bodied versus having or acquiring a disability that most of us take for granted. I have two very close friends who are wheelchair users and I'll be honest, when I first met them I was completely ignorant about the everyday ways their lives are made harder through no fault of their own. Some of these ways are simply thoughtless, but some of them are just the way we live, just the way we build infrastructure, just the way everything works that just makes their life harder than mine. That's just one of the ways that I am privileged and understanding that, embracing that, doesn't make me a bad person, but ignoring it raises the chance that my friends will be excluded in ways that are not obvious to me and as their friend I can't allow that.

There's a good chance, as a white person watching this, your life is already hard. Every day you have to overcome some difficulty or challenge just to get by, but you can still have white privilege. White privilege doesn't mean you haven't worked hard or you don't deserve the success you've had. It doesn't mean that your life isn't hard or that you've never suffered. It simply means that your skin colour has not been the cause of your hardship or suffering.

There is nothing but a benefit to understanding our own privileges, white and otherwise. It brings us closer to those who are different. It helps us be vigilant about the ways we treat others different than us. It helps us make a society that is fairer and more equal. Having white privilege doesn't make your life easy, but understanding it can help you realise why some people's lives are harder than they should be.

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Psychologist John Amaechi talks about white privilege.

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The Systemic Inequity that Prevent our Children from Gaining Access to  | Luis Torres | TEDxCCSU

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The Importance of teaching kids about systemic racism

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Institutional racism, or what is sometimes called structural or systemic racism, is what Solid Ground defines as "the distribution of resources, power, and opportunity in our society to the benefit of people who are white and the exclusion of people of color." In that definition, every single person, even kids, is affected by systemic racism.

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A layperson guide that explains systemic racism in America.

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Systemic And Structural Racism: Definitions, Examples, Health Damages, And Approaches To Dismantling

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Systemic And Structural Racism: Definitions, Examples, Health Damages, And Approaches To Dismantling

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October 2, 2023

Your waffle cone just got even sweeter! From Oct. 3 to 17, we're donating $1 for every waffle cone purchased in Scoop Shops to Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization working to progress human rights and build power in local communities.

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Yes, systemic racism is real. And people of color - African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other minorities - face it every day. We still have a lot of work to do, America. The good news: by speaking up about it, you can be part of the solution.

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My Part of the Story--Exploring Identity in the United States.pdf

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1. Create an identity chart for Chimamanda Adichie. Which labels on the chart represent how she sees her own identity? Which ones represent how some others view her?

2. What does Adichie mean by a “single story”? What examples does she give? Why does she believe “single stories” are dangerous?

3. Is there a single story that others often use to define you? Can you think of other examples of “single stories” that may be part of your own worldview? Where do those “single stories” come from? How can we find a “balance of stories”?

4. Adichie herself admits to sometimes defining others with a single story. Why is it that people sometimes make the same mistakes that they so easily see others making?

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

[APPLAUSE]

I am a storyteller. And I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call the danger of the single story. I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two. Although, I think four is probably close to the truth.

So I was an early reader. And what I read were British and American children's books. I was also an early writer. And when I began to write at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading.

All my characters were white and blue-eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. And they talked a lot about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out.

[LAUGHTER]

Now, this, despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria, I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn't have snow. We ate mangoes. And we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to. My characters also drank a lot of ginger beer, because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was.

[LAUGHTER]

And for many years afterwards, I would have a desperate desire to taste ginger beer. But that is another story. What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books, by their very nature, had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.

Now, things changed when I discovered African books. There weren't many of them available. And they weren't quite as easy to find as the foreign books. But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature.

I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized.

Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: it saved me from having a single story of what books are.

I come from a conventional middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator. And so we had, as was the norm, live-in domestic help who would often come from nearby rural villages.

So the year I turned eight, we got a new house boy. His name was Fide. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor.

My mother sent yams and rice and our old clothes to his family. And when I didn't finish my dinner, my mother would say, finish your food. Don't you know people like Fide's family have nothing?

So I felt enormous pity for Fide's family. Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit. And his mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket made of dyed raffia that his brother had made.

I was startled. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor.

Their poverty was my single story of them. Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19.

My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my tribal music and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey.

[LAUGHTER]

She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this. She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me as an African was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity.

My roommate had a single story of Africa, a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.

I must say that before I went to the US, I didn't consciously identify as African. But in the US, whenever Africa came up, people turned to me, never mind that I knew nothing about places like Namibia. But I did come to embrace this new identity. And in many ways, I think of myself now as African.

Although, I still get quite irritable when Africa is referred to as a country. The most recent example being my otherwise wonderful flight from Lagos two days ago in which there was an announcement on the Virgin flight about their charity walk in India, Africa, and other countries.

[LAUGHTER]

So after I had spent some years in the US as an African, I began to understand my roommate's response to me. If I had not grown up in Nigeria and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I, too, would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves, and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.

I would see Africans in the same way that I as a child had seen Fide's family. This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature. Now, here's a quote from the writing of a London merchant called John Lok who sailed to West Africa in 1561 and kept a fascinating account of his voyage.

After referring to the black Africans as beasts who have no houses, he writes, "they are also people without heads, having their mouths and eyes in their breasts." Now, I've laughed every time I've read this. And one must admire the imagination of John Lok. But what is important about his writing is that it represents the beginning of a tradition of telling African stories in the West, a tradition of sub-Saharan Africa as a place of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet Rudyard Kipling, are "half-devil, half-child."

And so I began to realize that my American roommate must have, throughout her life, seen and heard different versions of this single story, as had a professor who once told me that my novel was not authentically African. Now, I was quite willing to contend that there were a number of things wrong with the novel-- that it had failed in a number of places. But I had not quite imagined that it had failed at achieving something called African authenticity.

In fact, I did not know what African authenticity was. The professor told me that my characters were too much like him, an educated and middle-class man. My characters drove cars. They were not starving. Therefore, they were not authentically African.

But I must quickly add that I, too, am just as guilty on the question of the single story. A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the US. The political climate in the US at the time was tense, and there were debates going on about immigration.

And, as often happens in America, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the health care system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing. I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara watching the people going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing.

I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrant.

I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. So that is how to create a single story. Show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again, and that is what they become.

It is impossible to talk about a single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is nkali. It's a noun that loosely translates to "to be greater than another."

Like our economic and political worlds, stories, too, are defined by the principle of nkali. How they are told, who tells them, when they are told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly." Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.

I recently spoke at a university where a student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called American Psycho--

[LAUGHTER]

--and that it was such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.

[LAUGHTER]

Now, now--

[APPLAUSE]

Now, obviously, I said this in a fit of mild irritation. But--

[LAUGHTER]

--it would never have occurred to me to think that just because I had read a novel in which a character was a serial killer, that he was somehow representative of all Americans. And now this is not because I am a better person than that student, but because of America's cultural and economic power, I had many stories of America. I had read Tyler, Updike, and Steinbeck, and Gaitskill. I did not have a single story of America.

When I learned some years ago that writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoods to be successful, I began to think about how I could invent horrible things my parents had done to me.

[LAUGHTER]

But the truth is that I had a very happy childhood full of laughter and love in a very close-knit family. But I also had grandfathers who died in refugee camps. My cousin Polle died, because he could not get adequate health care. One of my closest friends, Okoloma, died in a plane crash because our fire trucks did not have water.

I grew up under repressive military governments that devalued education, so that sometimes my parents were not paid their salaries. And so as a child, I saw jam disappear from the breakfast table. Then margarine disappeared, then bread became too expensive. Then milk became rationed. And most of all, a kind of normalized political fear invaded our lives.

All of these stories make me who I am. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and to overlook the many other stories that formed me.

The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Of course, Africa is a continent full of catastrophes. The immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo, and depressing ones, such as the fact that 5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria. But there are other stories that are not about catastrophe. And it is very important, it is just as important, to talk about them.

I've always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of dignity.

It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar. So what if before my Mexican trip I had followed the immigration debate from both sides, the US and the Mexican?

What if my mother had told us that Fide's family was poor and hardworking? What if we had an African television network that broadcast diverse African stories all over the world, what the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls a balance of stories?

What if my roommate knew about my Nigerian publisher, Muhtar Bakare, a remarkable man who left his job in a bank to follow his dream and start a publishing house? Now, the conventional wisdom was that Nigerians don't read literature. He disagreed. He felt that people who could read would read if you made literature affordable and available to them.

Shortly after he published my first novel, I went to a TV station in Lagos to do an interview. And a woman who worked there as a messenger came up to me and said, I really liked your novel. I didn't like the ending. Now, you must write a sequel, and this is what will happen.

[LAUGHTER]

And she went on to tell me what to write in the sequel. Now, I was not only charmed. I was very moved. Here was a woman, part of the ordinary masses of Nigerians who were not supposed to be readers. She had not only read the book, but she had taken ownership of it and felt justified in telling me what to write in the sequel.

Now, what if my roommate knew about my friend Funmi Iyanda, a fearless woman who hosts a TV show in Lagos and is determined to tell the stories that we prefer to forget? What if my roommate knew about the heart procedure that was performed in the Lagos hospital last week?

What if my roommate knew about contemporary Nigerian music, talented people singing in English, and Pidgin, and Igbo, and Yoruba and Ijo, mixing influences from Jay-Z to Fela to Bob Marley to their grandfathers?

What if my roommate knew about the female lawyer who recently went to court in Nigeria to challenge a ridiculous law that required women to get their husbands' consent before renewing their passports? What if my roommate knew about Nollywood, full of innovative people making films despite great technical odds, films are so popular that they really are the best example of Nigerians consuming what they produce? What if my roommate knew about my wonderfully ambitious hair braider, who has just started her own business selling hair extensions, or about the millions of other Nigerians who start businesses and sometimes fail, but continue to nurse ambition?

Every time I am home, I am confronted with the usual sources of irritation for most Nigerians-- our failed infrastructure, our failed government-- but also by the incredible resilience of people who thrive despite the government rather than because of it. I teach writing workshops in Lagos every summer. And it is amazing to me how many people apply, how many people are eager to write, to tell stories. My Nigerian publisher and I have just started a non-profit called Farafina Trust. And we have big dreams of building libraries, and refurbishing libraries that already exist, and providing books for state schools that don't have anything in their libraries, and also of organizing lots and lots of workshops on reading and writing for all the people who are eager to tell our many stories.

Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.

The American writer Alice Walker wrote this about her Southern relatives who had moved to the North, and she introduced them to a book about the Southern life that they had left behind: "They sat around, reading the book themselves, listening to me read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained." I would like to end with this thought, that when we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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In her TED Talk, writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes the effects that labels can have on how we think about ourselves and others.

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In the wake of millions of people taking to the streets to protest police brutality against Black Americans - the most recent example of which involved the killing of George Floyd - and demand racial justice, white parents raising white children want to know how they can encourage the next generation to do better. The key: teaching anti-racism. As activist, scholar and writer Angela Davis has stated, "In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist."

The term has come to mean taking concrete action against racism and racist systems and policies versus passively claiming that you are not racist.

And kids ought to be a part of the conversation from a young age. "Children also often see and hear more than we think they do," explains educator Janet Wolfe, Head of The IDEAL School of Manhattan. "Avoiding conversations about anti-racism may leave white children with the sense that they do not have an essential role in making a change." On the flip side, talking to white children about anti-racism will give them confidence and tools for creating change. "When we discuss privilege and anti-racism with white children, we teach them perspective-taking, prepare them to serve actively as allies for people of color, and ensure that they will collaborate in the creation of a fair and democratic society," notes Wolfe.

Here, expert- and parent-approved tips for teaching your child to be anti-racist, based on their age.

How to teach your toddler

Start talking about differences when they are young. Erin Pahlke, an associate professor of psychology at Whitman College, whose research centers on how children form their views about race, has found that children notice race from a very young age. It's simply not true that children do not "see color."

"If parents don't talk to kids about race from a young age, they're behind," says Pahlke. "That's because by age 3-4, most white children have developed racial biases." She explains that the biases develop as a result of factors like exposure to media and experiences with segregation. Beginning conversations this young allows you to find out what your child actually thinks, notes Pahlke.

Talk about differences openly. Every parent of a toddler knows they might spontaneously comment on just about anything they see or hear. But should they blurt out something that's related to aspects of racial ethnic group differences (e.g., "That man has weird hair"), Pahlke encourages parents to resist the urge to silence them. "Instead, explain the difference and state your own view," she notes. "You might say, 'That man is African American, and his hair is not weird. His hair is different than yours, but I think that it is really great. People usually have hair like others in their family. You have hair like your [fill in the blank relative].'"

Consider the racial and ethnic diversity of their environment. "If as a white parent, I take my toddler to parks, supermarkets and events with only other white people, that sends a message," says Pahlke. "Research suggests that the racial composition of a white mom's friend group predicts her preschool child's racial attitudes. White parents of young children should take a step back and ask, 'What would someone guess my racial attitudes are based on where I go, what I do and who I spend time with?'"

Shivani Thaker, an Indian American mom from Chicago, is striving to find a diverse day care for her 11-month-old son by asking certain questions upfront. "We've already inquired about diverseness, the socioeconomic makeup and if the curriculum reflects diversity and ideals that we want to instill in our son," she says.

Select toys and media that include diverse characters. From books that have won the Coretta Scott King Award to Doc McStuffins or Elena of Avalor toys, kids' storytime and playtime lend themselves to learning. Thaker is working to expose her son to "diverse, amazing, and powerful people of color, especially Black leaders, activists and scholars."

She explains, "We regularly read and put up quotes from James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois, Audre Lorde, Essex Hemphill, Toni Morrison, the Black feminists and invisible Indian heroes like B.R. Ambedkar. We have been given and bought books that visually present the contributions and amazing accomplishments of people of color, like Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. We have a big framed poster of Barack Obama in his room and several pictures on his wall of other important leaders like Bayard Rustin and Tecumseh."

How to guide your elementary schooler

Have conversations about racism. Silence on race isn't necessarily a sign your elementary schooler doesn't have biases. Pahlke advises against assuming that they don't, as it's at this age that most white kids have learned that it is not appropriate to mention race.

It's also at this age that they're ready to have a conversation. "Books and movies can be powerful tools, especially if parents talk to kids afterward so they can both share their own views and clear up any misperceptions," suggests Pahlke.

Talking about what's happening in the world is crucial, too. "Kids will hear about what's going on in the world either from friends or from a radio/TV," says Pahlke. "So, parents really do need to talk to their kids about examples of racism in our world today."

No matter what inspires the conversations around racism, bear in mind that kids are ready for more than we sometimes give them credit for, says Pahlke. "Early elementary school aged kids will struggle to understand some of the nuances, but kids have overheard things and are ready to learn from the adults in their lives," she notes. That said, you could open up a dialogue by saying something as direct as, "Something happened today that demonstrates white privilege. Let me show you..." or "Sometimes people respond to the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' with 'All Lives Matter.' Let's talk about that."

Get involved in anti-racist action together. Kids this age are ready to join parents to take concrete action. Pahlke advises taking kids to protests, working with kids to write letters to legislators, exploring websites focused on the history of racism with kids and talking to kids about donations you're making.

This is an opportunity to set an example. "Kids are continually learning from what they observe," says Pahlke. "If I want to raise my child to advocate for justice, they need to see me advocating. For some of us, that means doing more. For others of us, that means making sure our kids know what we are doing. Talk to your kids about what's happening, what you would like to see changed and what you're doing to change it. Your example can serve as a powerful one for your kid."

And use these moments to keep the conversation going, says Kenneth J. Varner, a doctor of education and critical race theory and associate professor of literacy at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. "Encourage questions and avoid oversimplification," he recommends. "Even little children can handle big conversations when done with care and focus.""

How to go deeper with a tween or teen

Work to fill knowledge gaps. Although kids have the cognitive abilities to understand systemic racism as they enter middle school, your white child likely won't truly understand the repercussions of racism. "Research suggests that white tweens tend to have less elaborate understandings of racism that their non-white peers," explains Pahlke.

For this reason, she suggests asking older children what they know and where they might need more information, helping them understand history and context. You can then make an effort to fill in those gaps together. "Listen to the 1619 podcasts together, for example, so that you can both learn more and demonstrate your commitment to learning," says Pahlke.

Get real about history. Varner urges parents to work with their child to bust myths that often crop up in their history textbooks, in order to prevent mistruths from becoming the bedrock for their understanding of racism and oppression. For example, Rosa Parks didn't stay seated at the front of the bus because she was tired. "That is a narrative that is often replicated to children," explains Varner. "Rosa Parks was a systematic and conscientious actress in the fight against inequality and made conscientious choices about her behavior. These myths and lies need to be dispelled, and children need robust exposure to accurate history."

Travel can also serve as a valuable opportunity to offer your children solid facts. Sasha Brown-Worsham, a U.K.-based mom of a 13-, 11- and 6-year-old, notes, "We spent some time in South Africa recently, and before we went, we all read Trevor Noah's Born a Crime. While there, we talked a lot about apartheid and used guides of Robbins Island and other sites that explained the country's history. We used that as a major tie-in to U.S. history."

Talk about the news and watch documentaries together. Anti-racism goes hand-in-hand with being an educated consumer of news and an informed citizen. For that reason, Wolfe recommends parents expose kids to diverse media sources, compare coverage of the same event across publications or news stations and discuss media biases. "Engage in respectful dialogue about candidates' positions on a variety of issues, fostering engagement in the democratic process," she suggests. "Combat the distress and feelings of helplessness that come from seeing images of racially motivated violence by teaching tweens and teens that they have a role in creating a more equal society."

Film can also facilitate learning. Dr. Anandhi Narasimhan, a Los Angeles-based double-board-certified psychiatrist, recommends watching and discussing age-appropriate movies and documentaries that highlight inequities and teach about civil rights. "Engage in discussions about civil rights leaders such as Gandhi, Mandela and Dr. King," she suggests.

This practice has proven helpful for Brown-Worsham who shares, "After George Floyd, we watched 'Just Mercy' as a family. We kept pausing to discuss the history and how it all ties together."

How parents can do their part

One of the main ways white parents will be able to teach their child to be anti-racist is by continuing to educate themselves. Thaker encourages other parents to engage in constant learning in order to "better reflect the values on anti-racism, allyship, tolerance and diversity that you want to reflect to your children."

Varner adds that the anti-racism work must also be ongoing. "Like any practice, this has to be a commitment. These are not conversations to be had when there is an event, a tragedy or a crisis," he notes. "This has to be ongoing work and has to be developed like any other muscle we develop."

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How white parents can teach their kids to be anti-racist

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In the wake of millions of people taking to the streets to protest police brutality against Black Americans - the most recent example of which involved the killing of George Floyd - and demand racial justice, white parents raising white children want to know how they can encourage the next generation to do better.

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First Encounters With Race and Racism: Teaching Ideas for Classroom Conversations (Published 2017)

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Using firsthand accounts from teenagers to guide classroom discussions around race and racism.

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Amid a national reckoning on race sparked by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black people, thousands of high school students joined demonstrations across the country against police abuse. Some are now leading campaigns to force their school districts to create anti-racist curricula.

Against that backdrop, Education Week spoke with 10 Black high school students from across the country about how they think issues of race and racism should be handled in school.

In the first two videos of this series, students tell educators what they need from their schools to feel safe and supported, and how they've experienced classroom discussions about race. The next two videos focus on students' views on the importance of having Black teachers, and the role of school police.

In alphabetical order, the students featured in the videos are:
Jaden Adeyemi, a senior at Highland High School in Albuquerque, N.M.; Helena Almaw, a senior at DSST: Green Valley Ranch High School in Denver; William Bell, a recent graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C.; Malik Coleman, a recent graduate of Fairfield Central High School in Winnsboro, S.C.; McKenzie Curry, a recent graduate of Shaker Heights High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio; Onome Grell, a senior at John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Roxbury, Mass.; Zoë Jenkins, a senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, Lexington, Ky; Davion Pilgrim, a junior at Morningside High School in Inglewood, Calif; Zion Sanders, a senior at Booker T. Washington High School in Miami; and Rena Mateja Walker Burr, a junior at Cleveland High School in Seattle.

Credits:
Video edited by: Bridget Fetsko
Text: Madeline Will, Catherine Gewertz, Sarah Schwartz

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Black Student Voices: Reflecting on Race and Racism in Schools

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Education Week spoke with 10 Black high school students from across the country about what they need from their schools to feel safe and supported.

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Why Is Race So Hard to Talk About? (Published 2017)

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What can you say, or do, to make conversations around race easier, smoother and less awkward?

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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How Should I Talk about Race in MyMostly White Classroom?

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How Should I Talk about Race in MyMostly White Classroom?

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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By Tom Vander Ark and Emily Liebtag
Winsome, invigorating and inspiring are all words to describe Larry Rosenstock, Founder of High Tech High (HTH).

Without a doubt, this man has dreams and knows how to make them come to reality. The captivating carpenter who had a dream to start a school where learning is a continuation of the city or place where the school is located. Where students use what is around them and within themselves, to deepen their understanding of where they live, where they come from and where they want to go in life. The "place" is your "palette."

In this podcast, you will hear from Larry as well as Jeff Robin, HTH Fine Arts Teacher and Chemist extraordinaire (see his website for a glimpse into what his teaching is like), and Kaleb Rashad, HTH Director and cheerleader for all things related to project-based learning and human-centered design. What isn't captured in this podcast or blog are the student voices, the incredible projects and deeper learning outcomes that are overwhelmingly visible on campus. If you ever get a chance, be sure to visit a High Tech campus.

"Make The City The Text"

In fact, Larry did make the city the text when he started High Tech High along with Gary Jacobs, developing it with a coalition of San Diego civic leaders in 2000.

Stumbling upon an old naval base that San Diego was begging for someone to repurpose, Larry decided it was the perfect place for a school. Rich with history and scars, this place would be perfect for students to build, design and work with their hands on integrated projects. The now thriving area of Point Loma in Liberty likely came to be successful because of the school campus.

Students frequently engage in projects tied to the local community and environment, ranging from exploring the local watershed to recreating field guides of local parks.

Larry isn't the only one with contagious energy and passion at HTH. All staff has a similar zeal and zest for learning, especially Director of HTH, Kaleb Rashad.

"Fall In Love With Everyone"

Imagine if that was your first charge from a new boss, the very first day on a new job-that was the case for Kaleb. Larry gave him those five words of advice and you better believe he is doing it. Good thing he is bold, vibrant and passionate, so this doesn't appear to be a hard feat for Kaleb. His passion and dedication to learning is contagious. A long-time educator and coach, Kaleb tries to stick to these three commitments as a leader and in working with teachers at HTH:

Give permission

Give protection

Reduce policies

Jeff Robin, HTH Fine Arts teacher, describes himself as a "guider" rather than a teacher or a lecturer. He's pictured below with information on the Stairway To Nowhere projects High Tech High students created. You can see this and many other amazing projects like it on his website.

For more, see:
Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update

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Getting Smart Podcast | Making the City the Text at High Tech High

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By Tom Vander Ark & Emily Liebtag - HTH leaders discuss student projects, starting new schools and why the city the school is located in is so important.

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Just The Two Of Us | CoorDown | World Down Syndrome Day 2022

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Like many autistic women and nonbinary people of color, I didn't find out I was autistic until many years after the average white autistic man usually does in early childhood. I was 13 instead of 3, and that's still actually quite early compared to many other autistic people of color. Some do not get diagnosed until late adulthood.

Students of color - especially Black, Brown, and Native students - are disproportionately over- and under-identified as disabled throughout their schooling. School systems administrators are quick to make spurious diagnoses of stigmatized and criminalized disabilities for students of color. They're also far less likely to accurately identify learning and developmental disabilities when actually present in the same population.

Most people associate autism and ADD mainly or entirely with white boys, who in turn are seen in need of services and help. It's a stark contrast to the consistent deprivation and denial of resources, suspicion of malingering or fraud, and open criminalization to which disabled students of color are consistently subjected.

I even remember when my family was trying to advocate for an IEP for me in eighth grade. The school's psychologist amazingly insisted that I couldn't actually be autistic - instead, because I was adopted transracially and transnationally, he believed that I had reactive attachment disorder and therefore did not qualify for services. Having now actually represented disabled students in their IEP processes as the attorney, I'm impressed by exactly how wrong both the school and its psychologist were. Even if an RAD diagnosis were my only accurate one, it would still be a qualifying disability. More than simply being wrong on the law though, this experience only emphasized and exemplified the complex forms of racism and ableism ubiquitous in popular culture regarding both adoption and autism.

These ableist and racist value systems, endemic and pervasive in society, lead to catastrophic consequences in far too many young people's lives. The Department of Education's annual civil rights data collection consistently shows that Black and Latinx disabled students face the highest rates of suspensions, expulsions, and in-school arrests compared to any other group. According to studies detailed in Spectrum News, autistic people are more likely than non-autistic people to experience anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and trauma - and to report severe bullying. Likewise, people of color also experience higher rates of trauma caused by " race-based stress," or the mentally exhausting effects of encountering daily racism.

The students I worked with as a lawyer were all disabled and almost all Black. They were often suspended, expelled, and criminally charged for manufactured offenses and perceived noncompliance. One was charged with assault because of a friendly snowball fight. Another had probation revoked for violating a mandatory condition - school attendance - when they were late for class by two minutes, and knocking on the locked door led to a suspension for disrupting class. Another was sent to an alternative school (euphemism for a more overtly jail-like school) for defending themselves against a group of persistent bullies who repeatedly attacked them and even followed them home - and none of the bullies were punished. Another was functionally expelled after two years of racist harassment targeting both the student and parent. Another was forbidden from going to classes after a white woman therapist claimed he was masturbating in front of her when he fell asleep. And some school officials invariably treated all of their parents with the same contempt as they did the students themselves, sometimes even extending that contempt to me as well.

What many therapists - and others in what we like to call the "helping professions" - often don't understand is that we need systemic, societal change much more than we need individual behavior "correction." Today, many more clinicians understand that behavior is communication, but not enough do the extra work to understand the systemic, systematic, structural, and institutional oppression of racism and ableism that pervade disabled people of color's entire lives. In an ideal world - one in which neither racism nor ableism exist anymore - many of us will still want and need supports and services that respect our autonomy and dignity. But in the process of making that world, we need people in the helping professions to explicitly and open align themselves against oppression and with marginalized and targeted communities. This starts with consistently believing disabled people of color about our own experiences and using their power, privilege, and resources to support the work we are already doing.

For three years, I led the team that published the first-ever anthology entirely by autistic people of color and otherwise negatively racialized autistic people. We published this book in 2017, more than a half century after the earliest discussions about neurodiversity as a concept. The anthology came into being because of the extreme dearth of resources by and for autistic people of color. We wanted the anthology to exist as an educational tool for our would-be allies, but more importantly, we wanted it to serve as a tangible and permanent piece of evidence for others like us to know that we exist. One year after publication, I was able to use a small grant to launch the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color's Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment - a project many of us had envisioned for years to serve our community through direct mutual aid and redistribution of resources.

Our advocacy and community building work also take place within the same profoundly racist and ableist strictures as affect the rest of our lives. Although 61 different people's work appears in the anthology, and the Fund has given out over $25,000 to hundreds of community members, we have been unable to secure institutional support for the anthology or any further grant money for the Fund. We rely almost entirely on an already disproportionately unemployed, under-employed, and precariously employed community to self-fund the Fund. And we witness continually the devastating impacts of compounded racism and ableism in grantees' lives - autistic people of color who apply tell us about mounting medical bills, unpaid rent, court imposed fines, and inability to access food, clothing, or medication because of abusive parents, partners, and sometimes, medical providers. Many tell us that they have never received any support or assistance before of any kind, and never expected to.

The histories of ableism and racism are co-dependent and intertwined. Those histories inform and underly the inequities and injustices facing disabled people of color in both our individual lives and in our advocacy work. The definition of disability under global white supremacy is rooted in whiteness. Both disabledness and abledness are defined based on proximity to and approximation of whiteness as an idea. What that means is that to be defined as fully nondisabled requires being white - white disabled people's disabilities detract from their whiteness, and disabled people of color's disabilities accentuate our supposed inferiority and in-humanity due to race. And even people of color who are not disabled will be harmed by ableism because it is a value system about people's bodily worth.

This is what I mean when I say that we cannot talk about disability honestly and fully without talking about race. I mean that forced sterilization still happens today, and has always relied on characterizing Black, Native, and Latinx women specifically as sexually promiscuous, criminal, and mentally defective. I mean that social workers and child "welfare" agencies still target Black, Native, and Latinx families for increased surveillance, and frequently rely on psychiatric diagnoses to justify removing children from their homes and institutionalizing them. I mean that in those very same systems, Black and Native parents are also less likely to be allowed to adopt children too - and that all of this takes place with the transnational and transracial adoption industry often functioning as a legal form of child trafficking. I mean that immigration rules that screen out people based on fear they will become "a public charge" (that is, use social services or receive public assistance) are rooted in historical white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and ableism. And I mean that even how most people talk about COVID-19 (and even Chinese restaurants) reveals racist, ableist beliefs about East Asian people as dirty, tainted, or contaminated.

We are long past the "diversity and inclusion" point. We do not want or need to be the extra diversity spice in overwhelmingly white, nondisabled spaces. We do not want or need to be included into oppressive systems. Sensitivity training does not help. Pipeline programs without critical analysis only uphold existing systems. The entire occupational therapy profession's purpose and role must change. It is irresponsible and dangerous to proceed as if assisting disabled people can take place in a vacuum - everything that therapists, teachers, and other professionals do takes place in context. The profession must exist not merely to support individual autistic and other disabled people, but to align with our work to end the violent conditions that we contend with and make a better world possible and real.

For those excited about joining and supporting this work, here are a few resources just as starting points.

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We can't address disability without addressing race. - Learn Play Thrive

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We can't address disability without addressing race. Here's why. Guest post by Lydia X. Z. Brown, autistic attorney and disability justice advocate. Like many autistic women and nonbinary people of color, I didn't find out I was autistic until many years after the average white autistic man usually does in early childhood.

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ADA Compliance Division intern, Caitlyn Johnson, prepared a detailed fact sheet highlighting the intersectionality of Black and disability identities as well as recognizing the disparities that exist in these communities. The piece originally ran in the ADA Compliance Division newsletter that goes to state ADA Compliance Coordinators (ADACs) in every department. MDNR then shared the piece with members of their staff involved with disability-related matters.

Nationally, approximately 5.6 million African Americans have a disability, and in Michigan, roughly one third have a disability. Having a combination of these identities often results in increased inequities, specifically in education, employment, healthcare, and interactions with law enforcement.
In education:

Black students with disabilities are disproportionately suspended in school. More than 1 in 4 boys of color with disabilities and nearly 1 in 5 girls of color with disabilities receive an out-of-school suspension.

57% of Black students with disabilities graduate high school compared to 74.6% of Black students without disabilities.

In employment:

There are 3.4 million African Americans with disabilities of working age.

Only 28.7% of working-age African Americans with disabilities are employed while 72% of working-age African Americans without disabilities are employed.

Approximately 40% of African Americans with disabilities are living in poverty compared to 22% of African Americans without disabilities.

In healthcare:

Many people who are Black/African American and have disabilities have chronic underlying health conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19.

African Americans are less likely to have access to COVID-19 testing resources and they receive worse care when they do have access.

Blacks are disproportionately represented in settings where the risk of COVID-19 is highest (i.e., correctional facilities and congregate care).

In law enforcement interactions:

Racial profiling remains a persistent issue in policing. African Americans with disabilities may be unable to understand or cooperate with law enforcement orders.

People who are deaf may not be able to hear or understand orders, while someone with mental or cognitive disabilities may not respond well to officers.

Police officers who lack appropriate training or cultural understanding to work with people with disabilities and/or the African American community may have their preconceptions exacerbated when interacting with these individuals. This can lead to unnecessarily violent or even fatal outcomes.

Recognizing and understanding the intersection of identities and the realities that come with it can be a huge first step in addressing disparities and challenging biases.

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The Intersectionality of Race and Disability

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ADA Compliance Division intern, Caitlyn Johnson, prepared a detailed fact sheet highlighting the intersectionality of Black and disability identities as well as recognizing the disparities that exist in these communities. The piece originally ran in the ADA Compliance Division newsletter that goes to state ADA Compliance Coordinators (ADACs) in every department.

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The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

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Neurodiversity, Race and Culture with Jannett Morgan - Diverse Minds

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In this podcast Jannett Morgan talks about neurodiversity, race and culture and shares tips about what we can do for Dyslexia Awareness Week.

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Professor Alfredo J. Artiles discusses the complexities in creating inclusive policies for students with disabilities.

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Confronting special education's race problem

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Shaffer says classroom interactions like this could ultimately lead a teacher to recommend special education testing, putting the student a risk for misidentification. And it could be the same for a host of other innocuous behaviors. A young student showing up to preschool struggling to use scissors could be taken as evidence of a learning delay.

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By Renee Bakis

Neurodiversity is a term we are all starting to become more familiar with, we hear it talked about in the news and on social media, but are we doing enough to normalise it? Neurodiversity at its simplest refers to the variations in neurocognitive functions within the human population, the idea behind the term is to normalise the differences in brain function rather than seeing them as deficits or a disability, much like the way we consider gender or ethnicity to be a normal human variation. However, in this fight to normalise neurodivergence, we have missed mark in terms of equal representation and support for individuals across the board, and this is something felt by the Black community more than most.

Black individuals are often not treated with the same level of compassion as their Whiter counterparts, and that is no different when it comes to neurodivergence and mental healthcare. Amongst the five broad ethnic groups, known rates of detention for the 'Black or Black British' group (321.7 detentions per 100,000 population) were over four times those of the White group (73.4 per 100,000 population). This is one of the key facts highlighted in the Mental Health Act Statistics, Annual Figures 2019-20 for NHS England, and it is a prime example of how intersectionality in healthcare affects the level of care received by the Black community. Conditions such as Autism or ADHD often go hand in hand with other mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, yet despite this link, mental illness is often overlooked. Additionally, undiagnosed neuro conditions can also be masked by mental health conditions, which only adds to the trouble of getting the appropriate care for those who need it. Despite the fact there are no published statistics on diagnosis by ethnicity, it is still clear from the high number of Black bodies currently detained under the Mental Health Act that there is a distinct link between Black Neurodivergence and inequality when compared with other ethnic groups.

This doesn't just apply in just a hospital setting, when looking at the statistics on Community Treatment Order's (CTO), it has shown that "Amongst broad ethnic groups, known rates of CTO use for the 'Black or Black British' group (61.3 uses per 100,000 population) were over ten times the rate for the White group (6.0 uses per 100,000 population)". This is a significant difference that highlights that even out in the community, there is a disproportionate number of black patients with mental illness who have left hospital but still require further management or treatment. This is ironically at odds with the ongoing stigma that the Black community is reluctant to engage with mental health services, because as the statistics show, they are more likely to have professional input compared to other ethnic groups.

It does however highlight something worrying, and that is how the statistics indicate that the number of black people who are already at crisis point by the time they engage with mental or social services is high. Despite the focus on mental health and the awareness surrounding mental illness and neurodiversity, there is still not enough representation and support available for those who don't tick all the boxes. The lack of public acknowledgement and acceptance surrounding neurodiversity in the Black community is a contributing factor to the societal imbalances they face.

Even in my personal experience, I have worked with many individuals who have been labelled as "difficult" or "problematic" in relation to their neuro conditions, which is a common stereotype when discussing neurodiversity in general and is a separate problematic issue in itself. What has been the most shocking bit for me is how often these remarks were "justified" based on factors such as ethnicity or status. I have had multiple discussions in which developmental issues, especially regarding the younger generation, are often dismissed early on as being related to socioeconomic reasons instead of a genuine need for medical care, and the same is equal for the older generation. Things are often put down to excuses such as there being a "language barrier" or "cultural differences'' with BAME patients, as it is often easier to blame external factors that are considered "common knowledge" than to address deep rooted issues of racial bias or stereotyping. Racism has no place in the discussion of neurodiversity, as it affects everyone no matter your background or ethnicity, yet there is a lot of racial bias and discrimination that needs to be addressed as these harmful assumptions and stereotypes are very damaging and take away from the equality and acceptance we are trying to achieve.

In short, there just simply isn't enough being done to represent and support Black Neurodiversity. There is a notable lack of dedicated resources and research available to the BAME community, and this goes hand in hand with the lack of awareness and acceptance as there is not enough representation in the media to change the narrative and normalise Black Neurodiversity.

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Black Neurodiversity: The Intersectionality and Representation of Neurodivergence in the Community - Elevate Young Minds

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By Renee Bakis Neurodiversity is a term we are all starting to become more familiar with, we hear it talked about in the news and on social media, but are we doing enough to normalise it?

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A reflection on being Black and neurodivergent

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To dismantle racism and ableism, we must address intersectional neurodiversity

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Being Black and disabled is a constant struggle.

When Angel Love Miles arrived at Penn State in 1998, she realized she was going to have to fight to finish school. To begin with, Miles was a low-income Black student, and Penn State was mostly white. In addition, she has spina bifida, a condition that affects spinal development in utero. In Miles's case, this means she uses crutches or a wheelchair.

As a child, she had gone to a school for children with disabilities. Her school had an accessible playground with wheelchair swings, physical and occupational therapists, and a shop where she could get her wheelchair or crutches fixed.

Penn State was different. There was a van for students with disabilities, but waiting for it often made her late for class. She remembers waiting once for the campus bus. When she asked the driver to lower the wheelchair ramp for her, he said, "I don't want you on my bus," and drove away.

She pushed for the services she needed, and eventually, she finished college and went on to get her doctorate in women's studies. Today she's a social-justice advocate and policy analyst who specializes in intersectional and critical disability theory approaches.

"I became an advocate not because I wanted to but because I had to, to survive," Miles told me. "I was not very outspoken at all. But if you're trying to get home and the bus keeps passing you up because you're in a wheelchair, you have to scream out."

Miles's story is emblematic of what it's like to be Black and disabled in America: Every day is a struggle to not get left behind.

According to American Community Survey data, 14 percent of Black Americans have a disability, compared with 12.6 percent of the overall population. Thirty-six percent of disabled Black Americans live in poverty, compared with 26 percent of all disabled Americans. Disabled Black people often have to battle harder to get correct diagnoses and services. This is especially true for "invisible disabilities" such as autism, which educators are more likely to dismiss as behavioral issues in Black children than in white ones.

Black people with disabilities are especially likely to have issues with police officers, who can misinterpret their behavior-such as a deaf person who keeps walking when told to stop-as a threat. When law enforcement assumes a Black person's failure to comply is because of aggression rather than a disability, the consequences can be deadly. Black Americans in general are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be killed by a police officer.

None of this is that surprising. For centuries, white Americans treated Black people as less than human, as bodies valued only for the work they could do, Jane Dunhamn, the director of the National Black Disability Coalition, told me. Today Black people with disabilities are still doubly marginalized, by both racism and ableism. While America has undergone social and racial reckonings with the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, we've yet to see something similar with the disability movement. Many disability activists want to change this narrative but wonder why it's taking so long. What does this failure say about us as a society?

In many ways, the disability-rights movement was modeled after the civil-rights movement. Americans with disabilities used to be tucked out of sight in asylums and institutions, or even put on display at the circus. In the 1940s and '50s, disabled World War II veterans pressured the government to provide services such as vocational training and rehabilitation. In the '60s and '70s, activists fought for disabled children to be included in schools instead of relegated to institutions and asylums, and lobbied the government to make public spaces more accessible with measures such as ramps and curb cuts on sidewalks. In 1973, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act; Section 504 mandated equal opportunity for employment and prohibited discrimination against the disabled by any entity that received federal funds. Some of the language in the law came straight from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But for years it wasn't enforced. In 1977, disability-rights activists staged protests across the country to push the government to act, including a four-week sit-in at the San Francisco office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Kitty Cone, one of the organizers of the sit-in, wrote, "We felt ourselves the descendants of the civil rights movement." She described how disability activists drew inspiration from the civil-rights movement's sit-ins, and even sang freedom songs to keep their spirits up during their protests.

The Black Panthers, in an effort led by the group member Brad Lomax, who had multiple sclerosis, brought meals and other supplies to the protesters. Lomax was part of a delegation to Washington, D.C., that pressured the government to write regulations laying out what constituted discrimination, instead of leaving the interpretation of Section 504 up to judges.

Fifteen years later, the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act broadened these reforms to include compliance in private institutions and workplaces. But even today, many spaces remain inaccessible. And Black people with disabilities face many subtler kinds of exclusion.

Leroy F. Moore Jr., a Black activist with cerebral palsy, told me it is isolating to be Black and disabled. Many in the Black community don't understand what it is like to have a disability. He spent most of his career in the nonprofit world, where his mostly white co-workers didn't understand the experience of being Black in America. "I was caught between two worlds," he told me.

As a result of these experiences, Moore helped found the disability-justice movement in the 2000s. Whereas previous disability activism focused on gaining rights, disability justice takes into account how identity-race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual orientation-affects a disabled person's experience, and how ableism intertwines with other systems of oppression. This approach is crucial, Moore told me, because race plays an enormous and still-underappreciated role in the experience of a disabled person who is a member of another minority group.

Black people with disabilities often struggle more than their white peers, whether it's to get a diagnosis or services, or to simply be seen as individuals. Austin Haynes is a 24-year-old operating-room nurse at Penn Medicine who struggled for years with undiagnosed ADHD. Haynes is Black and attended a primarily white high school in New Jersey. He always had a feeling that something was different: He had trouble concentrating, and studying felt harder than it should. "I had to reread things multiple times," he told me, "and if someone made a noise, I would be completely gone." He graduated from high school with a 2.5 G.P.A.

When he was a sophomore in college, Haynes read about ADHD and realized that he might have it himself. He finally got a diagnosis, a prescription for Adderall, and studying strategies, which helped him focus and raise his grades. He graduated from college and enrolled in a nursing program, graduating with a 3.4 G.P.A. Sometimes he wonders why getting help took so long: "Why did I have to not excel in school even though I knew I was smart enough? I knew I had the capability to do so much better. And I think race had a huge role in not being diagnosed properly."

Systemic racism and ableism don't just result in denied services and poorer outcomes. Jevon Okundaye, a 24-year-old Black man with autism, worries that one day he'll be stopped by a police officer and his lack of eye contact will be perceived as a threat. Okundaye, who graduated from Tufts University in 2019 with a degree in English and Africana Studies and works now as a fellow focusing on race and disability for the nonprofit group Massachusetts Advocates for Children, carries an autism ID card in his wallet but isn't sure that will offer any protection. "If I were to pull it out in a panic, a police officer might think I'm reaching for a weapon," he told me. Okundaye hopes that if the cops ever stop him, they'll give him a chance to explain his diagnosis.

Some Black disability activists I spoke with lamented the movement's failure to understand how identity, particularly race, complicates disability. Racism and ableism are similar, in the sense that they foist society's limitations-in imagination and in empathy-onto individuals who don't look or act like everyone else. Keith Jones, a Black activist with cerebral palsy, drove home this point: "Am I the problem, or is society the problem?"

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Being Black and disabled is a constant struggle. When Angel Love Miles arrived at Penn State in 1998, she realized she was going to have to fight to finish school. To begin with, Miles was a low-income Black student, and Penn State was mostly white.

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Is "critical race theory" a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against white people? Liberals and conservatives are in sharp disagreement.

In truth, the divides are not nearly as neat as they may seem. The events of the last decade have increased public awareness about things like housing segregation, the impacts of criminal justice policy in the 1990s, and the legacy of enslavement on Black Americans. But there is much less consensus on what the government's role should be in righting these past wrongs. Add children and schooling into the mix and the debate becomes especially volatile.

School boards, superintendents, even principals and teachers are already facing questions about critical race theory, and there are significant disagreements even among experts about its precise definition as well as how its tenets should inform K-12 policy and practice. This explainer is meant only as a starting point to help educators grasp core aspects of the current debate.

Just what is critical race theory anyway?

Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.

A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.

Today, those same patterns of discrimination live on through facially race-blind policies, like single-family zoning that prevents the building of affordable housing in advantaged, majority-white neighborhoods and, thus, stymies racial desegregation efforts.

CRT also has ties to other intellectual currents, including the work of sociologists and literary theorists who studied links between political power, social organization, and language. And its ideas have since informed other fields, like the humanities, the social sciences, and teacher education.

This academic understanding of critical race theory differs from representation in recent popular books and, especially, from its portrayal by critics-often, though not exclusively, conservative Republicans. Critics charge that the theory leads to negative dynamics, such as a focus on group identity over universal, shared traits; divides people into "oppressed" and "oppressor" groups; and urges intolerance.

Thus, there is a good deal of confusion over what CRT means, as well as its relationship to other terms, like "anti-racism" and "social justice," with which it is often conflated.

To an extent, the term "critical race theory" is now cited as the basis of all diversity and inclusion efforts regardless of how much it's actually informed those programs.

One conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation, recently attributed a whole host of issues to CRT, including the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organizations, California's recent ethnic studies model curriculum, the free-speech debate on college campuses, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline-such as the Promise program in Broward County, Fla., that some parents blame for the Parkland school shootings. "When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based," the organization claimed.

(A good parallel here is how popular ideas of the common core learning standards grew to encompass far more than what those standards said on paper.)

Does critical race theory say all white people are racist? Isn't that racist, too?

The theory says that racism is part of everyday life, so people-white or nonwhite-who don't intend to be racist can nevertheless make choices that fuel racism.

Some critics claim that the theory advocates discriminating against white people in order to achieve equity. They mainly aim those accusations at theorists who advocate for policies that explicitly take race into account. (The writer Ibram X. Kendi, whose recent popular book How to Be An Antiracist suggests that discrimination that creates equity can be considered anti-racist, is often cited in this context.)

Fundamentally, though, the disagreement springs from different conceptions of racism. CRT puts an emphasis on outcomes, not merely on individuals' own beliefs, and it calls on these outcomes to be examined and rectified. Among lawyers, teachers, policymakers, and the general public, there are many disagreements about how precisely to do those things, and to what extent race should be explicitly appealed to or referred to in the process.

All these different ideas grow out of longstanding, tenacious intellectual debates. Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism-tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear.

What does any of this have to do with K-12 education?

Scholars who study critical race theory in education look at how policies and practices in K-12 education contribute to persistent racial inequalities in education, and advocate for ways to change them. Among the topics they've studied: racially segregated schools, the underfunding of majority-Black and Latino school districts, disproportionate disciplining of Black students, barriers to gifted programs and selective-admission high schools, and curricula that reinforce racist ideas.

Critical race theory is not a synonym for culturally relevant teaching, which emerged in the 1990s. This teaching approach seeks to affirm students' ethnic and racial backgrounds and is intellectually rigorous. But it's related in that one of its aims is to help students identify and critique the causes of social inequality in their own lives.

Many educators support, to one degree or another, culturally relevant teaching and other strategies to make schools feel safe and supportive for Black students and other underserved populations. (Students of color make up the majority of school-aged children.) But they don't necessarily identify these activities as CRT-related.

As one teacher-educator put it: "The way we usually see any of this in a classroom is: 'Have I thought about how my Black kids feel? And made a space for them, so that they can be successful?' That is the level I think it stays at, for most teachers." Like others interviewed for this explainer, the teacher-educator did not want to be named out of fear of online harassment.

An emerging subtext among some critics is that curricular excellence can't coexist alongside culturally responsive teaching or anti-racist work. Their argument goes that efforts to change grading practices or make the curriculum less Eurocentric will ultimately harm Black students, or hold them to a less high standard.

As with CRT in general, its popular representation in schools has been far less nuanced. A recent poll by the advocacy group Parents Defending Education claimed some schools were teaching that "white people are inherently privileged, while Black and other people of color are inherently oppressed and victimized"; that "achieving racial justice and equality between racial groups requires discriminating against people based on their whiteness"; and that "the United States was founded on racism."

Thus much of the current debate appears to spring not from the academic texts, but from fear among critics that students-especially white students-will be exposed to supposedly damaging or self-demoralizing ideas.

While some district officials have issued mission statements, resolutions, or spoken about changes in their policies using some of the discourse of CRT, it's not clear to what degree educators are explicitly teaching the concepts, or even using curriculum materials or other methods that implicitly draw on them. For one thing, scholars say, much scholarship on CRT is written in academic language or published in journals not easily accessible to K-12 teachers.

What is going on with these proposals to ban critical race theory in schools?

The bills are so vaguely written that it's unclear what they will affirmatively cover.

Could a teacher who wants to talk about a factual instance of state-sponsored racism-like the establishment of Jim Crow, the series of laws that prevented Black Americans from voting or holding office and separated them from white people in public spaces-be considered in violation of these laws?

It's also unclear whether these new bills are constitutional, or whether they impermissibly restrict free speech.

It would be extremely difficult, in any case, to police what goes on inside hundreds of thousands of classrooms. But social studies educators fear that such laws could have a chilling effect on teachers who might self-censor their own lessons out of concern for parent or administrator complaints.

The laws could also become a tool to attack other pieces of the curriculum, including ethnic studies and "action civics"-an approach to civics education that asks students to research local civic problems and propose solutions.

How is this related to other debates over what's taught in the classroom amid K-12 culture wars?

The charge that schools are indoctrinating students in a harmful theory or political mindset is a longstanding one, historians note. CRT appears to be the latest salvo in this ongoing debate.

In history, the debates have focused on the balance among patriotism and American exceptionalism, on one hand, and the country's history of exclusion and violence towards Indigenous people and the enslavement of African Americans on the other-between its ideals and its practices. Those tensions led to the implosion of a 1994 attempt to set national history standards.

The culture wars are always, at some level, battled out within schools, historians say.

"It's because they're nervous about broad social things, but they're talking in the language of school and school curriculum," said one historian of education. "That's the vocabulary, but the actual grammar is anxiety about shifting social power relations."

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What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

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Here's what you need to understand about the academic concept-and how it's portrayed in political circles.

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Critical race theory: Experts break down what it actually means

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what is critical race theory - Google Search

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Debates about critical race theory are coming to your district, board room, and classroom. Here’s what you need to understand about the…

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What critical race theory is really about | CNN Politics

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As critical race theory becomes increasingly politicized and attacked by Republicans, CNN's Jason Carroll explains what the concept is, and what it isn't.

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The following guidelines are suggestions for writing, reporting, and speaking to or about people with disabilities. As language evolves, we will continue to update this information and invite others to let us know your thoughts about language.

Something you can do today is avoid using the terms special needs and special education. Instead, use access needs, education, and education for student with disabilities. If you are referring to terms used in federal legislation or statutory language, you put the term in quotes or even footnote the term explaining that the language is outdated or archaic. Right now, there's federal legislation and statutory language that uses outdated terminology when it comes to disability. Updates to this language must be done by lawmakers and require legislative action and changes in the law. Please be aware that even though you may see archaic or offensive language in the law, it is not commonly used by the public and in some cases, shouldn't be.

First and foremost, refer to a person with a disability by their name.

Person-First vs. Identity-First Language

For many years, language used to describe people with disabilities emphasized or focused on their disability, rather than their personhood. A movement of advocates urged the adoption of language that focused on the person - person-first language, which uses possessive language to refer to disabilities (i.e. Jenny has a disability). Person-first language avoids putting a label or condition prior to an individual's name or title. Stated simply, person-first language places an individual prior to her or his disability:

Kate and Will's daughter, Judy, who has low vision, was accepted to Yale.

Dae, who has a mental illness, asked his employer for a reasonable accommodation of working remotely as needed.

Jenny, an 18-year-old soccer player, has a prosthetic limb.

More recently, a new generation has embraced their disabilities as an essential part of their identity and use identity-first language (i.e. Jenny is disabled):

Deaf individuals like Naeem often must make sure their smoke alarms have strobe alerts.

Gene, who is Autistic, uses his iPad to participate in discussions.

Carla is a disabled activist with a large Twitter following.

Recommendation: Ask the person you are speaking to or writing about how they wish to be identified. If you are unable to determine the preferred terminology of your subject, use person-first language. If you are going to use identity-first language, consider providing a disclaimer to your article like the Center for American Progress did in this October 2020 article.

Portrayal

Please consider the following when writing about people with disabilities:

Focus on the Issues

Unless it is crucial to a story, avoid tear-jerking human-interest stories about incurable diseases, congenital impairments, or severe injury. Focus instead on issues that affect the quality of life for those same individuals, such as accessible transportation, housing, affordable health care, employment opportunities, and discrimination.

People with disabilities should never be referred to as patients or cases unless their relationship with their doctor is under discussion. Don't imply that someone with a disability needs a "cure" or needs to be "fixed." No Pity is a popular concept in the disability community, a declaration that people aren't objects of pity - they're people with rights.

Think About Your Framing

When speaking to a person with a disability's success, avoid framing the success solely because the person has accomplished something "in spite" of their disability or "overcome" it. They aren't superhuman or heroes. In the same vein, avoid sensationalizing the disability experience itself. Don't use terms like "afflicted with," "suffers from," "victim of," "wheelchair-bound," etc. when referring to a person's disability.

Avoid Using Euphemisms

Don't use "differently-abled," "physically challenged," "handi-capable," or "special needs." Don't ever use "the r-word," or "crippled." Using these terms is considered condescending and offensive, implying that people with disabilities are somehow broken, less than or deficient. Disability is a natural part of the human experience.

Additional Resources

Disability Culture 101 by Virginia Knowlton Marcus

Choosing Words for Talking About Disability by the American Psychological Association

Disability Language Style Guide from the National Center on Disability and Journalism
Page last updated: October 27, 2020

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Communicating About People with Disabilities - NDRN

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Reporting and Writing About People with Disabilities

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4.5 Macdonald_Skillful Team Leader_Ch 5.pdf

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Disability Etiquette & Person First Language

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First Responders Disability Awareness Training | We are the nation's premier training program and resource for first responders to best serve & respond to individuals with disabilities

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The MN Gov. Council on Developmental Disabilities