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Ninth-grader Sadie Bauer was walking hand-in-hand with her girlfriend in a hallway of Kennewick High. It was a brave act of affection, considering bigoted attitudes toward same-sex relationships in this rural area of Washington State.

The words rang out, "You ******* dyke!"

Sadie braced herself for more profanity and slurs, when out of the crowd came one of the school's math teachers. The teacher was probably a head shorter than the bully she confronted, recalls Sadie. But she still got in the name-caller's face until he backed off. Later, Sadie's tormentor came up and apologized.

For Sadie, now 19, the teacher's intervention was a memorable moment in an otherwise miserable high school career. "School was horrible," she remembers. "I was so stressed out. There were only two or three teachers I could talk to about being gay." She describes being so fearful of the school locker room that she lied to her doctor to get a note to escape the teasing and taunts. By sophomore year, Sadie says, she showed up at school only twice a week. In the end, dropping out was a mere technicality, though she proudly shares that she recently earned her GED.

Being an LGBT youth in America has never been a Gay Pride Parade, no matter the community setting. But most rural schools prove an especially unhappy and dispiriting place for kids whose sexuality or gender expression does not fit within community expectations. Those are the findings of researchers for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence last August.

"We keep finding that youth in rural areas-whether gay or perceived as gay-are more likely to be victimized verbally and physically," says Dr. Joe Kosciw, lead researcher in the national study. In fact, the study found that these students are more at risk in rural districts than in urban districts with a history of bullying problems. "In addition, rural schools and communities often lack resources such as Gay-Straight Alliances or youth centers that can help offset the negative experiences of victimization."

Where might help for these students come from? The work of GLSEN and other national groups are increasingly entering frays to offer support. But as LGBT teens are eager to share, the intervention of friendly math teachers is not to be underestimated. "You learn very quickly to identify safe teachers," says Korey Gaddis, also a former Kennewick High student. "You pick up on their vibe."

For a decade now, GLSEN's biannual National School Climate Survey has revealed and quantified the bias encountered by many LGBT students in middle and high schools across the United States. Lowlights from the most recent 2007 survey include 86 percent of LGBT students reporting verbal harassment; 61 percent saying that they feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation; 33 percent indicating that they have skipped a day of school in the last month due to feeling unsafe; and 22 percent reporting that they have been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation. The idea that rural students are at greater risk for these abuses sounds alarm bells for LGBT youth advocates.

Out in the Country

As Dr. Kosciw and his fellow authors discuss in their article, "the overall climate of a school is ... influenced by and potentially reflects the attitudes, beliefs and overall climate of the larger community"-for better and worse. For rural areas, the "better" includes local recognition of schools as integral parts of the community, with area businesses and service organizations actively supporting school programs. Schools and students may benefit from strong values promoting the care and education of "their kids."

The "worse" is most evident when school and community leaders encounter values they consider alien. Many rural residents pride themselves on their conservative social and religious values, and distrust those whose identities and lifestyles fall outside those strictures. The relatively recent emergence of the national gay rights movement, and the fact that gay kids are growing up and coming out in their small towns, presents unnerving challenges to many rural residents and their ideas of how the world should work. These are among the views put forward by Mary L. Gray in her insightful book, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America.

Mark Lee has spent the last three years trying to communicate across this cultural divide in the Tri-City Area. In 2006, Lee moved from urban and progressive Portland, Oregon, to this farming region that includes the cities of Kennewick, Pasco and Richland. "The Tri-Cities are an incredibly conservative, white, religious community," Lee says. He quickly recognized the lack of an oasis for gay kids, and soon after his arrival established the Vista Youth Center, dedicated to the wellbeing of LGBT youth, ages 14-21. The center offers a support network and social outlet for dozens of teens and young adults, some who drive more than an hour each way for meetings.

Lee has witnessed the struggles of area LGBT students close up. "[LGBT] kids at Kennewick High learn quickly how to sneak in and out of school so as not to be screamed at," he says. "Youth have gotten beat up. They have to deal with frequent insults, sometimes from teachers as well as classmates. With all the bullying and harassment, I personally don't know how they make it through the school day."

At the same time, Lee describes the positive effect even a ray of support has on LGBT youth. "I've seen radical change in most young people who come to [Vista Youth Center]," he says. "I've seen them go from belligerent and depressed to being sweet, regular kids."

"It's an amazing place," adds Sadie about VYC, "a home away from home where I can be myself. If the youth center wasn't here, I don't know what I'd do. It's a lifesaver."

Lee recognizes that part of his mission is to reach out and educate community leaders about LGBT youth. He has brought in panels of educators to listen and respond to concerns and complaints from students. He plans to invite local ministers and church leaders to discuss the area's religious intolerance for homosexuality, which frequently fuels gay-bashing. "There's a lot of consciousness-raising that needs to happen," Lee says.

Not Rising to the Challenge

So why aren't more teachers and administrators in rural areas taking the lead in creating safer space for LGBT students in their schools? For some districts, it may be a lack of awareness, says Heather Rodriguez, program director for Triple Point, a youth group for LGBT teens in Walla Walla, Washington. While virtually all U.S. schools now trumpet anti-bullying policies, most fail to include language specific to sexual orientation and gender expression. And some educators don't even acknowledge that anti-gay references qualify as harassment.

Other reasons for failing to protect LGBT kids can be tied even more directly to bigoted attitudes, Rodriguez notes. Some teachers are fearful of being ostracized by colleagues and harassed by parents. Many rural educators carry their own anti-gay attitudes into the school building. Korey Gaddis, now 21, recalls an assistant principal telling him to his face, "You shouldn't be gay."

Then there is the threat to job security. In some rural districts, even engaging the subject of homosexuality can threaten careers. "Administrators in our area fear parents lashing out, whether about sex education or creating a GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance]," Rodriguez says. "Teachers and school counselors fear for their jobs. Nobody wants to rock the boat."

These are not phantom fears, as events in the small town of Grandfield, Oklahoma, revealed last year. As part of her ethics class, high school teacher Debra Taylor received her principal's permission to feature The Laramie Project, the play and movie about the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard. Her goal was to explore the roots of hate and intolerance. A few weeks later, the principal abruptly told Taylor to stop, which she did. But when she subsequently held a 20-minute class wrap-up on the material, the district superintendent suspended her for insubordination. Taylor resigned before she could be fired.

"I would be naïve to think what has happened to my students and me is an isolated incident," Taylor later wrote in her blog. "Unfortunately, those in charge of the school just don't get it. I know any gay student at Grandfield High School has been taught a dubious lesson. They have learned they better keep quiet until they are old enough to leave town."

"We Can Be Better"

Many small-town LGBT teens have learned that lesson well: Endure lives in the closet until adulthood gives you the means to move to more accepting communities. A quarter of gay teens who come out get thrown out of their homes or run away. Others kill themselves. Studies have consistently shown that LGBT youth are at elevated risk for dropping out of school, substance abuse, homelessness, depression and suicide. The lack of support in rural communities only heightens these risks.

The attempted suicide of a former student motivated veteran visual arts teacher Allison Kleinstuber to take a leadership role in helping LGBT kids and their allies at Golden West High School. The school is located in Visalia, a small city set in the center of California's rural Central Valley.

"There are few resources for LGBT youth here, and we don't have an environment that makes it easy to come out," Kleinstuber says, noting that the area has a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. "A lot of people here have a very literal way of looking at religious teachings." While she embraces her faith-based belief that "Nothing else matters but love," her friends and colleagues have made clear their condemnation of homosexuality as well as their disapproval of her decision to act as advisor for the school's new GSA, launched last fall.

School administrators and GSA members are still working around their mutual distrust, Kleinstuber observes. And parents have protested when they discover that their children-whatever their sexual orientation-have attended club meetings. "But I think there's a lot of staff, a lot of kids, who are glad [the GSA] is here," she says.

A self-described "tough teacher," Kleinstuber applies the same high standards to her school and district that she sets for students whose class work and behaviors do not meet herexpectations. "We can be better," she tells them. And she thinks teachers and administrators have an obligation to make schools safe places of learning for all kids, whatever their race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or gender expression.

Heather Rodriguez hopes teachers and counselors would at least educate themselves about the means to help LGBT youth. "I want educators to know where their local resources are," Rodriguez says. "Even if they're not comfortable dealing with the issue of homosexuality themselves, they can at least know where these kids can go to get support."

As part of in-school efforts, Mark Lee would also like to see more teachers in his area crack down on anti-gay speech in classrooms. He presses administrators to demonstrate leadership and courage to embrace student-empowered GSAs rather than stonewall their creation. He encourages teachers and counselors to post "Safe Zone" signs on classroom doors to send a clear signal to LGBT youth-and their tormentors-that gay students are not alone when running the gauntlet of hallways, bathrooms and locker rooms.

"I really think those signs make a difference," Lee says. "They signal these kids that there are places they can go where they know they're not crazy."

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Ninth-grader Sadie Bauer was walking hand-in-hand with her girlfriend in a hallway of Kennewick High. It was a brave act of affection, considering bigoted attitudes toward same-sex relationships in this rural area of Washington State. The words rang out, "You ******* dyke!"

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Recently I read a quote by a popular actor that troubled me. His words:
"The best way to stop racism today is to stop talking about it."
Interesting thought. Should we end poverty by not talking about it? Should we close the achievement gap by avoiding the topic? We could begin to change so much of what is wrong in our nation if we engaged in honest and courageous conversations about our biases, beliefs, and misconceptions. One of those misconceptions is the myth of colorblindness.

Colorblindness is the belief that we don't see color or race, that we see people and that we are all the same. These beliefs are widely held by wonderful and well intentioned people, including educators and school leaders. These are idealistic beliefs and there are a number of issues with this ideology:

We are beautifully diverse. Colorblindness negates our diversity, race and culture

We all see color and we all have biases. When we identify as colorblind, we are suppressing our authentic views and in the process, perpetuating systemic racism

Race matters. It impacts opportunities, education, and income in many ways

Colorblindness oppresses people of color. When you fail to see color, you fail to acknowledge the current narrative, a system of injustice for many non-white people

Why is the colorblind narrative popular?
For a few reasons. I believe it is easier to identify as colorblind than acknowledge differences that make us uncomfortable. This is easier for people to handle, especially in schools where we may lack the information and guidance to have difficult conversations about race. Another reason is simply not knowing...you don't know what you don't know. Many people also repeat what they've been taught and fail to reflect or question those beliefs. In the end, we don't realize how harmful the myth of colorblindness can be.
Why is this important in education?
When we work with children, we are responsible for their learning, social-emotional development, and overall well being. We are charged with developing healthy relationships with our students and families. Part of this is embracing the gifts they bring to the classroom and using those diverse strengths to make learning more meaningful. This includes language, religion, culture, and race.
What can educators and ed leaders do to be color brave?

Celebrate diversity! Acknowledge language, culture and race as strengths

Build relationships with your students and connect with families

Ask questions

Engage in honest conversations with your colleagues and administrators. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable and not having all the answers

Read and learn as much as you can about diversity and culturally responsive teaching. ASCD InService has useful resources: http://inservice.ascd.org/14-resources-on-culturally-responsive-teaching/ Another great resource can be found at Tolerance.org Critical Practices for Anti-bias education: https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/publications/critical-practices-for-antibias-education/classroom-culture

Provide culturally relevant student books. AmightyGirl.com has a great list of diverse books for children: https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=13481

It takes courage and practice to shift from a colorblind to a color BRAVE ideology. If we want to challenge racism and begin a wave of change in our country it must begin in schools with children and educators. Our students, all students, need you to lead this change. I hope this post inspires you to do so.
"In order to get beyond racism, one must first take race into account. There is no other way." -Harry A. Blackmun
References:

Hobson, Melody (2014). Color Blind or Color Brave? TED talk

Williams, Monica, PhD. (2011). Colorblind Ideology is a Form of Racism. Psychology Today

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The Myth of Colorblindness - Identity, Education and Power - Medium

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Recently I read a quote by a popular actor that troubled me. His words: "The best way to stop racism today is to stop talking about it." Interesting thought. Should we end poverty by not talking about it? Should we close the achievement gap by avoiding the topic?

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This guide extends Teaching Tolerance's work in school discipline reform and responsive discipline practice to include multiple stakeholders-from teachers to SROs-throughout the school.

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In 1989, the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw used the term "intersectionality" for the first time to describe the multiple avenues of discrimination that people face when their identity encompasses a number of minority categories, connected to things like race, gender, class and sexuality. Crenshaw may have coined a name for the feminist sociological theory, but her work built upon a rich history of ideas. Now, a new video by the National Museum of African American History and Culture breaks down the ABCs of intersectionality, exploring the long legacy of women who shaped contemporary ideas about intersectionality, as they fought for equality both as African Americans and females.

"Consider an intersection made up of many roads," Crenshaw says during the video. "The roads are the structures of race, gender, gender identity class, sexuality, disability. And the traffic running through those roads are the practices and policies that discriminate against people. Now if an accident happens, it can be caused by cars traveling in any number of directions, and sometimes, from all of them. So if a black woman is harmed because she is in an intersection, her injury could result from discrimination from any or all directions."

The metaphor is a ​handy introduction to the discussion of multiple oppressions, which has been articulated as far back as early women's liberation luminaries such as Sojourner Truth, a former slave who became a prominent abolitionist and women's rights activist. In 1851, she delivered a stirring speech at a women's convention in Ohio, titled " Ain't I A Woman?," in which she declared woman had been coded to stand specifically for white woman for too long.

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere," she said. "Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?"

The video goes on to explore the contributions of women like Anna Julia Cooper, a 19th-century scholar and educator who spent her life advocating for the agency of African America women, and groups like the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a human rights organization that galvanized black women to march on Washington in 1951, as well as the Combahee River Collective, a group of black, queer feminists who were among the first to include sexuality in discussions about multiple oppressions.

Check out the full video above to get a better understanding of African-American women's contributions to the struggle for full equality-a fight that continues to the present-day.

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This Video Breaks Down the ABCs of Intersectionality

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In 1989, the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw used the term "intersectionality" for the first time to describe the multiple avenues of discrimination that people face when their identity encompasses a number of minority categories, connected to things like race, gender, class and sexuality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The following post was created by members of NCTE's Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English.
The members of NCTE's Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias have felt an urgency since we each joined the committee to stand against racism and bias. We have been working on ways to encourage each member of NCTE to speak out against the systemic and individual acts of racism that disenfranchise our students in and out of the classroom.

We know that racism exists in our classrooms and in our communities. We feel that silence on these issues is complicity in the systemic racism that has marred our educational system. We see no place for neutrality and urge each member of NCTE to educate as many people as possible about the ways that systemic racism affects all of us in negative ways.

There is no apolitical classroom. English language arts teachers must examine the ways that racism has personally shaped their beliefs and must examine existing biases that feed systems of oppression. In light of the horrific events in this country that continue to unfold, and the latest terrorism in Charlottesville, Virginia, we would like to share resources that we hope will encourage all NCTE members to speak out against the racism and bias that have been a part of our nation's fabric since the first immigrants disembarked from European ships.

Our Action Subcommittee has been working this year on creating classroom resources for teachers to use as statements of love and support. Printable classroom posters and bookmarks for NCTE members will be available at the 2017 Annual Convention, as well as available for download after Convention. Until then, we offer this incomplete resource to help continue the daily work that is antiracism. Please share other resources in the comment box below.

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

- Elie Wiesel, Acceptance Speech on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1986

Resources for Working with White Students

Raising Race Conscious Children
"A resource to support adults who are trying to talk about race with young children. The goals of these conversations are to dismantle the color-blind framework and prepare young people to work toward racial justice."

Dismantling Racism in Education
Heinemann Dedicated to Teachers Blog
Sara Ahmed, Sonja Cherry-Paul, and Cornelius Minor talk about what racism looks like and how we can begin to break up the assumptions we make about racism.

Resources for Teaching in These Times
On June 14, 2016, in response to the Orlando shootings, NCTE began collecting teaching resources from its members that continue to build in relevance given the ongoing struggles and critical conversations taking place across the country.

Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation
"Race Forward's mission is to build awareness, solutions, and leadership for racial justice by generating transformative ideas, information, and experiences." Check out their video that explains systemic racism.

This resource was contributed by Kristin Beers
Online PLC: Read Aloud as an Anti-Bigotry Tool
Suggestions for using read aloud as an anti- bigotry tool with our youngest learners. This resource provides questions to prompt conversation, as well as a list of categorized titles that support this work.

Resources for Understanding White Supremacy
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Confront Antisemitism
Resources on anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and distortion
Southern Poverty Law Center
"The SPLC is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy, the SPLC works toward the day when the ideals of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a reality."

Ten Ways to Fight Hate
" Ten Ways to Fight Hate, which has been updated for 2017, sets out 10 principles for taking action, including how to respond to a hate rally that has targeted your town. It urges people not to engage white supremacists at their rallies. Instead, it offers tips for creating alternative rallies to promote peace, inclusion and justice."

Oath and Opposition: Education under the Third Reich
"The Museum has developed . . . materials . . . to help today's educators explore the pressures teachers felt under the Nazi regime, the range of decisions individuals made in the face of those pressures, and the relevance of this history now." (This rich resource includes a number of case studies you could use with your classes.)

Yad Vashem-The World Holocaust Remembrance Center
Read their working definition on anti-Semitism, which "encompasses both traditional and contemporary manifestations of antisemitism."

Anti-Defamation League (ADL)
"Founded in 1913, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is our nation's premier civil rights/human relations organization. We have a distinguished history of reminding the world just how tenuous civil rights are and we mobilize people to engage in reasonable discourse as together we find solutions to serve our diverse society." See their website's extensive Education & Resources section as well as their definition and historical explanation of anti-Semitism.

University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Lesson Plans
"Dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides a compelling voice for education and action."

Antisemitism and the Bystander Effect
"Students will watch testimonies from survivors of and witnesses to historical and contemporary antisemitism who describe the consequences of the bystander effect in their own lives. Students will construct a social media message for the #BeginsWithMe campaign that describes their own plan to counter bystander behavior."

100 Days to Inspire Respect
"At a time of heightened political uncertainty and polarization, middle and high school teachers are in need of easy-to-use resources that encourage their students to grapple with some of the most difficult but important topics: hate, racism, intolerance and xenophobia. '100 Days to Inspire Respect' provides educators with 100 thought-provoking resources that tackle these challenging topics and more."

The following book was recommended by Jenny Cameron Paulsen
Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
"By the time Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, 3.5 million children belonged to the Hitler Youth. It would become the largest youth group in history. Susan Campbell Bartoletti explores how Hitler gained the loyalty, trust, and passion of so many of Germany's young people. Her research includes telling interviews with surviving Hitler Youth members."

Charlottesville-Specific Resources

The Charlottesville Syllabus
"The Charlottesville Syllabus is a resource created by the Graduate Student Coalition for Liberation to be used to educate readers about the long history of white supremacy in Charlottesville, Virginia. With resources selected and summaries written by UVa graduate students, this abridged version of the Syllabus is organized into six sections that offer contemporary and archival primary and secondary sources (articles, books, responses, a documentary, databases) and a list of important terms for discussing white supremacy."

" How to Talk to Your Kids about the Violence in CharlottesvilleAugust 12, 2017, Los Angeles Times article by Sonali Kohli
Mental health experts and parents discuss developmentally appropriate ways to address the issues raised over the weekend.

#CharlottesvilleCurriculum
A growing list of resources posted by educators from around the country.

"''Blood and Soil': Protesters Chant Nazi Slogan in Charlottesville"
August 12, 2017, CNN article by Meg Wagner

" Charlottesville Murder Suspect's Teacher: 'He thought Nazis were pretty cool guys'"
August 13, 2017, ABC News article by Michael Edison Hayden

Resources for Understanding Bias
The following resources were contributed by Susi Long on behalf of the Early Childhood Education Assembly
The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB)
"The People's Institute believes that racism is the primary barrier preventing communities from building effective coalitions and overcoming institutionalized oppression and inequities. Through Undoing Racism®/Community Organizing Workshops, technical assistance and consultations, The People's Institute helps individuals, communities, organizations and institutions move beyond addressing the symptoms of racism to undoing the causes of racism so as to create a more just and equitable society."

Don't Be a Sucker - 1947
"In this anti-fascist film produced by [the] US Military in the wake of WWII, the producers deconstruct the politically motivated social engineering of Germany by the Nazi regime."

Teaching Tolerance Social Justice Standards
"The Social Justice Standards are a road map for anti-bias education at every stage of K-12 instruction. Comprised of anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes, the Standards provide a common language and organizational structure educators can use to guide curriculum development and make schools more just and equitable."

Anti-Racism Educational Consultants Network
"The ECEA is honored to present a network of some of the country's most respected professionals. They are experts in helping educators examine issues of race and racism in schools, childcare settings, and teacher education programs as they consider new possibilities for practice and policy. They consult widely, each with extensive experience in classrooms and with teachers, administrators, and preservice teachers."

Resources for Educators Focusing on Anti-Racist Learning and Teaching
"Our intent is to continue building and expanding this collection but we offer it now as a beginning, in support of educators working to (a) deepen understandings about institutional and interpersonal racism and its manifestations in early childhood settings, (b) understand the depth and breadth of histories often left out of or misrepresented in our teaching, and (c) apply new awareness to transforming practice and policy."

Articles and Other Readings

"These [three] special themed issues [of NCTE journals] explore and demonstrate not only the physical violence that Black and Brown children and youth and young Black girls encounter on a daily basis but also the symbolic and linguistic violence and the spirit-murder that are inflicted upon the lives and humanity of our children and youth of Color. In addition, all of these special issues provide the field with practical lessons and pedagogies for teaching in our current racialized and gendered context." - Lamar Johnson and April Bell

1. From Racial Violence to Racial Justice: Praxis and Implications for English (Teacher) Education (a special issue of English Journal) Edited by April Baker-Bell, Tamara Butler,
and Lamar Johnson
"We come to this project bearing soul wounds and heavy hearts, anxiety and anger, tears and fire. We sifted through a series of events and melded our wounds into a project that could heal us, our families, our communities, and Black, Brown, and other marginalized youth affected by racial violence."

2. "Beyond the Dream": Black Textual Expressivities Between the World and Me (a special issue of English Journal) Edited by David Kirkland
"In the most basic sense, this issue is about acknowledging how Black textualities, like vulnerable Black bodies, are contested in American classrooms, complicated by competing interests that wrestle daily for an ethical place in the consciousness of English language arts. It is in English language arts classrooms, as this issue suggests, that Black textualities have the power to move our assumptions past beliefs that strip away the humanity of others.

3. Black Girls' Literacies (a special issue of English Education) Edited by Marcelle Haddix, Sherell McArthur, Gholnecsar Muhammad, Detra Price-Dennis, and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
"We now must be urgent in interrogating hegemonic systems, English education practices, and educational policy to ask how we can experience a shift in the way we teach, talk about, and represent Black girls in school and society. In this way, English education becomes a site of possibility and disruption-a space to begin to ask these questions and respond." - Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz

How Two Teenagers Created a Textbook for Racial Literacy
From Facing History and Ourselves by Stacey Perlman
"Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi started the student-run organization, CHOOSE, to overcome racism and inspire harmony through exposure, education, and empowerment. This led them to collaborate with Princeton University on The Classroom Index, a textbook devoted to racial literacy."

This resource was contributed by Corinne Viglietta" Essential Everyday Bravery: Thinking and Talking About Identity and Difference in Your Classroom "-a downloadable packet with 6 stand-alone lessons, 4 short scripts, 4 video clips, and 1 long list of more resources from Folger Shakespeare Library
These resources were contributed by Jodi Derkson
The lessons were created by 10 excellent teachers, and designed to work in all kinds of classes with all kinds of students. These teachers are themselves people of different races, ethnicities, and religions, and they teach IB and AP, special needs, honors, and "regular" students in urban and suburban (mostly public) high schools in or near Washington, DC. These resources are also the product of CrossTalk, a yearlong community engagement project led by the Folger Shakespeare Library and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of their Humanities in the Public Square initiative. More info here

This resource was contributed by Emily Salinas
Drop the I-Word Campaign
"Race Forward's Drop the I-Word campaign to eliminate use of the word "illegal" was launched in September 2010 as anti-immigrant sentiment and hate crimes against communities of color had increased. Although the Associated Press, USA Today, LA Times, and many other news outlets and journalist associations have dropped the i-word, this racial slur in still being used in the media and everyday language."

This resource was contributed by Melanie Gustafson
Click! The Ongoing Feminist Revolution
"We aim to bridge the gap between those two clicks by offering an exhibit that highlights the achievements of women from the 1940s to the present. This exhibit explores the power and complexity of gender consciousness in modern American life."

Choose Your Voice (middle school)
Free online teaching resources and tools, curriculum-based for grades 6, 7 and 8, to help students speak out against racism, antisemitism and intolerance.

Voices into Action (secondary school and college)
"Designed by curriculum experts, this program utilizes a wide variety of media to present compelling information on a history of human suffering, stemming from social injustice that is still a growing problem today. Explore thought-provoking issues with your students by accessing our lessons and resources on antisemitism, racism, discrimination and stereotyping."

These resources were contributed by Nadia Kalman
"For contemporary global literature from Mexico, Russia, and other countries currently in the political discourse, along with multimedia contextual materials and teaching tools, teachers might try Words Without Borders Campus. Here's a link to a blog post on building inter-cultural empathy and understanding."

Books for Teachers

A Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Young Black Men by David E. Kirkland

All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald

Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S. by H. Samy Alim, Geneva Smitherman, foreword by Michael Eric Dyson

Black Intellectual Thought in Education: The Missing Traditions of Anna Julia Cooper, Carter G. Woodson, and Alain LeRoy Locke by Carl A. Grant, Keffrelyn D. Brown, and Anthony L. Brown

Community Literacies en Confianza: Learning from Bilingual After-School Programs by Steven Alvarez

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World edited by: Django Paris and H. Samy Alim

Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age by Adam J. Banks

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin

by Bryan Stevenson

"Multiplication Is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People's Children
by Lisa Delpit

Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom by Lisa Delpit

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America by Geneva Smitherman

The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, 2nd Edition by Gloria Ladson-Billings

The Latinization of U.S. Schools : Successful Teaching and Learning in Shifting Cultural Contexts by Jason G. Irizarry

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
These additional book resources were contributed by Elaine Richardson These additional book resources were contributed by Deborah Kelly
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore

The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High
by Melba Pattillo Beals

Books for Students

A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. by Luis J. Rodriguez

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing edited by Ilan Stavans

Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings - An Anthology edited by Roberto Santiago

Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus by Carolina Maria de Jesus

Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas

Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero

How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

I Am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

MARCH: Book One by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake
Rich in Color We Need Diverse Books Lee & Low Books A Mighty Girl
When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri

Websites to Follow (for books for our students)

If you have resources you would like to add, please share them in the comment box below.

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There Is No Apolitical Classroom: Resources for Teaching in These Times - NCTE

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The following post was created by members of NCTE's Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English . The members of NCTE's Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias have felt an urgency since we each joined the committee to stand against racism and bias.

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As of today, the mother of the murder suspect who killed at least 3 people in Charlottesville Virginia during a white supremacist rally, told reporters that all she knew the last time she talked to her son, is that he was going to an "Alt-Right" rally. She had no idea her son was a racist - or did she?

Racism is the elephant in the room in America - particularly, white America. White people would like racism to go away. The thought that their ancestors could have been slave owners is an embarrassment to most.

In counseling many white Americans who are against racism, one thing stands out: they are afraid to confront their racist family members and friends. They are against racism, but they also love their family and friends. I am often asked, "April, I don't know what to do. How do I confront them without upsetting them?"

Racism is complex in scope because it is both a mental illness and a value. In order words, it is a valued, sheltered, and protected mental illness. One might even say it has been incubated and allowed to fester throughout the course of American history.

Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in thinking, emotion or behavior (or a combination of these). Racism meets those criteria.

Like all illnesses, it needs to be treated in order for it to be cured. The problem, is that we do not see racism as a problem, because we do not see it for what it is - an infectious disease that has been an epidemic plaguing our nation.

Epidemics can spread rapidly and can be notoriously difficult to treat. In the medical field, the way to stop an epidemic is to educate and involve the general population on what the symptoms are in order to prevent spreading the disease. If the symptoms are not recognized, then the disease spreads and exacerbates. It can and will harm many people over the course of time - which racism has.

The mental illness that is racism has killed thousands of people of color, particularly, African-Americans and Native Americans.

The murders in Charlottesville Virginia would be considered an outbreak of the disease. Without swift and timely containment, it will only further spread and spur new outbreaks.

To prevent the disease, it is important to know the signs. Like many diseases, the symptoms can appear subtly, and if not treated, will get worse and become untreatable.

Review the "Racism Scale: Where do you fall?" below to begin to explore and understand whether or not you have symptoms.

If you fall below "awareness", then this is a red flag that racism is a problem for you. If it is not a problem for you, but find that it is a problem for your family members and/or friends, then it's time to address it or it will continue to spread throughout America.

There is no easy way to contain a disease, but if we can identify the symptoms, then we can put a stop to it through education and awareness.

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How America Spreads the Disease that is Racism by not Confronting Racist Family Members and Friends

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As of today, the mother of the murder suspect who killed at least 3 people in Charlottesville Virginia during a white supremacist rally, told reporters that all she knew the last time she talked to her son, is that he was going to an "Alt-Right" rally.

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We're launching the Interchangeable White Ladies podcast a show where we discuss education, culture, and local activism. We're teachers so we have an essential question--How can white women use their privilege to deconstruct white culture, confront their own biases, be better allies, and be

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A new study suggests race and immigrant status are determining factors in whether or not an educator will reach out to a student's family.

Charles Platiau / Reuters

Growing up in Columbia, Maryland, Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng was a self-described troublemaker in grade school. He even got sent to the principal's office once for in-class misbehavior. But none of his teachers ever called his parents about his school misconduct. In fact, throughout his K-12 schooling, Cherng can't recall once when a school staffer reached out to his parents. Meanwhile, even though it was customary in high school for the counselor to personally congratulate parents of students who gained early admission to college, his name was left off the call list. And when he complained to his chemistry teacher about the oversight, his comment was met with: "It's not that big of a surprise that you got accepted [to MIT]."

Now a sociologist and an assistant professor of education at New York University's Steinhardt school, Cherng's latest study parallels his childhood experience by exploring an under-researched topic in parent-involvement literature: the role that students' race and country of birth play in a teacher's likelihood of contacting their parents or guardians. Relying on a sample of about 10,000 predominantly public high-school sophomores, their parents, and teachers from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002-a nationwide sampling conducted by the U.S. Department of Education-Cherng's statistical analysis found sharp contrasts in how math and English teachers communicate with parents from different racial, ethnic, and immigrant backgrounds, reflecting many existing stereotypes of black, Latino, and Asian American students.

"One would think if a kid is struggling [or] a kid isn't doing their homework that the teacher would reach out to parents [whether they're] white kids, foreign-born Asian American kids, or third-generation Latino kids, [yet] this wasn't the case," Cherng said, noting that the racial and ethnic dynamics between teachers, students, and parents revealed in the 2002 data collection haven't changed dramatically in the past decade and "may have gotten slightly worse." (While the students were followed over the course of the decade, the Education Department only conducted the teacher survey in 2002.)

When teachers were questioned about their parent communications in three key areas-homework completion, disruptive behavior in class, and student accomplishments-a youngster's race, ethnicity, and immigrant status appeared to be the deciding factors. After controlling for students' classroom conduct and academic work, perceptions of parents' English proficiency, family socioeconomic status, and other variables, distinct racial and immigration patterns emerged.

Among all students with reported behavioral problems, teachers were much more likely to reach out to black and Latino parents-even those who didn't come from immigrant families-than they were white ones. Thirty-three percent of math teachers contacted parents of third-generation black and Latino youth about disruptive behavior, which was 10 percentage points higher than for parents of third-generation white youth-"consistent with the stereotype that teachers are in some ways hypersensitive to ... bad behavior among certain racial and ethnic groups of students," Cherng said. The teacher's subject matter also made a huge difference in predicting the likelihood of contacting parents over disruptive behavior, he noted: Math teachers more frequently contacted parents of color than did English teachers. Cherng attributed this to the "very implicit, really deep bias" that certain kids "get math" and certain kids don't.

By contrast, compared to black and Latino parents, teachers were less likely to contact immigrant Asian parents about academic and behavioral struggles. Only 5 percent of math teachers and 9 percent of English teachers communicated with parents of first- and second-generation Asian students about misbehavior. And less than 5 percent of English teachers contacted parents of first-generation Asian students who rarely do homework, which was 10 points less than the frequency of contact with the parents of their third-generation white counterparts.

This seemingly reinforces the trope that Asian American students are all hard-working and well-behaved-commonly known as the " model minority" myth. "When you have an Asian American student who is not high-achieving, who doesn't do their homework, and is disruptive in class, the rates of that teacher reaching out to those parents are actually quite low, much lower than for third-generation white parents," Cherng explained, calling it part of the false narrative that Asian Americans are always compliant.

Overall, the most frequent form of teacher-parent contact involved communication about student accomplishments. Though, yet again, discrepancies existed across racial and ethnic groups: Teachers were less likely to contact immigrant Latino and Asian parents with news of their children's academic successes. Twenty-six percent of English teachers contacted parents of second-generation Asian students about their children's school triumphs, for example, while 46 percent contacted the parents of third-generation white youngsters. Additionally, teachers were less likely to reach out to parents they perceived as uninvolved or uninterested in such news, which Cherng said is often linked to teachers' assumptions about immigrant or native-born parents of color as apathetic toward their children's education. A second analysis also factored in teacher characteristics: Female math teachers were more likely to contact parents than male teachers were, and black teachers were less likely to call parents about classroom disruptions.
"Experiencing [this discrimination] firsthand literally left me shaking with frustration and anger."
The role of parent involvement as a critical component of student learning is a concept that is widely endorsed by research and enshrined in federal education policy. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 stipulated that the participation of parents in "regular, two-way, and meaningful communication" with schools was a vital part of boosting academic achievement. And its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, specifically calls for federal funds to be used for parent and family engagement, emphasizing stronger school partnerships with parents and family members.

Still, despite widespread recognition that communication from school to home is valuable, most research to date has centered on parents reaching out to educators. With the NYU study, the focus is on the reverse: communication patterns that originate with children's teachers. Matthew Lynde Chesnut, a social-studies teacher at Kennedy High School, in San Antonio, Texas, confessed surprise at how much the findings "relate to my own shortcomings as a teacher" at a school with a 98 percent Latino student body. He admitted a tendency to underreport students falling behind to parents, acknowledging that because he teaches seniors "I take for granted that parents still want to be involved in their kids' education and still want that feedback for good or for ill." He also pointed to typical barriers that can keep even the best-intentioned teachers from routinely communicating good news, such as playing phone tag with working parents or having an unreliable phone number.

What he found most familiar, however, was the data on parent communication about disruptive students. During his time as a first-year teacher, Chesnut was more likely to contact parents if their child was disobedient than if their child was performing well, which he said was more a function of his inexperience at building strong relationships with students and having classroom routines in place. Currently in his seventh year at Kennedy High, he believes he would have benefited from greater cultural proficiency. "As a white teacher, [I] was subconsciously looking at my students as more likely to be troublemakers because they were Latino ... I didn't consciously check myself to think about how my actions created the conditions for those behaviors."

Betina Hsieh, an assistant professor of teacher education at California State University in Long Beach, said education schools should help teacher candidates "understand these troubling disparities and ... racial stereotypes" to promote better communication between parents and teachers in general. "A lot of [my students] are young, and the great majority are white ... It often doesn't occur to them to contact parents on a proactive basis, and many of them are intimidated to talk to parents," she said. Toss race and ethnicity into the equation, and "it heightens [their] concerns that they'll 'get it wrong' ... so some of them don't even want to try at all."

When she teaches about communicating with parents, Hsieh uses her own positive experiences working with black and Latino parents in urban settings, as well as her own perspectives as a parent of Asian descent whose children have received disparate treatment from teachers. She watched her adopted black daughter get labeled as "disruptive" and "defiant" by her 10th-grade math teacher; also, her biological son "never once received ... outstanding achievement, behavior, or recognition awards" despite being top of his class in almost every subject last year.

"Although I was aware of this type of discrimination [intellectually], experiencing it firsthand literally left me shaking with frustration and anger," Hsieh said. As a systemic issue, starting in teacher education is critical, she said, but the work is also in "pushing teachers to consider their roles in upholding systems that can be unjust to various communities of color-disproportionately Latino and black students."

Cherng, the study's author, echoes this viewpoint. Earlier in his career, as an eighth-grade math teacher in San Francisco, he wrestled with the same assumptions that surfaced in his study. His message to teachers is simple and direct: "If we're raised in the U.S., we all [subscribe] to these stereotypes to a certain extent, [and] that's really dangerous because I think it completely overlaps with racial and ethnic [academic] gaps. We must talk about [these biases] ... because ultimately we're all in this together to support our kids."

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Stereotypes Are at the Heart of Parent-Teacher Communication

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A new study suggests race and immigrant status are determining factors in whether or not an educator will reach out to a student's family. Growing up in Columbia, Maryland, Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng was a self-described troublemaker in grade school. He even got sent to the principal's office once for in-class misbehavior.

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What Happens When Poor Kids Are Taught Society Is Fair

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A new study finds that believing in meritocracy can lead disadvantaged adolescents of color to act out and engage in risky behavior.

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Zealously blocking their access to certain websites can end up undermining learning.

Giving all children access to the Internet and computing became a rallying cry for educators and elected leaders in the 1990s. In March 1996, President Clinton and Vice President Gore led 20,000 volunteers in a one-day effort to connect thousands of California public schools to the " brave new world of mouse clicking and web surfing." Yet that brave new world remains unconquered for many students and schools, especially in rural and high-poverty communities. Some have coined the term " digital redlining " to describe how advanced technology has been deliberately denied from certain areas based on geography as well as the race, ethnicity, and income of residents.

In the intervening years, the spotlight has pivoted to the so-called " connectivity gap"-which hurts schools without high-speed Internet connections-and the homework gap-which hurts students unable to access wireless and broadband connections from home. And like his predecessor, the president is using his bully pulpit to push for change. In 2013, the Obama administration launched the ConnectED initiative with the goal to connect 99 percent of schools to broadband Internet in five years; it also unveiled ConnectHome last year as a pilot project to bring high-speed broadband to over 275,000 low-income households in 27 communities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Oklahoma's Choctaw Tribal Nation.

Still, even as supporters work to promote equitable access through connectivity, deep-rooted disparities linger. And a more nuanced digital divide seems to have surfaced, thanks to the pernicious practice by school districts of overzealous Internet censorship on in-school computer networks and on school-issued laptops and tablets that are carried home with students. In turn, educators, academics, and advocacy groups have renewed calls to revisit school Internet policies, which, despite some progress, continue to deprive children from becoming knowledgeable digital consumers-with the hardest hit apparently being the most disadvantaged students.
"Ultimately they live in an unfiltered world."
At the core of the ongoing debate is a law passed by Congress in 2000 that mandates all public libraries and schools that receive federal funds for Internet access install blocking software. The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) specifically requires schools and libraries to block or filter Internet access to pictures and material that are "obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors" on computers that are used by students under 17 years of age. The fundamental question has been how schools are interpreting the law-and whether districts are acting in the best interests of children or simply functioning as online overlords.

"If you were to take one word that has driven the use of technology in education over the last two decades, [it's] safety," said Keith Krueger, the CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, a professional group for school-district technology directors. According to Krueger, safety is typically policymakers' and administrators' primary concern when it comes to technology in education.

The ACLU elevated another concern in 2011 when the national organization and its regional chapters in several states issued letters demanding public high schools remove web-filtering software that blocked items related to LGBT issues and support groups for LGBT youth. The ACLU discovered from students that web filters were routinely blocking access to groups such as GLSEN and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, along with LGBT anti-bullying resources like It Gets Better and the National Day of Silence. Joshua Block, the senior staff attorney for ACLU's LGBT Project, credits the organization's campaign, " Don't Filter Me," with changing minds and policies.

A separate LGBT category was eliminated in the filtering software that major companies sell to schools, Block said, and websites with resources for LGBT people are no longer sorted out. He notes that some problems with censorship persist, but not to the same degree. Krueger, representing school technology officers, said the key is balancing safety and access. "Without question, students need to become digitally literate (having the knowledge and ability to use information and technology for varied purposes) because ultimately they live in an unfiltered world. School systems need to ensure that we create a safe environment [but] if we believe any technical solution like filtering will keep us totally safe, that is misplaced."

This common-sense viewpoint, however, has yet to trickle down to many schools, where over-filtering-filtering beyond the requirements of CIPA-is common. One of the most ardent and active opponents of over-filtering to date has been the American Library Association, which for many years has championed the need to protect students' access to "legal, constitutionally protected information that is necessary for their school studies [and] personal well-being," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the deputy director for ALA's office for intellectual freedom. Stone said in some cases, the problem is as simple as school staff failing to adjust the pre-set maximum settings on filtering software, though much of the difficulty resides with school personnel who misunderstand the federal law and the requirements necessary to be in compliance. As an example, she said both the Federal Communications Commission and representatives from the Department of Education have issued guidance stating that Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms do not need to be filtered, but school districts often block these websites "on the grounds that students might access content barred by CIPA."

Maria Salmeron, a junior at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School just outside Washington, D.C., uses Facebook in student organizing as a leader in the Minority Scholars Program, a youth-led group working to increase the academic success of students of color in Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools. Up until this school year, the district blocked Facebook, effectively cutting Salmeron off from a critical mobilization tool. "Facebook is one of the sites that connects you with everyone the most ... it's kept me in contact with people and groups from all over the world," she said.

Likewise, Caldwell-Stone points to contradictions: students in AP biology classes blocked from accessing information needed to prepare for the AP exam; debate-team members unable to research controversial topics on school computers; and filters that routinely block websites for the National Organization for Women, the Quakers, and other "perfectly innocuous, legal, and informative content." The ALA report " Fencing Out Knowledge"-an analysis of CIPA 10 years after its enactment-found that schools' overreach with filtering software was putting children's education at risk, particularly children in poverty who depend on school-provided Internet access the most. "Other children are likely to have unfiltered internet access at home or through their own mobile devices," ALA wrote.

This finding is confirmed by anecdotal and empirical evidence. In Maine, Portland Public Schools in April 2012 installed filters on high-school students' school-issued laptops that banned access to social networks, games, and video-streaming sites. At the time, Portland was among the first districts in the state to authorize such stringent filtering on take-home school devices. As the Press Herald reported, Portland High School students had very different responses to the new policy, based on their access to another computer at home: "...those from middle-class families expressed various degrees of annoyance when told of the new filtering measures. A group of immigrant students reacted with anger."

New research released this past February echoes these students' sentiments. A team from Sesame Workshop's Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a nonprofit research lab, and Rutgers University conducted interviews on digital equity with 170 Mexican-heritage parents and children in three states-California, Colorado, and Arizona. All of the youngsters were enrolled in high-poverty school districts. Vikki Katz, an associate professor of communication at Rutgers and the study's co-author, said school-supplied laptops were usually not the only digital device in these families' homes, but emphasized that "the poorest families are least likely to have other devices. Districts filtering content means that those children and families don't get the same Internet as their more privileged counterparts."
"We sometimes think too much about the content that we block, and we ... limit their opportunities to succeed, explore their passions, and discover their strengths and talents."
What's more, in-depth conversations with the families revealed that districts blocked YouTube at school, as well as on school-supplied devices, because some content was deemed inappropriate. And the consequences were steep. "Parents and children depended on YouTube to support homework time, including tutorials to solve math problems and to learn more about historical characters. The problem is that these platforms are multi-use, and those uses change too quickly for district [filtering] policies to easily keep up."

This opinion is shared by Mary Beth Hertz, the art/tech teacher and technology coordinator at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, a public high school in West Philadelphia. In her role as a technology teacher leader, Hertz has watched the district's filtering process evolve since 2006, with teachers now able to request that sites be unblocked and requests "reviewed by actual human beings instead of an algorithm." Hertz said what many districts get wrong is listening too closely to lawyers. CIPA leaves a lot of room for interpretation, she said, and some districts opt to choose a strict interpretation to protect themselves rather than engage families, parents, teachers, and students in these digital-access decisions. "We should be blocking what the law requires, but unfortunately the phrase 'harmful to minors' to some districts means everything and anything that could offend or embarrass kids and their families," Hertz said, adding that blocking content doesn't teach kids how to "effectively, respectfully, and responsibly use the Internet."

At the start of each school year Hertz asks her freshmen "Is the Internet a basic right?"-eliciting responses from a dismissive "no" to an enthusiastic "yes" and prompting comparisons to China, where access to the Internet is restricted. A room of 14-year-olds is able to grasp what some school leaders seem to overlook.

"They understand that this connection is not a life-or-death situation, but that it affords opportunity. They also have a basic understanding of oppression and the idea that limiting access to the Internet limits people from opportunity," said Hertz. "We sometimes think too much about the content that we block, and we forget [that] when we cut kids off [from social media] we limit their opportunities to succeed, explore their passions, and discover their strengths and talents."

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The Problem With Filtering Kids' Internet Access at School

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Zealously blocking their access to certain websites can end up undermining learning.

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As the students file out of Janet's classroom, I sit in the back corner, scribbling a few final notes. Defeat in her eyes, Janet drops into a seat next to me with a sigh.

"I love these kids," she declares, as if trying to convince me. "I adore them. But my hope is fading."

"Why's that?" I ask, stuffing my notes into a folder.

"They're smart. I know they're smart, but . . ."

And then the deficit floodgates open: "They don't care about school. They're unmotivated. And their parents-I'm lucky if two or three of them show up for conferences. No wonder the kids are unprepared to learn."

At Janet's invitation, I spent dozens of hours in her classroom, meeting her students, observing her teaching, helping her navigate the complexities of an urban midwestern elementary classroom with a growing percentage of students in poverty. I observed powerful moments of teaching and learning, caring and support. And I witnessed moments of internal conflict in Janet, when what she wanted to believe about her students collided with her prejudices.

Like most educators, Janet is determined to create an environment in which each student reaches his or her full potential. And like many of us, despite overflowing with good intentions, Janet has bought into the most common and dangerous myths about poverty.

Chief among these is the "culture of poverty" myth-the idea that poor people share more or less monolithic and predictable beliefs, values, and behaviors. For educators like Janet to be the best teachers they can be for all students, they need to challenge this myth and reach a deeper understanding of class and poverty.

Roots of the Culture of Poverty Concept

Oscar Lewis coined the term culture of poverty in his 1961 book The Children of Sanchez. Lewis based his thesis on his ethnographic studies of small Mexican communities. His studies uncovered approximately 50 attributes shared within these communities: frequent violence, a lack of a sense of history, a neglect of planning for the future, and so on. Despite studying very small communities, Lewis extrapolated his findings to suggest a universal culture of poverty. More than 45 years later, the premise of the culture of poverty paradigm remains the same: that people in poverty share a consistent and observable "culture."

Lewis ignited a debate about the nature of poverty that continues today. But just as important-especially in the age of data-driven decision making-he inspired a flood of research. Researchers around the world tested the culture of poverty concept empirically (see Billings, 1974; Carmon, 1985; Jones & Luo, 1999). Others analyzed the overall body of evidence regarding the culture of poverty paradigm (see Abell & Lyon, 1979; Ortiz & Briggs, 2003; Rodman, 1977).

These studies raise a variety of questions and come to a variety of conclusions about poverty. But on this they all agree: There is no such thing as a culture of poverty. Differences in values and behaviors among poor people are just as great as those between poor and wealthy people.

In actuality, the culture of poverty concept is constructed from a collection of smaller stereotypes which, however false, seem to have crept into mainstream thinking as unquestioned fact. Let's look at some examples.

MYTH: Poor people are unmotivated and have weak work ethics.

The Reality: Poor people do not have weaker work ethics or lower levels of motivation than wealthier people (Iversen & Farber, 1996; Wilson, 1997). Although poor people are often stereotyped as lazy, 83 percent of children from low-income families have at least one employed parent; close to 60 percent have at least one parent who works full-time and year-round (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2004). In fact, the severe shortage of living-wage jobs means that many poor adults must work two, three, or four jobs. According to the Economic Policy Institute (2002), poor working adults spend more hours working each week than their wealthier counterparts.

MYTH: Poor parents are uninvolved in their children's learning, largely because they do not value education.

The Reality: Low-income parents hold the same attitudes about education that wealthy parents do (Compton-Lilly, 2003; Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Leichter, 1978). Low-income parents are less likely to attend school functions or volunteer in their children's classrooms (National Center for Education Statistics, 2005)-not because they care less about education, but because they have less access to school involvement than their wealthier peers. They are more likely to work multiple jobs, to work evenings, to have jobs without paid leave, and to be unable to afford child care and public transportation. It might be said more accurately that schools that fail to take these considerations into account do not value the involvement of poor families as much as they value the involvement of other families.

MYTH: Poor people are linguistically deficient.

The Reality: All people, regardless of the languages and language varieties they speak, use a full continuum of language registers (Bomer, Dworin, May, & Semingson, 2008). What's more, linguists have known for decades that all language varieties are highly structured with complex grammatical rules (Gee, 2004; Hess, 1974; Miller, Cho, & Bracey, 2005). What often are assumed to be deficient varieties of English-Appalachian varieties, perhaps, or what some refer to as Black English Vernacular-are no less sophisticated than so-called "standard English."

MYTH: Poor people tend to abuse drugs and alcohol.

The Reality: Poor people are no more likely than their wealthier counterparts to abuse alcohol or drugs. Although drug sales are more visible in poor neighborhoods, drug use is equally distributed across poor, middle class, and wealthy communities (Saxe, Kadushin, Tighe, Rindskopf, & Beveridge, 2001). Chen, Sheth, Krejci, and Wallace (2003) found that alcohol consumption is significantly higher among upper middle class white high school students than among poor black high school students. Their finding supports a history of research showing that alcohol abuse is far more prevalent among wealthy people than among poor people (Diala, Muntaner, & Walrath, 2004; Galea, Ahern, Tracy, & Vlahov, 2007). In other words, considering alcohol and illicit drugs together, wealthy people are more likely than poor people to be substance abusers.

The Culture of Classism

The myth of a "culture of poverty" distracts us from a dangerous culture that does exist-the culture of classism. This culture continues to harden in our schools today. It leads the most well intentioned of us, like my friend Janet, into low expectations for low-income students. It makes teachers fear their most powerless pupils. And, worst of all, it diverts attention from what people in poverty do have in common: inequitable access to basic human rights.

The most destructive tool of the culture of classism is deficit theory. In education, we often talk about the deficit perspective-defining students by their weaknesses rather than their strengths. Deficit theory takes this attitude a step further, suggesting that poor people are poor because of their own moral and intellectual deficiencies (Collins, 1988). Deficit theorists use two strategies for propagating this world view: (1) drawing on well-established stereotypes, and (2) ignoring systemic conditions, such as inequitable access to high-quality schooling, that support the cycle of poverty.

The implications of deficit theory reach far beyond individual bias. If we convince ourselves that poverty results not from gross inequities (in which we might be complicit) but from poor people's own deficiencies, we are much less likely to support authentic antipoverty policy and programs. Further, if we believe, however wrongly, that poor people don't value education, then we dodge any responsibility to redress the gross education inequities with which they contend. This application of deficit theory establishes the idea of what Gans (1995) calls the undeserving poor -a segment of our society that simply does not deserve a fair shake.

If the goal of deficit theory is to justify a system that privileges economically advantaged students at the expense of working-class and poor students, then it appears to be working marvelously. In our determination to "fix" the mythical culture of poor students, we ignore the ways in which our society cheats them out of opportunities that their wealthier peers take for granted. We ignore the fact that poor people suffer disproportionately the effects of nearly every major social ill. They lack access to health care, living-wage jobs, safe and affordable housing, clean air and water, and so on (Books, 2004)-conditions that limit their abilities to achieve to their full potential.

Perhaps most of us, as educators, feel powerless to address these bigger issues. But the question is this: Are we willing, at the very least, to tackle the classism in our own schools and classrooms?

This classism is plentiful and well documented (Kozol, 1992). For example, compared with their wealthier peers, poor students are more likely to attend schools that have less funding (Carey, 2005); lower teacher salaries (Karoly, 2001); more limited computer and Internet access (Gorski, 2003); larger class sizes; higher student-to-teacher ratios; a less-rigorous curriculum; and fewer experienced teachers (Barton, 2004). The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (2004) also found that low-income schools were more likely to suffer from cockroach or rat infestation, dirty or inoperative student bathrooms, large numbers of teacher vacancies and substitute teachers, more teachers who are not licensed in their subject areas, insufficient or outdated classroom materials, and inadequate or nonexistent learning facilities, such as science labs.

Here in Minnesota, several school districts offer universal half-day kindergarten but allow those families that can afford to do so to pay for full-day services. Our poor students scarcely make it out of early childhood without paying the price for our culture of classism. Deficit theory requires us to ignore these inequities-or worse, to see them as normal and justified.

What does this mean? Regardless of how much students in poverty value education, they must overcome tremendous inequities to learn. Perhaps the greatest myth of all is the one that dubs education the "great equalizer." Without considerable change, it cannot be anything of the sort.

What Can We Do?

The socioeconomic opportunity gap can be eliminated only when we stop trying to "fix" poor students and start addressing the ways in which our schools perpetuate classism. This includes destroying the inequities listed above as well as abolishing such practices as tracking and ability grouping, segregational redistricting, and the privatization of public schools. We must demand the best possible education for all students-higher-order pedagogies, innovative learning materials, and holistic teaching and learning. But first, we must demand basic human rights for all people: adequate housing and health care, living-wage jobs, and so on.

Of course, we ought not tell students who suffer today that, if they can wait for this education revolution, everything will fall into place. So as we prepare ourselves for bigger changes, we must

Educate ourselves about class and poverty.

Reject deficit theory and help students and colleagues unlearn misperceptions about poverty.

Make school involvement accessible to all families.

Follow Janet's lead, inviting colleagues to observe our teaching for signs of class bias.

Continue reaching out to low-income families even when they appear unresponsive (and without assuming, if they are unresponsive, that we know why).

Respond when colleagues stereotype poor students or parents.

Never assume that all students have equitable access to such learning resources as computers and the Internet, and never assign work requiring this access without providing in-school time to complete it.

Ensure that learning materials do not stereotype poor people.

Fight to keep low-income students from being assigned unjustly to special education or low academic tracks.

Make curriculum relevant to poor students, drawing on and validating their experiences and intelligences.

Teach about issues related to class and poverty-including consumer culture, the dissolution of labor unions, and environmental injustice-and about movements for class equity.

Teach about the antipoverty work of Martin Luther King Jr., Helen Keller, the Black Panthers, César Chávez, and other U.S. icons-and about why this dimension of their legacies has been erased from our national consciousness.

Fight to ensure that school meal programs offer healthy options.

Examine proposed corporate-school partnerships, rejecting those that require the adoption of specific curriculums or pedagogies.

Most important, we must consider how our own class biases affect our interactions with and expectations of our students. And then we must ask ourselves, Where, in reality, does the deficit lie? Does it lie in poor people, the most disenfranchised people among us? Does it lie in the education system itself-in, as Jonathan Kozol says, the savage inequalities of our schools? Or does it lie in us-educators with unquestionably good intentions who too often fall to the temptation of the quick fix, the easily digestible framework that never requires us to consider how we comply with the culture of classism.

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The Myth of the Culture of Poverty - ASCD

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As the students file out of Janet's classroom, I sit in the back corner, scribbling a few final notes. Defeat in her eyes, Janet drops into a seat next to me with a sigh. "I love these kids," she declares, as if trying to convince me. "I adore them.

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Commentary

When peaceful protests turned violent in Baltimore in April, the district closed public schools for a day. When schools reopened, district leaders encouraged principals and teachers to discuss the demonstrations in classrooms. They addressed the racial tension head-on and used it, as noted later in a district statement on the unrest, as a "teachable moment to reduce conflict and violence in our society."

While we applaud this response, we question why it took such a tragic event to prompt our schools-not only in Baltimore, but elsewhere-to begin an honest conversation about race.

Our concern is based on research we have released over the past 12 months on black and Latino males in Boston's public schools. In our work, we found reluctance on the part of teachers and administrators to talk about issues of race and gender. The two-part study -commissioned by the Boston school system and conducted by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, at Brown University, and the Center for Collaborative Education, in Boston-found that the city's black and Latino students are an increasingly diverse and growing population, with immigrant students from countries in Africa and the Caribbean being the fastest-growing groups.

In Boston, black and Latino males make up 78 percent of the total male enrollment of public schools, and they post lower attendance rates, higher suspension and dropout rates, and lower four-year graduation rates than their white and Asian counterparts. The aim of our study was to find out how schools doing comparatively better with black and Latino males were able to achieve their relative success.

In four case studies of such schools, we found that they all had the hallmarks of good schools: caring school cultures, professional collaborative communities, individualized instruction, and meaningful family engagement. Despite these positive characteristics, however, the schools still faced several barriers to being more successful with black and Latino male students. Chief among them, we found, was the fact that teachers and staff members preferred to take a colorblind approach to their work. And, with a few exceptions, they were generally reluctant even to discuss race and gender explicitly.

Many well-intentioned teachers use this colorblind approach, but it is the wrong response for black and Latino boys, who may experience daily instances of prejudice and racism. Research suggests that using curriculum and instruction that is explicit about race and the impact of racism in schools and society promotes school cultures in which students of color feel more of a sense of belonging and empowerment. Such school cultures can lead to better outcomes for students of color.

A colorblind approach flies in the face of that knowledge. When educators say, "I'm colorblind" and claim not to see or be influenced by their students' race, the net result is that students of color, their experiences, and their perspectives become "invisible" in the classroom.

The problem of a colorblind education system is not specific to Boston or Baltimore. H. Richard Milner, the executive director of the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Rac(e)ing to Class: Confronting Poverty and Race in Schools and Classrooms, also found in his research that while most educators have good intentions, teachers were very uncomfortable talking about race and avoided doing so. We know that a key quality of good teachers is "knowing your kids." When we went beyond the traditional race/ethnicity categories and included country of origin, it revealed a far more culturally and linguistically diverse black and Latino student population than the district had seen before. Educators need that kind of information to help them better understand and leverage their students' backgrounds as assets for learning.

In our research, teachers admitted that they lacked knowledge about their students' racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, but also acknowledged that knowing more would improve their teaching. Districts and schools need to provide this kind of information, as well as opportunities and training for faculty, parents, and students to talk about race, culture, and language.

If school leaders want to play a role in improving race relations and narrowing opportunity gaps in their districts and cities, they must work to abandon the colorblind approach. We recommend that urban districts like Boston that serve large numbers of students of color examine their student populations more closely.

Districts should recognize that black and Latino males need access to a rigorous curriculum that includes content reflecting their language, culture, and frames of reference. They need to see teachers and administrators who look like them. All of us must work harder to create schools that embrace students and families of all backgrounds, rather than places where some are asked to leave their cultures, languages, and experiences outside the schoolhouse door.

Published in Print: August 26, 2015, as Colorblind Approaches To Education Are Hurting Students

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Colorblind Education Is the 'Wrong Response'

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Commentary When peaceful protests turned violent in Baltimore in April, the district closed public schools for a day. When schools reopened, district leaders encouraged principals and teachers to discuss the demonstrations in classrooms. They addressed the racial tension head-on and used it, as noted later in a district statement on the unrest, as a "teachable moment to reduce conflict and violence in our society."

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Update, 7/20/2016: Last week, the editorial team at EdSurge chose to write (shown below) about issues in which we are hardly experts-namely issues of social justice. We stumbled in that effort-and are owning up to where we went wrong. Here's what happened.
"We educators do the work not just in the classroom, but also with our feet and voices. We move in unison with our folks on the street."
-Jose Vilson

On July 10, New York teacher and #EduColor founder Jose Vilson tweeted the above message after noticing that more of his fellow educators were endeavoring to be more "socially aware and vocal about oppression," whether they were teachers of color or otherwise. Vilson hit on a vital point: Given the recent increase in the visibility of shootings and violence against black individuals, as well as the impact that news inevitably has on students, no American can ignore what's happening in country. And we'll go one step further: silence is no option. Instead silence risks compliance. It smacks of "business as usual."

This means all of us: students, teachers and administrations-and yes, entrepreneurs and investors in edtech products used every day. And that certainly includes us, here at EdSurge.

Like many, the violence surfaced in recent weeks left us with a paralyzing mix of anger, grief and numbness.

At first, we planned to compile a list of resources that offer readers ways to discuss these issues with kids and peers. But after talking to Texas school administrator Rafranz Davis, she reminded us of something important: sharing these collections isn't enough. That's business as usual. Instead, we as an organization have to to analyze our own biases. Here at EdSurge, and across Silicon Valley at large, we've been slow to make a conscious choice to examine the root of the issues and their impact on our colleagues, family and friends.

Admitting to our confusion, vulnerability and naivety is the first step toward engaging in a proactive conversation. But here are some guidelines that we at EdSurge will follow on this journey of exploring the concept of privilege, recognizing "white blindness," and moving from conversations on listicles and Tweets, into practice in our office and in our work.

Guideline #1: Recognize the implicit biases in our own work.

Everyone is biased in some way, shape, or form. The musical Avenue Q parodied this concept with the song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" back in 2003. Sure, it may have been sardonic and poking fun-but that doesn't make the title of the song any less true.

How do our own backgrounds as writers, editors, and developers influence our stories? How do the images that accompany these articles reinforce or reject assumptions and biases?

So what privileges do we enjoy-as individuals and as an organization-and how can we be thoughtful about how that shapes our work? What do our races afford us? What about our socioeconomic statuses?

Like many education technology companies in the Silicon Valley, our demographic makeup does not reflect the education system that we report on. Many of us grew up in stable communities and had the privileges of a well-rounded education. We have many Stanford and Ivy League degrees. We have over-represented minorities (Asian) and severely under-represented ones (both Latino and black).

As reporters, we have always tried to be mindful about bias in our reporting-and to be open with readers about where conflicts may lurk. But we need to go further: We need to regularly ask ourselves whether or not we emphasize one set of voices over others in our writing.

Among the questions we have to ask ourselves:

When it comes to our stories, are we asking about the inequities in how edtech tools get used?

How do our own backgrounds as writers, editors, and developers influence our stories?

How do the images that accompany these articles reinforce or reject assumptions and biases?

Who do we quote in stories? Do those voices reflect relevant demographics, including those of schools and teaching communities?

Do we actively seek contributors and columnists that represent different-and at times opposing-viewpoints?

"You have privilege, whether you want to recognize or not. What each of us decides to do with our privilege is the real issue in my mind."

We have been critiqued for falling short on these standards and take the comments seriously. And we're renewing our commitment to asking these questions of our own work.

Guideline #2: Educate ourselves on bias and privilege, and learn how to turn them into a force for positive change.

What can we do to better understand how our prejudices affect and are perceived by others?

In a recent blogpost, Georgia educator Shana White exemplifies the concept of turning privilege into a positive when she writes, "You have privilege, whether you want to recognize or not. What each of us decides to do with our privilege is the real issue in my mind." Instead of "excusing actions," "dismissing, and "blaming others," White makes a conscious effort instead to "be more selfless" and "actively love people unlike me."

We at EdSurge need to do a better job of acknowledging what's happening outside of our laptops and office walls-and actively involving ourselves in using our voices and our convenings for positive impact.

"Acknowledging that this atrocity happened and that you're hurt by it - that really is a start to making a difference."

Guideline #3: Start the conversation-in the office, at home, with your neighbors...

In her recent article, Mandela Schumacher-Hodge describes how just acknowledging the pain and frustration that our colleagues are experiencing matters. "You don't have to have all the right words or all the perfect answers, but just saying something to the Black and White people you work with-acknowledging that this atrocity happened and that you're hurt by it-that really is a start to making a difference," she writes.

These talks are uncomfortable. But we can't pretend that the violence that has wracked our country is somebody else's problem. Instead, we have to seek to create an atmosphere of openness and trust where we can admit and accept each other's misunderstandings and vulnerabilities. Share your pain, confusion or frustration with your kids, friends, neighbors and colleagues. Write a letter to your family.

As an organization, we are trying to have these conversations-and having them now-with our colleagues, with people we write about, and yes, with you, readers.

Here's our promise to you: We will hold ourselves accountable. We hope you will help and let us know when we fail. And we'll share our reflections, in a few months' time, as we follow these guidelines-and perhaps discover more along the journey.

We will stumble, and we'll be uncomfortable, and we won't be perfect. But we will try.

And you?

Mary Jo Madda (@MJMadda) is Senior Editor at EdSurge, as well as a former STEM teacher and administrator. In 2016, Mary Jo was named to the Forbes "30 Under 30" list in education.

Tony Wan (@tonywan) is the Managing Editor at EdSurge. He was also on that Forbes list but has since turned 30.

EdSurge writers Leonard Medlock and Betsy Corcoran contributed to this piece.

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A Commitment to Confronting Our Bias and Privileges - EdSurge News

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Update, 7/20/2016: Last week, the editorial team at EdSurge chose to write (shown below) about issues in which we are hardly experts-namely issues of social justice. We stumbled in that effort-and are owning up to where we went wrong. Here's what happened.

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Wow, dusting off my blog....it is been more than a hot second but for a legit reason. I needed to mentally take a step back from being a connected educator. To be honest being a connected educator has been great for my growth and also helped me establish really great relationships and close friendships with other educators all over the world. With those connections has also created an oxymoronic feeling of murky transparency that I didn't like and wanted to be away from. There are people that I feel like I know really well and others I thought I knew, but I'm still surprised by their actions and choices. I guess I feel social media should really allow people to "live their truth" but quite often I've noticed instead people don't really do so. Why is that? I do feel connected educators need to do more internal work. What are you really about? What things in education really matter? Am I letting my bubble skew my understanding of the world around me? Am I really a desultory educator? Do I act like a cat and a laser pointer, always jumping the next catchy buzzword or trend? Many things in education are not fun, innovating, trendy, or glamorous. How are you addressing those things? Those are some of the hard questions I wish connected educators really thought about, worked through internally, and honestly answer.

Equity, inclusion, and advocacy work are examples of those topics that aren't as glamorous. Equity and inclusion aren't the flavors of the month although many on EduTwitter are treating them as such. Equity and advocacy work can't be treated like the Hokey Pokey. You don't get to put one hand in because you finally hear the music that's been playing for quite some time. Genunine pursuits for equity and sincere advocacy efforts for marginalized groups last a lot longer than a catchy song and require a lot more effort than shaking all about. Oftentimes, especially in the early stages, the work requires you in the words of Mr. Lamar to: "Sit down, be humble." The equity and advocacy party has been around a very long time. Don't arrive, attempt to change the music, invite some of your friends, then bounce shortly there after. Don't arrive on the scene because it's now the popular place to be, take selfies, and brag about being there once. Don't ignore the people who've been at the party from the beginning or for a very long time and dismiss/ignore their efforts to continue to keep the party bumpin'. It doesn't work that way. Genunine advocacy work is long suffering, active, visible, and full of humbling moments. Dismissing the work of and not listening to veteran advocates who have come before is disrespectful, ungrateful, and disingenuous. All connected educators must do better in this, stop ignoring and patronizing those working to improve these educational issues with more than buzzword, hashtags, and gadgets.

I'm still a bit baffled by the idea that people think patronizing, minimizing, erasure of people of color is okay. Black women have dealt with erasure since forever (ever, ever) and I feel maybe people think that's what makes it okay. It is dehumanizing when someone literally removes or eliminates your brilliance, ideas, thoughts, or words. Doubly troubling is when these same ideas, thoughts, and/or words are used for someone else's gain, ego stroke, or benefit. I respect the following quote from Truman: "it's amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit" but that adage is faulty for this reason. These accomplishments are tainted because they stem from ego-driven elimination of another individual's value. When you silence, ignore, or co-opt someone else's message/idea/thought you see them as less, and not as worthy or valuable. Co-opting is new school form of unpleasant piggy backing. Quite often when you co-opt, you're changing the value of originator to an object, standing on their shoulders so you can be seen, thus demeaning and dehumanizing them.
In my twelve year career as an educator, I've seen a lot erasure, disrespect, inequity and dealt with my fair share as well. I find it so peculiar that no matter the variety and wealth of my experiences and abilities, I still can be treated in educational circles at times as an nonentity. Microaggressions, unfair labels, silencing, co-opting all happen consistently and usually because other people are uncomfortable. In this situation, like most others, the why is forefront in my mind, and the what is a byproduct. Why do I get silenced? Why do I experience microaggressions? The question I've now instead begun to ask is this: Why am I causing you enough discomfort so you're acting this way towards me?

"Shana, you're so direct."

"Shana, that's mean because you didn't agree with me."

"Shana, because you don't smile at me all the time, I think you don't like me."

"Shana, you won't help me when I want you to."

"Shana, you speak up too much and your tone is aggressive."

Above are just a few of the things that have been said to me by adults (most of them not to my face) but via written format or my favorite, having someone else deliver the message to me. Labels like advocate, determined, skilled, strong-willed, passionate aren't always used by some people to describe me. Instead its aggressive, mean, disruptive, trouble-maker, or outspoken. Why? Some of us know why. I know a lot of other educators of color (especially black women) will raise their hands about being described by the latter adjectives more often than not. This is another form of disrespect, devaluing, and erasure that at this point in my career I should not be subjected to.

Again, I ask: Why does my existance cause you discomfort? Do you recognize the reason why yet? Again that internal work is necessary here to answer these hard questions.

Am I supposed to be docile and accept things the way they are? Should I never offer pushback or a reminder to pause and listen? Should I never speak up and speak out when people continue to trivialize serious issues? Should I allow myself to be dehumanized so you can feel better about yourself?

Well, news flash, my responses to the above questions will continue to be nope, nope, nope, and nope.

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Wow, dusting off my blog....it is been more than a hot second but for a legit reason. I needed to mentally take a step back from being a connected educator. To be honest being a connected educator has been great for my growth and also helped me establish really great relationships and close friendships with...

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We're at a juncture in education where big dollars are being spent to make sure kids have access to computers, tablets and the Internet at school. Such infrastructure opens the portal to a world of information, and new tools that support viewing, documenting and playing with information in school appear almost daily. We're told such tools engage our students and, thus, support their learning.

But which uses of technology in schools support young people's development better than, say, using a pencil? And which are, in fact, worse than a pencil?

As a step toward answering this question, an educator-led initiative called Smart Tech Use for Equity is engaging a diverse group of K-12 teachers who teach San Diego's low-income students of color. The goal? Identify uses of technology in schools that promote learning, development and success for all students versus uses that don't.

As a beginning exercise, the San Diego group reported on technology use they had seen or tried in a classroom that potentially did more harm than good. The teachers offered these examples.

Putting kids on skill-practice games for crowd control or simply to engage kids in something.

Using expensive Promethean boards as if they were cheap whiteboards, wasting limited district dollars.

"Sticking all kids on an app where they are just having fun but not rigorously learning."

Asking students to take hours to "make fun videos" for school projects without weighing the implications for student learning.

Replacing a hands-on lab activity with an online lab activity in science to avoid the mess and materials without evaluating the pros and cons.

"Looking at an online textbook that is really just still a textbook-it just happens to be online."

Buying technology resources for everyone and running workshops on how to operate them without investigating how the technologies might be helpful.

Keeping devices locked in computer labs or warehouses so no one steals them.

Put simply, it was the experience of these teachers that more technology use isn't inherently good. Closing the hardware and Internet divide is critical, but if some students get to create, think and communicate with technologies while others do more passive or low-level learning tasks, opportunity gaps persist. It was with this understanding that the group set out to ask harder questions about the pros and cons of technology use.

Smart Tech Use for Equity

The Smart Tech Use for Equity participants are K-12 teachers of science, math, special education and English (including English as another language). In 2014-15, 10 founding teachers each explored one tech use with their students, documented the effects and shared their learning with other teachers. The same process is underway for 2015-16. (You can watch videos about their work here.)

The projects asks teachers to be equity designers, exploring the potential and limitations of technology for enabling student thinking, learning, voice and achievement. Each teacher is encouraged to think critically about the equity implications of technology use in classrooms.

While equity in school-based tech use is often framed as "all students having devices and access to the Internet," the Smart Tech Use for Equity project requires a loftier definition, guided by this question: Does this use of technology help support the full human talent development of every student, and all groups of students? Or not?

This question asks teachers to test whether tech use supports English language learners; students from all racial and ethnic groups; students of all genders; students from all economic backgrounds; children with diverse abilities; and, of course, every individual.

In the initial launch meeting, the group responded to the question, "If you walked into a classroom and saw smart tech use for equity in action, what would it look like?" The answer was not "everyone on devices." Instead, the teachers had visions of diverse groups of students vigorously discussing literature, science or math. With these aspirational visions in mind, the teachers developed this template for testing, documenting and sharing the "smartness" of their own tech use with equity in mind.

1. What's your equity vision for students in your classroom?

2. What tech use did you experiment with to see if it could help achieve that vision?

3. What did you do with your students to test that use of technology, and how did it go? (Show the pros and cons for students.)

4. What's your conclusion about how "smart" that tech use was for achieving your equity vision?

This template essentially encouraged the participating teachers to do-and document-action research. As one participant put it, "As educators [who] care, we probably do this sort of testing all the time. This is formalizing it a little bit and ensuring that we share it."

Early Realizations

In starting to assess tech use for equity, participants-who were under pressure to use glitzy apps-quickly realized something counterintuitive: Often, it's the simplest uses of technology that get students to talk, write and create. As one participant tweeted, "Spent the day w/Ts developing research action plans to design technology for equity. I LOVE IT, it's no longer just about apps #createequity."

For example, middle school science teachers Alicia Johal and Melissa Foster each had the equity vision of supporting their English language learners. Both teachers have students who are shy about communicating their scientific thinking in English-but the Next Generation Science Standards require them to talk about science. Could technology help?

Each teacher chose a simple technological tool. Johal chose the Explain Everything Interactive Whiteboard app to see if it might help students verbally articulate their understanding of science before writing lab reports. She invited students to talk through their understanding with her one-on-one via a video voiceover (talking over images) in English and then transcribe their words into written English. Foster chose iMovie to help students verbalize their understanding before taking tests. She had students explain their thinking-in English and Spanish-on video voiceover during test preparation.

Both educators were "blown away" by how well students understood concepts they hadn't been able to describe previously in classroom dialogue, traditional lab notebooks or on tests. In both classrooms, technology helped the students start to share their voices.

English teacher Serena Pariser had a different vision: She wanted her middle school students to have deeper dialogues about literature. She tested two different tools to support small-group conversations: TodaysMeet and Padlet. Using TodaysMeet, she allowed her students to type their contributions to a small-group conversation about a novel instead of talking face-to-face. Using Padlet, she allowed the whole class to brainstorm and type their responses simultaneously while projecting their ideas onto a screen. After the Padlet brainstorm, Pariser prompted in-person small group conversations during which students could reference the class discussion on individual iPads.

Pariser found that TodaysMeet didn't add much to the literature dialogue. In fact, it got in the way: Students had better small-group conversations in person. Padlet, however, allowed for a rapid online brainstorm where every voice in the class was heard, captured and left visible. This deepened in-person follow-up dialogue by allowing students to tap all of their peers' ideas at once.

Teacher Jeri Aring had yet another vision: She wanted to support her third-grade students' abilities to explain a math concept verbally or in writing-a key expectation of the Common Core State Standards. She videotaped students explaining math problems to each other using the basic video feature on her iPad and showed the videos to them to clarify the elements of a rigorous math explanation. Students then taped themselves explaining math problems to each other. Aring was thrilled to see all of her students, including those who had struggled to explain math previously, explaining fractions and proportions in detail and correctly.

What Counts as Smart Tech Use for Equity?

Teachers' visions for "smarter tech use" evolved over the course of the project. Their initial ideas were broad, including statements like, "only as needed," "personalized classrooms" and "meaningful exploration." After some classroom experimentation, a more specific list of smart technology use criteria emerged-via Padlet-during a group brainstorm.

Students are able to think about their own thinking and the thinking of their peers.

Students engage in deeper thought and comprehension after a blend of verbal, in-person communication and typing/writing that uses technology as portal for students to talk.

Sometimes technology comes before verbal and sometimes verbal comes before technology.

Students are "heard."

Students go beyond the classroom walls both to get input for learning and to demonstrate/share learning and thinking.

Teachers learn from students, students learn from students, and students learn from teachers and other adults.

All students are able to share their learning.

Tech use supports students in talking through their thinking for an audience.

Tech use supports what students are learning rather than usage being the end goal itself.

The consensus definition of "smart tech use for equity" was the educational use of technology that considers the following questions:

Does the technology allow all learners to share/communicate their thinking and inquire deeply into a concept?

Does the technology empower all learners to recognize their knowledge and contributions to the learning environment and to society?

It also means deciding against the technology use if the answer to either question is no.

Takeaways

Teachers have big dreams for their classrooms that go far beyond more tech use. In particular, the teachers participating in the Smart Tech Use for Equity project have visions for equity in classrooms that include "students getting opportunity despite a label," "making sure that all students leave classrooms with the skills they need to succeed," "students leaving 12th grade as confident collaborators and creative thinkers," and "helping students be curious, contribute to community and get excited." Technology is simply a potential vehicle for these loftier goals.

A key to making these visions a reality is documenting whether tech use actually supports students' learning, participation and deep comprehension. Is putting kids on iPads in preschool better than playing with oatmeal or water? Is seeing the solar system on a screen better than mapping out its dimensions using toilet paper? And when does the use of technology open up learning for young people who most need support from their schools?

We need more teachers exploring and assessing smart tech use for equity. In an era when many stakeholders call for more technology while others resist, teachers acting as equity designers can define what it means to support all young people through tech use. As one teacher put it, "I want to see tech as a tool-not the end, but a bridge."

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We're at a juncture in education where big dollars are being spent to make sure kids have access to computers, tablets and the Internet at school. Such infrastructure opens the portal to a world of information, and new tools that support viewing, documenting and playing with information in school appear almost daily.

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Start with simple questions, and establish a baseline of trust.

Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters

This article is part of our Next America: Communities project, which is supported by a grant from Emerson Collective.

About the Author

Alexia Fernández Campbell is a former staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers immigration and business. She was previously a reporter at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Spanish-language newspaper of The Palm Beach Post.

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Start with simple questions, and establish a baseline of trust. This article is part of our Next America: Communities project, which is supported by a grant from Emerson Collective. Alexia Fernández Campbell is a former staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers immigration and business.

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Justice Committee: Using Restorative Practices to Resolve Conflicts

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Students at Pittsfield Middle High School are trained to mediate conflicts between their fellow students-and between students and teachers.

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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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Confession: I spent most of my formative years wrestling with the idea of "acting white."

The term "acting white" is often used against children of color who either still struggle with their self-concept or have taken on characteristics in their personalities that may not seem original to their ethnic background. Many of the people who know the present me always say that I don't look like I've ever had an issue with race, or that I handle race well. It's not that I never saw race; it's that I had to learn how to handle it at an early age. Negotiating the different worlds that I occupied, from the hood to the exclusive high school, I quickly learned that the best way to deal with race is to take on the norms and biases that come with it.

I learned how to work with the idea of race through experience, and lots of help from a book every educator ought to have in their bookshelves: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. In this book, she clearly defines some of the words we use freely in our discussions and gives us a framework for how to discuss race, culture and ethnicity in a constructive manner and in layman's terms.

Unfortunately, America still has a hard time working with race in a constructive way. Educators particularly find themselves at the center of the discussion. It's not just because we have the opportunity to speak daily to our students on this subject, but also because of the racial breakdown of teachers in our schools. When 83% of all teachers are white (non-Hispanic) with an ever-increasing student body of color, we can no longer stand by and expect the race discussion to solve itself.

It's a big monster. Students cross lines. Teachers get upset and ignore. Principals avoid at all costs. Here are five tips I've learned about having these discussions.

1. Discomfort is the Starting Point, Not the End Goal

Discussions about big ideas like race, religion and politics necessitate some discomfort. By discomfort, I mean that people who participate in the discussion have a degree of soul-searching and reassessment about their own perceptions and biases. For instance, does one person find that their opinions get listened to more readily than those of certain school colleagues? Do they always sit with people of similar interests, or does it go deeper than that? How often do they interact with people that don't look like them or speak like them? As long as people begin with a clear understanding that the discussion won't start off with warm, fuzzy feelings, then the next few steps become easier.

2. Proceed with the Best Intentions

The power of positive thinking works even in spaces where controversy arises. Despite our various experiences, we have to be willing to listen and not react immediately. The person speaking may say things in error, and usually speaks from exposure or lack thereof. We also have to keep in mind that, when we do get a chance to speak, we can't assume complete ignorance. If someone just doesn't understand an experience, we have to try our best to explain the experience with as much clarity as possible.

3. Be Honest and Inclusive

When it's your turn to speak up, you should come into the conversation with an understanding that whatever you say comes from a place of wanting to learn. Not everyone has the same understandings about race. We also have to keep in mind that those most affected negatively by race inevitably do most of the teaching. We shouldn't take this to mean that they also get to dominate the conversation; if anything, we all need to make sure a true exchange of ideas happens.

4. Facilitation Matters

With any discussion, having a good facilitator matters. Let's be honest: people can get carried away with their opinions. At the center of the discussion, we need to have someone or a collection of people who can set the norms for how the discussion goes. That person does not necessarily require special expertise in matters of race, but they should have a clear sense of how to ask questions, clarify thoughts, rephrase when necessary, and help bring some solutions or understandings to the fore.

5. Solutions Include Confronting Racism Wherever We Can

Having conversations is not enough anymore. Plenty of us have attended consortia on racism and other forms of prejudice, and rarely do the conversations end with some form of resolution or actionable item. In the 21st century, we have to get better at doing the small things that contribute positively to our environments. Things like including more people within our circles, recognizing how we sit during faculty conferences, and addressing how we speak to children who may or may not look like us (and how we teach them to approach others) all go a long way towards deconstructing racism.

Many of the solutions start with us. We can apply some of these tips as needed. While principals should take the lead, sometimes they neither have the tools nor the sense of self to hear these discussions. Some leaders may take personally the fact that a race problem exists in a school, or they might see it as a reflection of the person pointing out the issue. In other environments, an educator may not see the importance of discussing race because they consider themselves color-blind, despite the fact that research has disproven such an idea. (For an in-depth look at color-blind racism, I recommend Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.)

Let's sit down and have a conversation instead of looking for reasons not to. In these times, achievement without social justice is an injustice for all.

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Rethinking Conversations on Race Among Educators

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Confession: I spent most of my formative years wrestling with the idea of "acting white." The term "acting white" is often used against children of color who either still struggle with their self-concept or have taken on characteristics in their personalities that may not seem original to their ethnic background.

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This guide was created for educators, school support staff and service providers who teach, mentor and help open the doors of opportunity for undocumented youth and unaccompanied and refugee children currently living in the United States. Educators, school support staff and service providers are often the first individuals a student and/or family comes out to as undocumented.

Moreover, they are often the first ones to witness the impact of increased enforcement measures on students and their families.

Schools should be safe havens that embrace all students and families, regardless of citizenship and national origin, and that includes unaccompanied and refugee children. The 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe ruled that undocumented children have a constitutional right to receive a free public K-12 education, which provides the means to becoming a "self-reliant and self-sufficient participant in society," the court wrote, and instills the "fundamental values necessary to the maintenance of a democratic political system." However, today's increased enforcement measures by the Department of Homeland Security and campaign promises made by the incoming administration threaten that right for thousands of undocumented youth and the 4.1 million U.S.-born children who live in mixed-status households with at least one parent or family member who is undocumented.

Facts About Undocumented Students

An undocumented student is an aspiring citizen who came to the United States without legal documentation or who has overstayed his or her visa. These students:

Often don't know they are undocumented until they begin the college application process;

Don't qualify for federal grants or loans, even if they are in financial need and their parents pay taxes;

Are racially and ethnically diverse, from all corners of the world, and are part of the 11.5 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Educator's FAQ About Immigration Raids

What impact do raids have on children and youth?

Research consistently shows that immigration enforcement actions have a harmful impact on the health, safety, academic performance and overall well-being of children, including U.S. citizen children living in mixed-status families. According to a 2010 report by the Urban Institute, children who witnessed parents or family members apprehended in a home raid were much more likely to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder than children whose parents were arrested in other settings, including greater changes in sleeping and eating patterns and much higher degrees of fear and anxiety. Several teachers in North Carolina also reported significant behavioral changes and increased absenteeism among students following a local community raid, including among U.S. citizen students.

Are there places where raids are prohibited?

Yes, with exceptions. According to a policy memorandum released by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency in 2011, commonly referred to as the "sensitive locations memo," ICE officers and agents are to refrain from enforcement actions at least at the following locations and events:

schools (including preschools, primary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities, and other institutions of learning, such as vocational and trade schools);

hospitals;

churches, synagogues, mosques and other institutions of worship, such as buildings rented for the purpose of religious services;

funerals, weddings and other public religious ceremonies; and

public demonstrations, such as a march, rally or parade.

Note: The sensitive locations policy memorandum may be reversed. School leaders should stay informed about possible changes.
Is there a federal law that prevents schools from sharing student information?

Yes. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools are prohibited, without parental consent, from providing information from a student's file to federal immigration agents if the information would potentially expose a student's immigration status. If ICE agents present a school with a removal warrant (deportation order), the school is still permitted to refrain from providing student information, as the warrant is administrative, not judicial. Under FERPA, schools may disclose directory information without consent, but they are required to allow parents and eligible students a reasonable amount of time to request that the school not disclose directory information about them. Some schools [and the Southern Poverty Law Center] have also interpreted the Plyler decision as prohibiting them from requiring students to provide Social Security cards or birth certificates as a condition of enrollment, test taking or participation in school activities. For more on FERPA, see familypolicy.ed.gov.

What Educators, School Support Staff and Communities Can Do

Issue a statement-in English and in other languages spoken at the school-articulating that the school supports immigrant students/parents and affirming publically that it is a welcoming site.

Stress the importance of taking proactive steps to ensure the safety and well-being of children and entire communities.

Distribute "know your rights" materials to students, families and communities about what to do if a raid occurs or an individual is detained.

Identify a bilingual person at your school who can serve as the immigration resource advocate in your building or on your campus.

Work with parents to develop a family immigration raid emergency plan.

Provide a safe place for students to wait if a parent or sibling has been detained.

Provide counseling for students who have had a family member detained by ICE.

Work with your school board to pass a resolution affirming schools as welcoming places of learning for all students, distancing the schools from enforcement actions that separate families.

Strengthen relationships with local institutions of higher education and community-based organizations that can support the needs of unaccompanied children and students with interrupted formal education.

Maintain-in English and in other languages spoken at the school-a list of resources, such as the names of mental health providers, social workers, pro bono attorneys and local immigration advocates and organizations that can be shared with your students and their families.

Partner with a pro bono attorney, legal aid organization or immigrant rights organization to schedule a "know your rights" workshop on campus to inform students and families about their rights.

Find out if there is a local immigration raid rapid response team. These teams usually consist of attorneys, media personnel and community leaders who may be able to provide support.

Participate in National Educators Coming Out Day, held annually on November 12, and "come out" in support of undocumented students.

Participate in National Institutions Coming Out Day, held annually on April 7.

For additional tools and model resolutions to create safe, welcoming environments for all students, visit aft.org and see the toolkit for this story.

Taking Action Beyond The Classroom

Advocate to stop raids and halt deportation proceedings.

Unaccompanied children and youth should be in school, not in detention centers awaiting deportation. Educators can play an important role in protesting raids and halting deportation proceedings. For example, if a student has been detained by ICE, you can send a letter of inquiry to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, asking for prosecutorial discretion to be exercised or considered, or you can file a formal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

You can also distribute the United We Dream deportation defense guide, which was published to inform members of Congress and other elected officials about the role they can play in stopping the deportation of their constituents and other community members.

Elected officials have successfully advocated for individuals in removal proceedings for years and continue to employ this process to help immigrant communities even today. The guide is also a useful resource for community advocates and people in deportation proceedings seeking support from their elected officials. Download the guide here.

Adopt resolutions.

School districts are responsible for ensuring the safety and well-being of all their students while they are in school. One way to create a welcoming school environment and protect undocumented students while in class and on school grounds is to pass a resolution that restricts ICE agents' access to school property, similar to the one the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) passed in February 2016. The LAUSD resolution:

Forbids immigration enforcement agents from going on campus without approval from the superintendent and the LAUSD law office.

Forbids school staff from asking about a student's immigration status or that of family members.

Provides teachers, administrators and other staff with training on how to deal with immigration issues and how to notify families in multiple languages of issues.

Asks all schools to treat students equitably, including those receiving free and reduced price meals, transportation and other services.

Requires the superintendent to come up with a plan to provide assistance and information for students and families "if faced with fear and anxiety related to immigration enforcement efforts."

Such resolutions can also improve protections for students by affirming that the schoolhouse doors are open to all students, no matter their prior academic attainment or their language proficiency. For additional information about what actions cities and counties can take to protect immigrants and make communities welcoming places for all, visit Cities for Action.

Make public statements.

Educators, administrators, students and community allies can make public statements denouncing immigration enforcement raids to reassure students and families that their local school remains a safe haven.

Create an online petition to prevent a student's deportation.

Online petitions are powerful tools for building public awareness and community support. See the NotOneMoreDeportation.com petition for 19-year-old Kimberly Pineda Chavez, who was detained in the United States after escaping violence in Honduras.

Organize a rally or walkout opposing ICE raids and deportations.

In February 2016, educators and community allies in Durham, North Carolina, organized a rally in support of a high school student detained by ICE. Actions like this help to support individuals fighting their deportation cases. The student's teachers even mailed school assignments to his detention facility to help him stay on top of his work. "There is nothing that will hold me back from giving a kid his classwork and finish their education and graduate," teacher Ellen Holmes told a local news station.
Editor's note This content was originally published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its partners: United We Dream's Dream Educational Empowerment Program, the National Immigration Law Center and First Focus. This excerpt was adapted and reprinted with generous permission from the AFT.

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Immigrant and Refugee Children: A Guide for Educators and School Support Staff

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This guide was created for educators, school support staff and service providers who teach, mentor and help open the doors of opportunity for undocumented youth and unaccompanied and refugee children currently living in the United States. Educators, school support staff and service providers are often the first individuals a student and/or family comes out to as undocumented.

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Christopher Emdin: Teach teachers how to create magic | TED Talk

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What do rap shows, barbershop banter and Sunday services have in common? As Christopher Emdin says, they all hold the secret magic to enthrall and teach at the same time — and it’s a skill we often don’t teach to educators. A longtime teacher himself, now a science advocate and cofounder of Science…

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Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

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Colleges need a language shift, but not the one you think (essay)

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By substituting diversity and inclusion rhetoric for transformative efforts to promote equity and justice, colleges have avoided recognizable institutional change, contends Dafina-Lazarus Stewart.

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I just got back from the NNSTOY Conference in Washington D.C. The conference features some of the most decorated and outspoken teachers in the country. This year's foci included racial and social justice (my raison d'etre, really), student voice, and teacher agency. I was fascinated with the conference's forward thinking on this profession and the ways the organizers allowed its most potent practitioners to thrust this agenda forward. When you've assembled such a cadre of the country's most visible spokespeople for this profession, you're likely to get a good sense of where we are as a profession.

As an invited guest who is a National Board Certified teacher (NBCT), an internationally-recognized (notorious?) teacher-writer, and not- Teacher of the Year, I was fascinated by the humility. Even with all the A-type personalities in the room, the teachers in this space had a humility in their work that ought to be recognized. They generally come into their work with their hearts in the right place, and their minds on constant evolution. The folks in the room know how to walk into a classroom and make the space a learning vehicle.

That's known as expertise in most professions, but for some reason, not this one.

( note: I'm defining "teacher" here as a licensed practitioner in our classrooms who works with such a title in a PK-12 setting in the classroom. That's another fight entirely.)

I'm always concerned about how we own expertise. For an example, one of the things I learned through the NBCT process was that I had no idea how to directly talk about the profession. I'd use words like love, empathy, compassion, and failure to speak about my work in helping youth people find their paths. I still tell others that my work is nothing without my students and others who do the work.

I didn't know how to directly say "I did this. Therefore, my students learned that."

Part of that is the way that teachers are built. If we're doing the work, then we see ourselves as learners along with the students. Expertise is often foreign in that framework because we're neither confident nor settled in that One Truth. We're using and giving away tools so that the next generation might do better than us. There's also an underlying imposter syndrome that happens when we get thrown in spaces with folks with more visibility than us (media) and more political power (policymakers, administrators) and we're asked to give the totality of a given subject when we're not prepped for such an event.

At the same time, when there's a narrative gap, too many folks will gladly fill it for any number of reasons. Plus, if we don't love up on ourselves, who's gonna love us?

If this happens to our most visible spokespeople, what does that say about the rest of us? We have systems that constantly bombard us with deficit modeling. I've sat in a billion PDs where we're told that we're failing our kids, even when the kids themselves say otherwise. The person saying it is usually a professional developer who isn't worth their weight in whiteboard ink. Politicians tell us that we're not yielding results with measures that are both inappropriate and wildly unstable. Then, they turn around and tell us they can't alleviate and eradicate oppressions like poverty, institutional racism, gender inequity, and the prison injustice system. We're told by any number of folks that they'd left the classroom for greener pastures but still taut the "teacher" title and get to speak on behalf of us. ( Nah.) We get stacks of books from folks we love (few) and folks we have no love for (many), but the letters "Dr." or "Ph. D" legitimized why a district spent thousands of dollars on folks who may or may not have better pedagogical knowledge than the folks being handed these books.

These pieces all contribute to the devaluation of teachers as experts.

When teachers get out there, we always gotta point, quote, show love, exalt outward. When we're asked to name folks we consider experts, we forget to acknowledge those doing the work right from within our practitioner spaces, especially if they work in our own districts. We would do well to reassess how those deficits in expertise translate to the parents and students we work with, too.

We have countless stories of teachers who chose not to take credit for the work they did with students. The district acknowledges it, then goes on to take credit for creating environments that allowed the project to happen without acknowledging the origins. These gaps in the narrative, the ones teachers refuse to fill in because of humility, get closed up real quick with any number of policymakers who need to advance their cause.

So I don't place blame on educators for not having taken their narrative before, but on a system (and its actors) for allowing K-12 adults to get erased. This paradigm of expertise usually makes adults strip kids of their own agency too. Parents and teachers often butt heads over this issue when they could be working together to dismantle said paradigm. And, given the dominance of women in the teaching profession, this is as much an issue of feminism as it is about teaching.

There's hope.

The breadth of teacher voice groups is an indication that there's a small percentage of us willing to take steps to ensure we can re-construct a table that affirms students, parents, and community members along with the key stakeholders that wouldn't do the same for us. On the other hand, it's important to remain vigilant. Our voices can't be scripted. In our quest to demonstrate humility, we can tip over into modesty, where we don't acknowledge the fullness of the gifts we've been given. We don't have to pretend to have it all together, either. I'm more suggesting that we should be allowed to express the depth of what we do and put our strongest foot in the work we're already doing with our students and communities.

This is especially critical for those who work with our most marginalized students. The most powerful work I've seen in this space is when an adult puts a spotlight on the joys and injustices our students experience, and then speak with clarity on the moments and moves they make to give students hope and love. Contrary to our system's deficiency models, teachers doing the work can both say "I know this well" and "I'm humbled by this." We're looking for heroes to come validate the work we do, but those with mics usually don't pass them along. We can't wait our turn on this one.

Teachers who do the work model justice in this way. When given a platform, the best of us can look at the rest of the society eye-to-eye, feet firmly planted, and let truth sprout from within. That's the work, and if a teacher's already there, then they should take a mic and pump up the volume. Shake the corridors.

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Why Teachers Need To See Themselves as Experts - Jose Vilson - Medium

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I just got back from the NNSTOY Conference in Washington D.C. The conference features some of the most decorated and outspoken teachers in the country. This year's foci included racial and social justice (my raison d'etre, really), student voice, and teacher agency.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story | TED

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Minding the Gap:The Distance Between Compositional Diversity and  Institutional Transformation

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The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf | Grace Lin | TEDxNatick

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Last spring, a colleague, Dr. Karmen Kirtley, and I decided to form a book study group for fellow teachers. We knew that many of our colleagues were yearning for high-quality professional development that would push their thinking around social justice issues. And we've found that many teacher preparation programs vary widely in content and quality, and not all programs provide educators with the skills to teach in an anti-racist or anti-bias way. A book study seemed to be an appropriate method by which to address these needs, as well as our country's political climate and the many reports of prejudiced behavior we were seeing from across the nation.

There's another reason we wanted to create the book club that has to do with our students' identities and experiences. We teach at a public high school in Denver, Colorado. About 65 percent of our students receive free-or-reduced lunch. About half are currently enrolled in English language acquisition courses, and 75 percent are students of color. These demographics, although helpful, do not by themselves prompt teachers to see students as individuals who have complex-and differing-religious beliefs, socioeconomic statuses, family situations, political views and experiences with racism. To build crucial knowledge around students' identities, Karmen and I felt a need to go deeper. And with reports on the effects of divisive language and actions in schools-and beyond school walls-coming in from across the country, this need felt pressing.

During the summer before the 2016-17 school year, Karmen and I applied to make our book study a district-approved professional development unit, and the request was accepted. (In our district, teachers are paid on a merit-based system and receive salary increases for completion of district-approved PD courses.)

Our school's parent-teacher-student association awarded us a grant to begin building a social justice library for teachers with 20 copies of two different books- Rac(e)ing to Class: Confronting Poverty and Race in Schools and Classrooms (2015) by H. Richard Milner IV and Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School (2008), edited by Mica Pollock-and copies of a selection of scholarly articles on anti-bias education. The parents who awarded us the funds were enthusiastic about our forthcoming work. They recognized the benefits of providing teachers with recent scholarly works on such topics as culturally responsive instruction and anti-racist education, and how these readings could strengthen teacher-student relationships and, thus, improve student achievement.

With the grant from the association, we were able to allow 20 teachers (22, including Karmen and me as facilitators) to participate in the book study, although close to 30 of about 100 staff signed up. During the fall semester, we met four times-once to introduce participants to the book study's purpose and three other times during which we discussed our books and generated action steps for ourselves.

We first read Rac(e)ing to Class. One goal of our small group discussions was to identify issues that are within teachers' control and issues that are more systemic in nature. Here are some examples of teachers' reflections:
Are we first creating warm, caring relationships with students? Consider the differences between "schooling" and "education." Teachers should develop their knowledge beyond the academic content. Why do schools narrow curriculum?
Then, we turned to our second book- Everyday Antiracism. Karmen and I selected this title because it's a collection of short essays by leading scholars (easy for teachers to read during minimal amounts of spare time) and because it contains discussion questions and strategies for the book's use. One recommended strategy is for readers to think of "try tomorrows," actionable steps that teachers can take in the near future to practice being anti-racist educators. Here are some ideas our book study generated:
Avoid using gender-specific pronouns in the classroom. Don't be afraid to speak about racism. Make group work skills part of the curriculum. Own my own mistakes and ask students for their solutions.

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Last spring, a colleague, Dr. Karmen Kirtley, and I decided to form a book study group for fellow teachers. We knew that many of our colleagues were yearning for high-quality professional development that would push their thinking around social justice issues.

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What children learn from the things they aren't told | Chris Tompkins | TEDxCSULB

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Most of us think children are too young for certain conversations. But what would happen if that changed? In this sincere and thought-provoking TEDx Talk, Chris Tompkins unravels a complex issue unlike we've ever heard.

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Last month, at an educational event, I spoke on a panel with an elementary school teacher who has two decades' worth of experience. She shared a personal revelation about heteronormativity in the classroom: Even though she is a supportive and affirming mother of an LGBT child, it had never occurred to her that the questions she asked her students and the examples she used in the classroom always put forth a heteronormative perspective. It wasn't until she recently ran into one of her former students-now in high school and openly gay-that she realized how important it is to not make assumptions when teaching children.

Not everyone is straight or cisgender. Yet, we live in a heteronormative world, and many students spend their days in classrooms that are extensions of the world outside them. Through everything from pop culture to K-12 materials, the messages children receive inside and outside the classroom often put forth a heteronormative worldview.

Just the other week, I was at the grocery store with my 8-year-old nephew. We were waiting in the checkout line, and a woman at the register complimented his brown eyes and long eyelashes. She told him, "You're gonna be trouble for the ladies. I'm sure all the girls have a crush on you." It's a seemingly harmless and sweet comment, but if you scratch beneath the surface, the message is harmful.

As my nephew and I left the store, I thought about how, when I was 8 years old and knew I was gay, comments like hers were part of the reason I hid in the closet. How did she know my nephew wasn't gay?

Teachers have a responsibility to not make assumptions about their students' identities-and that includes their sexual orientations and gender identities. To effectively do so, it is important to consider the following key points:

No matter who you are or where you come from, we subconsciously learn or are exposed to certain societal messages. They mold our beliefs, and it's our belief systems that become the lens through which we interpret the world. Building an awareness of our implicit biases is key to interrupting heteronormative thinking.

Beneath heteronormativity lies homophobia and transphobia. Homophobia and transphobia are multi-layered, and each can include conscious or subconscious beliefs that someone else or a group of people is "bad," "wrong" or "less than."

Biological sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression cannot be equated. This is vitally important to understand when dealing with youth.

Not communicating is still communicating. When teachers do not have LGBT-inclusive curricular materials or lesson plans, they are still sending a message to their students.

Heteronormativity perpetuates the closet and the closet is a hotbed for shame.

Dr. Brené Brown, who researches shame and vulnerability, argues that shame-prone children are more likely to commit suicide, drop out of school, engage in high-risk sexual behaviors and experience increased drug use. During her keynote address at the 2017 SXSW EDU Conference, Brown spoke to an audience full of teachers about shame and the negative impact it has in the classroom. She shared how learning is inherently vulnerable and if students can't be vulnerable, it's impossible for them to learn.

For LGBT youth in the closet, it isn't possible to be vulnerable without first feeling safe.

As educators, it's not enough to support gay marriage and be an ally for the LGBT community. We have to go a step further and stop heteronormativity from taking root in our classrooms.

Here are five proactive steps:

1. Consider that at least one child in your class is LGBT.

2. Be inclusive and incorporate LGBT examples in your teaching and classroom discussions.

3. Show support by having LGBT-related books, signage, stickers or resource materials.

4. Create an open, safe and affirming space.

5. Be vulnerable, ask questions and have authentic conversations.

By incorporating these steps and not making assumptions, we can help keep children out of the closet. Being outside of the closet is the only place appropriate for a child to learn, feel safe and thrive.
For more information, click here to watch Tompkins' 2017 TEDx Talk, "What Children Learn From the Things They Aren't Told." Tompkins teaches intrapersonal development, self-empowerment and confidence building throughout Southern California. His work brings him to high schools, afterschool programs, LGBT centers and a Los Angeles-based juvenile hall.

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Last month, at an educational event, I spoke on a panel with an elementary school teacher who has two decades' worth of experience. She shared a personal revelation about heteronormativity in the classroom: Even though she is a supportive and affirming mother of an LGBT child, it had never occurred to her that the questions she asked her students and the examples she used in the classroom always put forth a heteronormative perspective.

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Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy