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What a journey! I truly have learned so much in the past 6 weeks. This exploration of self in tandem with the readings has been so powerful; in particular, it's been important to both consider the systems of power and oppression, which I am enmeshed in, as well as engage in future dreaming for what my classroom could be like. In sum, this work of self-exploration and continual education about anti-racism, abolitionist teaching, and freedom dreaming is important. I want to continue to engage in this after my time at TC. This perhaps means finding a partner to reflect with and hold me accountable and creating some type of regular schedule to commit to reflection and further reading.

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Personal: This exercise has been SO useful in thinking about my identities, beliefs, and how these two elements could manifest themselves in the classroom. I want to continue to reflect on my identities, particularly as my context changes as I leave TC and move to a new city. Hopefully I will continue this journey by journaling or adding onto this padlet! I also hope to continue having conversations with my white friends and family members about interpersonal and systemic racism.

History Teacher: My curriculum next year revolves around the "founding" documents in the U.S. I am specifically thinking about some counter-narratives that I can use to teach documents like the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. Also I am wondering how I can front load ethnic studies concepts such as cultural capital, identity, intersectionality at the beginning of the year without overwhelming students. I would love to learn more about how to incorporate parent/community voices into the curriculum. I was very much inspired by the Tintiangco-Cubales et al. article's mention of how indigenous communities incorporated elder's voices in the curriculum. This is something that I really want to do, but want to make sure multiple family/community knowledges are represented and honored in the curriculum without being a burden/nuisance of families, particularly families of color.

Advisor: As an advisor, I want to design lessons that will help middle school students explore their identities. However, I want to make sure I do so in a way that honors their multiple identities and does not re-traumatize students. I also would like to create a space where students can reflect and heal, particularly my Black students. I really feel that I do not yet that I know what healing in my new classroom context looks like, or if I am necessarily the right person to hold/facilitate that space. I certainly need to read theoretical articles as well as learn more about how effective educators are promoting healing in their classrooms.

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As a middle school history teacher and advisor, I will certainly want to implement elements of this activity as a way to have students explore themes of identity, power, and history. I like that this project is deeply personal - it feels in some way like a journal. I anticipate some students may have hesitations exploring parts of their identity with me. Particularly, my students with marginalized identities may hesitate to share personal aspects of their identity with me, a whit woman teacher. Prior to starting this activity, I will need to establish rapport and trust with my students. Additionally, students will need to understand concepts like ethnicity, intersectionality, resistance, and power. I can imagine this activity being a weekly assignment, where as students get more comfortable, they tackle more complex questions, and choose if they would like to share their findings with me or a co-teacher.

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I chose a mind-map using Padlet for several reasons. For one, writing this archaeology as an essay seemed extremely overwhelming! There is no way that I could possibly organize my thoughts as they have unfolded across the past 5 weeks. Initially, I had hoped to use more images. Yet, as I delved into the questions presented in the assignment, there was no way that I could represent my thoughts with the images and stock photos that I found online. So I wound up mostly writing mini-paragraphs related to prompts or topics that I felt were relevant.

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Considering my identity has been helpful to consider what preconceived ideas of identity, power, and privilege that exist prior to coming into the classroom. Furthermore, it has been helpful in considering my teaching philosophy and who the teacher is that I wish to become. Often, I have found myself negotiating between my identities and my beliefs as a social justice and aspiring anti-racist educator.

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Similarly to exploring the identities I hold, examining my relationship to my ethnic identity has been important to understand how I fit into systems of power and oppression present in the U.S. In particular, this part of the archeology was helpful in considering how my identities have impacted my sense of belonging, understanding of cultural capital, and privilege that is connected to citizenship.

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Exploring the identities I cary has been essential to thinking about how my experiences will be brought into the classroom. I also think that checking in with my identities periodically has been useful: our identities are always evolving and my understanding of my identity has changed with my context. Particularly as a white person who holds multiple privileged identities, this exercise and other forms of self-reflection have helped me to understand the ways in which I have internalized ideals of whiteness. Archaeology of self has been a helpful starting point in unlearning deficit mindsets.

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Part 2 is in pink stickies :)

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Over the past few weeks, I feel that I have added layers to my reflection on my identity. Some of these reflections have come from class conversations, others from thinking more deeply about my context(s) as a teacher. This has really demonstrated for me how my identity changes in different contexts, including when I am teaching. Indeed, I often feel that my personal privileged identities are in tension with my beliefs and role as a teacher to a truly diverse group of students. I think that reflection and sitting in discomfort with these tensions will help me to consider the ways in which I may intentionally bring my worldview and biases into the classroom, and hopefully will allow me to better create a liberatory classroom.

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Perhaps because of respectability politics, perhaps because the current debate about CRT is vitriolic, I have been hesitant to champion CRT in my practice. Looking back at the Yosso article, I find myself wanting to put many of the elements of CRT in action in my classroom. Namely, I found the tenants "the challenge to dominant ideology" and "the commitment to social justice" to be important philosophies. I have also been thinking about how I want to further center experiential knowledge, as to date, my teaching has been very literacy and skills focused. I am still thinking about what CRT looks like in the classroom and how I will need to explain my framework and my unfolding pedagogical philosophy to students and families.

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As I think about the return to the classroom, I have been considering the ways in which my able-bodiedness effects both my attitude toward returning to school and the challenge of setting up a classroom that follows COVID protocols as well as accompanies the physical needs of my students. As someone who is not immuno-compromised, I am very much hoping to get back into the classroom. As an able-bodied white person, I felt comfortable getting the vaccine early on, which in many ways was a reflection of my identities. However, I realize that may not be the case for my colleagues with health conditions or adverse historical experiences with medicine in the U.S.

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Rethinking "The Cannon" and Delving into YA 

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Rethinking "The Cannon" and Delving into YA 

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As someone who was seen as "smart" in high school and college, I have felt pressure to read "great books," some of which I actually enjoyed others of which I read to say I did or keep up with other students who were labeled "smart". While some of these "classics" have a place in my heart, I am trying to decouple my actual experience of these books with irrational nostalgia (I am thinking here of Mockingbird). Instead, I have been snacking on newer YA novels. I have really enjoyed reading these (there is LOTS of drama) and I think it has helped me to value multiple types of literature and learn about teen experiences that were quite different from my own.

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This part of my identity gained a new importance in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump. Growing up, I was exposed to a variety of political beliefs and was not really sure which one seemed "right" to me. My father's ex-wife was a progressive while he was a libertarian. My mother voted for Bush and then Obama. My stepsister, who works at Facing History, is an outspoken democrat. As a kid, I experimented making all types of political arguments with my friends, although no one candidate or ideology stood out to me.

In college, I discovered that I was a progressive. There was no one moment that defined my political position but rather the culmination of being exposed to different political views and lenses. While I have not been involved in political organizing, I consider myself a progressive and am optimistic about progressive agendas and candidates. Although I feel less political than some of my friends, I know that I bring my views with me into the classroom. I have been thinking a lot about and still feel conflicted about being a Liz Warren supporter but then also working at a charter and private school.

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Yosso's article has prompted me to think more deeply about what cultural capital I value and how that manifests itself in the classroom.

In my schooling and experiences more generally as a white American, I have bought into Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital: the "accumulation of cultural knowledge, skills and abilities possessed and inherited by privileged groups in society". This was reinforced by the content and pedagogy of my teachers (with the exception of a few outliers).

Throughout this course, I have found myself appreciating and agreeing with Yosso that this definition of cultural capital is far too narrow and ultimately oppressive. I very much find myself thinking about how I can highlight different types of cultural capital and student experiences (especially coming out the of the pandemic) instead of putting skills and Western cultural knowledge on a pedestal. To be successful in this, I have to interrogate how I personally have been told I have Bourdieu's cultural capital, and how this has shaped me as a student and scholar. While I also have a clear idea of what I do NOT want to, I am still not exactly sure how to access and highlight the different types of cultural capital that my students will bring to the classroom.

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I really appreciated the question on the assignment page about belonging. Belonging is such a potent emotional feeling that is so tied up with our experiences and identities. On the macro level, I have almost always felt a sense of belonging, if not welcomed in most of the spaces I inhibit. This is largely because of my multiple privileged identities.

There have been a few instances in which I feel "outside," but this has largely been due to privileged identities of my socio-economic status and generational wealth. One such instance was in a happy hour after work when my co-workers were all discussing issues of student loans. In this moment, I felt acutely aware of my privileged identity and felt it would be inappropriate to contribute to the conversation.

On a different note, I have really felt a sense of belonging at TC. It has been wonderful to cultivate a network of education folks who are not my co-workers. I have met several people who are like-minded and also quite different than me that have pushed my thinking and encouraged my journey. I think there is a sense of belonging as in not being excluded and then a sense of belonging that includes community, celebration, and a commitment to a common goal.

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This semester, I have been thinking about the ways in which I have been socialized to have deficit mindsets. For the past two semesters, I have been identifying where these deficit mindsets pop up for me, particularly thinking about students with disabilities. The Duncan-Andrade reading also opened my eyes to the notion that the achievement gap is rooted in deficit thinking about Black students. My old school at SA was very concerned with the achievement gap in general but also within our school community. While I knew that the assessments that SA administered were not indicative of student performance or knowledge, I certainly bought into the idea that the achievement gap is a problem, instead of questioning what exactly that gap was measuring. Similarly, during the pandemic, there has been a type of hysteria around "learning loss". Of course, it is not a good thing that students, particularly low-income students in urban areas, may have lost ground with regards to literacy . However, entering this new year, I want to question these deficit mindsets, as well as focus on what students may have gained during the pandemic. Perhaps it is wrong to assume students were not reading if they were very active on Discord. Perhaps they learned about a new side of themselves as family-members, friends, etc. I hope to highlight these things as students transition back to what will hopefully be a more normal year.

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This upcoming year, I am moving to Washington, D.C. to teach U.S. history at Georgetown Day School (GDS) and will be working with a different student population than at SA. While GDS does have considerable diversity in its student body, the demographics of the students will be different. Mostly, there are far fewer students who identify as Latinx at GDS and the majority of students are white. GDS also will be much much homogenous in terms of socio-economic status. By nature of the tuition cost, families will mostly be from high income backgrounds; only 25% of the students receive financial aid.

In some ways, teaching this student body with a progressive administration that will (hopefully) have my back is exciting. I want to have the conversations about race, identity, and privilege that were not a part of my middle and high school experiences. While I feel confident having these conversations with white students, I am still thinking about how to ensure that my students of color feel that their multiple identities are seen and celebrated, especially as some white middle school students may just be unpacking their privilege for the first time. I am thinking about using a more private form of reflection (like this exercise!) when starting these conversations. I am hoping to mull over this in the last few weeks of the course.

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In class 4, we learned about and explored different immigration policies, including the Immigration Act of 1965, which stipulated immigration for highly skilled workers and those who had relatives in the U.S. 1965 was exactly the year that my grandparents and father left Germany for the United States - I asked my father about this and he said he was unsure if the move had to do with the passage of the Act.I need to follow up with my grandparents about this. Regardless of their particular case, this connection made me think about how the lives of families are so tied up in an immigration system that is arbitrary.

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My identities have largely privileged me and provided me with opportunities/choice. Throughout my life (particularly in school), I was favored because of my identities, even when I had done nothing to prove my competency. I have begun to consider the different ways in which my identities afford me power and unearned authority in different situations. I have also considered how my identity that largely matches the "status quo" impacts my worldview and biases.

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Relationship with my Identity as a German-American 

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Relationship with my Identity as a German-American 

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My father was born and spent the first several years of his life in Cologne, Germany. As he explains it, my father never really kept up his German or connections to the country, since he felt embarrassed by his heritage growing up.

Although my dad did not teach me any German, throughout my childhood I was very close with my grandmother. She is a tiny, vivacious woman who has an opinion on literally everything. A former librarian, she loves books (romance stories in particular) and children. She introduced me to elements of her culture that were important to her: growing up I listened to opera with her, she read me translations of German poetry, and she made a lot of food for us when we were younger. In high school, I went on a 3 week trip with her to Germany and Denmark to visit family. I further explored this side of my heritage in college when I studied German and wrote my thesis on German Jewish women poets in the Weimar republic and of course, when I received a grant to teach English in Hamburg for a year.

My grandmother was always very private about her experiences living through WWII. When she has discussed this period with me, she has expressed deep shame in her country, although none of her immediate family members were involved with the Nazis. To this day, she is a committed socialist in the U.S. and supports progressive causes, perhaps influenced by the horrors of racism and fascism she witnessed during WWII. She has been vocal in speaking out against racial discrimination and slurs in her assisted living community and talks openly about issues of race that appear in the news (recently the capitol insurrection, but also she was furious about the birther movement during Obama's election).

In terms of my identity as a white, German-American, my grandmother has taught me implicitly and explicitly that it is okay to love parts of German culture (food, music, the structure of the language). She has also taught me that white supremacy, and white racial pride, both in Germany and here in the states is deplorable. Talking to her about current events and her past, she has imparted a message similar to what Wilkerson outlined in her article "America's Enduring Caste System": I may not be personally responsible for oppressive acts committed by my ancestors both in the U.S. and Germany, but I do have an obligation to be aware of injustice and work towards a more equitable society.

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The Impact of Identity in Interactions with Students

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The Impact of Identity in Interactions with Students

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My identity has shaped my interactions with students and families. Throughout my past three years at SA, I reflected on who I perceived to be causing a disruption in class, during recess, or in the hallways. Undoubtedly, I more closely monitored my students of color and confronted them if I felt that their conduct was inappropriate.

To interrupt this biased behavior on my end, I would often think about who I was looking at in the classroom during downtime or while on lunch/recess duty. If I felt the urge to talk to a student or deliver an infraction, I thought about what exactly about a student's behavior was bothering me and if that could be implicit bias speaking. I also noticed that as I got to know my students better, including my students of color, I tended to give students the benefit of the doubt and ask questions about a situation or conflict instead of immediately reacting. Generally, I saw their point of view, or talking about a conflict helped to diffuse the situation. In my new school setting, I hope to continue to interrogate my biases, learn more about (and hopefully implement) restorative justice policies, and get to know students, their families, and home cultures.

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Next year, I will be teaching at a progressive private school in Washington, DC. The school boasts racial diversity, but it is still a very expensive private school, so I anticipate the student body will be different than at Success Academy Midtown West, where the student body was diverse in multiple ways.

That being said, I am looking for more resources to tap into funds of knowledge of these students, who are from a city that I do not know well, and how may come from very different communities across DC. I loved the tree exercise of last week and would love to have more of those types of activities.

I will also be teaching U.S. history next year and realize that much of the material may be difficult for my BIPOC students. I am still considering how to address difficult histories without traumatizing students.

Finally, I will likely have many more white, affluent students next year. As an advisory and a history teacher, I want to consider how I can have these students begin to interrogate their identities and privileges as well have them consider their roles in dismantling white supremacy.

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Workshops for my job and classes at TC are not enough to suddenly transform me into an anti-racist teacher. While PD and TC classes have provided me with useful tools for reflection, I need to continue to process my privilege, as well as consider how my actions at a personal level or within an institution maybe be racist.

I find that I can process and reflect best in conversation with others. I often engage in these discussions with my partner (who comes from a similar background - white, affluent family, cis-gendered) and a close friend who is also in education.

Beyond these conversations that are important to me to process race in my work and life, I also know that I need to confront racism in my family and community. I am optimistic that these conversations can disrupt harmful attitudes. I hope that communities like the one I grew up in will be more diverse, accepting, loving places for all folks. Ideally, the segregation that existed in my community on multiple levels will eventually dissipate and that the children in these privileges communities would realize the brilliance and beauty of many cultures.

I hope that my family and old acquaintances in my community will come as understand that bigotry and segregation is detrimental to all, especially in the wake of the violence, rage, and fear from white people that we have seen increasing since the election of former president Trump.

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The Impact of Identity "Classroom Management" & Curriculum

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The Impact of Identity "Classroom Management" & Curriculum

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I inevitably bring my identities into my work as a teacher: how I plan a lesson, position myself in the classroom, and interact with students is a product of my identity.

In my first year of teaching at Success Academy Midtown West Middle School, a diverse middle school that is part of a city-wide charter network, I was very concerned about classroom management. My direct manager expected my classroom to look a certain way and to have students engage in class in a uniform way. I realize now that this type of classroom control was harmful in that I was expected to police children, many of whom were students of color, and reproduced norms of white supremacy (order, obedience, control). During my first year teaching, while I felt uncomfortable running this type of classroom, I continued to run my classroom in the "Success way" because this type of classroom looked and felt somewhat similar to the ones I had been in as a child. Pressure from my leadership team also did not help.

My second and third years teaching, I began to teach in a way that was more authentic to me. I skirted my school's disciplinary system when possible and changed aspects of Success' standardized curriculum. My second year, when we were in person, students engaged in a roundtable discussion or group work in pods almost every day. I learned to give up control in the classroom and as a result, learned more with my students. I made an effort to really get to know my students, their backgrounds, and families. I reflected on what it meant to "manage" a classroom and more than anything, discovered the power of listening and relationships. In terms of curriculum, I celebrated YA literature with diverse protagonists and created a unit about memoirs that centered the BIPOC writers. Although I am more familiar with European and American history and literature, I am more aware of my blindspots and am trying to learn more about the history and literature of people of color.

I am not proud of how I brought my identity into the classroom my first year teaching. In some instances, I feel the need to assert myself as an authority figure or "control" my classroom. I have spent time in my student seminars exploring why it is that I feel that way and what events will make me feel that my classroom is "out of control" and how my identity has informed those feelings. Next year, I will be at a school with no unified classroom management plan nor standardized curriculum. I will need to be intentional about what systems I put in place and what topics I address in my curriculum considering my identity and those of my students.

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Both reflecting on my identity by myself or with other white people and educating myself about racism, resistance, and the brilliance of people of color are essential to my on-going work as an educator. I also am invested in getting to know more folks from different backgrounds than my own and maintaining friendships with people of color.

Finally, exploring my identity as a white person also means having difficult conversations with family members who do not believe that they are complicit in racism or think that "race is not such a big deal". Talking about race with family, friends, at TC, and in a work context has been messy and uncomfortable. However, ultimately, I feel that I have grown from these conversations and want to continue talking about race in my communities.

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Until college, my identity with my ethnicity as white was something I never really considered. In majority white spaces, I was not challenged to confront my racial privilege. Growing up, most of the spaces I was in were white and I had no friends who were people of color until high school.

Engaging in identity work in college, I felt a sense of shame, disgust, and disappointment in my community and teachers for not addressing issues of identity and inequality. Indeed, during discussions about race and racism I felt feelings of white fragility, a feeling of discomfort or defensiveness when talking about race, as Robin DiAngelo puts it.

In college, I was a summer intern at Facing History and Ourselves. Here, I learned about what it meant to be an upstander but also about taking up space in conversations about race. At Facing History, I became more interested and open to unpacking my privileges as a white person, as well as became aware of the large gaps in my knowledge of the history of people of color in the U.S.

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My Relationship with my Ethnic Identity 

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My Relationship with my Ethnic Identity 

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Both of my parents went to Ivy-League colleges, and my mother in particular always stressed the importance of doing well in school and going to a prestigious four year college.My father had attended a private high school which he credited with getting him into Harvard. He insisted that in middle school and beyond that my siblings and I attend private school. We did.

My educational privilege has opened many opportunities and options for my career. The resources and support I had in my all of my schooling contexts have been incredible. In high school, I took several AP classes and was able to try out many extracurricular activities. I am lucky to have had an education that has focused on intellectual curiosity and self-development, rather than practical value.

Some family members have cast doubt on the use of my education and look down on the teaching profession as a whole. As my sister once told me, "Why would you go into teaching if you went to Brown?"

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My junior year of college, I was diagnosed with anxiety. This has impacted my relationship with my education and family members. My relationship with anxiety is rather personal, but important to how I navigate interpersonal relationships and stressful situations.

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I am one of those people who actually enjoys distance running. In 2018, I ran a marathon and I am training for a marathon this year. During training, I have thought about how my able-bodiedness has allowed me to access the sport.

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Growing up in a white, upperclass family, I never had to worry about money. My mother in particular had extensive generational wealth; my maternal grandmother helped to pay for college for me, and I therefore graduated with no student debt. My parents encouraged me to enter a profession that I felt passionate about, regardless of income.

Both my mother and father worked corporate jobs (in marketing and consulting respectively). Work consumed both of their lives and they spent very little time in the community or with friends. In high school, I knew that I did not want to pursue a similar career path.

Although my parents have not supported me financially since I graduated undergrad, their generational wealth has allowed me to enroll in TC with my savings as well as pursue a career in education.

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Although both my mother and father were present throughout my childhood, I was raised almost exclusively by my mother (my siblings and I would spend one night a week with my father). To have a single working mom was a rarity in my suburban community. My mother cared for us fiercely and was distrustful of the institution of marriage. I think because of her experiences, she stressed qualities of independence and self-reliance.

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Growing up, my notions of gender were culturally situated in my mostly white suburban town. Many of my female friends were interested in dance, fashion, and icestaking. In school, it was uncool for a girl to be smart, and many other girls in my grade tried to hide their intelligence. Many of these norms were tied up with whiteness and unrealistic beauty ideals.

For a long time, I tried to conform to these norms, reading teen magazines, painting my nails, enrolling in dance classes. None of these things felt authentic to me. My mother always encouraged me to do what I enjoyed. I took up the bass guitar and joined the jazz band as the only middle school girl.

In high school, and later in college (where I would write my thesis on women poets in their historical context), I became interested in learning more about gender studies and the history of women, trans, and binary folks. While my journey to learn what being a woman means to me has not been straightforward, I have recently been thinking more about my privilege as a cis-gendered woman who is considered "pretty" by normative beauty standards.

Image: Teen role models?

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After I graduated college, I taught for a year in Hamburg, Germany. Until then, I had never really considered myself as distinctly "American," as I am not particularly patriotic. I quickly found that I embodied several stereotypes held by Germans about white Americans: I was friendly, indirect, and tech savvy; I loved to work. I had never before considered these parts of myself as associated with my "American-ness"

Getting a work permit in Germany was an ordeal. I spent several hours at the immigration office in Hamburg, and it was immediately clear that my status as an American citizen gave me special treatment. The process was more expedient for me than for folks of Arab descent  who were in the waiting room, also applying for a work permit. The officials I dealt with were far kinder to me, likely because of my race and nationality.

Image: Office of employment in Hamburg, Germany

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I grew up in a mostly- white suburban community in Connecticut that was the result of white flight. There were almost no students of color in my primary school or middle school. As a day student at a boarding school, I encountered more students of color there. Throughout my educational experience whiteness was the norm and white narratives in classes were centered.

My schooling was full of both overt racism and microaggressions. At the time, my community fully believed in color blindness and that with Obama's election, we lived in a post-racial society. Growing up in a mostly white community that did not talk about race, I almost never thought about my ethnic identity. I also had very few friends of color growing up. From my parents, schooling, and community, I harbor racist and white supremacist ideas that I only began to uncover in college.

Through several extracurricular activities, namely the Brown Outdoor Leadership Training Program, I began to discover my privilege as well as unpack moments form my past in which I was complicit in or acted in racist ways. I am continuing this introspection now at TC. Recently, I have come to terms with the fact that by virtue of growing up in America, and particularly in the segregated community I grew up in, I am racist. While I was initially resistant to thinking of myself as racist, I have come to approach the term as not necessarily pejorative, but of describing a behavior/attitude resulting from the systems of race and oppression in the U.S.