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Resources for Teaching About Race and Social Justice

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Resources for Teaching About Race and Social Justice

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Resources for Teaching About Race and Social Justice

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We’ve compiled the following lesson plans, teaching ideas, discussion guides and online resources to help teachers address the crucial issues of racial equity and social justice in the classroom.

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188: Uncovering Your Implicit Biases: An Exercise for Teachers

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Talking to Young Children about Race and Racism

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Talking to Young Children about Race and Racism

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Talking to Young Children About Race and Racism

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Here are tips, books, and resources to help you have meaningful conversations with young children about race, racism, and anti-racist behavior.

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How Black Students Got a Quality Education in the Jim Crow South

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How Black Students Got a Quality Education in the Jim Crow South

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How Black Students Got a Quality Education in the Jim Crow South

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The Rosenwald Schools served hundreds of thousands of Black students.

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A teacher tolerance guide discussing race, racism and other difficult topics with students

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Our youngest students deserve a truthful, age-appropriate account of our past. These resources for elementary educators include a first-of-its-kind framework, along with student texts, teaching tools and professional development for anyone committed to teaching this hard history. Download the Framework

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A lyrical, heart-lifting love letter to black and brown children everywhere: reminding them how much they matter, that they have always mattered, and they always will, from powerhouse rising star author Tami Charles and esteemed, award-winning illustrator Bryan Collier.

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A picture book that follows two families, one White and one Black, as they discuss a police shooting of a Black man in their community. The book aims to help children understand and address racial injustice by answering their questions and encouraging them to identify and counter it in their own lives. It includes a note to parents and caregivers with guidelines for discussing race and racism with children, as well as child-friendly definitions and sample dialogues.

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Something Happened in our Town by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, Ann Hazard

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Something Happened in our Town by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, Ann Hazard

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Something Happened in our Town by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, Ann Hazard

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Confronting hard history | Hasan Kwame Jeffries | TEDxOhioStateUniversity

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A Class Divided (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

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Young, Gifted and Black: Teaching Freedom Summer to K-5 Students

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Young, Gifted and Black: Teaching Freedom Summer to K-5 Students

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Young, Gifted and Black: Teaching Freedom Summer to K-5 Students

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Episode 11, Season 3 Teaching civil rights history to young learners creates both opportunities and challenges. The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and the subsequent Freedom Schools offer important lessons for helping elementary students to understand the civil rights movement. In this episode, we explore community-based strategies and activities for bringing the Black freedom struggle into your classroom.

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The School-To-Prison Pipeline,
Implicit Bias, and Racial Trauma

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Local case study revealing Black students are twice as likely to be suspended or referred for juvenile services

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Addressing Racial Inequity in the School to Prison Pipeline

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Addressing Racial Inequity in the School to Prison Pipeline

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Reports clear data showing racial disparities in student suspensions and limited benefits from zero-tolerance policies

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Pushed Out: Trends and Disparities in Out-of-School Suspension

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Pushed Out: Trends and Disparities in Out-of-School Suspension

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Checking Yourself for Bias in the Classroom

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Checking Yourself for Bias in the Classroom

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If you had asked me in my first few years of teaching what a classroom should look like, I probably would have described something that included students sitting silently and working on assignments. Sure, I also would have mentioned something about discussion and group work, but a lot of what I envisioned in my mind was compliance. Why? Because that's what my own educational experience looked like.

I wouldn't have realized at the time that this was also a glaring example of the unconscious bias I carried with me into the classroom. I was in a classroom where I was the only person who was not of the culture my students shared. I took this as an opportunity to listen, learn, ask questions and accept responsibility when I got it wrong. In my eagerness and earnestness to learn and soak up as much as I could, students and their families trusted me with their stories. It has shaped my purpose as an educator and evolved my practice over the last decade.

This work is ongoing and ever-evolving.

While "doing the work" on yourself is intense and reflective, it is also a process. It will take time to unpack and time still to revisit, revise and reevaluate your practice. As you begin or continue this journey, it can be helpful to have a way to check yourself in class. We all know that impact matters more than intention-this is of utmost importance with young people who are shaping their views of themselves and their place and space in the world-so having a reliable strategy to check your response to a student's behavior can be helpful in determining the most appropriate response in that moment.

I have relied on what I call Me/They/We. Using Me/They/We helps me to quickly determine whether my initial evaluation of a situation is a reflection of my own expectations rooted in bias, a judgment of the student's behavior or a response that is appropriate to the situation at hand.

In this sense, I'm able to more accurately understand my own intention in redirecting a student. I ask:

Me -Am I the only person bothered or distracted by this behavior?

They -Is the student's behavior distracting them from the task at hand?

We - Is this student's behavior distracting to a larger group/the class as a whole?

Here's a more specific example: A student is constantly drumming his fingers on his desk and bobbing his head to his beats. This gets my attention and seems like a distraction. Consider:

Me - Am I the only one bothered by his drumming and moving?

They - Is his behavior distracting him from working? Is it a habit he does without realizing? Does this actually help him focus?

We -Does the class notice? Are the people around him distracted?

If I'm the only one bothered/distracted, the student in question is working and others around him are unbothered, I move on.

This technique helps you weigh your purpose in calling attention to something otherwise innocuous against the potential effect of your calling a student out. While your intention may be to redirect the student to an ideal classroom behavior that appears more focused-or rather, meets your vision of what focus looks like-the impact varies. You may be passing a judgment that erodes trust or creating a larger distraction to students who were otherwise working diligently. Or, at the very least, you may be interrupting the learning process for your student.

This is one example, of course. There are times in class when I've run through this in my mind and determined that the behavior is, in fact, disruptive to the student in question or to others and that I needed to redirect. There are many ways to validate and redirect with low intervention.

Does this seem like a lot to consider before telling a student to stop drumming or stop drawing or lettering all over their notebook? Maybe.

But we already do this every day.

As educators, we make judgments and evaluations constantly throughout the day. It's worth being more deliberate and slowing down the process to further peel back any layers of unconscious bias we have and, most importantly, to always keep the care and connection with our students at the forefront of our decision-making.

If we aren't diving into this work as deeply as we dive into curriculum, then what exactly is the purpose?
Fracassini teaches seventh- and eighth-grade ELA.

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Checking Yourself for Bias in the Classroom

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Unconscious bias can shape the responses of even the most well-intentioned educators. But you can check yourself-one teacher shares how.

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Find and share resources and explore strategies to engage students by connecting to and honoring their cultures, experiences, and backgrounds.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Video Library

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Video Library

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Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Video Library

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The goal of the Massachusetts public K-12 education system is to prepare all students for success after high school. Massachusetts public school students are leading the nation in reading and math and are at the top internationally in reading, science, and math according to the national NAEP and international PISA assessments.

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Ep. 5: Responding to Racism in Schools — The Bell

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When a teacher makes an offensive comment about Black people in class, Black students are unsatisfied with the school’s response.

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In these podcasts for families and children, Black hosts and voice actors spotlight fairy tales, historical figures, activism, and Black Lives Matter.

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Through My Eyes: Ruby Bridges on the Struggle for Racial Justice

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Through My Eyes: Ruby Bridges on the Struggle for Racial Justice

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On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges integrated the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in her New Orleans neighborhood. She was six years old.

Ruby's courageous journey helped pave the way for Black and brown students across the United States to gain access to educational opportunities that had long been denied to them.

Sixty years later, "Black Lives Matter" has become a rallying cry for an end to the systemic racism that continues to harm African Americans nationwide. Ruby is still speaking out and still speaking up. In 1995, she created the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which is dedicated to fostering respect and equality for people of all races and backgrounds. She talks with children everywhere about the disease of racism, which she calls "a disease of the heart."

In this episode, Ruby talks with host Suzanne McCabe about the events that led her parents to risk the hostility of segregationists for a better life and how her story can help today's young people bring about lasting change and equality.

To learn more about the Ruby Bridges Foundation, go to rubybridges.com, and follow Ruby on Instagram at @RubyBridgesOfficial.

If you'd like to share Ruby's story with your students, you can order her 1999 memoir, Through My Eyes, here. Click here to access The Power of Story, a catalog of diverse books for readers of all ages.

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Through My Eyes: Ruby Bridges on the Struggle for Racial Justice

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On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges integrated the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in her New Orleans neighborhood. She was six years old. Ruby's courageous journey helped pave the way for Black and brown students across the United States to gain access to educational opportunities that had long been denied to them.

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Major racial injustices play out in our schools every day - from unequal access to resources and teachers across school districts to segregation and marginalization within our own schools, from the classroom to the principal's office and the PTA. These racialized power dynamics often play out in the moment-to-moment interactions between parents and teachers or principals, leading to especially bad consequences for Black, Native and Latinx children. Our guest, Ann Ishimaru, has been working with a network of scholars, educators, families, and community groups to fundamentally reimagine how parents and communities might engage with schools. Watch this eye-opening conversation about the principles and practices families and communities of color are using to challenge dominant narratives about race and class and bring about promising new possibilities for transforming power and fostering solidarities across communities in education. Also read the action guide Ann created just for us: Tips for collaborating with other families for educational justice. A lightly edited transcript follows. Find the list of mentioned resources after that.
EmbraceRace: Ann Ishimaru is joining us from Seattle for this conversation about best and next practices for building power across communities and transforming education, for educational justice.

We're really glad to have you, Ann.

Ann Ishimaru: Glad to be here!

EmbraceRace: Now for a quick intro.

Ann Ishimaru is a mom to three mixed-race Asian-white kids and is associate professor of Educational Policy Organizations and Leadership at the University of Washington's College of Education. She co-leads the Cultivating Capacity for Racial Equity Project and the Family Leadership Design Collaborative. Through these efforts, her research seeks to understand how schools might better leverage the expertise of minoritized students, families and communities in systemic change toward educational justice and community wellbeing.

Her first book, Just Schools: Building Equitable Collaborations with Families and Communities, will be published by Teacher's College Press at the end of December. Congratulations, Ann, and on that and thank you so much for doing this work.

Ann Ishimaru: Thank you!

EmbraceRace: I feel like, we've been talking about how to most effectively and equitably get parents and community involved in the education of our children forever, and have, broadly speaking, a long way to go to get it right. The EmbraceRace community is made up of mostly parents and educators, and we know from the questions that were submitted beforehand and even from a couple of emails, that a lot of people are trying to figure out how best to do this work in their local communities or local schools and districts. So to the extent that you have some insight to offer, we'd love to hear it.

Beyond the obvious, normalized, everyday injustices baked into how schools work

Let me start with a very basic question. You talk about how racial injustices play out in our schools every day. Can you lift up a couple things that are really striking to you after all the work you've done in the space of racial justice and education?

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah. I think I'll start just because, a lot of times the conversation starts with things like the test score gaps between different racial groups. We've been hearing a lot of that in the news. Part of what's really problematic about that narrative is that it obscures histories as though history doesn't exist. Our schools have been, they're part of centuries of colonization and oppression and assimilation. Those indicators that get a lot of the news media are often just the tip of an iceberg of what's really baked into our systems. I think some of the things that really strike me are the kinds of injustice that are unfolding every day that have become very normalized.

And so, there're all always these sort of extreme examples. Like on social media right now, we have a lot of conversation about the discipline and the school-to-prison pipeline or the nexus as people have been calling it. We have these sort of extreme examples now of video capturing how young children, especially black children, are being treated and those are really distressing, and those are things that have been going on. That's not new, it's just that we have video to capture those kinds of things.

But I think about things like the history of redlining and the racial covenants in our real estate. It just shapes where we live. It shapes the schools that we have access to. Where I live in Seattle, gentrification is happening on a very active basis. We have displacement happening of communities of color, especially black communities. That really shapes the resources that are available to kids in schools.

We might think also just about things as seemingly simple as fundraising by the PTA. Increasingly, we're becoming aware of how that can fuel and reinforce the inequities that already exist. When there are some families that communities who can pay for extra enrichment, who can pay for school counselors or instructional aids. In essence, some scholars call that buying a better education, and that's very tied up also in what some scholars call "opportunity hoarding." Things that just seem like, "This is just what's best for my child," but what does it mean for some children to have those opportunities and the quality of education and not others? And, which children are not going to have that kind of access?

EmbraceRace: Let me, Ann, just say, you mentioned a few terms along the way that may have been unfamiliar to folks. Let me just lift up a couple of them. You mentioned redlining. I think a lot of people know that in the 20th century, especially banks, literally drew a red line around black neighborhoods to indicate that, supposedly, these were unsafe places to lend. It's amazing how much those same neighborhoods continue to reflect that kind of disinvestment today, the continuing impact of history and historical practices continue to the present. You also mentioned the racial covenants. Can you say a little bit about what those were?

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah. Often, there might be real estate papers you need to sign when purchasing a home. There might be things actually written into the covenants, into the agreements to purchase homes, that would require that it only be purchased by white families, for example. It seems like the distant history, but ... I used to live in Oregon and had friends who said that such covenants showed up in the real estate papers they were asked to sign. Even when they're no longer in the paperwork and active in our legal documents, those things still shape how our neighborhoods have come to be.

When "opportunity hoarding" is considered good parenting

EmbraceRace: OK, you also mentioned "opportunity hoarding" and segregation. I just want to make a note about how those things go together. How much easier it is for racially-defined communities, certainly white, largely or predominantly or exclusively white communities, to hoard opportunities on services when they're geographically distinct.

Ann Ishimaru: That's right. I think for a lot folks, [what we call "opportunity hoarding"] just feels like doing something good, because you're doing something good for your children or neighbors. There've been some studies about people trying to get each other jobs. And so, people are trying to get each other, get their family or their neighbors or the people who they know well and live closely to. But because of the historical segregation and the lines of marginalization of race and class, those folks tend to be the folks who already have those kinds of resources when it comes to particularly white families and individuals.

EmbraceRace: That is, I mean, another sort of way that that shows up, I think is in neighborhood schools. The fight for neighborhood schools, right?

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah.

EmbraceRace: Some people have an idyllic vision of, "Oh, don't we want to go to school with our neighbors," and don't realize that that's how schools get segregated especially in the North. That's our history. So there's a lot to know, right?

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah.

EmbraceRace: And if you haven't lived in a (once) redlined neighborhood, you don't know that "neighborhood school" means something very different on the other side of the tracks.

We tend to think of racial inequality and inequities as being perpetuated by bias against.

Ann Ishimaru: That's right.

EmbraceRace: The point you're making is, sometimes it's a bias in favor of, right?

Ann Ishimaru: Mm-hmm.

EmbraceRace: It's a well-meaning action in favor of people, our family members, our kids, those may know. Getting a job for your friend's child, whatever, in the summer. But, again, if there's a sharper racial skew or class skew on that, clearly that means there're people who are not being helped.

Ann Ishimaru: That's right. Yeah. And I think that can feel really big and it is really big, but these things also play out just in the everyday. It's also the ways that people are treated on an everyday basis, so parents going into any given school will be treated differently.

We know, we've looked at the research. There might be a white parent who's advocating for her child, and that will get framed by educators as being an involved parent, being engaged parent. Another parent may come in, a black mother might come in, advocate for her child as well, but that often because of these broader racial dynamics and narratives and stereotypes, and also just sort of expectations and norms that will often get framed as being disruptive or problematic.

So on the one hand they're these really broad, historical scales, and on the other hand, they're also like very day-to-day interactions where these kinds of things play out.

A researcher's personal investment in educational justice

EmbraceRace: So I wonder, a lot of folks who do this work have real deep personal investment in it. Long before they came to whatever it is they're researching or working on right now. So I'm wondering what the story is for you in that respect?

I also wonder if I can add on about Seattle where you are, because there's so much happening in the education space in Seattle. I hear, "Oh, you're worried about testing," or whatever, "look at what they're doing in Seattle." That comes up a lot and I'm wondering why that is?

Ann Ishimaru: That's interesting. OK.

For me the entry point is my own upbringing and my own family and community's history. I'm a Yonsei, or fourth-generation Japanese-American. My whole family was incarcerated during World War II in the Japanese-American Incarceration Camps. So, from a very young age, my family was teaching me not only about that history, but also the kinds of things about the culture and the values, but also forms of resistance. My parents were of the generation, the Sansei generation, that fought for reparations. And so, that was a really powerful lesson to me, both about the teaching, the powerful lessons that families and communities hold for young people, but also about a kind of responsibility that we have to justice and to working towards justice.

The other entry point for me, of course, was schools and having learned all kinds of things, really positive things, in schools, but also growing up in predominantly white middle-class schools and communities in which racism was a pretty much every day interaction and encounter. Especially when I became a teacher - we have a discourse about parents being the first teachers and being very important, but it was striking to me to realize how much of that ended up being lip service. If you look at the research as well, the insights and teaching of families and communities, especially families and communities of color, is often dismissed. Then, when I became a parent myself, I was a grad student in the beginning and was in treated very much as a low-income immigrant parent.

We have a discourse about parents being the first teachers and being very important, but it was striking to me to realize how much of that ended up being lip service. If you look at the research as well, the insights and teaching of families and communities, especially families and communities of color, is often dismissed.

I began to feel a real disconnect between my own experiences, the lessons that I had learned from my family community, and then the disregard that I experienced as somebody who was within the educational system. It wasn't until I had an opportunity to be involved in community organizing and then also to be part of study with Mark Warren and a group of other people, where I began to really see parents and communities working together collectively and enacting really powerful change. And so, that was a really profound inspiration for the work that they do, and also grounding back to those powerful lessons from my own background.

You asked about Seattle. Seattle is a very complicated place as I mentioned. It's a place of great wealth in some ways and great disparity in other ways.

One of the studies that I was able to do was of a school called Rainier Beach High School [in Seattle]. They've experienced many decades of disinvestment, the kind you were talking about, and there was a group of parent leaders in tandem with the principal and community leaders and then the young people there, who really turned the school around. [But Rainier Beach High School] is a really inspiring, but also against-all-odds kind of story. As we think about the kind of money that exists here in Seattle, and then what's happening to, especially communities of color in the midst of how much money.

EmbraceRace: Yeah. The against all odds story. There's no shortage of wonderful turnaround stories, schools that were struggling in one way or another that managed to turn it around. I think the question a lot of people ask is, are we learning things that can be applied to a range of contexts that will make these turnaround stories or just these good stories, especially in the public school context, not exceptional? So that, ideally, we wouldn't be talking about turnaround stories. We'd just be talking about wonderful school that serve communities and kids.

So, we mentioned two of the big research projects you're involved in, I think there's at least one more that we didn't mention. But could you give us an idea of some of the threads that go through all of these pieces, that really define your interest and what's at stake here?

Families have expert knowledge school systems need

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah. One thread has to do with leadership. Some of my work focuses on the role of formal leaders. We have a tendency in the dominant culture to think of leadership as associated with a particular role, so in schools we might think of leadership as associated with the principal or with the superintendent. I think that, one of the things that community organizers and other communities as well recognize though is, that leadership is something that can be enacted across a collective of people. That it can have nothing to do with a formal title or a paycheck from a particular institution.

I also study and think about how to cultivate the collective leadership of families and communities and especially the kind of expertise that our schools are often so lacking and seeking out. We have an increasing awareness I think from schools and districts across the country of the kinds of racial injustices that we were talking about at the beginning and, at the same time, a sense that folks are grasping for, how do we make change, where do we find the expertise we need? How do we go about this very challenging work? One of the suppositions of a lot of the work that I have undertaken is that, some of that expertise lies right there in front of us, in the knowledge and the practices and the insights and understandings of families and communities in those systems, the ones who are experiencing those injustices.

EmbraceRace: Let me ask a follow up on that, Ann, because that's, on one hand, often experts are understood in a conventional way as having degrees or titles. I don't mean and I don't say that dismissively, I just meant to sort of define that conventional understanding of expertise. On one hand, many of us are used to hearing people talk about, yes, how parents and community members really are experts in their own lives and that expertise needs to be respected. I do think we probably hear it more often than we see it. One of the things that certainly drew me to the work you're doing is the serious collaboration between researchers on one hand, community folks, school personnel, parents. I don't know how much children actually are actively involved, but I wonder if you could say a bit more about, for people who might be listening and are thinking, "That's sounds good. I think it's right, but I don't actually know what that means to say that committee members have expertise they can bring to bear," what tangibly might that look like?

One of the suppositions of a lot of the work that I have undertaken is that, some of that expertise lies right there in front of us, in the knowledge and the practices and the insights and understandings of families and communities in those systems, the ones who are experiencing those injustices.

Building solidarities vs. perpetuating individualistic norms for interacting with schools

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah. Well, I think that part of what you're talking about is a national project called the Family Leadership Design Collaborative. That's a network of over 50 practitioners, scholars, family leaders. I co-lead that work with Dr. Megan Bang who's at Northwestern University, as well as a number of other incredible scholars and collaborators.

What we've undertaken in that context is something we call solidarity-driven co-design. Really what it means is starting the conversation with local communities and addressing the issues that are most pressing to those communities.

So here in Seattle, for example, there's a group called SESEC. It's a Southeast Seattle Education Coalition. It's a coalition of community-based organizations. They are, at this moment actually, in the process of collecting data from a family engagement survey that they co-designed.

They are using the collection of that data as a vehicle for rebuilding trust. Then they're collaborating with a number of schools to bring that data to those schools to think about how they can better work with and collaborate with families. So the focus is different depending on the context of that community.

In some communities, like in Salt Lake City, they're really focused on budget decision making. There's something there called School Community Councils. And so, they're thinking about, how can they reshape those structures so that families, especially from, in their contacts, from low-income immigrant communities, have real influence on the decisions that get made? Instead of rubber stamp dynamic where the educators say, "Hey, we need XYZ." Okay. They're starting conversations to say, "Well, you know what, let's think about what is it that we see as the pressing priorities," and starting the conversation from those places.

So a lot of it has to do with where the conversation starts, and then the kind of decision making processes. Sometimes there are formal decision making processes and sometimes they can be at the level of a conversation between a parent and a principal about a discipline issue, for example. I'm happy to talk a little bit more about that.

1. Black/Latinx Solidarity Work in Los Angeles

One of the partners is CADRE, they're in South Los Angeles, and they're doing some really powerful work to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, but they're thinking hard about, how does that actually play out on the ground? They have done some really important work on policy, but their experience of any of their parents was that a lot hadn't changed on the ground. So they're thinking about how to reshape the conversations they have on an everyday level to humanize educators and the parents themselves and to disrupt what can often be a divide-and-conquer dynamic that can emerge.

EmbraceRace: If you could say more about that - you talk about transforming power across race and class. I wonder what that looked like on the ground, maybe using the example of the organization CADRE.

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah. CADRE is a parent organizing group and Maisie Chin is the lead there. One of the things that they talk a lot about, and I think this is a great example of transforming power, is that, it's not about getting a bigger piece of the pie, it's about changing the rules. And so, one of the things that they have talked a lot about is the way in which especially Latinx community and the black communities can get pitted against each other within those contexts. Because the conception is it's a zero-sum game and there's a small pie and there's a dynamic that can get set up where people feel like they're trying to grab a larger piece of the pie. What CADRE does is they said, "We need to build a collective to really challenge the terms of engagement and the rules that shape those dynamics."

So they are practicing, in a sense, they are using role plays in their context to think through how a particular conversation around setting discipline policy, for example, might get reshaped, especially as parents are trying to enact solidarity between each other.

I think that that's a really powerful shift, because so much of the way that schools approach parents is on an individual level. It's very individualistic. And so, when parents instead build relationships with each other and try to move in solidarity, so if your child is having an issue and you're trying to negotiate that with the school authorities and I come in as a parent just to support you and to be in solidarity, that shifts the dynamic in a profound way. Those are the kinds of things that CADRE is working on.

2. Resources for Building Solidarities

EmbraceRace: And you gave us a resource for communities wanting to build these solidarities. Could you tell us what that is?

Ann Ishimaru: Yes. The Family Leadership Resource Guide [created by the Family Leadership Design Collaborative (FLDC)]. It was developed by the folks who are in phase two [of FLDC's solidarity-driven co-design project].

Our first phase was, we have 10 different sites and then we sort of honed in on four in particular. One of the things that evolved out of that is that those groups were really thinking about facilitative practices for developing these kinds of collaborations. So that resource guide has examples for each, it talks a little bit about the process of solidarity-driven co-design, and how that's different from a listening session or one-off engagements. Then it gives particular examples from each of the different four sites in that case, and some of the practices that they used to be able to undertake this work.

You asked about involving children. One of the facilitative practices that they undertook was thinking about, how much of our work in schools and family engagement is an adult-only spaces? In fact, we both were talking before we got on about like, "Oh, my kids are wandering through. I hope they don't pop in here." SESEC started to realize, when they reflected on their work, how much they like so many other groups are doing adult-only spaces as they're working on educational justice.

And so, they began to think about, what are some facilitative practices, so young people can be part of these conversations? So that sometimes, when they're very, very young, they're in our midst, but they may not be participating but we are also planning and designing for that? Then as they get to be a little bit older, they can actually participate and become very powerful contributors and leaders in their own right towards the justice work, because they're the ones who are actually in the schools on a daily basis.

EmbraceRace: One point you have emphasized both about your work in general and, certainly, about CADRE in particular in South LA, is the importance in forging relationships among parents. Right?

Ann Ishimaru: Mm-hmm.

EmbraceRace: I think we tend, when you talk about parents in school relationships, we tend to think the main piece of action is between the parents and the schools. Right?

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah.

EmbraceRace: Sometimes, it can be challenging, it can even feel antagonistic. I actually had a great conversation with Maisie Chin [of CADRE] a year ago. One thing that stuck out for me that really just underlines what you're saying is, all the work that they've done, building relationships between black and Latinx parents such that, for example, when they have a meeting with school administrators, the black parents are as or more likely to call for Spanish language translation as needed for their Latinx friends and colleagues then the Latinx parents are.

Ann Ishimaru: Mmm hmm.

3. Solidarity and your PTA

EmbraceRace: They're really showing up and advocating for each other.

Then, two, that I wanted to know, you talk about the cross-class stuff and the importance of that. Of course, race is one category and it cross cuts with class and all these other things. But we don't always think of class as being a cleavage line. I mean, we know it and we act like it, but we think much more about race as a possible line that can be hard for people to get across. Can you say a little bit about how the class piece may show up, and what's the work look like?

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah. A lot of the work is not as focused on class. We know that race and class are intrinsically linked to each other. I think that's some of the, a lot of times I'm approached by parents especially in a more privileged context, who are struggling because they're concerned about these issues, but they don't know how to begin.

One of the dynamics that can happen, for instance, the issue that I was talking about with PTA fundraising, there's a recognition that there are those kinds of disparities. Sometimes, they're two responses that play out along class lines. One is, "Well, why don't we just give money to these other schools?" And that can create a really weird dynamic between schools if there's a paternalistic dynamic that can unfold through there. I think the other one is, especially when we think about the conflation of race and class, we know that for middle class families of color they also experience racism and oppression in school and there are affordances that their class privilege allows them in schools.

Sometimes, that has to do with the ability to choose the neighborhood that they're going to live in. And so, then, they'll have a different relationship to the school than the folks who didn't have that kind of choice. We actually have research that's about the variability and the differences say between working-class and middle-class black parents and their interactions with schools.

So it's complex space and it's really important, I think, especially middle-class and middle to upper-class families of color who are thinking about this work, to recognize that there are always at stake the, yes, racialized and oppressive experiences, and a kind of privilege that's at play that we have to own and contend with.

And to really not fall into certain kinds of traps around, on the one hand a set of assumptions about a meritocracy. Meaning, "If only those people would just work hard, they would be as successful as we are," and that plays into the bigger piece of the pie set of assumptions [i.e., a zero-sum game]. So that's, on the one hand, what we have to watch out for. And on the other one is a paternalistic dynamic.

One of the things that's happened in our city is that there have been schools that are meeting up to try to build a different kind of relationship and to try to think together about how might they bridge these kinds of socioeconomic disparities that are happening across these different schools.

4. Solidarity-drive parenting is good parenting

EmbraceRace: And I'd really bring that home, because these are their children. Again, going back to the term you used, "opportunity hoarding," and the way that through much of the country, for white and/or privileged parents, schooling is really the hard knot of the problem in many ways.

Many would surely say that they understand about the disadvantage for some and advantage for others like their own families and so on. But, again, this is where so many of us have been led to believe that being a good parent means doing all you can for your particular child.

Ann Ishimaru: Actually, that is huge. Again, it's kind of watching that set of assumptions that we're operating from and the individualistic approach to thinking about parenting and just recognizing that ... And I think that's where the power lies in building solidarities [across race and class]. So if you deeply understand those histories and have relationships across those lines, it becomes very difficult to think about your child as this, "I'm going to get my child what's best at the expense of other people." When it's abstract and we're so segregated and in our daily lives, it's easy in some sense, to think that I'm just doing what's good for my own.

[I]f you deeply understand those [racialized] histories and have relationships across those lines, it becomes very difficult to think about your child as this, "I'm going to get my child what's best at the expense of other people." When it's abstract and we're so segregated and in our daily lives, it's easy in some sense, to think that I'm just doing what's good for my own.

EmbraceRace: Ann, you were talking about moving away from sort of an individualistic, interactions between schools and parents. You mentioned getting away from listening sessions. I'm imagining getting away from school committee meetings as well? These are usually spaces that [don't foster deep solidarities], where bridges are not being built. In part because there's, maybe not in every school committee meeting, but when it's a big public forum and people go up to the mic, Not everyone's going to be comfortable going up to the mic.

Then there's sort of these ... I see that one of your projects is called Cultivating Capacity for Racial Equity in Education. That's related to something we're trying to do with EmbraceRace, to move the discussion. There can be such a lack of understanding about how race works for people on the ground, and then there are these, you were saying sort of stereotypes or these dominant ideas, like [the virtue of] neighborhood schools. And those dominant ideas or ideologies are in the room with everyone and feel true to many - "Oh, that makes sense. Neighborhood school" - and they're often not countered or not countered powerfully enough or not countered in the three minutes you have to talk.

There needs to be a different forum, a different way, in order to be able to take in the complexity and live in the gray and rethink power. We need to be asking, what do we want [what's the end goal]? For example, this white supremacy thing isn't working so well. But what does that mean I want instead? Whose supremacy I we want? Or do I actually want to share power? What does that look like if all I've seen is you're on top or you're on the bottom? Can you share what the alternatives forums you've seen are, other than the typical ones that parents find themselves in trying to interface with school systems?

5. Building solidarities through Indigenous practices in Chicago

Ann Ishimaru: Yeah. Well, I think that you asked a ways back of like, "What's an example of the kinds of expertise that families and communities of color might have?" I think this is a great example that we have a set of structures and ways of doing things. We have like Robert's Rules of Order or the PTA meeting, and that's operating in a particular set of norms and expectations associated with whiteness.

If we learn from, I'm thinking about the group that came together in Chicago, they were looking to build global indigeneity. They were folks from, for example, the American Indian Center but they were also working with folks from the Aloha Center and thinking about, what are the forms and formats and structures that are used in, for example, indigenous communities to share information or to make decisions? [See more in the Family Leadership Resource Guide.]

They're very different kinds of structures. And so, that's a good example I think of the kinds of practices that we can begin to think about. We don't have to sort of make them up off the top of our head. That's maybe a tall order, especially for educators who haven't experienced anything else, but there are those kinds of practices that have existed in the case of indigenous communities since time immemorial that we can learn from. Those begin to be places where we can construct different ways of doing things. Even restorative practices, sitting in a circle, having a specific time for each person to share their perspective, a lot of those practices draw from indigenous practices.

I was hearing about a story from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, who wrote An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States. She was talking about a time when she was meeting with all these Lakota elders and community members round a Supreme Court case. Just the thinking about how they would gather, and it was hundreds of people, to talk through the day's legal strategies and try to make a decision and thinking it through.

You know what, that didn't happen because each person had an allocation of three minutes to give their testimony in a very combative environment. So, I think that there's a wealth of practices from many different communities that can begin to be starting places for constructing new ways of enacting and building relationships with each other.

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From 'Best' to 'Next' Practices in Family Engagement for Educational...

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We discuss the principles and practices families are using to challenge dominant narratives about race and class and bring about promising new...

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Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Families and the Community as Partners in Education

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Toolkit of Resources for Engaging Families and the Community as Partners in Education

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A powerful, timely novel that follows sixteen-year-old Starr Carter as she navigates two very different worlds: the poor, mostly Black neighborhood where she lives, and the wealthy, mostly white prep school she attends. Her life is turned upside down when she witnesses the fatal police shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil. As national protests erupt and his name becomes a hashtag, Starr is the only one who knows what really happened and what she says could change everything. Heart-wrenching, honest, and empowering, this bestselling novel explores race, justice, identity, and the courage it takes to speak out.