Six Antiracist Reminders For Back To School
It's Back to School season, and everywhere we look, we are inundated with messages about things to buy, what to wear, and what we need to be prepared to go back to school.
But what really matters most? We could have the most beautifully decorated classroom, the best outfit for the first day, and the most meticulously prepared lesson plans, but if we don't have our antiracist, liberation-oriented lenses on straight, all this back to school excitement soon gives way to the mid-year slump, disengaged kids, and the souring of all the positive relationships we formed when school first began.
So, what's that mean for us as educators? Here's Six Antiracist Reminders for Back To School season that will keep our focus on what matters most. My hope is that these reminders will help us intentionally align all of our back to school choices with the goal of creating an educational experience that truly liberates us all.
Back To School Antiracist Reminder #1:
We can support teachers and still hold ourselves accountable for dismantling and reimagining harmful racist systems and structures.
Loving and supporting (or being!) teachers doesn't mean we can't recognize that sometimes we cause harm. Being in a harmful system means that this will happen and that sometimes it will even be at our own hands. We can't fix it if we don't recognize it and call it out when we see it, and we have to be honest for that to occur.
We should support our teachers, advocate for their compensation and worker's rights, shower them with praise and help, and also ensure that we aren't teaching our kids inaccurate curriculum or engaging in practices that uphold white supremacy. Fostering close relationships between families and educators will make these crucial conversations possible. When these kinds of brave exchanges are held in a spirit of love and truth, the outcome is always better for our children.
Back To School Antiracist Reminder #2:
Names are important. Learn to pronounce everyone's names the way they want them pronounced.
This is simple. Don't mispronounce people's names.
Ask how to say somebody's name. This goes for students, colleagues, parents, everyone. Don't laugh off mispronunciations or say "Oh, I'm so bad with names!" Instead, try, "Would you pronounce your name for me, please?" or "Did I say that correctly? I want to make sure I get it right."
Also, use people's correct pronouns. This is not up for debate.
Back To School Antiracist Reminder #3:
Many moral leaders remind us to break unjust laws in the name of true justice and peace. Remember Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, Jesus, and Rosa Parks? ...All law-breakers.
There are SO many times in history when educators were subject to unjust laws and practices that stopped us from doing our job through a liberation lens. Remember when enslaved humans weren't allowed to read? Remember when only boys went to college? Remember how Indigenous children were basically kidnapped from their families and forced to separate from their culture to attend residential boarding schools that proved fatal to so many of them? Remember when there was segregation? Remember how currently you might be legally required to out a trans child to their parents or not use the word "slavery" when teaching about... slavery? Yeah, me too.
There's always a way to do what is right, and every moral leader in history had to take risks when they were alive in order to make that happen. Everyone's risk assessment will look different, of course, and that's okay. Look to our historical liberation leaders on the days when you have the most trouble figuring out how to reconcile keeping your job to feed your family, and selling your soul. You're not alone!!
Back To School Antiracist Reminder #4:
How racially diverse is your school's study body and staff? How inclusive are your school's curricular resources and displays with regard to ethnicity, ability, language, race, gender, and beyond? How affirming and culturally attuned are your school's policies and daily routines? Push for more.
Our school system is still deeply colonized. While there are certainly individual schools that are doing amazing work, collectively, we have a LONG way to go. Lead the charge wherever possible for a more liberating experience for students and staff. This means looking at hiring practices, student demographics, hallway displays, read aloud choices, curriculum mapping, school-wide events, theme days (don't get me started on some of these theme days, ya'll!), culturally attuned practices for behavior and academics, teacher book studies, and more!
Back To School Antiracist Reminder #5:
Are you advocating for policies that will actually protect our children and their future? Are your choices in line with an intersectional lens and solidarity with those most impacted by injustice?
Are we aligning ourselves and standing in true solidarity with people and ideas that will protect our children and their futures? This means averting the worst of the climate catastrophe, ending the American gun violence epidemic, and demanding that our tax dollars be used to feed, house, educate, and actually care about children. It means insisting that our tax dollars are not used to let kids go hungry or get shot here at home and to actively kill kids with American-made military equipment and bombs sent across the world.
One thing we are great at as teachers is closing our doors as just making it work. We build our own little worlds inside of our classrooms and give our children a chance to drown out the chaos of the world. What if this is our superpower? If we can build that beautiful world inside our classrooms, we can build it outside of those four walls, too. It just requires us all to work collectively, and to be bold and unafraid.
We know what it looks like for things to run smoothly, and to create a space where everyone feels a sense of belonging. Where kids are kind to one another, and helpers are bountiful. Where we have fun together, cry together, solve problems together, and look forward to being together. That doesn't all need to end when the bell rings at 3pm.
Ever since the start, teaching has been political, no matter how much so many educators just want to "stay out of it." As long as the laws and lawmakers determine the quality of our educational experiences, teaching will aways be political. Political, however, doesn't mean party politics, or red or blue or green. It means POLICY. It means intentional choices with our tax money. It means imagining the society we know we want, and then taking action to build that.
Back To School Antiracist Reminder #6:
Pay attention to the decisions being made. Colonized systems always work hard to sustain themselves and to repress anything that dismantles them. Use your power and privilege to push back on these patterns whenever possible.
There is almost always a way for us (especially those of us who are white, straight, and cisgender) to leverage our power and privilege to disrupt colonial systems of harm. Whether it is in reflecting on our own pedagogy, doing our personal anti-bias work, interrupting the deficit lens another teacher has when discussing students or families, starting a new inclusive program for our students, raising the issue of the lack of representation in books at our school library, spending our Saturday at a local rally for social justice, or pushing back on the way a BIPOC colleague is silenced or talked-over during a meeting, the opportunities for our liberation work are ever-present. Use what you have, when you have it, as often as you can, because white supremacy never takes a day off.
Keep reading, keep talking, keep learning, keep teaching.
So, while you're getting ready or heading back to school, be sure to stay grounded in what is always essential: our collective liberation. If that's our guiding light, we can't ever go too far off-field. And, when we do find ourselves a little lost, as is inevitable in this work, we can go back to the cornerstone of liberation, solidarity, and true antiracist practices to help us find our way back. Wishing everyone a blessed year rooted in love and a spirit of excellence!
Happy Back To School, Beautiful Educators!
Thanks for reading!
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