Three Teachers' Perspectives
In the age of Obama, many people believe that racism is diminishing and we
are ushering in a new era of change and equality. For many, their vote for the
nation’s first Black president became their contribution to eliminating racism.
Unfortunately, white liberals with this perspective believe they are exempt from
having to truly confront the prevailing racist traditions and oppression that
still dominate the power structure in this country. Anti-racist activist, Tim
Wise, explains, “…talking about racism and then actually doing something about
it are the only ways to make the subject go away. It won’t disappear just
because we choose not to mention it.”
This exoneration from confronting racism regrettably plagues the students in
the educational system tremendously. The racial hierarchy plays itself out in
schools where more white students succeed and students of color still struggle
to find their accomplishment. The existence of this achievement gap (which is an
opportunity gap, an expectation gap and teaching gap) is very real and continues
to thrive. There is an evident disconnect in schools where white female
teachers dominate the teaching field and their classrooms are populated with
students of color. This division persists because of cultural ignorance, the
silence of discussion and the inability to redefine the language of white middle
class schooling. Executive Director of the Center for Urban Education &
Innovation, Lisa Delpit explains, “Many liberal educators hold that the primary
goal for education is for children to become autonomous, to develop fully who
they are in the classroom setting without having arbitrary, outside standards
forced upon them. This is a very reasonable goal for people whose children are
already participants in the culture and power and who have already internalized
its codes.”
“Our interactions with our students must be personalized and our teaching
must be responsive to their needs. The question becomes how does a white female
teacher struggle against the standard in a quest to form authentic relationships
with her students and engage in constructive dialogue about race, culture and
language?”
Andrea Hunley
Being a teacher of color to students of color poses unique challenges. The
pathway to forming authentic relationships takes many twists and turns. With the
start of each school year, I become more and more aware of the steps my students
take to trusting me and trusting my pedagogy.
When my students of color enter the classroom and see me for the first time
they experience immediate excitement. Or, as close to excited as teenagers can
get. This first phase of pseudo acceptance allows my students of color to begin
forming connections- I’m young, brown-skinned, energetic, and schooled in their
media and music. For the first few weeks, I’m a cultural chameleon, my racial
ambiguity allows my students of color to enter my classroom and see an ally.
This may be the first and only time that they will have a person standing in
front of the classroom that looks like them- a privilege their white peers are
afforded every day. Upon entering my room, my students of color can let down
the wall they have had to build while being instructed by teachers who –
intentionally or not – exude white privilege. They can drop their defensive
baggage at the door and come ready to focus on learning. My students of color
quickly realize that in me, they have found not only an ally, but an equalizer,
a teacher who holds them to the same high standards as their white peers. I
refuse to perpetuate institutionalized racism by masking lowered standards as
accommodations. My classroom is a safe place to excel and there is no excuse
not to.
Enter the second phase: resistance. While my privileged students welcome my
high standards, my students from traditionally underrepresented groups feel as
though I am being hard on them. These students have become accustomed to the
reduced expectations they have received from their peers and past teachers. They
become combative because they feel I have betrayed the nonexistent agreement
that they deserve special treatment. This is where I get frustrated with their
uninformed white teachers of the past. Their teachers who offer pity disguised
as empathy and attempt to overcompensate for their perceived lack of connection
by lowering their standards under the guise of differentiating instruction.
This is where I get frustrated with my students’ well-intentioned, former
teachers who attempt to connect, but instead cripple. I cringe as these teachers
pat themselves on the back for opening minds, but in reality have done nothing
short of impose their middle class values and belief systems on a captive
audience. My students, especially my students of color, then come to me
thinking I’m being unfair, unjust, pushing them because I have some hidden
agenda to prove that education is power. I am simply demanding the same high
expectations and high standards for all of my students.
Many of my students have become quite adept at playing the victim. They see
themselves as victims of society, victims of the system. In many ways, they are
right. We are failing our students. The research shows that black and Latino
students are more likely to be referred to special education than their white
counterparts. Herein lies our most egregious failure: allowing students of
color to believe that they somehow deserve special treatment. I attempt to
break this mentality by holding a mirror up to my students and telling them to
stop looking around for someone to blame. This cannot be done in a 10-minute
mini-lesson. Day in and day out I model taking responsibility for my own
successes and failures- teaching how controllable actions dictate one’s path. I
share anecdotes of my own struggle with cultural identity, opening up
conversations about blurring racial lines and shattering stereotypes. I
demonstrate how adversity is not unique to teens and that we must focus only on
what we can control.
As the weeks wear on, my students begin the transition to trusting me, and
once they come to this realization they move into the third phase: acceptance.
It is only when we reach this point that we are able to form authentic
relationships and thereby increase learning and achievement.
Stacy Endman
My students often tell me: “You’re not white. You’re Jewish.” As if there
is a glaring distinction between the two. I’ve often wondered why they’ve taken
the time to point this out to me. At first, I was convinced it was because of
the region of my school. The Westside of Indianapolis isn’t necessarily the
center of the Midwest Jewish population. I thought, “Certainly, my students had
to be telling me because I was the only Jew to have come into their lives—and my
‘Jewishness’ qualified me for non-white status.”
However, after a few years of examining this quandary, I’ve come to
understand that my students’ perception relates to educational-theorist Paulo
Freire’s subversion of the traditional educational system. Freire states
“Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their
world in order to transform it.” In order for our oppressed students to
experience humanization, the educator must instill trust in her students and
call upon their creative voice and unique perspective in the classroom. This
dissolve of traditional teacher-student relationships lets students know their
humanity is treasured and they need to stand up against discrimination and all
systems of oppression. I make it very clear to my students that
institutionalized racism pollutes their high school institution. It is hidden
in the curriculum, dominating the design of classroom compositions, ensuring who
goes on and who drops out. It is my goal to be very deliberate about the
inequities that plague their lives. Current research indicates that only 50 %
of all black students are expected to graduate from high school. These numbers
are no accident. The system does not work in their favor. I think it is
through this transparency and authentic interaction that the students come to
see me as an ally. There are so many teachers who choose not venture into the
murky waters of discussing race. It has become somewhat poetic to adopt a
color-blind mentality in the classroom. Teachers believe they are servicing
students by treating them all the same. Our students come to us with a
different history and different needs. It is an absolute disservice to dismiss
race as a crucial factor in our interaction with them. Anti-racist activist Tim
Wise explains, “It is white denial, as much as anything, which has allowed
racial inequity to persist for so long.” See, it’s so much easier not to talk
about race. The topic is too confusing, too controversial or too
uncomfortable. So the obvious solution is not to talk about it all! And
students, who often want nothing more than to use the academic forum to
deconstruct their notions about race, are silenced and taught that it’s not a
polite subject.
When I began teaching an AP English Language class, I decided to design a
unit around the social construct of race. I found out quickly, in my
predominately white AP class, that most students were irate when I explained to
them the extent and advantage of their white privilege. Many of my white
students turned on me quickly, defining my passion for anti-racism as a defect
in my character. I knew that I couldn’t completely change their minds, but I
also knew a few seeds were planted.
My quest to raise racial consciousness in my classroom, however, is my duty
as a teacher. This does not mean that my students of color flock to me and
adore me. My relationships with them can often be treacherous. I look like the
women who have crippled them, who have patronized them and who have stunted
their educational path. I have seen and heard of incidents where teachers have
lowered their expectations for their students of color, adopt an attitude of
pity and accept mediocrity. I choose, very deliberately, to challenge them and
to not always “play nice.” Sometimes they get it, and sometimes there is a lot
of resistance to my actions. I have been labeled “mean” or “difficult” because
of my quest to dare my students to achieve more. My classroom can often be an
uncomfortable space. Yet, I think we’ve played nice for too long in school.
Doubt and uneasiness are areas of strength where new insight can be achieved and
original understandings are articulated to welcome true justice. My favorite
poet, Anis Mojgani, elegantly explains in his poem Shake the Dust, “Do not
settle for letting these waves settle.” The pursuit of equity in the classroom
is never easy and it is never over.
Martha Sacks
The majority of my students are Latino. Initially, I am confronted with some
resistance from my students. They tend to quickly pigeonhole me as simply “a
white teacher,” as someone who dismisses their experiences and is therefore
ignorant to their daily challenges. This is not to mean in any way that they
are disrespectful, but rather just guarded towards me. Like most students in
the first few weeks of school, they test me to discover how much I really care
about them not just as my students, but as individuals. However, as the
semester rolls on, the students begin to warm to me and eventually greet me with
a reciprocal relationship of authentic understanding. Reaching this level of
understanding requires time. Just because I am a white teacher does not mean I
am not genuinely empathetic to their challenges as minorities. I share my own
experiences as a religious minority. I tell stories of challenges I faced in
high school, how I was treated poorly for being a minority too, and how I dealt
(or in some cases, didn’t deal) with the adversity. It does, however, mean that
I cannot fully understand their experiences as racial minorities. My
“minority-ness” is something I can hide, which is in some ways a privilege. I
am able to determine when I share the fact that I am not always part of the
majority group. My cultural identifier is a choice. Regardless of the choice,
I can appreciate my students’ experiences and we share those experiences and
find that common ground.
I allow conversations about diversity to occur in my classroom as needed, as
teachable moments, and equally importantly, I model how to address intolerance
now as an adult and in current situations. For example, last year a video
segment was shown on our school’s closed-circuit television station that
interviewed some of our English language learners talking about various topics:
how our English as a New Language (ENL) Club prepares students for college and
what the students’ viewpoints were about immigration. In some of my students’
classes, slurs were made about these interviewed students as the segment aired.
Comments such as, “She can’t even speak English – how is she ever going to go to
college?” and “We don’t want you here. Go back to where you came from” were
stated. Unfortunately, the teachers in these classrooms did not address the
situation. This lack of action sent the message to my students that 1) the
teachers agreed with the racial comments and/or 2) the teachers didn’t care
enough about the ENL students to even address the situation.
I initially told my students that I didn’t think either of these options were
actually the truth. I said that I believed the teachers simply did not know how
to address the predicament, thus sending the message through their silence and
lack of action that they agreed with the statements. Although my students
understood it on an intellectual level, I don’t think they truly believed it.
This being the case, I called for one of our Assistant Principals to come to the
class to speak to the students about the situation. I modeled for my students
the importance of having a voice when they are faced with adversity. If we
don’t speak up, and inform others of acts of injustice, then we can’t expect
others to change their behavior. We are then simply perpetuating the
situation. The Assistant Principal listened to their concerns and validated
their emotions. More importantly, it made her even more aware of the need for
cultural competency training among our staff. She shared the situation with the
administrative team in our school and a seed was planted. This example of
intolerance contributed to laying the groundwork for the implementation of
cultural responsivity training for our staff, which is an initiative on which we
are working more diligently this year than in years past.
In hindsight, I realize that though extremely well-intentioned, I actually
defended my colleagues’ lack of responses and gave them the benefit of the doubt
by saying they did not know what to do. While it may not initially seem like a
destructive action, what I really did was ask my students to act more as the
adults in the situation than the actual adults simply to expedite the
resolution. Isn’t it odd that I have more faith in my students to address
situations of intolerance simply because they have more experience with it than
adults? My statement in reality perpetuated the exact situation I am trying to
diminish. We need to encourage and teach adults how to address acts of
intolerance and conduct appropriate conversations about race. Why should
children have to suffer because adults are not expeditious in addressing these
types of acts?
Students need to have their voices and their experiences heard and
validated. These are the incidents that define us as young adults and help to
shape who we are. Students need to feel safe in confronting such issues.
Adults and students alike need the guidance and the tools in conducting these
difficult conversations. Just because I am a white teacher does not mean I am
unable to provide that support to my students or to my colleagues. --
TOC
Related Links @ Teachers of Color Magazine
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Classroom Lessons on Race, Culture and Language
