Educators, not sure what to do to help in this moment of civil unrest, racist injustice laid bare, and calls to action to dismantle white supremacy? Our WORK is what we do.

Education— or more accurately, lack thereof or miseducation— is a huge part of why we continue to have systems of oppression that remain intact in American and continue to have hordes of white folks unaware of their urgent need to combat it. 

WE NEED ANTI-RACIST EDUCATIONAL CHANGE. 

Educators: this falls on us. We need to make it so that every child, in every town, has access to education that teaches them compassion, anti-racism, anti-bigotry, activism, allyship, humanity, self-awareness, and the powers of both using their voices and votes and of listening to others. 

Educators: our activism is within our role. 

When the “me too movement” was forefront in our nation’s consciousness, part of what I recognized and verbalized as crucially important in addition to empowering and listening to my fellow women was to also do better by our young boys. I could be angry about what had happened and what continues to happen, and I could simultaneously see that a big part of the way toward a better future laid, and still lies, in educating our nation’s boys and young men better. This meant consistent, active instruction in consent, gender quality, and body agency starting in elementary school; empowering parents to educate their male-identified children better at home; and equipping the surrounding communities that have voice into our children’s lives, such as faith communities and community centers, with resources to provide consistent messaging around consent and fair, aware, anti-misogynist treatment of women. This started with me in my classroom where I explicitly teach my young students about consent, and in my school hallways where I converse with fellow teachers and with students’ parents about raising nonviolent boys and young men at home. 

Educators: this starts with us. 

Our activism as educators now is to make sure that we are educating the next generation of police officers and lawmakers so that they know what is and is not okay. We need to be actively including anti-racist messages on our curriculum, not just treading lightly around the subject of racism or systemic oppression with our students for fear of doing it wrong, upsetting parents, upsetting administrators. Let them get upset. Maybe people getting upset is okay when what they’re upset about is having their previously held views that condone or tacitly comply with oppression or violence or unfair treatment, knowingly or unknowingly, called in question. 

We need to do better by our people. 

We need to educate our people at every level— child, teen, adult, parent, colleague— so that folks come to know that whatever viewpoints of oppression, violence, bigotry they have inherited, explicitly or implicitly, are actually not okay.

Part— not all, but part— of the reason that the white police officers who murdered George Floyd believed that it was okay for them to do that, in my best conjecture, is because nobody taught them otherwise. Their families and friends and teachers in school either taught them explicitly racist messaging, or didn’t actively unteach these things, because of how they were educated both in school and through experience. The communities that they were part of affirmed and reinforced this in daily action and discourse because no one also taught everyone else around them better, leading them to continue to self-select and seek out membership in groups that affirmed white supremacy, comfortable racist sentiment, violence as they grew up into adults. This is systemic reinforcement of violence; hand-in-hand with systemic racism and systems built to perpetuate white supremacy. The pathways here are well-worn— often so deeply so that they are not questioned or even seen for what they are. Author Ibram X. Kendi described internalizing messages from systemic oppression in a recent interview as beliefs that are raining on us, and part of what’s raining on us is the message that we are dry. Wrongful messaging trickles down to us insidiously through these systems, tricking us into believing that everything is okay. Education MATTERS here, for every member of communities like these. Education is not the only way to combat these systems, but we can’t combat them without it. How are we going to change something people don’t know about? Knowledge is power, and we as, educators, have broad-reaching power. 

Education doesn’t change what has happened and what’s happening now— it doesn’t undo the brutality and the violence that has happened— but it can, and must, be looked to as CRUCIAL in creating change for the future. It is not just one way to to affect change— I think it’s really the only way. How are we going to have leaders one day that espouse humanity without the educator (or parent, or coach, equipped with their own education) who taught them to be that way?

Since starting my career as an educator, when horrific or divisive or heartbreaking things happen in our country and world— continued mass shootings, separation of families at our borders, hate crimes, racist violence— I tend to eventually feel caught or powerless beyond a few acts of individual activism. I vote; I write or call my state representatives calling for the change I want to see; I maybe protest or make art or write or talk to people who agree with me already about how horrible everything is; and then I think: what else can I do? 

Well, here’s what I can do: I can wake up and go to my job as an educator and choose to bring conscious voice to what is right as I speak into the lives of tomorrow’s adults. As a white person who is an educator, I can use my white privilege and the fact that I am generally listened to by my surrounding community to call attention to what is wrong and how to begin to make it right. Want to talk about having far-reaching power and awesome responsibility? Being an educator has probably more for more far-reaching power and more awesome responsibility than any other activism I will engage in— more than protesting, more than writing to my mayor. Here’s why: imagine if I ask three friends to write to the mayor calling for policy change. Maybe they do it—great, that’s four of us in total using our voices— three people beyond myself who are acting as change agents. Or, I could go to my place of work and work hard to educate 80 students each day about compassion and human rights and equality and social justice and what is okay and not okay in terms of how we treat others. Well, that’s already 80 young lives touched… and then what if each of those 80 students talks to one friend who I don’t teach, or brings up the topic of racism at home and starts the conversation, or goes to play with some neighbors down the street that week and remembers one thing they heard in class and uses that to stand up against in instance of bigotry or racism or seek to include or understand instead of acting out of continued systems of oppression?

That is change that’s powerful. That is creating agents of change. Because the thing is— our children are listening. This is been proven to me over and over as an educator. I have often been surprised about one sentence that I have said, simple or offhanded in my mind, that a child has repeated to me weeks or months or even years later. Teachers: they are listening to us, they are learning from us, and we do have huge power and an enormous responsibility to make sure that the things we are saying that they are listening to are on the right side of history. 

I know educators often struggle with pushback and curricular regulatory guidelines meant to delineate that schools are not places to be political— guidelines set by schools and districts out of efforts to remain inclusive. But although the fallout of this moment includes political change called for, the heart of this current moment is not political— it is HUMAN COMPASSION. At its heart, this is not arguments over taxes and wording and insurance— this is HUMANITY. People being killed. Our stance now will determine what is written in history books 50 years from now and what the world looks like for our children, and their children— whether our students of color, or our white students’ black friends and partners can live in comfort and safety each day as they never have before— or not.  And that’s why it does have a place in our discourse at school and with our children.

I’m calling for not just individual educators to make anti-racist curriculum a priority, but also for broader educational reform and educational change that includes specific modifications to nationwide curricular standards to include anti-racist learning. 

So, fellow educators and childcare professionals and parents— let’s talk. What are you doing? What can I do better? What resources do you love? Where are your community’s needs? What can we create?

Nonprofit organizations already doing this work— how can we help? What can we create?

The time is now to join together for education in service of our future. 

We need to educate our children better— to unteach oppressive messages and re-teach what is true, kind, helpful and human. We also need to educate and equip our parents and faith communities and other organizations that have significant voice in children’s lives better, so that they can unteach oppressive messages at home and re-teach what is true for a better tomorrow. 

And, I’ll be watching closely to see which candidates address education as a crucial area for amendment toward anti-racism in the next election and suggest you do the same.

Note:

I want to be clear that my use of the first-person here is not meant to be interpreted as narrative centered around me. I am working on being an anti-racist and recognize that part of that means upfront acknowledgement of my own privilege, my blindspots, my own internalized racism. I am a white educator writing heatedly about this issue; it’s what I believe, it’s personal opinion, but I am not the expert, and I don’t desire to participate in conscious or unconscious erasure of the voices of black educators and childcare professionals and educational policymakers.  There is a lot that I don’t know. I am listening, will eagerly look to educators of color for leadership and input, and want to learn.

Let’s connect.

Authored by: Miranda Pool M.Ed NCC

References:

Ibram X. Kendi, interview with Brene Brown, 6/3/2020, on Unlocking Us (audio podcast)

How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi