Unsettling Education

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Acknowledgments

We thank our series editors, Les Burns and sj Miller, as well as Megan Madden and Monica Baum at Peter Lang Publishing. Thanks, too, to Carolyn Lesnick and Josh Staub for formatting and cover art, respectively.

Our mentors Bill Ayers, Todd DeStigter, Kevin Kumashiro, and David Schaafsma have provided continual guidance and insight.

Many colleagues and friends, too, deserve our appreciation: Chris Bass, Lauren Bell, Mikela Bjork, Jake Burns, Amy McGrail, Sarah Donovan, Angela Gutierrez, Nicol Howard, Abby Kindelsperger, Kate Manski, Russell Mayo, Manulani Meyer, Sarah Rutter, Jennifer Tilton, Beverly Troiano, Andrew Wall, and Christopher Worthman.

Special thanks to this volume’s contributors, all of whom challenged us to “unsettle” our thinking on schools and schooling: Deborah Bieler, Mikela Bjork, Kevin Carey, Alex Corbitt, Sarah Donovan, Noah Asher Golden, Matthew Homrich-Knieling, Will Hudson, Glynis Kinnan, Avi Lessing, Russell Mayo, James McCoyne, Angela Whitacre de Resendiz, and Samantha Young. And special thanks, of course, to their and our students, past and present.

Finally, we are grateful to our families for their support and encouragement.

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2. Calculating Justice? Using Mathematical Mindsets for Teaching From a Social Justice Perspective

ANGELA WHITACRE DE RESENDIZ AND WILL HUDSON

“Maybe They Can Dance for Us”

Each week, all the students in our school meet in one room for discussion, problem-solving, or students’ presentations of their ideas for the school. During one such meeting, a teacher explained that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was approaching, summarized who Dr. King was and why we celebrate him, and asked students to think of ways we could mark the holiday. Some students suggested reading books about the Civil Rights Era; some thought creating a bulletin board or display was a good idea. And then it happened. A rather precocious, white, first-grade girl, who we learned later had discussed in her classroom that some schools and community events feature African music or dance for Black History Month, suggested that some of the Black students could present a song or do a dance for us. Teachers’ faces went into shock as we looked at each other. Did a white student just suggest that Black students (“They”) should sing and dance for non-Black students (“Us”)? Yes, yes she did, and several kids, their brows furrowed and mouths agape, seemed to have gotten what just happened.

We teachers were suddenly faced with a litany of internal questions, none of which had easy answers. How could we address this comment without crushing this child? How could we explain the weight of the historical and polarizing racist imagery she had just conjured? How could we make clear to all present that this was hurtful? How could we do it in the thirty minutes available without stirring up more confusion or unresolved harm? How could we protect those students who were offended, angry, or confused? How could we unpack this in the moment as a multi-age group? ← 33 | 34 →

Well, we didn’t. We let the comment sit there a few moments and then brushed over it thinking that those students who got what happened “got it” and those who didn’t hear the offense wouldn’t need any further discussion. And so we moved on. We were not prepared. As a faculty, we were fairly well-versed in history, racial inequity, and activism. We were well-spoken, vocal, and “good” at navigating nuanced conversation. But, in this moment, we failed. How did this happen to us? And how were we to pick up the pieces and make sure it didn’t happen again?

Angela’s Response

A student in my third-grade class went home deeply affected by the all-school meeting, so I spoke with her mother about her and her sister’s reactions at home. The younger sister cried about dancing for the white kids, and my student was angry. The following day we discussed as a class what went wrong, how teachers should have reacted, and why what was said was so upsetting to some of us.

In discussing the incident as a faculty, it became clear that we had not done the work to know how to call someone’s racism out in a productive way. We knew how to agree with other adults that leaned in the same direction, and we knew how to impart facts and ideas. We did not know how to really open ourselves up and be completely present, engaged with children in difficult, open dialogue about sticky topics where we might not have all the answers. I am haunted by that all-school meeting, and always will be, because I know that my inaction, even if only delayed by a day, will be a story that lives in several children’s memory.

These are the moments that make teachers, particularly white teachers, afraid to open discussions about race, gender, sexuality, class, and social justice. Indeed, some of our faculty later suggested we should simply avoid discussing such potentially unpredictable topics in mixed-age settings. It can be easier to do nothing, because if we do nothing, we can feel as if we have caused no harm. But not knowing what to do is not an excuse for inaction.

The discussion I and my students had the day after the all-school meeting was deep, honest, and meaningful. I cried, and students cried. We talked about our discomfort and opened up to each other in a way that wasn’t about saying the “right” thing, but about using the right tools. We stopped excusing and protecting ourselves and started explaining and asking questions.

As a facilitator of that discussion, I used a lot of “I statements” to guide students through how I analyzed my thoughts and actions. More importantly, however, I started asking the group open-ended questions like, ← 34 | 35 → “What were you feeling? Why do you think you felt that way? Does anyone have something to say about that? What are you wondering about now as we’re talking about this?” Asking such questions allowed students to talk about a full range of emotions both related to that moment and to racism in general. Several comments were about wanting to understand racism and what it was, where it came from, and how it worked but not knowing how or when to ask. One child spoke about wanting others to understand how racism felt but not wanting to always be the person having to explain it or point it out.

And here I made a conscious choice not to always just nod and thank, not even to rephrase and reaffirm, although I believe these to be effective discussion tools. While acutely aware of the risk of exploiting the existing power imbalance between teacher and students, I did not want to facilitate a feel-good talk about everyone being right in their own way. I chose to say so when I thought some comments lacked context, history, truth, or respect. I analyzed and unpacked bias, and I talked openly about why such analysis and unpacking were important. We discussed how even unintentionally racist comments are still painful and that when our friends are oblivious to their racist behavior it can hurt more. We talked about the importance of saying what we really felt and not what we assumed was “right,” even at the risk of being critiqued, because it gave everyone a chance to learn to recognize and combat racist ideas in a safe space. We talked about not liking what someone may say but still being able to like them as a person. And this conversation carried on well beyond that day. We created a working definition for racism. We began referring to racist behavior, distinguishing between the actions and the person. Reframing the conversation allowed us to be critical of each other and hold each other accountable, without alienating each other or suppressing genuine expression.

Because I have the privilege of working in a private, progressive school that is based on democratic, project-based learning, our class chose to start a new project on racism. The project involved several activities where we explored racism not as “hatred” of a group of people, but as the systemic “othering” of one people and the privileging/centering of another. I learned in this project that, while the content was important, the way in which we learned to discuss the content was equally so. We weren’t trying to have definitive answers; we were trying to understand better this complicated thing called racism, get comfortable exposing our discomfort, and ask better questions. Furthermore, we were trying to do it in a room full of eight-year-olds and one grown-up. I knew we weren’t going to replicate this project every year, but surely we could replicate something about the process. There was a ← 35 | 36 → familiar framework evolving that would not formulate clearly in my head until many projects and several years later.

Will’s Response

I spent the first ten years of my career as a public school teacher. In the schools where I taught, racism and bias were common and pervasive. From hearing white teachers telling students of color that they weren’t speaking “correctly” to observing students struggle with biased standardized test regimes, I witnessed low-income students, immigrant populations, and students of color be marginalized and penalized. At the time, my efforts at pushing back against this system were sporadic and ineffectual; I had yet to develop a sense for myself of how to teach for justice and equity. However, beginning my first year as a sixth-grade teacher in a new middle level program at a small, progressive, and independent school, I quickly understood that I was no longer in a situation where I could hide behind systems that silenced important and challenging discourse. On the contrary, my very privilege and ability to make an impact within this school community required me to begin the process of interrogating and addressing my own shortcomings, biases, and even fear.

Looking back on the morning described above, I realize my inaction in that situation set me on a trajectory towards developing a deeper understanding of what it meant for me, a white heterosexual male, to teach for social justice and anti-racism. When the student made the suggestion that Black students dance for us, I remember feeling uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed. I wasn’t shocked or mortified. Rather, I saw this as a young child whose choice of words had uncomfortable implications. In the moment, we glossed over the comment and moved on. But that was the beginning of a reexamination of privilege, racism, and the inadvertent perpetuation of systems of thought and action that marginalize and, in many ways, dehumanize students and teachers alike. The process has been challenging. It has been difficult and painful as I have had to reconcile my own past actions, or inactions, with who I am and want to become personally and professionally.

Social justice and anti-racist work is ongoing, and I have found that, for me, there are no easy answers, no ready-made solutions. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: questions, uncertainties, and mistakes define my efforts more than solutions and comfortable outcomes. To be sure, so much of learning is about being comfortable with mistakes, with not knowing exactly what to say or how to approach a topic or problem. As a teacher, I take this to heart and encourage my students to become more comfortable with discomfort as it is an integral component of growth and learning. Big problems, or real-world ← 36 | 37 → problems as we like to call them, do not come with an ordered set of steps or predetermined solutions. They can often be approached from a variety of angles and always require one to struggle and to grapple with uncertainty.