“If we love education, and want it to be the enriching and liberating endeavor it has the potential to be, we must educate ourselves about it. We must seek out the truth about how our education system is serving, or failing to serve, students of color. We must learn about who benefits from our education system operating as is, we must learn the ways in which racist oppression has been built into the system, we must seek out different ways of learning, and we must embrace different definitions of academic success.”
About the teaching guide:
This guide is designed to offer basic principles and resources for educators committed to fostering an antiracist classroom environment. For those teaching the Art & Antiracism curriculum, reading How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi is mandatory. However, it is recommended for all educators, regardless of the subject they teach. This guide is structured in a relatively simple manner- it is designed to provide information for educators to extract and apply to their own process. This guide is a collection of quotes, articles, and resources created by educators of color to help inspire antiracist pedagogy; understanding antiracism and combating racism effectively mandates learning from those who experience it firsthand.
“Anti-racist teachers take Black students seriously. They create a curriculum with Black students in mind, and they carefully read students’ work to understand what they are expressing. This might sound fairly standard, but making Black students feel valued goes beyond general “good teaching.” It requires educators to view the success of Black students as central to the success of their own teaching. This is a paradigm shift: Instead of only asking Black students who are not doing well in class to start identifying with school, we also ask teachers whose Black students are not doing well in their classes to start identifying with those students.”
Resources for educators by educators of color:
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - Education for Liberation
- This is a collection of multiple articles centered around the topic of education for liberation.
Dena Simmons- How to Be an Antiracist Educator
- This is a quick article delineating a few steps on incorporating antiracism into educational practices.
Taryn Coe - How to be an anti-racist teacher in a mostly white school
- This is a 9 minute TED talk by educator Taryn Coe explaining the importance of actively talking about race and racism in a classroom environment.
Jamilah Pitts- Don't Say Nothing | Learning for Justice
- This is an article by anti-racist educator and activist Jamilah Pitts on confronting personal biases and stepping out of comfort zones to become an antiracist educator.
Pirette McKamey- How to Be an Anti-racist Teacher - The Atlantic
- This is an article by principal Pirette McKamey explaining what makes an antiracist teacher so special to students of color.
Allyson Criner Brown- Engaging and Embracing Black Parents
- This is an article found in the book Teaching When the World is on Fire. This article delineates the importance of accepting, informing, and collaborating with Black parents as an antiracist educator.
Jamilah Pitts - What Anti-racism Really Means for Educators | Learning for Justice
- This short guide provides advice on incorporating love and acceptance into teaching.
Mellody Hobson - Color blind or color brave?
- This is a TED talk by finance executive Mellody Hobson on how having conversations about race makes for a better society.
Above the Noise - How Can You Fight Racism at School? | Above the Noise | PBS LearningMedia
- This is a 14 minute long podcast episode sharing the stories of students fighting against racism in their schools.
Disrupt texts - disrupttexts.org
- Disrupt texts is a bundle of resources for teaching literature in a way that promotes diversity, equity, and representation. Their website provides a list of common reads in high school English classes and how these texts can be taught in an antiracist manner.
Educolor - Tomorrow There'll Be More Of Us — EduColor
- Educolor is an organization that has created resources/support programs for educators of color.
Zak Cheney-Rice - Powerful Hashtag Has a Beautiful Message That All #NativeYouth Need to Hear
- This article gives guidance and insight on the importance of affirming/supporting Native youth.
Teaching for change website - Teaching for Change - Teaching for Change
- Teaching for change is an organization that provides educators with tools they can use to help their students change the world.
Clint Smith - Clint Smith: The danger of silence | TED Talk
- This is a TED Talk by poet and teacher Clint Smith encouraging the use of our voices to discuss important issues.
Edutopia- 6 Ways to be an Antiracist Educator
- This is a quick YouTube video giving teachers advice on how to be an antiracist educator.
Mandy Smoker - What Culturally Responsive Teaching Looks Like: A Native Educator Explains
- This is a YouTube video by a Native Educator explaining the value of culturally responsive teaching for students.
- This is an article explaining 5 actionable steps that educators can take to empower native youth in the classroom.
Nathan Lee Harris- Supporting Black Children learning STEM
- This is a TedX talk by PhD Candidate Nathan Lee Harris on how to support Black students learning STEM by incorporating it into multiple areas of their lives.
Black Educator Advocates Network - SEEN AND AFFIRMED: WHAT BLACK EDUCATORS AND STUDENTS NEED TO THRIVE
- This is a report that highlights how to empower Black students and teachers. Although the report is centralized around problems in the Los Angeles county school district, many of their findings can be extrapolated to districts all across the U.S. This is a project authored by Black educators and is a valuable resource with actionable steps educators can take.
Zaretta Hammond - Culturally Responsive Teaching 101 | #PLtogether
- This is an interview with Zaretta Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain on the myths and facts of culturally responsive teaching.
“Anti-racist educators understand that they must be lifelong learners. They believe in the power of developing a critical consciousness, which comes from reading, from studying, from deep scholarship, from humility, from listening to and engaging with others, and from constantly examining and re-examining their own ideas, beliefs and truths.”
Additional Resources:
Note: These resources all have a good message, but were not created by educators of color or the author is not specified. Resources by educators of color should be prioritized first.
Teaching Anti-Racism in the Classroom
- This is an article on incorporating antiracism into teaching practices. The author of the article is not specified- we would recommend looking to articles explicitly written by teachers of color first.
Martin Haberman - The Pedagogy of Poverty vs Good Teaching
- This is an extensive article explaining urban teaching, poverty, and how to act against the pedagogy of poverty as an educator. The author of this article is White- we recommend prioritizing the articles written by authors of color in this document before this one.
Harvard’s implicit bias test - Project Implicit
The Zinn Education project - Teaching People's History | The Zinn Education Project
- The Zinn education project is a project that promotes the teaching of people's history in schools, going off of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.