Seeing Anti-Racist Principles at Work in the Classroom
Part 2: Learning From Equity In Action
Edited by Ryan Ingram
This is the second in a series of four articles that address how the Goalbook team is making a concerted effort to learn about anti-racist teaching practices from the educators who are and have been engaging in anti-racist teaching. By learning from others, we hope to contribute to a more racially equitable US public school system through our own products and services.
In Part 1, we encountered one real anti-racist teacher, Pirette McKamey, and learned about the power that an individual teacher can have in creating racial equity (or inequity) in their classroom. When I studied her practice more closely, I discovered that she brought to life a set of anti-racist teaching principles that were universally shared across the researchers, frameworks, and perspectives I was also learning from.
I’m not suggesting that the universal anti-racist teaching principles we identified are totally comprehensive or completely universal. There might be some anti-racist scholars that do not share these principles. Furthermore, there may exist other universal principles that are not represented here. What I was hoping to accomplish was creating a list that was useful — with hopes that if the Goalbook team could better understand and adopt these universal principles, we can more effectively understand, align, and ally ourselves with those who are working towards a more equitable school system.
UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF ANTIRACIST TEACHING
- Acknowledging the Prevalence of Racism
- High Expectations of Student Success
- Success Beyond Measure
- Ownership of Racial Inequities
- Personalized and Localized Solutions
- Continuous Learning and Growth
- Primacy of Outcomes
1. Prevalence of Racism
… the power that [black students] initially bring to school is siphoned off by educators at every level of the educational system who do not respect, and in some cases do not wish to respect, the intellectual contributions of black students. — Pirette McKamey (Atlantic)
It is overwhelmingly clear that racism from outside of the school system can have serious impacts on Black students, their families, and their communities. It is doubly true that racism from inside the school system can harm students and have an even greater negative impact on learning and achievement. Being an antiracist educator means understanding, and addressing racism from both outside AND inside the school system.
Shores, Kim, and Still have researched and concluded that within-school factors are a bigger cause of racial disparities than out-of-school factors in their study of categorial inequalities; Duke Professor Angel L. Harris dispels oft-cited out-of-school explanations for racial achievement differences in his book, Kids Don’t Want to Fail: Oppositional Culture and the Black-White Achievement Gap.
2. High Expectations of Student Success
I have witnessed countless black students thrive in classrooms where teachers see them accurately and show that they are happy to have them there … Given the chance, they email, text, and call the teachers who believe in them. — Pirette McKamey (Atlantic)
The high expectations we set for Black students should come from a deep belief and conviction about the excellence they are capable of and the assets they bring with them to the classroom. The bar we set for Black students is not set by another racial group, relative to another racial group, and certainly not measured against the average of another racial group.
TNTP’s The Opportunity Myth describes the limited access students of color and other groups to rigorous grade level tasks; UNCC Professor Tracey Benson shares how unconscious racial bias has impacted educator practice (e.g. grading essays). Claude Steele has studied the power of stereotype threat and its impact on test performance in Stereotype Threat and African-American Student Achievement in the book, Young, Gifted and Black. Educator Shemeka Millner-Williams shared a powerful personal testimony of how her high (and low) expectations impacted one of her students.
3. Success Beyond Measure
In short, these students are everything their families and community members have raised and supported them to be. — Pirette McKamey (Atlantic)
Our highest aspirations of success for our Black students should transcend measures of performance (e.g. test scores, discipline data) and closing “gaps.” They should also transcend graduation, higher education, or obtaining a high paying job. While those are important milestones and measures of antiracist progress (or lack thereof), they should not be our ultimate vision of student success. Our vision of student success should be motivated by our highest aspirations of our shared humanity and the specific communities our students belong to. While I found that specific articulations of this more elevated vision of success differed, a common theme seems to be that education should equip black students to possess freedom and power.
Theresa Perry, Professor of Africana Studies at Simmons University, describes a philosophy of African-American education that is inspired by her study of education within African-American history and the pursuit of freedom in her essay, Up from the Parched Earth: Toward a Theory of African-American Achievement in the book, Young, Gifted and Black. Zaretta Hammond describes the higher aspiration of developing independent learners rather than dependent learners in her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.
4. Ownership of Racial Inequities
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. — Pirette McKamey (Atlantic)
Racial inequities (e.g. state test score gap) demonstrate the existence of racist policies NOT the deficiencies of students, families, or communities. In other words, when there is a racial inequity between Black students as a group and another racial group, it means that the school system and society at large is racist — there must exist policies that are creating or sustaining racial inequity. Therefore, the responsibility and locus for change lies where the policies are i.e. the school system and not with our Black students or their communities.
Pedro Noguera, Dean of USC School of Education, shifts the focus from the deficit-focused explanations of students lacking “grit”, but instead the responsibility of educators to impact greater agency in his essay, Grit, Overemphasized. Agency, Overlooked. Bettina L. Love, Professor of Education at University of Georgia, advocates the urgency of schools and educators to understand and correct the racism and its harm that occurs inside and because of the education system itself in We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom.
5. Personalized and Localized Solutions
They ask themselves: Why did Taylor get a C on the final when he earned an A or a B on all of his other assignments, many of them equally demanding? Why is Vince silent in his group? What inspired Hile to write multiple drafts of her essay, each time asking for more detailed feedback? — Pirette McKamey (Atlantic)
Racial equity may be measured and reported in aggregate, but teaching and learning are performed and experienced by individuals. What works for one student may not work for another. What works for one teacher may not work for another. Each student (and teacher) is a unique and different human being, regardless of what racial group they belong to. Therefore, at the end of the day, an antiracist teacher continuously needs to figure out what works for the students who are in front of them.
Gloria Ladson-Billings defined “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy” in her essay, But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. In their compendium of essays, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, Django Paris, Professor of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University, frame students’ unique culture and communities as assets to be amplified rather than deficits to be erased.
6. Continuous Learning and Growth
We read articles and books, and we attend workshops centered around black pedagogy. That helps us examine cultural differences in discourse styles, so we can better understand black students’ analytical approaches in essays. — Pirette McKamey (Atlantic)
There is no silver-bullet, no single set of antiracist policies, that will deterministically create racial equity. Therefore a critical part of being an antiracist teacher is continuously learning about Black pedagogy, culture, and racism to iteratively improve instructional practice. Even more important than that, is to continuously learn about the individual students we teach, their families/communities, and what does or doesn’t work for them.
Dr. Asa Hilliard III, discusses the importance of instructional quality and effective and ongoing teacher education in his essay, No Mystery: Closing the Achievement Gap, in the book, Young, Gifted and Black. The ongoing learning about students and their cultural communities done by educator Carrie Secret and Prescott Elementary, educator in Oakland Unified School District (CA), in the article, Teaching Outside One’s Race: The Story of An Oakland Teacher.
7. Primacy of Outcomes
Over the years, collaborating with other anti-racist educators, I co-developed an approach that was successful — and it showed in the students’ attendance, grades, and quality of work … In essence, we do what works for black students, which also works for all students. — Pirette McKamey (Atlantic)
Learning, best practices, thoughtfulness, and intentionality are all important, but what matters at the end of the day are outcomes. With this knowledge the question that I am left with is: Are our efforts achieving racial equity for our Black students or are they not?
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in his book, How To Be An Antiracist, defines anti-racism in the context of power and policies that achieve more equitable outcomes rather than intentions and efforts that just make us “feel better” about racism. In Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning, Andratesha Fritzgerald contrasts the “savior complex” that centers the educator versus a classroom honors and centers students and student outcomes.
These seven principles of anti-racist teaching articulate ideas and beliefs that have come up over and over again in my research. They aren’t meant to be authoritative nor comprehensive; they are valuable because of their usefulness.
If we at Goalbook continue to deepen our understanding of these principles than we can effectively increase our impact to empower educators to engage in anti-racist teaching that creates classrooms where ALL students succeed. Part three of this series will explore contrasting approaches to anti-racist teaching and offer real-world examples of how educators are creating equitable and anti-racist learning environments.
Read part three of this series on Learning From Equity In Action.
Follow our publication Innovating Instruction to stay up to date on all our product updates and to read about the impact Goalbook is having on our partner districts.
Bibliography
- Rizga, Kristina. Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph. Nation Books, 2016.
- McKamey, Pirette. “What Anti-Racist Teachers Do Differently.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 9 Sept. 2020, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2020/06/how-be-anti-racist-teacher/613138/.
