Facilitating Conversations about Race in the Classroom

Danielle Stewart, Martha Caldwell, Dietra Hawkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000552775
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

Learn how to facilitate conversations about race in the classroom, and why these discussions are such an important part of our work toward equity and justice. In this helpful book, Danielle Stewart, Martha Caldwell, and Dietra Hawkins cover everything from what you need to know to get started, to facilitation methods and techniques, to how to sustain your work. Drawing on their experience at iChange Collaborative, a group that works with schools across the country, the authors offer a plethora of compelling strategies and examples to help you hone your facilitation skills.

Specific topics include the importance of exploring your own identity, how to prepare yourselves and your classrooms for sensitive conversations, how to create class guidelines that create trust and allow vulnerability, and how to deliver explicit instruction in compassionate listening, sharing stories, and giving supportive feedback. The book also discusses the role of affinity groups in strengthening racial identities, building supportive relationships, and enhancing professional practices for educators of color and for race conscious white educators.

With the authors' practical advice, educators of all levels of experience and comfort levels will be able to address racial equity in schools or classrooms, so you can do your part to repair harm, educate, and ultimately transform society.

1What You Need to Know to Get Started

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191353-2

The evening Derek Chauvin was convicted of George Floyd’s murder, we met with a group of teachers. Gloria, a Black kindergarten teacher, recounted a conversation she had with her 10-year-old son, Jared. “I’m worried about how the world will respond to the conviction,” Jared said.

“How would you like for the world to respond?” she asked him.

“We don’t want to make him an example, but we need justice for what’s been done.” He took a deep breath and continued, “But I worry about how he will feel locked up behind those walls.”

Liz, a white high school teacher was moved by Gloria’s story. “I’m amazed that your son can respond with empathy for someone who brutally killed a Black man,” Liz said. “I’m also realizing that I’ve never had a conversation like that with my daughters.” Liz paused and continued, “I guess I’ve never had to. I don’t have to worry about how police violence could affect my white daughters like it could affect your Black son. Honestly, I’ve never been more aware of my privilege than I am right now.”

“It means a lot to me to hear you say that,” responded Gloria. “Thank you for being so transparent.”

“I don’t have the answers,” Liz said. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to start. I’m not sure what to say to my own children, not to mention to my students.”

“My kindergarten students know what police officers are supposed to do,” replied Gloria. “We have expectations for police officers, and young people are capable of understanding that this man did not do his job the way a police officer is supposed to. Not saying anything could be read as complicity. White kids need to be having these conversations too.”

The demographics in our schools are rapidly changing, and the need to address and correct racial inequities is more urgent than ever. Students of color already make up the majority of students in our public schools, and by 2050, the population of the United States will be majority Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Yet our teaching force is 80% white (Characteristics of public and private elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States, 2020). We face a pressing need for educators, especially white educators, to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to guide our students through this imminent social transition. To successfully transition into a racially equitable society, we will need to talk about race. Educators need to know how to facilitate these sensitive conversations toward positive and productive outcomes so that students can achieve their full potential as individuals and as citizens.

Race is only one aspect of identity, but it’s one of the first things we notice about someone. Some educators don’t want to talk about race because they have been taught that bringing attention to racial differences only increases divisions. But research shows that avoiding the topic is what actually makes things worse because not talking about race influences racist mindsets. Well-intentioned avoidance of racism perpetuates racism, and we miss important opportunities for learning and healing. On the other hand, exploring one’s racial identity and investigating race as a systemic force correlate to higher self-esteem, increased self-confidence, academic achievement, and ethical leadership in students of all races.

We understand race as a social construct, an illusion. The word race was once used to distinguish between nationalities: Italian, French, Spanish, and English were once considered different races. Biological notions of racial difference were invented to justify imperialism: the slave trade, Native American genocide, and limit Asian immigration. White supremacy was further institutionalized through Jim Crow laws, unfair housing practices, inequities in the justice system, and lack of access to health care, education, and citizenship, and denial of voting rights. These policies created the wealth gap, a persistent reality that continues to plague our society.

Race may be an illusion, but it’s a persistent one, and one that has profound psychological and material effects on people of color. The consequences of race are as real as gravity.

We need to talk about race. Well-intentioned avoidance and silence about race denies the consequences of race, perpetuates racism, and undermines the many strengths and achievements made by the communities of color. To remain ignorant is to deny glaring social realities: the history, politics, and economics of racism. Even worse, when educators remain silent or purposely redirect the focus off of race, they deny the realities of the students standing right in front of them who are living and breathing the politics of race every day. Educators need to acknowledge the prevalence of racism in the lives of their students and recognize that it is perpetuated through society’s institutional structures.

When we recognize inequalities in education, in the legal system, in housing, and health care, we can investigate these disparities so they can be corrected. We can highlight and embrace cultural differences with respect and admiration. Racial history emerges as a source of pride when seen through the lens of resistance and survival against difficult odds. We can’t ignore that structural inequalities are affecting the personal biographies of our students. We can grapple with the complexities of socially constructed racialized differences, and so can our students.

Why We Need to Talk about Race

Catherine, a white teacher with 20 years of classroom experience, gave her fifth graders a survey to find out what they were most interested in learning. She discovered that her predominantly white students were intensely interested in issues of justice and fairness in the world around them. They wanted to learn about race and how they could contribute to creating a more equitable society. Yet Catherine felt unprepared to lead them in conversations about race, so she hesitated to follow up. “I feel inadequate,” she said. “I just don’t know where to start.”

Teachers like Liz and Catherine feel ill-equipped to discuss race with their students. What if the conversation goes awry and devolves into confrontation? Avoiding conflict feels safer, yet in avoiding the issue, we miss out on real educational opportunities. The key lies in leading these discussions with the same thoughtfulness that guides other curriculum choices.

Racial identity is a lived experience for everyone, and it takes an emotional toll on the lives of all our students. For Black, Indigenous, and people of color, racism is experienced as an oppressive force. Researchers report that as much as 75% of bullying is bias related (Richardson et al., 2012), and when bullying is related to core components of a student’s identity such as their race, the effects are even worse. Having a forum to talk openly about encounters with racism and experience adult and peer support can mitigate its effects.

We know supportive relationships with teachers help students learn, but so do relationships with peers. Healthy relationships in the classroom keep students engaged, and the benefits transfer into academic achievement. Yet students need to master a set of prerequisite social and emotional communication skills to keep their exchanges respectful and forge compassionate relationships. Clear ground rules for respect are needed, and these guidelines can and should be taught.

When students feel safe enough to tell their stories in a classroom, they can be accepted and affirmed by their teacher and their peers. When they hear each other’s stories, they feel empathy and understanding. Telling their stories nurtures authentic relationships among them. When they share their personal experiences with prejudice and/or privilege, their differences are transcended through empathetic understanding.

Learning to talk respectfully about race and racism improves school cultures. After participating in a day of dialogue about how their race, class, and gender identities influenced their relationships, eighth graders in a Nashville public school took action to bridge the divisions among them. The eighth graders began intervening on behalf of other students, and their actions created a dynamic that resulted in a positive change in the entire school environment. After a similar unit at an Atlanta KIPP School, seventh graders initiated an anti-bullying support group.

To rise to the challenges of our times, students need to develop the skills to build relationships across differences. Through sharing their own stories and hearing the stories of people whose experiences may be very different from theirs, their voices are empowered; they gain appreciation for diverse cultures and life experiences; and they learn perspective-taking and critical thinking skills. These skills transfer into greater academic performance.

How to Talk about Race

Empathy is the North Star of the Transformational Inquiry Method. Empathy, or the ability to “feel with” another person, to imagine what it feels like to be in that person’s shoes, and take their perspective, is a key ingredient of human relationships, but also foundational to critical thinking. Understanding how deeply our experiences are impacted by our racial identities is the first and most urgent step in building our capacity to address racism. We live in a system that advantages some racial identities and disadvantages others, and we form racialized notions of ourselves, whether conscious or unconscious, through childhood conditioning, family backgrounds, the neighborhoods we grew up in, experiences in school, religious indoctrination, media coverage, national and international politics, and other ways of socialization. Unpacking our own conditioning, bias, and past experiences with race helps us be more available to help our students explore their experiences.

Too often, as educators, we feel we have to know the answers before we ask a question. But in conversations about race, we often don’t know the answers. What we really need to know is how to ask the right questions. We need to know how to elicit students’ stories, protect their vulnerability when they are courageous enough to share them, and teach the social skills they need to navigate these conversations. We need to understand the common patterns our students encounter and how to extrapolate their stories to create a curriculum that addresses the broader phenomena of racism and resistance in society. We need to incorporate reflections of their perspectives in what and how we teach history, literature, math, science, and the arts.

What Educators Need to Know

Before embarking on the work of facilitation, acquiring some foundational knowledge is necessary. Besides knowing how to facilitate sensitive conversations, educators need to know why these conversations are important, a fundamental history of race and resistance, and some race-based patterns of experience they may encounter in their students as they move into this work. It helps to develop a clear pedagogy in case you are called upon to defend the rationale of your curriculum. There is a rich tradition of critical pedagogy (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Friere, 1970; hooks, 1994; Wink, 2011) and extensive research in identity formation theory to support this method (Côté & Levine, 2002, 2016; Erikson, 1968; Tatum, 1992, 2017). Positioning your work within educational theory and practice strengthens your confidence.

Set Your Compass: Guiding Principles

Every educator needs to define a set of guiding principles. Our work is informed and guided by four underlying concepts. These principles lay the foundation for every conversation we facilitate and provide a positive, appreciative focus on strength-based learning.

Every human being is a genius. We believe each student has a gift to contribute to their learning community. Each of them brings rich family traditions and cultural histories. Our work as educators is to recognize each student’s unique and individual personhood in light of the understanding that their individuality is impacted by the racial identities they bring to school. Understanding how their lives are impacted by race is central to their development as ethical human beings. Our goal is to bring out their innate gifts, affirm their intelligence, validate their experience, and strengthen their identities. Our job is to help them cultivate their gifts and realize their potential. Their racial identities are intimately tied to unique, individual identities, because being who you are and being true to yourself is the most intelligent thing you can do. But social identities can get in the way of that intelligence expressing itself. When racism is internalized, it limits potential.

We believe equity and inclusion are the ground of intelligence and reason. The stronger and more confident you are about who you are, what you know, and what you believe, the more intelligent you become. Stronger identities are associated with self-determination and agency, higher academic performance, and success in life.

Learning is an emotional, social, and cultural process. Learning is not only an intellectual activity. Learning is always emotional. It’s exhilarating to learn; it’s exciting and fun. Teachers live for those light bulb moments and frequently describe them as the most rewarding part of their work. They can see that moment in their students’ faces when everything falls into place. Nothing compares to the thrill of learning.

Yet sometimes learning is a struggle. Learning can also be frustrating, difficult, and fraught with conflict. It can feel overwhelming when things don’t make sense, when other people understand something, and you just don’t get it. Either way, learning involves a transformation that is always emotional, so welcoming our students’ felt experience into our classrooms is fundamental to this work.

Learning is also social. It’s never done in isolation, but rather in community with others. Even when you’re alone reading a book, you’re still interacting with another human being, the author, and all that author brings to the text.

Learning is a cultural transmission, so we begin by acknowledging that our students learn through the cultural identities they bring to school. These identities can be “read” as another kind of text, another kind of literacy. As educators, we have the power to create learning experiences that affirm, validate, and strengthen our students’ cultural identities and experiences.

Learning is also cultural in the sense that it is value laden. Schooling as we know it has both an explicit and a hidden curriculum. The ideology that manifested racism is still embedded in the structures of schooling today, and we see it manifested in the so-called achievement gap, the discipline gap, the numbers of Black and Brown students absent in advanced placement classes, graduation rates, and college admissions.

Social emotional learning combined with identity-inclusion practices lead to ethical development and cultivate leadership potential. Social emotional learning theories and methods are abundant in the literature, but there’s something missing from just about every approach to social emotional learning. SEL skills cannot be learned in a vacuum. They need a context and teaching such skills in the context or race and relationships can provide the missing link. That’s where social emotional learning finds practical application.

Conversation is the revolutionary way of learning. We learn from listening to and sharing ourselves with others. Conversational learning recognizes race-based power dynamics and levels the play...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 What You Need to Know to Get Started
• 2 Understanding Identity
• 3 Cultivating Language to Talk about Race
• 4 Learning from Students’ Stories
• 5 Creating an Identity Safe and Brave Learning Community
• 6 Managing Emotional Processes
• 7 Setting the Stage for Transformation
• 8 Building Your Support Network
• 9 Preparing to Launch and Lead
• 10 Epilogue