[…] Inclusivity and representation aren’t just the responsibility of English and history teachers, said Rifkin, the private school physics teacher. In his class, he’s had students look at the demographics of physicists — a field dominated by white and Asian men —in order to open up conversations about implicit bias, racial privilege, and stereotypes. Both white students and students of color have responded well, he said.
“There was a big spike in the number of white students who say, ‘This makes me more comfortable talking about race, and this makes me recognize that I have advantages in America, and that I can do something with these advantages,’” Rifkin said.
“I saw a big spike in students of color in terms of how comfortable they felt in physics class, and how they identified as a physics students. And that is a slam dunk for me.”
[…]
“There was one white teacher who said, ‘You guys aren’t here to learn. You guys can’t learn. I don’t know why I’m giving you the tests, because you’re not going to do it anyway,” Felder said. “The majority of the students in the middle school were African American, so for a white teacher to say that, that destroys them.”
When you tell students you have high expectations for them, it can influence their academic success, Lauren Mims, the assistant director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, said […]
Think Progress has a good look at educators who are fighting back: These educators aren’t tolerating racism in the classroom.
There aren’t many comments on the article, but they certainly demonstrate how Trumpoids think.
Good to hear.
Teachers DO have a lot of power. They can make their classrooms welcoming and safe and they can make them unsafe.
Giliell:
Yes, they do. They have the power to make or break lives, that’s about as powerful as you get. For a lot of kids, a compassionate and caring teacher can mean the whole world, especially when they don’t have anyone else. I was fortunate enough to have one of those teachers in Catholic school. She saved my life.
My dad keeps sending me articles about incidents where people lied about or faked a hate crime as ‘evidence’ that maybe it’s not all that bad after the election. I’ve been trying to say that 1) sharing stories about a faked hate crime distracts from the real narrative we need to be having and that 2) these are in no way evidence that things are not ‘all that bad’. The stories you posted here are the kind we should be sharing as sources of bright spots. I think I’ll pass these along to him today. Thanks for posting!
I hope it helps!
Reminds me of the time MRAs called a rape hotline and flooded it with false accusations to prove false accusations exist.
Good for them!