6/10 "Doing Race Talk with Teachers"

 

Dyan Watson wrote "Doing Race Talk with Teachers" from the Winter 2019-2020 edition of Rethinking Schools. This is a link to a little staff bio on Watson from her time teaching at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. 

 https://www.lclark.edu/live/news/43838-for-the-love-of-teaching-dyan-watson-departs-lampc

Link to the full article:

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/doing-race-talk-with-teachers/

This article speaks to one professor's attempts to bring teachers into the headspace of race in the classroom in a healthy and informed way. She used so many personal stories along with teaching prompts and ways of using empathetic thinking in order to showcase the importance of how we think and view race in education. "My aim is to send into schools teachers who are adept at designing curricula that respond to the diversity of the community and prepare their students to be kind, socially just participants in a democracy. I want my student to understand how race influences how they teach and interact with students. I want them to constantly think about how race intersects with both teaching and learning". After participating in our class and also reading through the personal stories she includes, I can't help but see the way that traditional Western education does a disservice to students of color and those who are not privileged. 

Near the end of the article she highlights a personal story about AAVE (African American Vernacular English). "The two most helpful ways I'vs dealt with this burden [not having a team of allies present in her corner] in the classroom is to do a lesson on [AAVE], and on my fears as a parent raising Black boys. The lesson about AAVE usually comes within a unit on language and power. I begin with an exercise I got from Rethinking Schools editor Linda Christensen. I ask the class master's degree-seeking candidates the following..." She continues to describe a prompt where she asks students to describe why they want to be teachers, but in writing they have to follow three rules: no "s" on plural words, no "s" on possessive words, and no "s" on third person verbs (aka "He swim", "we swim", and "they swim". After writing she asked the students to write a response about the experience, some of their reflections were, "'It's hard to think about grammar and answer the prompt'...'I had all these ideas but then when I saw the rules, I abandoned them'. I point out that when students have to focus on rules instead of ideas, the ideas suffer and that when teachers prioritize speaking in a language or manner that isn't natural or native, it diminishes self-worth." I loved this as an exercise in true empathy and understanding what it would be like to be forced into this box by the educational system that so many students feel. I think as a tandem to this it's important to remember what we learned about in the Delpitt article about how "students must be taught the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of American life" while still being encouraged to express themselves in a way that feels genuine to their culture and history. She includes many more ways that she brings students into a mind frame that better helps them to understand the importance on including race in not only their thought process but into their classrooms. 

Her stated goal for her classroom is to bring teachers to a place by the end of the semester when they are asking different questions than at the beginning. Instead of saying things like "Urban kids don't want to learn as much as the other students in class" they will ask things like, "How do we empower students to use their home language and provide them the tools to be successful in a racist world?". To be teachers who own that their classroom is a gateway for many and that they only need to be open-minded about to hand each student the keys. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61e4ZHm6Oqc&t=8s

This is a video of Watson speaking at an event, reading a letter she wrote to her son Caleb, at 24:09. I highly recommend watching it as it is something she reads to her master's students at the end of their semester.