PDK’s CEO observes that the incoming generation of teachers seems far more ready and willing than their older colleagues to talk about race.
This fall, the school of education at Towson University (in Towson, Maryland, just north of Baltimore) hosted the release of PDK’s annual Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. After the event, one of our panelists, Rodney Robinson — the 2019 National Teacher of the Year — was gracious enough to stick around to talk with college and graduate students.
Robinson, a Black teacher who works with incarcerated youth, engaged in a spirited conversation with the Towson students, most of whom were young White women. I was struck by how forthright these future teachers were in laying bare their insecurities about working with students of color. “I’m a cis, straight White woman who wants to work in the city with disadvantaged students,” one began. “How should I handle the differences between me and my students?” From there, questions about race, gender, and social justice flowed on for almost two hours. In the end, I found myself wondering not whether these aspiring teachers were ready to work in diverse schools but, rather, whether the schools are ready for them.
When I started teaching, in 1993 in Brooklyn, New York, we didn’t discuss these issues openly. Frankly, we didn’t have the same kind of language and awareness. As teachers, we were a mix of Latinx, Black, Irish, Italian, West-Indian, and Jewish, and our students were mostly Black and Latinx. I held no illusions about the (limited) extent to which my middle-class suburban upbringing allowed me to identify with my students. I ran the after-school basketball team, so we bonded over that, and they took great pleasure in convincing me that A Tribe Called Quest was completely uncool, and that I should be listening to Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, and Wu-Tang Clan. But I had no deeper understanding of how my identity as a White man — no matter how tragically hip and progressively liberal — intersected with those of my students. Nor did the leadership and faculty of the school ever talk explicitly about race.
In graduate school and in an internship with a Black superintendent, I learned a lot about the need to understand and address identity issues between faculty and students, and among faculty members themselves. But once I started working as a school system leader, I found that while I hoped to provoke what Glenn Singleton (2014) calls “courageous conversations” about race, I had to contend with a pervasive culture of silence. Even in Montgomery County, Maryland, which has a relatively strong tradition of discussing issues of race and equity, it struck me that such conversations were difficult to sustain.
The aspiring teachers from Towson, though, may just demand to talk things out. Judging by what I heard from them, many members of their generation think of teaching not just as a chance to work with children but as a means of confronting racism and pursuing social justice. As Tamir Harper — a former student leader of Educators Rising, currently a sophomore at American University, a nonprofit founder, and an activist — likes to say, “Teaching is a political act.”
Not all future educators feel this way, of course. But my question is this: To the extent that today’s aspiring teachers do aim to challenge the culture of silence on race, how can schools and systems leverage their passions and energy for the greater good?
The first step, I think, is for school and district leaders to be alert to their own defensiveness. Many White folks — especially older ones — find it just plain difficult to talk openly about race, and they’ll be tempted to run and hide when some young teacher tries to do so at a staff meeting. But it’s not OK to avoid such conversations, and I suspect that the new generation of teachers won’t put up with that avoidance. Increasingly, administrators and superintendents may have no choice but to allow for — or, better yet, encourage — honest and forthright dialogue about race, culture, language, religious bias, and other topics that have long been considered taboo.
Taking a political stance, or talking openly about race and gender dynamics, can seem risky for school and system leaders.
Second, I think it’s valuable for school and district leaders to organize teachers into professional learning communities (PLCs), giving them the time and, ideally, the safety and support they need to talk through such delicate issues. When PLCs go well (and the Kappan archive is full of articles about PLCs gone right and gone wrong), they can serve as a useful bridge between older and younger colleagues. Veteran teachers often have knowledge and skills, borne of years of experience, to share with new teachers. And younger teachers, for their part, often find it easier to discuss race, and they can bring along older teachers who may be hesitant to do so. As the research on PLCs tends to show, professional conversations need to be facilitated carefully, and it often takes time for colleagues to trust each other, but they can offer great opportunities for teachers to rethink their core beliefs and values.
Third, White educational administrators need to take greater responsibility to initiate and facilitate conversations about race. All too often, they rely on teachers of color to do so (or to serve as sounding boards and confidants for students and colleagues of color). But, as former U.S. Secretary of Education John King Jr. puts it, that amounts to an “invisible tax” on those teachers — not only must they teach their students effectively, but they must take on the added burden of leading discussions about race and serving as de facto experts on racial dynamics in the school. (After the event at Towson, I asked Rodney Robinson if he objected to being asked to talk to young White women about how to teach kids of color. He didn’t mind and was glad to have the conversation, he said, but yes, it reinforced a troubling dynamic.) White school and system leaders, especially, need to step up and show teachers, students, and community and family members that they are willing to embrace the discomfort of confronting the racial legacies of our public schools.
A recent article in Inc. magazine (Stillman, 2019) reported on a study of different generations’ attitudes toward the workplace. By and large, today’s young workers, the study found, want to belong to an organization that stands for something. Taking a political stance, or talking openly about race and gender dynamics, can seem risky for school and system leaders. Not everyone wants schools to be the place for that kind of talk, and most communities hold no consensus position on these issues. Yet, school and system leaders have a responsibility to build an educational culture that welcomes the newest generation of teachers and rewards them for their passion and energy. Otherwise, we risk continuing to lose our best and brightest young educators, who may not put up with our discomfort and avoidance. And if we continue to prefer silence over courageous conversations, then our Black, Brown, and poor children will continue to pay the price for our bias and neglect.
References
Singleton, G.E. (2014). Courageous conversations about race: A field guide for achieving equity in schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Stillman, J. (2019, September 30). A new study of 11 million employee comments reveals the one thing Gen Z wants most from work. Inc.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joshua P. Starr
Joshua P. Starr is the managing partner at the International Center for Leadership in Education, a division of HMH, based in Boston, MA. He is the author of Equity-based Leadership: Leveraging Complexity to Transform School Systems.
