Family engagement and conflict about teaching for social justice

A 2nd-grade teacher learns that when families see teaching through the lens of social justice as “indoctrination,“ clear communication is key.

In the summer of 2020, the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police — and growing public awareness of all kinds of violence and discrimination directed toward Black and Brown people in the United States — persuaded many Americans of the urgent need to press for greater economic, racial, and social justice. The country had reached a boiling point, and educators were not immune to impassioned pleas for change. Across the country, teachers began to educate themselves about anti-racist pedagogies, and many school districts ramped up their support for professional learning initiatives focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

In turn, the increased support for DEI trainings drew the attention of many critics, including conservative activist Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute (Wallace-Wells, 2021). When Rufo examined a selection of school districts’ DEI training materials, he noticed occasional references to critical race theory (CRT) — a theoretical perspective used to study systemic relationships among race, racism, and power in American law and society (Delgado & Stefanic, 2017) — and saw an opportunity to demonize his political opponents. He reasoned that if he portrayed CRT as a Marxist and anti-white ideology (which it isn’t) that has a large and growing influence on DEI trainings and other efforts to pursue racial equity in K-12 education (which it doesn’t), then he could whip up public fear of and opposition to those efforts (Teitelbaum, 2022). What followed was a deliberate, orchestrated attack on CRT that eventually made its way into school board meetings; local news outlets; and the homes of predominantly white, conservative families across the U.S.

It is against this backdrop that we reflect on how a curriculum that Carolyn Stoughton planned and enacted during a 2021 summer school enrichment program prompted unanticipated responses from families, the impact it had on her, and what we can learn from her experiences about navigating contentious family communication.

Exploring social justice with 2nd graders

At the start of summer, Carolyn, a new English as a second language (ESL) teacher, brought in two former student-teaching supervisors, Megan Lynch and May Lee, to join her in a research study of her efforts to address gender and racial inequities in her 2nd-grade curriculum. The three of us have worked together in different configurations over the past few years, exploring family engagement, justice-oriented pedagogies, and other topics. We share a belief that children should have opportunities to engage in serious conversations about equity and inequity, inquire about the world around them, and be encouraged to seek justice for self and others.

To help address what the district labeled “unfinished learning” after a year of virtual learning, Carolyn’s school was offering a six-week, half-day summer program to provide students with supplementary academic and enrichment learning opportunities. This was an optional, in-person learning opportunity for all incoming 2nd-grade students in a small, rural school district where the student population is 2% Asian, 3% Black, 16% Latinx, 1% two or more races, and 78% white. Of the approximately 70 incoming 2nd graders, nearly 55 students participated in summer programming. The students were split into three homeroom classes, with one 2nd-grade teacher assigned to each classroom. All students worked on reading, writing, and math in their homeroom. Then, similar to stations or center rotations within one classroom, each homeroom rotated to the other classrooms in 25-minute intervals. Each rotation had a different theme selected by the classroom teacher. One of these was a social justice rotation called “Justice League.”

Even before the course began, some families were making direct connections between Carolyn’s course and anti-CRT rhetoric circulating in the media.

At its core, the social justice rotation was a thematic unit that integrated reading, writing, discourse, and social studies state standards. Carolyn decided to approach her 25-minute rotations through the lens of social justice not only because it would help incoming 2nd graders prepare for grade-level standards and expectations, but also because it would ask students to think critically and ask important questions about racial and gender stereotypes so they could develop the ability to recognize and speak up when they encounter harmful stereotypes. In hindsight, the shorthand name, “social justice rotation,” might have led to more frustration than intended.

By the end of Carolyn’s first day of teaching, it was clear to us that we should have spent more time anticipating family pushback. Even before the course began, some families were making direct connections between Carolyn’s course and anti-CRT rhetoric circulating in the media, which led them to believe that schools are teaching white children that they are inherently evil and that they should feel guilty about their race. (In fact, CRT does not teach either of these things, as Antony Farag, 2021, explained in a previous issue of Kappan.) For many families, this fear of CRT, in particular, seemed to manifest as a more general “fear of young people learning to think critically about race” (Middleton, 2021).

As the summer continued, Carolyn faced increasingly intense scrutiny and criticism from some family members over her instructional choices. Here, we recount her efforts to respond to them, and we describe what we hope are some helpful lessons about productive ways to engage with families who perceive the curriculum to be controversial and inappropriate.

Accusations and self-doubt

For Carolyn, the trouble began a few days before summer school started, when she sent a standard welcome letter that included a list of possible lesson topics students might engage with during the class (i.e., gender, the LGBTQIA+ community, race and ethnicity, and cultural differences) and a link to the Learning for Justice website (www.learningforjustice.org) so that parents could learn a bit more about her approach. To give herself some flexibility to revise and adjust her plans as the summer progressed, she described only the general topics she might address, rather than detailing the specifics of each unit or lesson.

The letter seemed to alarm and raise questions among some families. On the first instructional day, one family requested more information, one requested an in-person meeting, and another withdrew their child from the summer session, citing a belief that Carolyn’s teaching would push a specific ideology and brainwash children. The language parents used to express their concerns appeared to mirror familiar conservative talking points — for example, references to the curriculum being too “woke.” And because of these echoes, Carolyn worried that these parents held preconceived assumptions about her instruction and that they would criticize her unfairly, without taking a careful look at her well-crafted plans for the class.

On the second day of the session, Carolyn and her principal met with the set of parents who had requested an in-person meeting. Before the meeting, Carolyn sent the parents more details about each lesson plan in the unit. During the meeting, the parents expressed concerns over maintaining firm boundaries between what is taught in public schools and what is taught at home, and they questioned whether the lesson was age-appropriate for 2nd grade. Carolyn explained that the goals for the unit were for students to become critical thinkers and question the world around them. However, the parents seemed to be arguing that trusting adults and questioning them were mutually exclusive. Overall, Carolyn felt that the tone of the conversation was professional and respectful, yet the family ultimately chose to opt their children out of the entire gender stereotypes unit and said they would consider opting back in for the second unit, on racial justice, after the specifics of the curriculum were more clearly defined.

It was then that Carolyn and her principal agreed to increase their transparency regarding lesson content by providing more frequent and detailed communication. They surmised that after reviewing the brief summary in the welcome email, a few vocal families had filled in the gaps with information they had gleaned from anti-CRT rhetoric. And they reasoned that providing more detailed information about each lesson might allay many of their concerns and foster greater trust in the school to design age-appropriate, relevant curriculum that meets students’ needs.

Thus, each afternoon, Carolyn diligently sent out emails and direct messages through the school’s family communication app to share the topic of the next day’s lesson and to explain how classroom activities and conversations would be facilitated. During the second unit, on racial justice, she also began to share information about the learning goals and relevance of each lesson. But, of course, Carolyn couldn’t turn to colleagues for advice as to how best to frame this information. While she was expected to carefully craft, edit, and ruminate over the “right” messages to send families every day, those responsible for teaching math, reading, and science were not required to send daily communications, as the content in these areas is generally perceived as less controversial than topics such as gender stereotypes and racial justice.

Nor did family members respond to these messages as Carolyn and her principal had hoped. Over the course of the summer, there were (1) requests from six families to opt out of specific lessons, sometimes an entire unit; (2) accusations from three families that Carolyn went too far in pushing an agenda that does not belong in public education or is not “age-appropriate” for 2nd graders, and (3) messages from seven families thanking her for engaging their students in this work. Due to fears of negative feedback from a vocal minority, whenever Carolyn opened an email, she didn’t know if it was going to be a mundane note about a student absence or a threatening accusation about her professional judgment.

Those who aim to teach about issues such as race, gender, and social justice must be especially careful to articulate their reasons for doing so, and their reasons for doing so in particular ways.

When a class conversation flowed naturally to a topic that Carolyn had not mentioned in the previous daily communication, she felt the immediate urge to tell the families what happened, so that she could not be accused of “keeping something from them.” For example, when an image of all U.S. presidents and vice presidents sparked a powerful classroom conversation about gender and power, Carolyn turned what was supposed to be a brief warm-up activity into a full lesson — and started mentally drafting a message to send to families about the decision. Some of this pressure was self-imposed, and some arose from school administrators’ suggestions and family demands. But whatever the source of the pressure, Carolyn became exhausted from constantly having to send lesson goals and outcomes for “approval” (especially while her colleagues’ subjects were automatically deemed appropriate), as well as updates on any last-second adjustments to her plans.

Indeed, there were even times Carolyn wondered whether she should be facilitating conversations with students about race and gender at all. During that initial sit-down with parents on the second day of the program, she began to consider scrapping a unit entirely because the parents expressed such firm opposition to having their child participate in read-alouds of certain picture books that pushed against gender stereotypes.

In another instance, after sending out a message describing an upcoming lesson on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and its connection to the Civil Rights Movement, Carolyn received two condescending emails that questioned her professional judgment, leading her to ask herself, Did I go too far? Is this too much for my 2nd graders to handle? At the same time, however, she knew the conversations with students were going to be engaging and age-appropriate. Some students shared that they thought the Black Lives Matter movement was about making sure everyone was safe, felt loved, and was kind to one another. Many students said that they had seen BLM signs in their neighborhoods and parks, but that they did not know what they meant, which suggested that while they were aware of the movement, they hadn’t had opportunities to ask questions about it. Still, Carolyn sometimes struggled to convince herself that she was qualified to encourage students to inquire into such topics.

Lessons for new and aspiring teachers

Family communication does not need to entail sending detailed information about every lesson plan; rather, it could be as simple as sending an overview so families can learn more about what their children are being taught. However, given that anti-CRT rhetoric was rampant in the U.S. in summer 2021 and that the most vocal critics often presented distorted views of what is actually taught in schools, the lack of specificity in Carolyn’s initial letter created a space for families to speculate on her intentions for their children’s learning. Additionally, by providing a link to Learning for Justice’s full website (which included lessons ranging in topics and grade levels), Carolyn inadvertently pointed families toward material she did not plan to integrate into her lessons — and, indeed, at least one family did ask for more information about content on the website that was not part of the curriculum plan. These early decisions resulted in Carolyn’s and her principal’s pressing need to quickly come to a solution to increase transparency and maintain student enrollment so that Carolyn could enact the curriculum she designed. Their solution was for Carolyn to send the detailed descriptions each day. Despite her principal’s support, presence at potentially contentious family meetings, and advocacy for her work through phone calls and emails to concerned families, ultimately, Carolyn became exhausted from overanalyzing her every move with families.

If Carolyn were to do this again, rather than starting out by sending families a letter describing the broad design of the class, she would be more specific from the outset about the goals for the units, the kinds of classroom activities that would take place, and how the work is aligned to state standards. And instead of sending detailed lesson plans or daily descriptions, she would routinely send families resources for continuing conversations at home, pictures of student work, and celebrations from class. The goal would not be to lessen transparency but to set more reasonable expectations about the level of detail she would provide, while still creating opportunities for families to stay informed and ask questions.

In addition to becoming more cognizant of the ways she communicates with families, Carolyn became more intentional when choosing what, how, and why to teach about certain topics. When put on the spot with parents in that initial meeting about the gender stereotypes unit, Carolyn realized that she could not adequately justify why she was teaching each lesson — she just knew that those lessons were important. By the time she planned her unit on racial justice, later in the summer, she had become more careful. As she created each lesson, she asked herself: Why am I teaching this specific topic? Why am I using this specific material? Why is this important for students to learn about? This made her better able to explain, with confidence, how each topic connected to the state’s social studies standards and why each lesson was appropriate for her students.

Of course, every teacher should be able to defend, argue for, and think deliberately about their lessons. But in our current political climate, as Carolyn discovered, those who aim to teach about issues such as race, gender, and social justice must be especially careful to articulate their reasons for doing so, and their reasons for doing so in particular ways.

During our first meeting before summer school started, May raised a question about how relatively conservative families might respond to Carolyn’s curriculum, but amid all the planning and brainstorming in that first meeting, we only briefly attended to May’s concern. In retrospect, we should have given it more serious consideration, helping to prepare Carolyn for such pushback. Indeed, teacher mentors and supervisors should always make it a priority to anticipate criticism and strategize ways of communicating effectively with students and family members who object to specific lessons and units.

Working alongside Carolyn sheds new insights into the types of support that should be available to teachers and that should be incorporated into teacher preparation programs (TPPs). First, there is an urgent need to integrate more discussion of contemporary politics and policy debates into TPP coursework. Local, state, and federal politics affect classrooms directly and indirectly, but teachers are not always aware of those effects. And while TPPs usually require a foundations course that reviews key educational laws and judicial rulings from past decades, those courses rarely address current policy debates and conflicts. Nor do they do much to equip future teachers to navigate families’ varied political beliefs and perspectives. To address this, TPPs could consider integrating projects that ask teacher candidates to inquire into state and local policy; having teacher candidates attend town halls, school board meetings, and advocacy events from local educational organizations; facilitating community learning exchanges for teacher candidates; engaging teacher candidates in protocols for developing shared understanding when discussing difficult topics; and aiding teacher candidates in finding resources and professional networks to continue professional learning even after graduating.

Additionally, while teacher preparation programs usually provide some instruction about family engagement, the support they offer tends to be too cursory to be helpful. For instance, preservice teachers are told they should engage families and invite them into their classroom, and they may learn about program models and tools to welcome minoritized families into the classroom, lessen the school-home divide, value families’ contributions, reject deficit framings of families and communities, and decrease barriers for access (see Calabrese Barton et al., 2004; Moll et al., 1992; Yosso, 2005). However, what Carolyn needed was guidance on how to communicate effectively with families that are already involved in the school and have the knowledge and resources required to navigate and participate in the school system and assert their power when they have objections to teacher plans.

Preparing for uncertainty and conflict

Carolyn’s interactions with a few families demonstrate the tensions that can arise when families and educators are not on the same page regarding what children should learn. Carolyn taught content that is factual, important, and necessary for participation in a full democracy. However, some families believed that it was not in their children’s interests to be taught about race, gender, or justice-oriented concepts in the 2nd grade classroom.

Teaching with a social justice perspective is complex and uncertain and requires a commitment to equity and a democratic society. As school curricula addressing topics related to equity and justice continue to come under attack, schools and teachers must be prepared for how some families will respond. Teachers engaging with this difficult, important work must have support from administrators, colleagues, community members, and families if teaching for social justice is going to have a lasting and sustaining effect in public schools. Carolyn was fortunate to have the support of her building principal, fellow teachers, and former student-teaching supervisors. Without strong support, many more educators will exhaust themselves, and some may come to doubt their professional commitment to teaching through a lens of social justice or even to teaching itself. Communication with families about contentious topics needs to be emphasized more in teacher preparation programs, clinical experiences, and professional learning so that all teachers have the confidence and skills needed to defend their practice and continue teaching for social justice in public education.

References

Calabrese Barton, A., Drake, C., Perez, J.G., St. Louis, K., & George, M. (2004). Ecologies of parental engagement in urban education. Educational Researcher, 33 (4), 3-12.

Delgado R. & Stefanic, J. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction (3rd ed.). New York University Press.

Farag, A. (2021). The fear of multiple truths: On teaching about racism in a predominately white school. Phi Delta Kappan, 102 (5), 18-23.

Middleton, R. (2021, November 4). A time for candor: Reflections on leadership and the future of teacher preparation [Keynote Presentation]. The National Network for Educational Renewal & The National Center for Clinical Practice in Educator Preparation Annual Conference, Cincinnati, OH.

Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31, 132-141.

Teitelbaum, K. (2022). Curriculum, conflict, and critical race theory. Phi Delta Kappan, 103 (5), 47-53.

Wallace-Wells, B. (2021, June 18). How a conservative activist invented the conflict over critical race theory. The New Yorker.

Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth, Race Ethnicity and Education, 8 (1), 69-91.

This article appears in the April 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 103, No. 7, pp. 23-27.