"The Students Led Me Here": A White Teacher's Action-Oriented Journey Toward Antiracist and Abolitionist Practice

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seventeen
  In Roundtable Session: Journeys Toward Antiracist Praxis and Disrupting White Supremacy (Table 4)

Abstract

The racial mismatch between the overwhelmingly white teaching force and an increasingly heterogeneous student population continues to widen (Boucher, 2021; NCES, 2020) with dangerous implications for BIPOC students. I employ critical whiteness studies to examine one white teacher’s progress toward antiracist praxis. Analysis uncovered three shifts: 1) from a deficit perspective to an asset-based stance, 2) from a dominant culture curriculum to a culturally relevant and sustaining curriculum, and 3) from regarding family and community as distinct from curriculum to centering families and community. The conclusion offers recommendations for integrating antiracist praxis into professional development, pedagogy and ways of being.

Author

• Tanya E. Friedman, Hunter College - CUNY
  Presenting Author