Perspectives of a Teacher: Struggling to Feel Heard and Supported While on the Front Lines.

• In Event: Listening and Learning: Educational Stakeholders' Reflections and Perspectives on Implementing an Antiracist Curriculum for Middle-Schoolers

Abstract

As an experienced instructional coach and educational equity specialist of eight years, it was my role to support teachers, administrators, and school communities to develop instructional mindsets, practices, and curriculums that ensure all students - especially those from historically underserved communities - have the opportunity to thrive in school. While I worked closely in these capacities with partners to find solutions to challenges that were both unique to their contexts as well as to those that were common across the Division, I increasingly developed an urge to return to the classroom myself and refresh my own experience of teaching for educational equity firsthand. My present role in the classroom illuminates for me not only the incredible complexity of implementing policies and curriculums developed at the state and division level but also the limitations of public schools, in general, to transform themselves into more equitable environments. As teaching and learning are inherently cultural acts, I am still convinced that the core tenets of culturally responsive teaching hold the most promise for navigating the epistemological underpinnings of education.
However, the field of public education, which has never reconciled the extent to which it does or does not aspire to be explicitly enculturating, is in a state of significant struggle as it attempts to not only address this question but to even live up to its ideals of cultural pluralism. Further, as educational leaders and policymakers are embroiled in a debate over how far schools should acknowledge the human violence that is foundational to all parts of our American system, they are in no position to meaningfully consider the ongoing human and environmental violence that schools are complicit with as a part of an ongoing project of colonial, capitalist modernity. Addressing these and other challenges to educational equity requires strong and critically thoughtful leadership. Meanwhile, teachers work in the crossfire of this context, where leaders attempt to clarify the purpose and direction of education while increasing portions of the general public question the efficacy of public education at large.
As such, my paper will discuss how to do this work in the current dehumanizing landscape teacher must work within. My presentation will pose questions to the audience about how can and should we create humanizing spaces for teachers to do this work alongside the humanizing spaces we seek to create for students. In addition, given the various roles I have held, I will discuss what feasible steps administrators can do to support teachers. Lastly, and arguably most importantly, I will share what teachers need researchers to do to support this work and act as co-conspirators in the efforts to disrupt anti-racism in school contexts (441).

Author

• Lars Holmstrom, Albemarle County Public Schools