"I'm Afraid I'm Gonna Get Shot and Die": Teaching for Racial Justice in Early Childhood

• In Event: 68.041 - "Yes, We Do See Color!" Actively Combating Racism in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

In this paper, an early childhood teacher and a teacher educator share their critical collaborative action research, highlighting ways of teaching from the pressing issues and concerns young children bring to the classroom (author). Instead of excluding societal issues from the early childhood classroom, they invite participants to consider the promise and possibility of approaching important societal issues critically within the context of early education.
Through critical pedagogical lenses (Freire, 1970), we discuss how 23 six- to eight-year-old children in a dual language second grade classroom in a public school serving a high percentage of low/no-income children and children of Color in New York City developed sophisticated understandings of the misuse of justice which took place in Ferguson, MO and in Staten Island, NY, engaging in critical readings of the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two Black males killed by White police officers who were not brought to trial. As one of the children said: “It’s like in slave times. You know, when White people were allowed to do whatever they wanted to Black people and Black people couldn’t do anything. That’s what it’s like.”
Through the re-presentation of culture circles, we name issues of injustice and learn from the children and consider critical and deeply personal issues voiced by the children. The children took up issues of racial justice in their own lives as they drew clear connections to their own lives—e.g., “I’m afraid I’m gonna get shot and die. If not now, when I grow up.” In doing so, we will uncover the ways they negotiated sophisticated understandings, communicating clearly that “every life matters,” “Black lives matter” and “It’s like in slave times.” In sharing the learning that happened in conjunction with these situated representations of the societal disregard for Black lives, we share ways in which early childhood teachers can take up issues of social and racial justice (author).
Together with the children, we deconstructed stereotypes, explored issues of White privilege, and committed to a plan of action for our immediate setting. We troubled racial representations of “good” and “bad,” refuting normative racial associations and definitions. We drew on the words of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to anchor our dialogue, specifically acknowledging that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” We asked questions, voiced our dissent (“this is not fair!”), and considered what the country failed to hear, not only in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, but also in many other cases.
This paper makes visible the process, offer resources, and identify learning standards addressed by this learning journey, explicating how teaching for social and racial justice requires high academic expectations (Au, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b). We conclude by inviting participants to take on the responsibility of teaching for racial justice and to envision ways of engaging with social topics in critical ways in their own settings.

Authors

• Mariana Souto-Manning, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Jessica Martell, New York City Schools