Anti-Racist Education in History Classrooms

By: Bruce Cohen

Four Anti-Bias Domains

This resource outlines a teaching strategy which incorporates the four anti-bias domains (identity, diversity, justice & action) into classroom group discussions & textual analysis. The strategy entails selecting a text or a combination of texts that align with each domain and having students read the text(s) and engage with them using the textual analysis, station work, or jigsaw activities outlined on the site. I could easily see myself adopting this strategy in my future classrooms by choosing texts for my students to read that specifically deal with or promote these domains and their educational goals.

Defiance Against Slavery & The Importance of Resistance

This resource is a lesson plan that allows students to learn about how enslaved people resisted slavery using a poetry activity. After learning about the seven types of resistance outlined on the site using assigned readings, students will create a collective poem as a class to reflect upon and creatively express what they've learned about resistance. As discussed on the site, using this lesson helps eliminate the narrative of slaves being docile and establishes earlier historical roots for the wider acts of resistance seen during the Civil War and Reconstruction period. So, the overall teaching strategy to take away from this resource within the anti-racist education framework is to center history lessons around acts of defiance and activism to demonstrate how important they are in bringing about social change. I look to incorporate lesson plans like this in my future classrooms and to generally include a lot of learning materials about acts of defiance and resistance against injustice.

Anti-Racist Social & Emotional Learning

This resource examines the concept of combining anti-racist and social & emotional learning (SEL) educational approaches in order for these two educational strategies to mutually reinforce each other. It discusses how using this combined strategy allows for students and teachers to create stronger and more respectful relationships that allow them to more critically examine the root causes of inequity and to develop collaborative solutions for issues of inequity in our communities. Furthermore, it details how SEL in the absence of an anti-racist lens can harm and marginalize students of color, hence the importance of combining the two approaches. A couple of teaching strategies provided in this resource within the anti-racist SEL approach are teaching representative history and acknowledging the existence of racism and implicit bias. In my future classrooms, I will incorporate anti-racist SEL by making sure to include resources that teach my students the most representative history possible and frequently acknowledge racism and implicit bias in the classroom to build the most inclusive and socially productive classroom possible.

Anti-Racist Pedagogy

This resource outlines and defines what anti-racist pedagogy is, listing its five main components as well as nine elements of anti-racist education. It also outlines many ways in which anti-racist pedagogy can be put into practice, using the frameworks of self-reflection and self-education, addressing conflict, instruction design & assessment, student empowerment & reflection, and beyond the classroom. Two notable strategies from within these frameworks are engaging in continual learning and re-learning as an educator and assigning reflections for students that allow them to voice their feelings or concerns about difficult class discussions surrounding race. I seek to incorporate strategies like these in my future classrooms and consistently challenge myself and my students to be anti-racist both inside and outside of the classroom.

Discussing Tough Topics in Class

This resource deals with understanding anti-racism in general and learning how to apply it within an educational context in order to address difficult subject matter in the classroom. It defines racism and anti-racism both in practice and in action and then provides a set of critical questions with which to assess a classroom as either racist or anti-racist. Finally, it details how to establish a classroom centered on community with several practices to utilize during tough discussions, such as organizing desks in a circle (and sitting in that circle as the teacher) and facilitating organized debates. I will certainly use the assessment questions to evaluate my future classrooms and ensure they are anti-racist environments, along with incorporating strategies like the aforementioned ones in order to establish a strong classroom community in which students are comfortable discussing tough subjects.

Page updated

Report abuse