As individuals, our perceived racial identities often send messages well before we are able to speak. Just as in everyday living, students and educators engage race from spaces of curiosity, confusion, and trepidation. Currently, classrooms, curricula, and teaching practices are being scrutinized as places where race ‘plays out’ in the school landscape in often harrowing and unbeknownst ways. The cost: professional, pedagogical, and personal complication. Such complication and confusion is an invitation to all educators to look beyond text choice and curricular shifts and include the ways personal racial identity is a significant part of the teaching dynamic. This two-part session will explore how one’s personal racial identity intersects with professional teaching roles to create classroom dynamics.
Participants will engage in the practice of specific self-reflection, read a summary from a major research institute and articles from scientists, listen to a podcast about racial self-awareness, discuss emerging ideas, and implement sustainable self-awareness practices. This two-day seminar is designed for those who are beyond the introductory phases of racial awareness and who are willing to investigate how their personal racial identity is functioning in the classroom with or without their conscious awareness.
Selected texts may include publications by Stacey A. Gibson, Resma Menakem, Erica Meiners, and Laura Brewer.
Please note that attendance in all scheduled seminar sessions is required for full CPDU credit.