Maybe I’m oversensitive, but it seems like every time I talk to friends or family about the advocacy work I do in the education system, I get what feels like a pretty reflexive and, if I’m honest, kind of defensive response from folks.
And I mean this comes from Black folks, white folks, and folks everywhere in between.
The conversation starts relatively normally with people asking me what I do. I then mention my opinion writing and its connection to the advocacy work I do in our education system. Specifically, my hope to address the challenges facing our kids in the education system.
After taking in what I have said – they often shake their head, furrow their brows and barely manage to stifle an eye-roll before uttering an almost instinctual rebuttal:
“Well, you know – there are good teachers out there”.
Ok. Um. Sure? I literally didn’t ask.
This almost always leaves me feeling awkward, wishing the conversation had wandered into safer territory like vaccine mandates or veganism.
After the first few times experiencing this, I rocked back on my heels, feeling compelled to go on record and simultaneously defend myself and deflect this outrage. I would say things like “yes but…” and fill in whatever meaningful statistic I could about the state of Canada’s education system, the bias within the system, and the poor outcomes of marginalized students.
Fearing insulting a profession – I might instinctively echo back their sentiment — with a quick and sheepish “yes, yes, of course there are good teachers.”
I mean, I have friends who are teachers.
Ok, I don’t mean to sound like the old white guy who says he can’t be racist because he has Black friends. I know my proximity to teachers doesn’t preclude me from doing harm to them.
What I mean to say is I’m actually not doing harm to teachers. I’m not in a fight with good teachers.
First because my quest is for an education system that delivers better, richer and inclusive education which is what most folks should and do want – especially good teachers.
Second because many of the teachers I work with, speak to and do this work alongside, acknowledge that the education system has deep-rooted issues and we all have a role in making it better.
Advocating for more from our education system doesn’t invalidate or diminish the work of good teachers – it elevates and validates it.
Make no mistake, good teachers are often looking for help from outside the system.
On more than one occasion a teacher has told me that more parents need to use our ‘collective and considerable power to hold our ground, ask for better and hold the system accountable’. Don’t quote me on that, a teacher told me that… This teacher made it clear that parent advocacy doesn’t invalidate or dismiss the work of good teachers – it elevates and validates it.
Good teachers are doing incredible work to integrate different perspectives into their curriculum. These folks spend an inordinate amount of time researching ways to bring voices and perspectives to life that the curriculum has long ignored. They share resources with other teachers, they join parent-teacher advocacy groups.
Good teachers challenge the inclusion of outdated or problematic material in their school’s curriculum and work to find alternative, better, and more diverse content. They often do this for no extra pay, no professional accolades and their only reward is their student’s success.
These folks have high af expectations for each and every one of their students and use any means necessary to build connections between their students and learning material. Good teachers are listening, when you tell them that a book is problematic, that a course could be more inclusive, or that yes math can be anti-racist or feminist. Good teachers research, they adapt, they ask questions and they up their game.
But.
And yeah, this is a big but.
You knew it was coming.
But – our education system seems to makes it easier to be an average teacher than a good teacher.
And the average teacher is not a good teacher.
I said what I said.
Good teachers do an amazing amount of work that average teachers just do not. Currently, the system does little, if anything, to incentivize, reward or uphold truly good, inclusive, anti-racist teachers.
Teachers live in the same world we do, which anti-racism scholar Ibram X Kendi and author of How to be an Anti-Racist, aptly describes as “raining racism down on our heads”. This translates into bias, lower expectations, streaming Black children into courses below their potential, higher rates of and more severe disciplinary action for our kids, and overall lower educational outcomes. It takes a huge effort to swim upstream against the current of racial bias.
Perhaps this would be less of a problem if our teaching staff better reflected the racial and ethnic and religious diversity of our populations, but even in the most diverse regions of our country, teachers are overwhelmingly white, CIS gender, female-identifying, Christians.
This translates into our system being filled with teachers who have never felt marginalized, whose history and worldview is reflected in curriculum and who are not necessarily convinced that they need to do anything differently, nor particularly impacted by things remaining unchanged.
And study after study shows the average teacher doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to seeing the best in our kids.
As well, many teachers may feel they have the capacity to make changes in their classroom, but feel powerless to look beyond their classroom to make broader changes. Even when you look at the incidents of racial violence in our schools – these incidents occur across every board and yet are often reported and recorded by students or their parents rather than teachers.
Remember the teacher who wore Blackface to school? Despite being seen by numerous colleagues in the hall and an auditorium full of teachers during an assembly, it was their students who called him out. TF?
I’ve spoken with many teachers who do not feel they can safely express their concerns about their school or the education system and have only agreed to speak “off the record”, fearful of repercussions.
Teachers have mortgages too, and akin to a whistle-blower officer coming forward, they have legitimate concerns that if they speak up about issues or incidents they will be seen as trouble.
If they are Black, teachers say they often feel unsupported and, if not, they fear being labeled a “woke” white person going too far. Or – as I am all too familiar with from experiences in my past life – they fear that despite taking a personal risk and speaking up nothing will change. It’s only been a couple of years since making the Ontario College of teachers deemed discriminatory behaviour as a form of professional misconduct for its members.
And with incidents of folks still walking around in blackface while others use their elementary classroom to decipher the appropriate pronunciation of the N-word, it seems like good teachers work in what might be considered a pretty toxic environment.
Most significantly, despite sporadic anti-racism training conducted in most, but not all schools and attended by many, but not all teachers, some teachers still do not feel equipped to be really good, anti-racist teachers.
As an example, I recently spoke to my child’s teacher about a book they were reading. My child had brought it to me and pointed out problematic areas and she had said she had spoken to her teacher about it and the other class in her school had decided not to read it.
When I asked this teacher why she had decided to continue reading it, she agreed the book had problematic content. She acknowledged that the students told her they were uncomfortable with the racist tropes in the book. But since it was approved by the department chair, and they had already started it she thought they may as well finish it.
Wait. What?
I bear no ill will towards this teacher, but her actions are, IMHO, an illustration of what the average teacher seems to be capable of these days. She was aware enough to recognize that the content of her course might be problematic in its depiction of indigenous and Black people and women – great. She saw the need to ask her students if they were concerned about this content – amazing.
But she kept teaching the book, then when asked about this decision, she deflected responsibility for its inclusion in the curriculum to those above her head. And despite her students expressing their discomfort, she was not equipped to ask probing questions and have a conversation so she basically just let it go. So children sat in a classroom and studied material that portrayed an inaccurate history of Indigenous and Black people and reinforced problematic racial stereotypes.
That part is not awesome.
There is no doubt that the ask of education advocates is a hefty one. Day in and day out good teachers make a herculean effort to rise to this ask.
Good teachers demonstrate constant vigilance, self-awareness, and diligent follow-through. Good teachers show a commitment to courageous, and sometimes uncomfortable content. Let’s not forget in the background they face the wrath of “anti-woke” parents who want none of it. They deal.
Good teachers are not perfect, but they are constantly learning, improving, and applying anti-racist, inclusive perspectives when they discover the areas in their teaching practice or institution that they need to commit to changing.
Good teachers do the work. An incredible amount of work.
So yes. There are good teachers out there. And the next time I am faced with those who see my work as adversarial rather than uplifting, I will remind them that the work of anyone who considers themselves an education advocate, is to work with good teachers to help create a system where it won’t always take so much damn work for them to be good teachers.
Folks, I would love to feature the work of a good, anti-racist educator. Maybe if we have a few, I’ll make it a regular feature. Send an email or mention them in the comments if you know of a school, teacher, educator, or principal who is truly anti-racist, and with their permission – I’d happily spread their good work.
