Digging In: Curriculum for White Educators
After months of growing and tending and sweet care, this baby is ready for harvest! White educators, teachers, school admin and more—get ready. My co-author, Zia Grossman-Vendrillo, and I started working on this 9-part workshop series last fall, and we are SO excited to share the final, DESIGNED version with folks, crafted by the brilliant Kaitlyn Eleniak. Filled with homework, land acknowledgements, incredible readings and videos, and lots of activities for digging deep, this is a true labor of love and will help push our movement for justice forwards.
Zia and I both came to this project from experiences at our school sites where we experienced the majority of fellow white teachers to be apathetic, avoidant, or “too busy” to consider how our whiteness was violent to our students. Seldom do white educators (particularly those of us who have served in Black & Brown communities) create dedicated space to not just undo our whiteness, but deeply interrogate whether we should be teaching in communities of color AT ALL. White women make up 83% of public school educators, and a huge majority of us have zero anti-racist training, and are never asked to consider how our whiteness and teaching uphold systems of white supremacy that persist in schooling.
When folks say they care about, respect, and love their students, we believe those are empty claims unless we are committed to crumbling the interpersonal and systemic systems that cause harm to them and their communities. The work of liberating ourselves from oppression is freeing for everyone, and is essential if we want a world in which our young people are free and safe.
With the advising of some badass leaders (Tiffani Marie, Derrika Hunt, Jo Brownson, and Patrick Camangian), we are putting this curriculum out into the world! A huge thank you to our support team for their advising, critique, and deep love.
If you are a white educator and want to bring it to your school site, please reach out! We ask that you and your colleagues make meaningful donations to Black and/or indigenous-led justice organizations. We have preferred suggestions! Please share your donation receipt and we will send you the full PDF. Together in joy and freedom.
