anti-racist curriculum

Teaching Young Learners About Slavery, Part II

By Noreen Naseem Rodríguez and Katy Swalwell

This week, K-12Talk presents the second of a two-part excerpt from a forthcoming book by social studies educators Noreen Naseem Rodríguez and Katy Swalwell, Social Studies for a Better World: An Anti-Oppressive Approach for Elementary Educators, part of the Norton Series on Equity and Social Justice in Education. In this second excerpt, the authors provide creative solutions for teaching the painful history of slavery to young learners without reproducing trauma.

Teaching Young Learners about Slavery, Part I

By Noreen Naseem Rodríguez and Katy Swalwell

At a time in our nation’s history when systemic racism is a focal point of increasingly volatile political and societal divisions, it is more important than ever to think deeply about how Black History Month is celebrated in our classrooms. To further that conversation, K-12Talk is pleased to offer a two-part excerpt on the blog this week and next, from a forthcoming book by social studies educators Noreen Naseem Rodríguez and Katy Swalwell, Social Studies for a Better World: An Anti-Oppressive Approach for Elementary Educators, part of the Norton Series on Equity and Social Justice in Education. In this first excerpt, the authors explain how teaching the painful history of the enslavement of Black Americans–so often a central part of the social studies curriculum in February–is important and necessary but must be handled with extreme care to avoid retraumatizing BIPOC students.

Teaching for Social Justice

By Lorena Germán

Social justice is not a book that you teach. It is not a unit you explore with students. It is not a week-long, school-wide celebration during which you acknowledge diversity. These are all too often superficial attempts at having in-depth conversations that require nuance, time, and pause. While well-intentioned, this type of teaching may lead educators to think they’ve done the work because they spent an hour or day teaching one idea in a one-dimensional way. However, social justice is not a topic or a content area, but an ongoing action and fight for a better quality of life for all. Therefore, it requires actionable and tangible steps.

Cultivating an Anti-Racist English Classroom

By Sharon Kunde

The English classroom is a crucial space for us, as teachers, to cultivate anti-racism. In ELA class, students learn which stories and points of view matter—they are taught which voices and narrative styles are legitimate. While strides have been made in the past years and decades to remove racist content from our English curricula, this is not enough to constitute an anti-racist curriculum. In order for our curricula to be truly anti-racist, we must rethink our entire system of literary study.