TeachingInColor FINAL DIGITALPages - Flipbook - Page 32
that attempt to limit what they can cover in the classrooms
and how they can cover it, this moment presents a shift on
many levels.
“As a teacher of color, how do I look dismissing issues
that affect me, that affect my people, that affect what I teach
in the classroom?” Sutton says. “I would see that as a slap
in the face.”
Not talking about any of it, means creating gaps for
students who genuinely want to know and need a place to
process the information, Sutton argues.
It also limits teachers, says Ureña.
“The thing I would imagine a lot of us have in common
is the need to censor ourselves, to muzzle yourselves and
the need to go into situations knowing you cannot say what
you think, you cannot be who you want to be in the lives
of your students” Ureña says. “We have to open up the
dialogue so that public education is not so censored, not
so whitewashed, and not so assimilated because I feel like
there are definite strengths when we come as our authentic
selves into places.”
Presence meets Purpose
“I think this is an incredibly difficult time to be a teacher,”
Barton says. “There has been a perceptible shift in the
Dr. Brittany D. Hunt is a member of the Lumbee
Tribe of North Carolina and a postdoctoral research
associate at Duke University. She is also the owner
of Indigenous Ed, LLC and cohost of the podcast The
Red Justice Project
perception of teachers in the last 10 years. It’s very different.
A world of difference from when I went to school.”
What has not changed is how students benefit from
teachers who are committed to their classrooms and the
young people within them.
Barton, who is doing his doctoral research on the
“That feeling of being uncomfortable in a space that I
impact of the pandemic on indigenous students during
have felt in certain school communities, some of our kids
remote learning, says a major theme his study has
go through that constantly,” Ureña says. “Not just black kids.
uncovered has been about teachers.
Muslim kids. Asian kids. You feel like you’re always seen as
“It was not the principal, it was not they missed
their friends,” he says, “it was their relationship with their
teacher.”
Students responded best when they had a strong
a caricature. No one is trying to get to know you and they
even are mispronouncing your name over and over.
“The benefit of a teacher of color who walks in their
own ethnicity and authenticity is that they see you.”
relationship with the person on the other side of the screen
Sutton agrees.
and the lesson plans.
“I tell the kids all the time, ‘You see me. I see you.’
That relationship starts largely with being in the
Being at a school where I see younger versions of me
presence of someone “who understands and sees you,”
makes me want to stay in education because I know even
Ureña says. That understanding can lead to relatability,
though we come from different backgrounds, I know they
which she says is something many teachers of color have a
need what I have,” he says, “and the journey they are about
unique capacity for.
to take.” ■
