Thoughts On Critical Race Theory

I really enjoyed learning more about critical race theory and the importance of listening to your students and taking their feedback to heart. One Aha moment I had when reading the article was when I realized just how important busting these myths are. These misunderstanding about CTR has caused many schools and states to ban teaching CTR. A lot of people, probably mostly in the South, see CTR as making children less patriotic. There are some white people that still believe that they are dominate to other races. They think that by teaching CTR children will learn to hate their country. However, CTR does the exact opposite. What it really works to do is to fully explain the history and dynamic of our country. The U.S. Census Bureau has just released its last batch of race-ethnic population estimates in advance of the 2020 census, with data indicating that the national headcount will reveal a more diverse nation than was previously expected. America is a melting pot. The US is made up of a variety of diverse people, and they are just as important in our society as white people. CTR works to educate students on a variety of different races and cultures. With the rising number of minorities, learning about a variety of different people is absolutely vital. Students need to be able to work with an array of different people, and if they aren't educated, they will struggle in the real world. I can relate this back to the importance of PLN's in professional careers. Social media can be a great way to connect with people who have similar careers and goals, however, if you say the wrong thing it could end up negatively affecting your odds of getting a job. What we say on the internet is there forever, and even if we take a post down, odds are someone saved it before we had the chance to delete it. This is very common with celebrities'. Once they become famous, they are often criticized for things they've said online, even if it was years prior. Teaching CTR is extremely important because it will teach us how to be inclusive and anti-racist. If students are taught CTR they will be much more well versed on how to be respectful and inclusive, which could prevent them from saying something they might regret.

Another big takeaway I had from the article was the about the importance of CTR, since the majority of students are not white. As previously mentioned, the number of minorities is growing in the US. This makes CTR even more important to teach. If the majority of students are not white, it will be hard for minorities to feel included and valued if we never talk about their unique struggles and cultures. As a teacher, it is my job to make sure that all my students feel safe, valued, and celebrated in my classroom. This goes beyond just adding in a few books or one or two lessons that focus on minorities. As a teacher, I'm going to have a multitude of books and lessons that incorporate minority characters and diverse themes. One thing I talked about in TCH 235 last year was how talking about slavery is not enough. Slavery is an important part of history that needs to be discussed, but in reality, black children today don't know what it was like to be a slave. They are just normal kids like everyone else. If the only black history we talk about is slavery, the students will have a very hard making connections and relating to the content that is taught. In ENG 272, we read a variety of middle level books where the main character was not white- and they were great! These books did not just focus on the historical trauma, but they were based in present day, with normal minority children. In ENG 272, we also talked about the importance of windows and mirrors in books. In my opinion, it is equally important to have both mirrors ( books you can relate to) and windows (books that represent a lifestyle or world that you're unfamiliar with). With the rise of minority students, it is vital that we include books that they're able to relate to, as it cane help them in their search for identity. From reading "What Every Middle School Teacher Should Know" I know that middle school is a time where students are desperately trying to fit in and discover their identity. Having role models and being able to relate with a variety of lessons and books is a huge part of self discovery.

Another big takeaway I had was it talked about the myth that CTR teaches that all white people are bad and racist. CTR does not do this, instead it asks white people to simply recognize their privilege. It is not saying that all white people are bad or racist, instead it's asking white people to take a step back and realize the ways in which white people are given an advantage in our society. Some people think that CTR is blaming white people, but instead it is simply outlining the inequalities that so clearly exist in the US. Something that is important to note is that the teacher holds a lot of power when teaching CTR. They need to make sure that they are not making it seem like white people are bad or racist, instead they are eliminating aspects of their personal opinion and bias from their discussions and focusing more on facts. I think this can be related back to chapter 4 from "We Got This," which talks about the importance of listening to your students and taking their opinions and feedback to heart. We need to listen to our students when teaching CTR and make sure that every student feels safe and comfortable to share their opinion. We also need to take into account the aspects of CTR that they are interested in learning more about. It's also important to let students lead a lot of the conversations. If I have a lot of students that are minorities, it doesn't really feel right for me to get up there and lecture about discrimination and racism, because as a white women I have never experienced those type of things. We want to make sure that we're not telling our students how they should feel, but instead letting them share their own thoughts and feelings without an outside influence.

One of the questions I have after reading the article is how exactly we're supposed to teach CTR. Are they supposed to be their own lessons, or are we supposed to integrate them into our lessons? Another question I have is how teachers are supposed to know what is and isn't appropriate in the classroom. The article mentioned how teachers have been penalized for stating their opinions, so what's okay to say and what isn't? I feel like this questions brings up an important idea: Teachers need to be taught CTR as a part of their training before they are in the classroom. Just as we have to pass content tests before we teach a subject, we need to make sure we understand CTR before we attempt to teach it to our students. The last question I have is about weather or not CTR should be taught by the teacher, or an outside person? Would it be better to have a CTR expert come in and talk about it, or do you think it's important for the teacher to do it?