Submitted by: Jane Belton

We built on our collective work from February 24, using the following ideas and questions to guide our discussion:

Erasure and invisibility. Teachers not “seeing” Black students, not hearing or allowing for voice (as an example, not calling on Black students, not seeing individual contributions within group work)

–> How do we create structures and practices within our classrooms that ensure student voice and visibility? How do we create visibility within group work? Create opportunities for group work that necessitate plural perspectives, and can only be accomplished through that?

Silence from white teachers / white teachers not having the language (or choosing not) to name racism when it happens.

–> What are our practices around naming and reflecting on harmful power dynamics? On repair within the classroom? Around speaking up when a microagression has occurred? What practices do we have around providing trigger warnings? What language do we use?

Harmful power dynamics in the classroom and perpetuation of White Supremacy Culture.

–> What practices work to dismantle those dynamics?

Deficit model / thinking.

–> What practices do we employ that dismantle this deficit oriented thinking? What practices do we have around academic support and learning plans to support students of color with learning differences? What are our policies and practices around around late work/revision/extensions?

We each shared a variety of classroom practices that we feel help to dismantle White Supremacy Culture, disrupt harm, and address some of the larger issues expressed in the Black@LREI posts. These fell into multiple categories, including Class Discussion Practices, Group Work Practices, Feedback / Assessment / Grading Practices, and Teacher Lexicon, among others. Here is the jamboard we created.

We plan on exploring some reading around multimodal writing practices in advance of our next meeting.