Article 5: Aggressive and Tender Negotiations – Teacher Educators Confront Whiteness in Their Practice

October 11-17: Justin is the lead blogger and will post it by Sunday midnight. Reflections are due Wednesday midnight.

6 Responses to "Article 5: Aggressive and Tender Negotiations – Teacher Educators Confront Whiteness in Their Practice"

Justin Bartlett says:

October 14, 2018 at 8:19 pm

This week’s article was a great read but it was a topic that I felt many teachers brush under the rug very often. I will preface this post by saying that being culturally responsive in the classroom is a necessity when we examine and promote a student-centered classroom. No matter your background as a teacher, educator, education advocate, etc., as an influencer in the education field, it is you (our) duty to make sure our students are accepted and treated with fairness, kindness, and love. As an African American educator working in a title one school with the majority of our teachers white females, this article really hit home for me as it made me ponder my own cultural responsive practices in the classroom.

Now, let’s dissect the article.

Authors Galman et al., began this study after many conversations about how teachers, specifically white teachers, respond to the expanding diversity seen in the school systems. They all had a common belief that no matter what their skin color was, their goal was to love, teach, and inspire their students. Their focus was based on the idea of learning what an Antiracist Teacher is and the traits that make up that label and what needed to be done to unlearn the traits that may be present in the classroom. The focus was on pre-service teacher education students. The findings from the research are as follows: 1) white non-participation was affirmed and 2) race talk in the classroom was silence. I will give a brief overview of what both of these meant in their study. Their main goal of this research was to prove that first, there is a prevalent issue with both pre-service educators and licensed professionals with recognizing racism in the schools. From the research it was clear that a call for more teaching and professional development of both pre-service and licensed professionals were needed as the conversations had within their program were not conducive to a culturally responsive program. It’s a notion of in today’s field of education; there is a protection of white culture and feelings when it comes to race talk in the schools. It’s also a notion that the minority voice is not heard or respected in the sense that white teachers are not speaking up when a student or co-worker makes a racist remark.

I could go on and on about how important it is for us as educators to be knowledgeable in making sure that we respect and tend to the cultural needs of our students. However, it is important that the lesson we get from this article is not just teaching pre-service teachers how to be culturally responsive in the classroom, its about how we promote and embrace it. No matter how matter what types of schools we teach in or what students we are servicing, it’s important to know that we have to provide a platform for students’ voices to be heard. In today’s time everyone is very sensitive in what is said or how something is perceived. It’s as if we are walking on egg shells because the simplest thing can be taking out of context BUT when we become culturally responsive and take on the responsibility of equipping ourselves with the proper tools and resources to combat racism in the schools or just life in general, it become best practice as we are able to influence more than just one race. There’s no hiding that we as educators have to set the tone for or students and it can’t just happen during pre-service training.
Timothy Corallo says:

October 15, 2018 at 10:09 pm

Justin,

Great job summarizing the article. I also thought this was a very important article for teachers to read as well. As a white educator, I think we (white educators) all to often fall into the trap of thinking that we are not racist, and that therefore nothing we say or do (or a way that we think or react to things) could be racist. This is a dangerous trap to fall into because once we begin to think this way with certainty, we stop examining our practices, speech, and thoughts. I think this complacency has a lot to do with the white non-participation Galman, Pica-Smith, and Rosenberger (2010) discuss in the article we read this week. I was pretty disappointed to read the stories about white students distancing themselves from conversations about race and racism. I also thought it was disappointing that no white students responded to participate in the focus group of this study, despite making up 88.2% of enrolled students at the university during the time of the study. This white non-participation (as well as the “Economies of Niceness” discussed on page 233) seems to be major contributors to silence in the classroom regarding race talk. While these are complex issues without simple solutions, I think you offered some valuable advice in your last paragraph. I agree that this should not just be a discussion taking place with pre-service teachers but an on-going discussion and contemplation among all teachers. I think that we should always be reflecting on how we are perceiving issues, talking with our students and colleagues, and whether we are creating a classroom climate in which all students are comfortable discussing there thoughts and feelings. We also need to consider how to appropriately respond to comments which are naively or overtly racist rather than simply gloss them over in order to help things run more smoothly. By doing these things, we can, as you said, “Set the tone for our students.”

Great job!
1. Timothy Corallo says:
  
  October 15, 2018 at 10:13 pm
  
  From my entry:
  
  “I think that we should always be reflecting on how we are perceiving issues, talking with our students and colleagues, and whether we are creating a classroom climate in which all students are comfortable discussing there thoughts and feelings”
  
  I wrote “there” instead of “their”. I wish WordPress let me edit.
Molly Hulihan says:

October 17, 2018 at 5:02 pm

Justin,

I agree with you that this is such an important issue and an important article for all teachers to read and understand. I think a main problem that the article addresses right away is that teachers go into the school year with low expectations of students from different backgrounds. Immediately they are judging students before even getting to know them and this sets forth how they will treat the students throughout the year. I think that it is important for all teachers to learn how to be antiracist educators, not just new teachers. It should be a reminder to all teachers who might claim “white innocence” (Galman, Pica-Smith, & Rosenberger, 61).

Overall, this was a very interesting study to read about. As with Tim, I was also disappointed to see that there was no participation from white students. I think that by just looking at this study we can see that more needs to be done to continue to talk about racism in our classrooms. As educators we need to be open-minded, take all students in, and have tough conversations. All students should feel safe and equal and I agree that this is something we have to continue to work at.
Casey Vanderpool says:

October 17, 2018 at 5:51 pm

This article addressed the issue of racism from an interesting perspective. It is easy to lay the onus for combating racism at the feet of the new teachers just coming out of school; however, if the vast majority of teachers are white women, wouldn’t it follow that the vast majority of people who educate teachers are also white women? Galman, Pica-Smith, and Rosenberger (2010) conducted their study to determine how new teachers deal with racism and how teacher educators deal with it as well. Galman et al. (2010) noted that many attempts were made to address racism in university programs and discarded which suggested that “faculty are interested and committed to antiracist education but are perhaps unsure of how best to approach it” (p. 227). If the universities haven’t figured it out yet, then the new teachers will probably struggle with it as well. I also found it very interesting when they discussed being unhappy with white students’ lack of engagement but admitted to failing to show them a better way to handle the situation (Galman et al., 2010). Their solution to this issue was focused around frank and honest, yet tender, discussions of how racism affects students and teachers in schools.

I feel as though I am oftentimes guilty of non-participation, mostly out of fear of saying the wrong thing. My school has a very diverse population, and that is one of the best things about it. I teach the ESL cluster and am so happy to be able to learn about their cultures and experiences. I try to build a classroom community that makes all children feel welcomed and valued. I think that is one of the many wonderful things about being an elementary school teacher – it seems to be a little easier to teach acceptance to younger students. The other thought I now have after reading this article is whether or not I truly know what racism is/means and if I inadvertently am guilty of it. What has not changed is my commitment to being culturally aware and accepting of all people.
Samantha Muse says:

November 3, 2018 at 8:01 pm

One thing that I took out of this article was when they were talking about the dominant group stepping up and saying “this is not okay” they mentioned a moment where there were only 2 black students in a cohort and they stuck together. This made me think of moments where I may not have noticed someone feeling alone or different in a group.
I think there are two reasons that people may be reluctant in talking in the classroom about race, 1 they do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings and 2 they might not feel educated enough to speak. This is something that can be easily fixed with more of a focus in teacher readiness programs or during training during the school year.
I wish articles like these were more prevalent in my own education. It’s important that educators know how to start and run these conversations so that we can pass on to our student that it is important to notice differences and understand those around us.

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