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CRITICAL RACE THEORY?

Sure… Let’s talk!

Recently Critical Race Theory has been a contentious topic in many communities so we started collecting and constructing resources, and now we are providing a time for to share with each how you’ve responded. I think it’s important that we as leaders have an understanding of what CRT is and is not, before we can assure parents whether or not CRT is present in your students curriculum, when the questions comes up.

Folks at the ODE are offering support if we want to do a deeper dive into this topic. But before we go down that road, it is our practice to look inwards, at our in-house resources first And we would lean on folks in our team who would like to contribute to this discourse when/if we partner with ODE to something more in depth, Something we can offer to districts in the fall?

I want to give a shout out to Leah Dunbar who has been AMAZING!!!! THANK YOU, Leah! For getting us started with the framing of today’s conversation and providing some of the resources in today’s agenda…

Next slide

As I said earlier, today is really about giving us an opportunity to get a pulse on what’s happening in your context and for you to have an opportunity to have a dialogue… so here are the prompts

Send them to breakout sessions with the prompts in the next slide - assign a note taker and a reporter...

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Pulse Check

What's the current status with this topic in your district?
Is this topic being addressed, and if so how?

Communication

Has any communication been sent out to your staff and the parent community?
And are you willing to share?

Support from us at the ESD

What level of support do you need beyond the resources shared with you today?
And how can we help?

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Not to be confused with Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT)

Culturally Responsive Teaching is the explicit and deliberate use of students’ cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and frames of reference in everyday instruction and curriculum materials, with the aim of empowering students to excel intellectually, socially, and emotionally.

CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING MINDSETS

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Slides 3-11 were reprinted with permission from the authors: Dr. Angel Jones and Dr. Kate Slater

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How we teach Historical Events… our History books were written (an are still been written predominantly through a White Narrative, meaning we base our historical facts using primary sources that were primarily written by folks from the dominant class, white class, wealthy class, Imagine if the Narrative of the American Revolutionary War or the US constitution had been written by Red Coats/British instead of the American Patriots in the 13 colonies -

CRT asks you to analyze situations with a critical lens in a way that decenters the typical white narrative and to focus instead on the root cause of racism and inequity. Younger students, for example, can be taught the truth behind the Christopher Columbus and Thanksgiving narratives (with a Colonizer/Colonized context) and then discuss how and why this differs from the history that is normally taught.

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Some other examples of how one might use CRT in an educational context:

- To examine the unconscious biases that cause white teachers to punish children of color more frequently and severely.

- To investigate why Black children are disproportionately excluded from gifted and advanced academic programs

- To determine why Black children score significantly lower on standardized tests

- To interrogate why racialized children are over-represented in drop-out rates

- To critique dress code policies which prohibit natural Black hairstyles

- To re-evaluate the predominance of curriculum that excludes the history and lived experiences of racialized people and imposes a dominant white narrative of history

- To reframe deficit-oriented instruction that characterizes students of color as in need of remediation

- To examine school funding disparities, including the persistent underfunding of property-poor districts, many of which are composed primarily of children of color

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Slide 8: There are a few key CRT themes which align with other anti-racism approaches:

1. Race is a social construct created to benefit white people.

2. Systemic racism exists across many spectrums (Criminal Justice system, policing, housing, healthcare, education, banking, politics, etc )

3. “A few bad apples” is a false narrative; racism is both individual and systemic.

4. White privilege leads to false ideas of meritocracy.

5. “Color blindness” invalidates racialized peoples’ experiences

6. The experiences of oppression is exacerbated when a racialized person has additional marginalized identities (“Intersectionality”)

7. Internalized racism occurs when a racialized person believes that they are inferior to white people.

8. Racialized people have valid and unique experiences that need to be heard.

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Strategies to consider when responding to Qs about CRT

Pull a team together – people should not feel alone in responding
Compile and review the questions, feedback, inquires, criticism together; honor that some of the emails may be painful to read, and some people may need to step out or take breaks
Discuss and develop shared understanding and talking points –this may mean doing research
Determine who may need additional support, and who else may need to be looped into the discussion
Respond as appropriate (this could be individual responses or potentially a letter that goes out to the community)