Creating Space for Middle School Students to Discuss Race

The system of education in the United States continues to operate largely from a colorblind ideology where race remains ignored and viewed as irrelevant. That is, educators, who are predominantly white and female (NCES, 2019), teach subject matter without consideration of their own racialized identi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Voices from the middle 2021-05, Vol.28 (4), p.65-68
Main Authors: Beschorner, Beth, Burnett, Robbie, Ferrero, Kathleen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Cultural activities
Current Events
Curricula
Education
Educational aspects
Educational systems
Females
Gender
Junior high school students
Leadership
Learning
Males
Meetings
Mentors
Middle school students
Middle schools
Minority Group Students
Multiracial Persons
Planning
Race
Racial Identification
Racism
School Culture
Social aspects
Social justice
Teachers
Teaching Methods
Video Technology
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The system of education in the United States continues to operate largely from a colorblind ideology where race remains ignored and viewed as irrelevant. That is, educators, who are predominantly white and female (NCES, 2019), teach subject matter without consideration of their own racialized identities or their students' racialized identities. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to take a color-brave (Hobson, 2014) approach to education. One specific action that educators can take involves bringing students together to discuss race/ism in ways that develop students' racial consciousness and encourage justice-oriented action. This was the approach at one middle school in the Midwest, whose student population was approximately 30 percent students of color. This article describes the lessons learned when a white principal, Mary, initiated a group called Brave Space, which met once per month for an hour over the course of an academic year. Through the initial year of Brave Space, we learned that the process of naming and discussing race/ism in middle school will be ongoing, imperfect, and will need to be adapted for specific contexts, school culture, and current events. As a result, we offer the following recommendations.
ISSN:1074-4762
1943-3069