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Keeping the Freedom to Include: Teachers Navigating “Pushback” and Marshalling “Backup” to Keep Inclusion on the Agenda

Keeping the Freedom to Include: Teachers Navigating “Pushback” and Marshalling “Backup” to Keep Inclusion on the Agenda

By Mica Pollock, Reed Kendall, Erika Reece, Dolores Lopez, & Mariko Yoshisato

Background/Context: This paper shares K12 educators’ efforts to marshal local support for the act of basic inclusion: welcoming all communities as equally valuable. We share data from a national pilot of #USvsHate (usvshate.org), an educator- and student-led “anti-hate” messaging project. In interviews, participating educators revealed careers of “pushback” against even their basic efforts to include (mention or empathize with) marginalized populations. They also shared five key forms of “backup” they had learned to marshal to keep such topics on the agenda. Building on scholarship positioning basic and deeper inclusion work as the unarguable task of schools, we explore how keeping the freedom to undertake even basic inclusion efforts requires teachers to preserve agency through assembling local backup — supports from other people.

Full article can be found here.

#USvsHate: the power and core tensions of using an ‘anti-hate’ onramp for K12 antiracism today

#USvsHate: the power and core tensions of using an ‘anti-hate’ onramp for K12 antiracism today

By Mica Pollock & Mariko Yoshisato

Background/Context: This paper launches public analysis of #USvsHate (‘us versus hate’), a collective initiative to invite ‘anti-hate’ lessons and youth-made public messaging in U.S. schools. Building on multiple research traditions, the Authors designed and piloted #USvsHate regionally, then nationally, starting in 2017.

Full article can be found here.

What’s Going On: “Partisan” Worries, and Desires to Discuss Trump-Era Events in School

What’s Going On: “Partisan” Worries, and Desires to Discuss Trump-Era Events in School

By Mica Pollock & Mariko Yoshisato

Background/Context: This article explores how the classic U.S. educator effort to stay politically “nonpartisan” when teaching became particularly complicated in an era of spiking K–12 harassment, when government officials openly targeted and denigrated populations on the basis of race, national origin, gender, sexuality, and religion. We share research on a pilot (2017–2019) of #USvsHate, an “anti-hate” initiative we designed and studied with K–12 educators and students in the politically mixed region of San Diego, California.

Link here.

No, It Isn’t Racist to Teach Antiracism

No, It Isn’t Racist to Teach Antiracism

I wrote this OpEd featured on edweek.org. My goal was to support collaborative antiracist effort by clarifying how “antiracism is not some zero-sum game of ‘us’ vs. ‘them.’ It’s a collective investment in the human
‘us.'”

“Anti-racism is about leveling the playing field of opportunity, dismantling opportunity barriers, benefiting
from the rich diversity of all communities, and treating all people humanely.”

Link to original article: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-no-it-isnt-racist-to-teach-anti-racism/2021/05

View article PDF here.

Exploring the Principles of Schooltalk

Exploring the Principles of Schooltalk

In March 2021, I spoke with principal Candace Hunstad, school instructional coach Brigid Dux, ESOL teacher/school equity lead Samantha Gauta (all of Fairhill Elementary), and district coordinator of professional learning/cultural responsiveness Junena Thomas — all educators from Fairfax County, Virginia — about their use of Schooltalk for sustained antiracist equity work at the school level. It was a really exciting discussion about how to go beyond initial use of books to long-term use of texts for change. Sharing here to support others in similarly sustained efforts!

Session guide here.

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