curated talk tools – Schooltalking

Supporting State and Local Efforts to Expand Opportunities for Young People in an Age of Attack

The nation’s students are experiencing spiking threats to educational opportunity access. Since 2020, the nation has seen intensive efforts by nationally networked organizations and politicians to limit race- and diversity-related learning, discussion, support, and opportunity creation in US schools, using the levers of both local agitation and formal policy. Calling such work harmful to youth and the nation, policymakers and activist organizations have sought to “ban” “Critical Race Theory” from schools starting in 2020+, then to limit basic supports across all sexual orientations/gender identities (SOGI), and most broadly to curtail and “end” work on “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” in states and federally.

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The Limitation Effect: Exploring Education Restriction and Opportunity Removal Today

What happens to education opportunities when restriction pressures cascade through systems? How do we keep increasing and improving opportunity, so every student and all groups of students can thrive in public schools? Derived from 5 years of collective research on efforts to restrict K12 work on race, sexual orientation/gender identity, and “DEI,” this presentation shares first hand experiences of how restrictions influence schools and raises questions about how to protect and expand educational opportunity for all students.

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Yearning to learn: youth voices from restriction states, 2023

Abstract

Purpose – Recently, the nation has seen intensive adult efforts to regulate and limit race- and LGBTQ-related student learning, discussion, and support in US schools, calling such education harmful to youth. This study aims to investigate: What do youth say themselves? The authors delve here into six youth interviews from five states with new, explicitly restrictive state legislation and policy. The authors put youths’ voices describing education they found helpful directly in conversation with their states’ policies, which targeted related education as harmful.

Yearning-to-learn-youth-voices-from-restriction-states.PDF Download

The Limitation Effect: Experiences of State Policy-Driven Education Restriction in Florida’s Public Schools

How can a teacher discuss Jim Crow laws without breaking state law? Should a librarian stop ordering books with LGBTQ+ characters? A new white paper by UC San Diego and NYU researchers reveals the experiences of K-12 educators and parents in Florida grappling with state policies and policy effects restricting access to instruction, books, courses, clubs, professional development, and basic student supports.

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Leveraging a University to Create Local Equity-Oriented K–12 Learning Opportunities: A Conversation Starter

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One Actual Dialogue about Book Banning

With permission of “Educator X,” I’m sharing what we both think is a pretty decent engagement between two people with very different perspectives on book banning.

What do you think of this exchange? What are its pros and cons? What would you have said, that I failed to say? I’ve enabled comments for now. Please respond as if Educator X is listening.

-Mica Pollock, #Schooltalking (feedback welcome to micapollock@ucsd.edu)

Read our exchange here.

#LetUsLearn: Talking points naming the kind of education that’s good for students, in everyday language.

Educators are employed to support all of the nation’s children and youth to be well-prepared and successful contributors to our country. Our job is to prepare all students to become critical thinkers who are successful, informed, and thoughtful participants in our multiracial, interdependent, and multicultural democracy, capable of respectful dialogue across diverse perspectives and skilled in all subject areas. In this work, educators are equipping students for “a future that includes all of us.”

To sustain this work, we need to get better at clearly describing the education work we are trying to do so students can continue to learn and thrive. These talking points are designed to help you describe your goals in everyday language backed up by research and national organizations.

Link to these #LetUsLearn talking points can be found here.

SUPPORTED, SILENCED, SUBDUED, OR SPEAKING UP? K12 EDUCATORS’ EXPERIENCES WITH THE CONFLICT CAMPAIGN, 2021- 2022

Mica Pollock, with Reed Kendall, Erika Reece, Abdul-Rehman Issa, and Emilie Homan Brady

University of California, San Diego, Department of Education Studies.

Published July 2023 in the Journal of Leadership, Equity, and Research. Pre-released publicly here on schooltalking.org in May/summer 2023 with the journal’s permission. Please send correspondence on this article to micapollock@ucsd.edu.

Across the country, effort is underway to restrict discussion, learning, and student support related to race and gender/sexual identity in educational settings, targeting schools with state legislation and politicians’ orders; national conservative media and organizations; Board directives; and local actors wielding media-fueled talking points. To date, few analysts have yet explored in detail educators’ lived experiences of these multi-level restriction efforts and local responses to them. In this article, we analyze 16 educators’ experiences of 2021-22 restriction effort and local responses, with an eye to potential effects on student support and learning. Educators interviewed emphasized their recent experiences with talking about race and LGBTQ lives, with many emphasizing threatened punishment by critics for discussing these topics. Context mattered tremendously: While some educators enjoyed support and freedom in race and diversity-related discussion and learning, other educators described intensive restriction effort emanating from local, state, and national pressures. Respondents also indicated that responses from local district leaders, school leaders, and other community members amidst such multi-level restriction efforts were crucial in effecting restriction or protecting the ability to talk and learn. Data from this interview study suggest that the nation may be heading toward two schooling systems: one where children and adults get to talk openly about their diverse society and selves, and one where they are restricted or even prohibited from doing so. The fate of our nation’s teaching, learning, and student support is up not only to the nation’s teachers, principals, and superintendents, but us all.

Keywords: censorship, restriction, leadership, teaching, race, gender, LGBTQ

Link to published JLER article can be found here and schooltalking.org preprint of the same is here.