Action First

Years ago, I sat in a meeting that began with a question.

"Is it easier to act your way into feeling, or feel your way into acting?"

We landed on the former.  One can feel angry but act with grace, feel disappointed with a child but act to build capacity, etc.  While not always easy, this is easier than waiting for feelings to come that will cause more desirable actions.

As a parent, this is also true.  I teach my girls to treat one another with respect, and at 4.5 and 9, they don't always feel like being respectful.  (Case in point, preparing for a recent Zoom meeting, I told them to play unless an emergency occurred.  We classified a number of situations as emergency or not.  The four year old determined that being mad at her sister IS an emergency and worth interrupting a call.  We had to discuss that one!)

I was struck by this line in a post from Cult of Pedagogy:

“You do need to get to implicit bias at some point,” she says. “It’s just not the starting point. If you start there, you can’t pivot to instruction. Whereas when you understand inequity by design, you can actually talk about instruction but also come back to talk about microaggressions. The sequencing of that is really important.”

Even if we are still working through our own implicit bias, we need to teach in a culturally responsive and anti racist manner.  This is good news, as working through implicit bias is hardly a short term task!  As teachers, we are good multitaskers.  We can change our teaching to benefit our students AND address our own biases at the same time.

I want my students (now primarily all from the same socioeconomic group, which is new for me) to really experience windows and mirrors in literature.  Since this will primarily be through online book choices, I need to start curating their collections on Epic, as my collection of multicultural books isn't as helpful from my living room as it is in my classroom!  I want them to consider how various groups would have interpreted historical events.  To quote a line from Hamilton, I want them to consider "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story."  I want my students to develop the kind of relationships where they can ask questions.

My students this year are a part of what might be considered the "elite" class, kids who travel internationally, who are dual passport holders, who have wealth and who, by nature of their birth, anticipate being leaders.  One of my own biases I've had to examine is that these kids need less.  The truth is, these kids will the ones making decisions, whether their privilege is earned or not, so they need to be MORE culturally competent to help make the systematic changes the world needs for justice.