Improving by facing our unconscious assumptions

Educators want every one of their students to succeed and we’re willing to put in the work to make it happen.

We seek out training on our own time at Education Minnesota’s Summer Seminar and the Minnesota Educator Academy conference in October. We advocate for useful professional development in our districts, too.

There’s always something new to bring back to our worksites.

We’re working to bring trauma-informed teaching and restorative practices into our buildings because advances in the cognitive sciences have shown us new ways to help our students. It’s the latest chapter in the long story of our campaign to improve the learning conditions in schools.

In the fall, many of us will buy snacks for students who miss breakfast, hats and gloves for students without them and even fill bags with food for children who might not get enough to eat during long breaks. We can’t ignore the effects of poverty when four in 10 Minnesota students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch.

With our history of caring for the academic, emotional and physical health of our students, it should be no surprise Education Minnesota has developed a program called F.I.R.E. (Facing Inequities and Racism in Education), or that our union is working more closely with allies in our communities of color.

After a year of preparation, Education Minnesota’s F.I.R.E. program is now training its first cohort of 29 volunteer racial equity advocates, who are all working educators from districts in Minnesota. A committee of educators selected them from more than 80 applicants. All have knowledge or experience in providing the sort of anti-bias training that improves student achievement. 

After several months of training, these advocates will go back to Minnesota districts to work with educators.

The goal is to help us all grow in our practice. It’s a simple fact that Minnesota students are much more racially diverse than the corps of teachers who educate them. That situation won’t change anytime soon, despite of our best efforts. Our students on the margins need us to learn more about how to help them succeed.

That often starts with acknowledging the biases and assumptions we’ve acquired growing up in America. I’ve learned through my own training on these issues that it’s frighteningly easy to accept stereotypes and systems that hurt students on the margins. As a child, you don’t even know when it’s happening. Unwinding those unconscious beliefs takes a conscious effort. It helps to have a trained guide, believe me.

That’s where the F.I.R.E. program comes in. The racial equity advocates will help educators disrupt the historical, cultural, institutional and interpersonal systems that benefit whites while, as racialequitytools.org puts it, producing “cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color.”

The advocates will produce professional development classes and work with communities on racial equity. They will participate in conflict resolution and restorative justice within school districts. They will help our educators working through issues around racial equity as a supportive peer. And they will help train the next cohort of advocates.

This is important and necessary work for everyone who cares about closing the opportunity gaps in Minnesota, but no one at Education Minnesota believes the F.I.R.E. program alone is enough. It will take even more changes to E-12 and higher education, but also to housing, economics, criminal justice and even public health, to achieve real and widespread equity.

Education Minnesota supports other groups doing that work. The missions of organizations like ISAIAH, Neighborhoods Organized for Change and CTUL overlap with ours when it comes to disrupting institutional racism and bringing more fairness and opportunities to communities of color in Minnesota.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the World War II theologian, once wrote, “We are not simply to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

I’m aware some members of Education Minnesota believe we’re spending too much time and money on racial and social justice. Other members say we’re not spending enough. For context, here is what’s actually happening within our union’s budget.

Currently, 3 percent of Education Minnesota’s annual dues revenue goes to building positive relationships with our community allies, 13 percent goes to providing professional development and other training to educators, 21 percent is spent increasing the voice of educators in policymaking at the local, state and national levels, and 40 percent goes toward advocating for your career through collective bargaining. The rest pays for the infrastructure – rent, utilities, equipment, etc.
The elected leaders at Education Minnesota understand our responsibility to advocate for students is complicated. There isn’t just one policy, or set of policies, to accomplish our goals. If we put 50 educators in a room and ask what’s the single most important thing we can do for our students, I’d bet you would get 30 different answers.

But if we were to pull those answers apart just a little bit, I know we would all agree on two things. Our students benefit when each of us strives to become the best educator we can be by reflecting on our practice and incorporating the latest research into our work. We also can’t tackle all the issues holding back our students of color by ourselves, and it would be foolish and arrogant even to try.

In that spirit, I hope we all can embrace programs like F.I.R.E. as an extension of the work we’ve already done to become the best educators of the students we have today, and will have in the future. I also want us to find the time and energy to support the groups that work and care for their communities just as much as we work and care for our classrooms.

Together,
Denise
Twitter: @DeniseSpecht