Antiracist Teaching and Learning

By Imanay Lotia ’21

ANTIRACISM IN ACTION

Antiracist Teaching & Learning in Action

The past year has exposed the painful impacts of systemic racism on all aspects of American life, including our schools. Students recounted racialized and biased experiences in classrooms from the distant and recent past. Many of the stories were shared through Instagram posts, and at Castilleja, we faced troubling details about who we have been and how we must do better for our students and employees of color by continuing to support and honor the different cultures and identifiers within our community.

Some portion of the reckoning involved honest listening: taking in the sorrow and trauma of these memories without becoming defensive, centering the experience of the people who have been harmed, and realizing that impacts of our actions always outweigh our intentions. At Castilleja, we have since established a formal process for communicating a concern or challenge connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Students are actively identifying and sharing experiences to learn from, respond to, and engage with as Castilleja makes necessary changes to become a community where everyone feels a keen sense of belonging. Stacey Kertsman, Dean of Equity Education and Social Impact, shared that, “Recent submissions have brought attention to opportunities for Castilleja educators and students to become more inclusive by stepping up as antiracists. It's been a privilege to support these intentional discussions and cognitive shifts—which we named as ‘rewiring’ in our antiracist competencies.”

But that is only part of the work. The other part is seizing the opportunity to become the change that is so long overdue. At Castilleja, we have begun that process in different ways. Over the summer, all employees engaged in workshops and reading about antiracism and began the school year by writing an Antiracist Commitment Statement to share with the community. Within the classroom, teachers have changed everything from what they choose to teach to how they approach assessment in an effort to become more inclusive. This will be an ongoing process of making meaning from the past as we work to become a stronger and more compassionate community in the present and the future.

Castilleja Leadership Values ANTIRACISM COMPETENCIES

Valuing Competing Narratives M o v i n g Bey on d Essentialism Sitting with Dissonance Understandi n g P osi t i o n a l i t oy Committing to Rewire Purposeful Embracing P r o b l e m C u r i s i ty Empathy Collaboration Reflection Ambiguity St rat e g i z ing INITIATIVE AGILITY PURPOSE CORE COMPETENCIES LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES ANTIRACISM COMPETENCIES

Valuing Competing Narratives

Valuing multiplicty of life stories, perspectives, and experiences.

Moving Beyond Essentialism

Moving past the belief that things and people are what they seem. This presumes that people can be categorized into intrinsic and enduringly different groups.

Sitting with Dissonance

Valuing discomfort and ambiguity (including regarding oneself — not applying essentialism to one's self-concept).

Understanding Positionality

Understanding and owning that an individual's “location” with a community (i.e. their rank and status) is impacted by social and organizational frameworks.

Committing to Rewire

Habituating knowledge into new practice, or changing habits to align with learning.

BLACK LIVES MATTER @ SCHOOL WEEK OF ACTION

For the first time, Castilleja participated in National Black Lives Matter @ School Week of Action, a national movement that began in 2016 and has gained momentum since. Students and employees initiated and co-created programming, a powerful example of antiracist learning and leading in action. Throughout the week:

• All history teachers designed at least one lesson around the Black

Lives Matter movement, ensuring that students learn about and engage with questions of racial justice; some of the resulting art projects are shown on the next page. • Members of the Black Student Union and P-Cubed (Pause,

Positionality, and Purpose: a group of students who have committed to becoming intentional and responsive allies in antiracist work) led workshops and discussions. • Middle School and Upper School meetings included content and context about the Black Lives Matter movement.

• Professor Ilyasah Shabazz — a motivational speaker and daughter of Malcolm X —spoke to the entire school community about the movement, her own life, and ways to continue to engage for justice. PROFESSOR ILYASAH SHABAZZ, DAUGHTER OF MALCOLM X

ART IN ACTION Student artists (clockwise from top left): Zoya Chughtai ’22, Genia Goldwasser ’22, Alana Stull ’21 (as part of her AP Art class), and Eveliena Pasmooij ’22.

In the Classroom

In the classrooms, teachers are adjusting their content and teaching strategies, reflecting their commitments to antiracism.

RETHINKING ASSESSMENT

Inherent bias has been part of the national conversation about standardized testing for years, but this summer, Colin Quinton decided it was time to ask the same questions about his own assessments in chemistry. Partnering with Karen Strobel, Castilleja’s Director of Institutional Research, Mr. Quinton completely revised his grading criteria to become more inclusive while also reassessing the core skills and content he wanted students to practice and learn. He explains, “Traditional grading systems often punish students for reasons that have little to do with their understanding and more to do with who they are inside and outside the classroom.” Relying on the pillars of equity grading—accuracy, bias resistance, and motivation—he has created a more inclusive measure of success that benefits all students.

REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS

Two years ago, in an effort to introduce social justice themes into her 7th grade math curriculum, Maya Kapoor began teaching probability using data from what were identified as random roadside stops made by the Chicago police. Students used their math skills to understand that the process was not actually random at all, because different races were impacted differently. In past years, after calculating the probabilities, the numbers were so different for different groups that the students actually thought they had made mistakes as they worked, but this year that changed. Dr. Kapoor explains, “After the past year of learning about the impacts of racism in the classroom and in the world around them, many students immediately understood that their calculations were correct and the bias skewed the data, not human error on their part.”

REWIRING CONVERSATIONS

Jenny Raterman and Laura Hansen ’08, from the English department, teach Advanced Topics American Voices to juniors. They did make changes to the syllabus to include new authors this year, but the shifts they made to the way they talk and write about all texts may be even more impactful because they apply to every book, every conversation, and every essay. At the start of the semester, Ms. Hansen and Dr. Raterman compiled a vocabulary list—working with and adding to elements of Castilleja’s school-wide Teaching and Learning Antiracism program—to help inform and guide engagement with topics like racism, bias, and inequality in literature. While these were all themes they had addressed in the past, Ms. Hansen sees her own mindset differently this year, “My own fear became less important than the work that needed to be done. Since we've shifted our approach, we've noticed the students are more interested in hearing perspectives different than their own, and we are all spending less time defending our own points of view.” Dr. Raterman has also noticed a shift in the writing, “Students are choosing antiracist frameworks for their essays even when we don’t explicitly assign them to do so. It’s becoming a key part of their worldview in a more authentic and internalized way.”

By Emily Chan ’22

“My own fear became less important than the work that needed to be done. Since we've shifted our approach, we've noticed the students are more interested in hearing perspectives different than their own, and we are all spending less time defending our own points of view.”

— LAURA HANSEN ’08

REVISITING IDENTITY

Christina Courtney ’02, who teaches 7th grade science, had to revise many of her labs to suit Distance Learning this year and was inspired to make several changes to her curriculum for some timely learning about current events. “Due to my antiracist teaching pledge from the beginning of the year faculty meetings, I revived a unit about skin color variation based on a curriculum from the Smithsonian. We were able to engage with social justice topics relevant to today's news such as race as a construct and social Darwinism. I'm so glad that I did it. Since then we’ve revisited these ideas as we learned about the story of the cell line from Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) during National Black Lives Matter @ School Week of Action. We've been encouraged to use this challenging moment as an opportunity to revise, revisit, and refocus our curriculum with an emphasis on the essentials for learners of today and the future.”