Teaching for Equity and Justice: Community-Building with BIPOC Educators

How do we support and build community with BIPOC educators?

This question was at the core of Facing History’s BIPOC Educator Roundtable series, which began as a sequence of virtual discussions over the course of a year. Culminating in an in-person meeting in Washington, DC in April, a cohort of eight BIPOC middle and high school educators from across the country convened with a group of BIPOC Facing History staff members for a rich and open discussion about their lived experiences as educators of color in diverse school settings.

“BIPOC educators bring a wealth of knowledge, joy, and experience to their classrooms and school communities, and they also experience an often-overlooked, dual burden of having to navigate interpersonal and systemic biases as educators of color while at the same time working to support and honor the lived experiences of their diverse students—many of whom come from historically marginalized communities as well,” said Charles F., a Facing History & Ourselves program associate who helped design and facilitate the roundtable.

“We recognize that many BIPOC educators across the country may be trying to do this on their own, so we wanted to create a dedicated affinity space for folks to bravely come together to share challenges, support one another, and build community—and to share their wisdom more broadly so that others could benefit,” he said.

Held at Howard University—one of the oldest historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States—this meeting was intentionally designed so that this close-knit group of equity-focused BIPOC teachers and administrators could come together in-person to deepen connections. They discussed topics like microaggressions and overt discrimination in their school communities; navigating difficult conversations with colleagues; the importance of centering student voice and identity; and how to stay motivated while continuing to build solidarity with like-minded people. Together, they celebrated successes, shared challenges, and collectively brainstormed solutions to the complex challenges they face in their schools and classrooms every day. You can watch the full conversation here.

We caught up with Elen R., Randrea A., and Julian B.—educators who joined us at the roundtable from northeast Ohio, the California Bay Area, and Boston, Massachusetts—to learn more about their experiences.

What has been a highlight of participating in Facing History’s BIPOC Educator Roundtable series?

Elen: A highlight of the day and of the process and of the experience is just hearing how other people and other educators are using their voices. It felt really validating that they're also experiencing similar challenges, and it’s also really inspiring to see how they're navigating those pieces too.

Randrea: There aren't very many spaces where you can come in and feel the community already. It was almost like we all knew each other … that's really meaningful when you're talking about things that are just so vulnerable and important to you… Facing History has a way of bringing us all together [with] purpose, and it makes it feel like this is a safe place to be able to be vulnerable. Sitting at that table and having conversations with every single person, it made me realize that my experience is not meant to be survived alone. My experience is not meant to be traveled alone. There's just something so validating and special in that.

Julian: The highlight for me is connection. Being able to be in a room with people that understand your journey, that you can connect with, that affirm you. I actually had my doubts of whether something like this could take place virtually, [but] it did. I think we were all in a space where we trusted each other, we were able to be vulnerable with each other [through the course of the program], and then to see each other in person, it was just like a family reunion. The highlight [of this experience] is the word that was used throughout: solidarity. The solidarity that we have for each other and the solidarity that we need for everyone who's in the teaching profession.

Why do conversations like this matter to you as a BIPOC educator?

Julian: Conversations like this matter to me as a BIPOC educator because it's who I am, it's what I bring to the table. It's not a conversation about something that is to the margins—it's the core of our identity. And so when we talk about creating schools and communities that really talk about equity and social justice, we're talking about things that are at the heart of the curriculum. And I think it really is important that we are intentional with these conversations. When we talk about teaching and learning [with students], we often talk about the skills, habits of heart and mind. There are skills that are related to equity and social justice that we need to have as educators.

I often think about the Facing History curriculum where we talk about being an upstander. I think it's important that we think about being an upstander in everyday acts, where we are calling out things where we see injustice, where we see someone’s voice not affirmed, that we're just calling that out. It is really about supporting each other. It's about affirming each other, and it's about connection.

Elen: When you're in the school year, not just being a BIPOC educator—being a woman, just being in education, being a mom, just all of those layers—when you're in the trenches of the school year, it can feel like a lot. It can be like, why am I doing this? These conversations can become part of your good memories that motivate you. That's what keeps you going. They’re a really good motivation and a good reminder of your shared why … it adds to your why.

Randrea: When we move into our context in our spaces, we're oftentimes thinking about the students and everything is for them. Every decision we make is in service to them. And sometimes when you're in the work, you're not really taking a step back to reflect on where you are or how you got here or how you feel about a situation. As educators, we're programmed to be in emergency-mode all the time, and we're solving problems every single day. This [experience] really allows us to understand our own story through our lens and to communicate and share space with other people who are facing the same struggles.

It's so important to continue to have these conversations because they're still relevant … even if it's an inch forward, we're still making progress [on] representation, on understanding and unpacking our own internalized oppression or internalized colonization or internalized racism. It's the unlearning of not taking up space, learning to belong, and [learning] that my voice is valid and that I'm meant to be here. I don't know that I could realize those things on my own. And I think having these conversations with other people is not just validating, it's really affirming. It makes you feel like you're not living in this alternate reality [where you’re experiencing these things alone].

What advice would you give to educators in this current political and social moment?

Randrea: For BIPOC educators, I think remembering that no matter what, you have a choice. And I think that's so easy to forget, especially when you're part of a team and sometimes you want to just comply, but there's always a choice. You can choose how to show up to a space. You can choose how much you want to educate someone else. You can choose how to hold someone else accountable. Those are all choices that you can make. And all of those choices are okay. I wish that someone had told me along the way that the choices I was making were okay. We were talking about how as BIPOC educators, there's so much in our minds that we have to balance and think about: How am I going to be perceived in this moment? How am I going to represent my culture now that I have this platform? What am I going to say? Is it going to impact someone? I just want everyone to know that as long as it's part of your real lived experience, something that you'll say will resonate with somebody else.

Elen: The advice that I would give to a BIPOC Educator is going along with Facing History’s ‘People make choices.’ If you put students at the center—with any choice that you make, big or small in the classroom, whatever content you choose to share or things you share—if you ask yourself, is this putting students first? Is this in students' best interest? Then you can go to sleep at night knowing that you've done your best job—even if it's met with conflict, even if it's met with resistance. If you know in your heart and in your soul that you were putting students at the center, then you're doing well, you're moving forward. And for non-BIPOC educators, it would be the same thing. It would be, how can you amplify voices and advocate both for your BIPOC educators and for your students as well?

And for all educators, to also have grace for yourself because at the same time that we're learning things, we're also unlearning things. Especially in this climate, I myself am so nervous about saying the wrong thing, about getting it right, and the costs feel really high—that one word I'm going to say is going to cost me my job or it's going to cost me my career. The stakes feel really high, so [my advice is] to have a little more grace.

Julian: History teaches us that this current climate is not foreign. If you look at history: one step forward, one step back—sometimes two steps forward, two steps back. So we know that when there's progress, there's going to be pushback. And so we have to know that we're going to get through this, we're going to get through the pushback. If we look at history after reconstruction, we saw the pushback. And I think we know that there is hope… I often am accused by my friends who are not in education, “you're always optimistic and have so much hope”—how could you not have hope if you teach students? They are really challenging us to make sure that they have the skills and the knowledge and the information so they can be agents of change. I think as educators, we need to prepare ourselves for the information that we need to share with our students about history. So that means attending seminars like Facing History, that means going to institutes, that means doing training that's necessary to build inclusive communities.

Teaching is a political act, but I'm not teaching students to think in a political way about a particular topic. What I really want them to do is to be agents of change so that they can influence their own destiny, their own sphere of influence.

As I think about this period of time … even talking about systemic racism in some parts of the country is considered to be off limits. I don't have to talk about claiming something as systemic racism, but what I could do is just talk about Dred Scott. In the Dred Scott decision in 1857, it was declared that he had no rights and the systemic issues from that Supreme Court decision have to be seen today. So it's really about teaching history. If you teach true history, students will understand the systemic nature of that history.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Julian: Don't underestimate the value of human connection to build change, to inspire each other. When I was invited to be part of this program, I had no idea what it was going to be about. But what I realized is that if you allow yourself to reach into new experiences, to allow yourself to take in information, to allow yourself to be challenged, you will be a better person for it.

Randrea: I think first it's okay to be aware of exactly where you are in this moment, in this work. And then once you realize that, make choices to move forward and to stand in solidarity with [other] non-BIPOC folks and BIPOC educators who are trying to do the work… I was having conversations with non-BIPOC educators about [this], I asked them, ‘What do you wish I said to you?’ And they said, ‘I wish you told me it was okay to be where I was, because where I was wasn't going to be the state that I had to stay in. Where I am right now doesn't mean that I can't get better. And, thank you for telling me where I was and being honest about it.’ And so I'm just hoping that my non-BIPOC folks can build the awareness that they need to understand different issues that they maybe didn't grow up with, and then help collaborate on choices that require privilege. Because I may not know that I have access to something unless a non-BIPOC educator tells me, ‘Hey, this resource exists because I had this resource and you didn't.’

Collaboration is so important and I want my students to feel this balance. It’s not about ‘fighting the man,’ it's actually about working alongside someone who's different from you, because perspectives can change and people can change, and you have to believe in that so that things can change.

The BIPOC Educator Roundtable series was part of Facing History’s Teaching for Equity and Justice initiative, which aims to provide guided learning opportunities for educators to explore unconscious bias and work toward mitigating the effects of historic and systemic racism in education.

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