Identity Affirming Classrooms

Spaces that Center Humanity

Erica Buchanan-Rivera

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000536447
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education

Learn how to create identity affirming classroom environments that honor the humanity of students.

Although schools have potential to be spaces of inquiry and joy, they can also be the source of trauma and pain when educational equity is not a foundational element. With a race-conscious lens, Dr. Erica Buchanan-Rivera explains how to actively listen to the voices of students and act in response to their needs in order to truly activate equity and make conditions conducive for learning. She also offers insights on how we need to do anti-bias and antiracist work in efforts to create affirming, brave spaces.

Throughout the book, you'll find features such as Mirror Work and Collective Work to help you bring the ideas to your own practice and discuss them with others. You'll also find excerpts from students' voices to hear the why behind affirming spaces through their perspectives. With the powerful ideas in this book, you'll be able to create the kinds of classroom environments that students deserve.

Part I Do the Work

DOI: 10.4324/9781003216964-2

As a consultant and professional in a DEI role, I am often asked by others, “Where do I begin?” as related to justice-centered work. My answer is that people should begin with a deep analysis of themselves. If we want to fight for others, we must know how we show up into the work of creating equitable outcomes. In my career, I have witnessed people show up with their heart in the right place, but their minds did not reflect a critical consciousness to authentically love children who did not share their identity or lived experiences. I was also an educator who came into the field with the best intentions but recognized quickly that I had so much to learn and that my lack of knowledge contributed to actions that negated my beliefs about children. When I rededicated my life to a process of learning and unlearning, I could feel a shift in my pedagogy, leadership, and my humanity. I have made plenty of mistakes and still fall short at times, but I am committed to looking in the mirror and connecting with people who can hold me accountable. This section will walk you through the internal work that is needed prior and during the work of developing identity affirming environments. We all need an understanding of historical contexts that have shaped our current realities and a common language of educational equity that is rooted in justice and love for the children as well as communities we serve.

1 The Role of the Classroom and the Sociopolitical Contexts of Schooling

DOI: 10.4324/9781003216964-3

Reduction of injustice is not the same as freedom.

Ella Baker (as cited in Jones & Hagopian, 2020, p. 132)

The classroom environment, encompassing the disposition and beliefs of educators, pedagogical approaches, and socialization, is one of the most influential factors in identity development. Carla Shalaby (2017), educator and author of Troublemakers, conveys that classrooms are places where we must practice freedom. Liberatory spaces are not created by chance, but through intentional and equitable actions rooted in justice, collectivism, and accountability. The classroom should provide opportunities for dreaming, fostering a love for self and imaginative thinking that isn’t distorted by systems of surveillance. Students should be able to take risks in an inclusive, democratic culture that centers joy.

As an administrator, I have witnessed the good intentions of educators transcend into harmful actions. I have engaged in critical conversations with adults who were unaware of their own role in fracturing student relationships. Through policy work, I have seen leaders come to the table and debate the humanity of students, including my own. At educational conferences, I have sat through trauma-informed sessions that rarely discussed the trauma that happens within the walls of a classroom environment. My work has been devoted to helping people see what they don’t acknowledge and how they show up in the eyes of children.

Our ability to see each other as fully human involves ongoing mirror work and understanding the sociopolitical contexts within society. Nieto and Bode (2017) define sociopolitical contexts as the laws, policies, ideologies, and practices that generate unequal outcomes and the marginalization of identity groups. The political, social, and economic structures within society influence and frame the decisions made within education. People in positions of power determine what constitutes a developmentally appropriate curriculum, who should receive an invitation into academic or social programs, what narratives in history should be acknowledged, and what should be recognized or celebrated. While writing this book in a global pandemic, it’s also not lost on me that directives pertaining to the reopening of schools were overtly political. The field of education is inherently political, and the decisions made by humans within systems shape the experiences of those who are a part of the institution.

As a student, I was not exposed to a curriculum that incorporated authors of color. I internalized ideologies of whiteness and believed I had to prove my worth since I could not see my racial identity reflected. The students I have served over the span of my career have also shared disheartening narratives about the ways school environments steal joy, creativity, and deflate the pride one has for one’s culture. Muslim school-based student organizations have conveyed that outside of their safe space, their culture is only acknowledged within courses in the context of terrorism. Within an intersectional club that I co-sponsored called Student Alliance for Equity (SAFE), high school students would share that they did not want their mental health, race, or ability to define how others treated or perceived them and recognized how school structures magnified disparities. Students are constantly processing the messages school environments send about mattering.

Erasure thrives in oppressive environments where political decisions deny basic human rights and the ability to bring one’s whole self into educational experiences. Students know if their identities are reduced to a test score or the categorization of a high, low, or average ability group. They are also acutely aware of the identities that not only have a seat at the table but have the universal key to access every opportunity. I have worked with elementary students who can articulate how biases of adults come to life. Children recognize who and what matters in school settings, providing me some of the most insightful lessons I have learned as an educator. Shalaby (2017) asserted that “we need schools that offer young people a chance to grapple with these lessons—schools fueled by the imperative to imagine and to create a world in which there are no throwaway lives” (p. xviii).

The classroom is a space where learners can process the structural and educational inequities that exist and co-construct welcoming environments with teachers. However, it is critical for all educators to understand the depth of institutionalized racism, stereotype threats, and their role in dismantling injustice. Civil rights activist, Ella Baker, said that “reduction of injustice is not the same as freedom.” We must understand how forms of oppression operate, dissemble foundations that uphold inequities, and rebuild systems to support as well as affirm all identities.

Antiracism and Education

An identity affirming environment prioritizes anti-bias and antiracist work (ABAR). We all have biases that derive from our experiences and form the ideologies we carry into the world. Elena Aguilar (2020), in Coaching for Equity, equates racism to a toxic substance that is not only in the air we breathe, but in the soil in which we plant crops and the water we drink. In other words, racist ideologies permeate our physical, emotional, and social beings and we—white people and people of color—must learn how to confront white supremacy culture. Furthermore, we have to move beyond identifying the manifestation of whiteness in institutions and learn how to dismantle the racism that is deeply ingrained in curriculum, policies, and school culture.

Racism is prejudice plus power, a system of oppression that rests on the belief that one race is superior to another based on physical characteristics. It robs one’s humanity and dreams of freedom. Those who engage in antiracism surrender themselves to the work of disrupting racism every day. It’s about centering and listening to people of color, understanding needs, and shifting the power dynamics to create and sustain access, opportunities, and resources for identity groups that have historically experienced marginalization. Antiracist work has always existed as a response to racism. Many people throughout history, including Sojourner Truth, Fred Hampton, Grace Lee Boggs, Claudette Colvin, and John Lewis, fought for liberation and organizers across the country continue to mobilize others to fight against racism today. Antiracist work requires ongoing mirror work—you’ll hear that again and again—where we challenge the pollutants that have clouded the ways we see other racial identity groups or ourselves.

ABAR, which is prevalent in many Montessori schools, is an approach that works to eradicate discriminatory practices within education. Biases can lead to damaging patterns. We must recognize how our biases influence our communication, interactions, and the ways we empathize with people. Furthermore, we must learn how to equip ourselves with tools to talk about racism, whiteness, and white supremacy culture. Conversations about race and the disruption of racism should be normalized.

Identifying Oppression within School Environments

My sixth-grade experience is etched in my memory as the year I amplified my voice and, as Congresswoman Maxine Waters would say, “reclaimed my time.” It was the year I decided to no longer internalize the pain of erasure in silence and vowed to tell someone when my identity felt threatened. Unfortunately, that someone was a teacher who I trusted; a relationship that was tainted due to the releasing of harbored racist ideologies. I was reading independently and sitting in the front of the classroom. The room was quiet except for a few white males who were talking in the background. And, important to note, I was the only Black student within the classroom. The teacher warned the boys to watch their voice levels a few times and to stop making beats in the back of the classroom. Finally, she reached a point of frustration and I assumed she was going to separate the group or call for the support of a neighboring colleague who typically escorted peers into his room for a “break.” However, this time she yelled without hesitation, “You guys need to stop acting Black!”

The broken record sound that you hear in any motion picture during a climactic event cued in my brain. Almost immediately, I dropped my book and looked around the class to survey reactions. I will never forget how I felt as my eyes danced around the room and I recognized that no one had flinched. My body froze. I questioned my existence. How did she see me … my racial identity as a student? Did she see my Blackness as a deficit? Following class, I approached my teacher and shared how her words made me feel. She was embarrassed and led with defensiveness, feeling inclined to share that she did not consider herself a racist. The next day she gave me a lengthy apology note that expressed how her biases and stereotypical views were hurtful. She deconstructed herself before my eyes, showing me how racism affects all of us. And, I still have this note today, one artifact of many to symbolize the racial trauma I experienced in classrooms.

The oppressive structures (e.g., racism, classism, sexism, etc.) that exist in school settings are impediments to the creation of an affirming space. Therefore, it is important to name the barriers that hinder the outcomes and success of students and eradicate the inequities that challenge the liberatory environments we are striving to create for students. Jamila Lyiscott (2019) developed the Fugitive Action Framework referenced in her book, Black Appetite, White Food, to confront the role and presence of whiteness on a micro and macro level within society. The framework acknowledges four forms of oppression that show up in education and across other industries.

• Ideological: collective consciousness, beliefs and ideas upheld about various groups.
• Institutional: the network of institutional structures, policies that create advantages and benefits for some, and discrimination, oppression, and disadvantages for others.
• Interpersonal: the ways that ideological, institutional, and internalized privilege and oppression play out in everyday interactions between members of privileged and oppressed groups.
• Internalized: the process in which a member of an oppressed group accepts the stereotypes applied to the group by its oppressors.

When reflecting on my sixth-grade experience, I recognize that the four forms of oppression were at work. There was a shared belief about the behaviors of Black people as confirmed by the teacher’s statement and the indifference of white peers. The anti-Black messages in society conditioned a collective con...