Josh wrote: ↑Fri Mar 03, 2023 11:50 am
Aha. So CRT actually is being practiced in elementary schools across the country. (And, yes, that includes teaching it.) If you bothered to read it, you’d know it said it was taught directly to pupils.
I did read the article. All 22 pages.
It is about an academic researcher who worked with a group of staff members on an "equity team" at a highly diverse elementary school in Mississippi during their monthly professional development sessions. The focus was to listen to the actual stories of black teachers as a way of understanding racial biases that they, the teachers, might have, or that might be built into the system at that school district. You obviously didn't read the article. It was very mundane but probably useful in some minor way.
This is the sort of ordinary professional development that happens across all school districts in the country. I've been to a ton of that sort of thing. Some of it useful, some of it not so much. This particular example? It may or may not have been useful, it's hard to tell from the paper. You'd have to ask the teachers involved if they actually got anything out of it.
This is what happens in education because every state in the country requires that all teachers do ongoing "professional development" to maintain their teaching licenses. Here in WA we have to do a minimum of 20 hours per year to keep our license current, and keep our hours documented in our state licensing file. More than 20 for some specialty certifications like Special Ed. Some of it is subject-related (math, science, English, etc.) and some of it is more general pedagogy like this. Over the past decade I've been to trainings on
5E lesson planning
Danielson Model Lesson Planning
Mastery Based Grading
Trauma-informed practices
Mindfulness and "growth mindset"
Experiential and "project-based" learning
Diversity and Equity
NGSS
Digital Citizenship
Blind Spots and hidden biases
Response to Intervention (RTI)
Inclusive-based learning
Proactive classroom management
Suicide prevention
Restorative Justice
and others that I have forgotten. Some useful, some not so much. It is the bane of every teacher's existence frankly. Because they often do this stuff during the staff work days the beginning of the school year when you'd rather be in your classroom getting materials and lessons ready for the start of school.
I fail to see the slightest issue with this particular effort. Do you not think that teachers at a diverse school district in Mississippi should not be aware of issues of race and how it may affect their teaching and their students? If that is what you think then you are willfully blind to the society in which we live, and both the past and present in Mississippi.
Ignore the buzzword CRT and tell me a single thing that you think is actually problematic with this particular project.
