“Culturally Affirming” Teaching Explored

Teachers feel unprepared to buck the way schools have taught about race and culture, gender and sexuality. But they can start with small changes as they push the district to do more, activists said.

They can fill bookshelves with more texts by authors of color. They can supplement the history textbook with chapters from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. They can explain biological factors behind sexuality and gender in science class. They can help students understand their own community in a statistics class. And they spend more time facilitating conversations that center students’ own experience. 

A panel of experts made those suggestions at a forum in the basement of the New Haven YMCA Youth Center on Howe Street.

The event, put on Wednesday by the NHPS Advocates, a group of parents and teachers who’ve been organizing for transparency, accountability and progressive pedagogy, was meant to figure out what a ​“culturally affirming curriculum” might look like in New Haven, especially after the state passed a law requiring high schools to offer electives in African-American, Latino and Puerto Rican studies, thanks in part to organizing by Students for Educational Justice.

Participants said they’d like to see more teachers of color, more anti-bias training, more viewpoints on history, more civic engagement, more project-based learning and less standardized testing.

Rebecca Cramer, a parent at L.W. Beecher School, said schools need to ditch the ​“Hallmark curriculum of thinking about holidays” that borders on tokenism for a more comprehensive approach to teaching about other cultures.

Hanan Hameem, the founder of the Artsucation Academy Network, said schools need to teach kids to think, not just answer questions. She said that can happen by centering the arts, which allows for expression of ​“everybody’s genius and everybody’s narrative.”

And Alan Veloz, a New Haven Academy senior, said classes need to be ​“more active,” so that students ​“feel like they’re actually part of the education system.”

But as small groups dreamed big about what ​“joy and justice” might look like in the classroom, writing their answers on big sheets around the room, some teachers urged caution.

One said that the job is hard enough already without teachers being expected to ​“create all sorts of things out of the limited resources that we have.” She said that expectation is ​“not just problematic,” but borderline ​“rude and disrespectful.”

“How can we make it so you don’t have to be extraordinary to give our kids what they should have?” she asked.

Judy Puglisi, a former principal at Metropolitan Business Academy, said that teachers can use the structures that are already in place to demand change. They can use the goal-setting portion of their evaluation to ask for more resources, bring it to the union, and speak at the school board meetings.

Pedro Mendia-Landa, New Haven’s director of English language learner programs, said the school district is working on making stipends available for extra training and curriculum writing.

And Daniel HoSang, an associate professor of ethnic studies at Yale University, said that the changes didn’t have to be sweeping to make a difference.

“Where do you start? [Schooling] was structured in a history of domination to make it seem like it’s unremarkable. But the insubordination is happening all the time,” HoSang said. ​“Right away, there’s so many bottom-up possibilities. I’m struck that so many times when I ask students how they become interested, it was one teacher, one book, one gesture that turned them towards it. I think we have that capacity.”

While there wasn’t much disagreement in the room, the most common criticism of these ideas is that kids aren’t ready to have these conversations yet. Even if they’re older, critics add, schools are an inappropriate place to have them. They say kids are essentially being indoctrinated into one way of thinking.

endawnis Spears, the programing and outreach director at The Akomawt Educational Initiative, which helps educators teach about Native American history and contemporary issues, pushed back on that viewpoint.

She said that kids are still learning something, even when it’s not talked about directly. They are noticing differences, especially ones the broader culture highlights, but they might not know what to make of them.

“We then put the burden on the kids to figure it out,” Spears said. ​“We’re not being the adults in the room.”

Jesus Morales Sanchez, who trained peer educators with Planned Parenthood, backed Spears up, saying that the conversation can’t be avoided, because schools themselves are not a ​“neutral place.”

“They are affected by politics, 24/7, from the resources that a teacher gets to the content of the curriculum,” Morales Sanchez said. ​“Advocacy and education go hand in hand. It really is making sure that we’re holding those in power accountable for what we’re allowed to do in our schools and our communities at the same time.”