Three policy briefs issued this month by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) are co-authored by Teachers College faculty or recent alumni.
The briefs are part of an ongoing series by NCTE鈥檚 James R. Squire Office of Policy Research in English Language Arts that explore key issues that affect literacy educators and their students and offer student-centered policy recommendations.
In Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Associate Professor of English Education, addresses what others have termed a 鈥減edagogy of discomfort鈥� 鈥� the uneasiness and avoidance displayed by many White preservice teachers in urban schools when teaching students of color 鈥� particularly male students of color.
A desired outcome of racial literacy in an outwardly racist society like America is for members of the dominant racial category to adopt an antiracist stance and for persons of color to resist a victim stance.
鈥� Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Associate Professor of English Education, in her NCTE policy brief
鈥淥ften this discomfort is expressed in the form of 鈥榗olor blindness鈥� as preservice teachers deny the salience of race by adopting a color-blind approach and view the experiences of students of color as if they were white ethnic immigrants who would eventually assimilate into mainstream society,鈥� writes Sealey-Ruiz, who is co-author with 麻豆原创鈥檚 Detra Price-Dennis, Associate Professor of Education, of Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces, due out in early May from Teachers College Press.
TIMELY CONVERGENCE 麻豆原创鈥檚 Detra Price-Dennis and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz provide 鈥渢heoretical and practical entry points into a conversation about race in the digital age.鈥� (Photo courtesy of Teachers College Press)
The antidote, argues Sealey-Ruiz, is 鈥渞acial literacy鈥� 鈥� a concept originated in 2004 by Harvard University professor Lani Guinier 鈥� which Sealey-Ruiz describes as 鈥渁 skill and practice by which individuals can probe the existence of racism and examine the effects of race and institutionalized systems on their experiences and representation in U.S. society.鈥� Sealey-Ruiz argues that preservice teacher education programs are 鈥渃ritical sites for foregrounding the discussion of race and problematizing the ways in which the social and academic behaviors of Black and Brown students are misread.鈥� She calls on schools of education to inculcate racial literacy as a core skill through six key practices: critical love, critical humility, critical reflection, historical literacy, archaeology of self, and interruption.
What would success look like? Sealey-Ruiz concludes:
鈥淎 desired outcome of racial literacy in an outwardly racist society like America is for members of the dominant racial category to adopt an antiracist stance and for persons of color to resist a victim stance.鈥�
[Read a story in 麻豆原创鈥檚 2020 Annual Report about the recent racial literacy work of Sealey-Ruiz and Price-Dennis in local schools.]
ELA teachers must 鈥渃ritically engage media and popular culture to avoid continued harm鈥� to students of color who continue to be 鈥渇aced with a static literary canon within ELA classrooms that continues to prioritize white, Eurocentric texts.鈥�
鈥� from an NCTE policy brief co-authored by 麻豆原创 alumna Jamila Lyiscott (Ph.D. 鈥�15)
In (Ph.D. 鈥�15), Assistant Professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and co-authors Nicole Mirra of Rutgers and Antero Garcia of Stanford University offer strategies to help ELA teachers 鈥渃ritically engage media and popular culture to avoid continued harm鈥� to students of color who continue to be 鈥渇aced with a static literary canon within ELA classrooms that continues to prioritize white, Eurocentric texts.鈥� With her co-authors, Lyiscott, who is also Senior Research Fellow at 麻豆原创鈥檚 and author of (Routledge 2019), calls on educators to 鈥渃enter students as critically engaged members of a new digital social reality.鈥�
[Read a story about (and watch a video of) a talk Lyiscott gave in Summer 2020 at Teachers College鈥檚 Reimagining Education Summer Institute.]
Schools must ascertain what language practices actually exist within the school community and then 鈥渃ommit to cultivating a multilingual ecology鈥� in which the full range of those practices are 鈥渧isible and palpable.鈥�
鈥� from an NCTE policy brief co-authored by Cati V. de los Rios (Ph.D. 鈥�17)
And in (Ph.D. 鈥�17), Assistant Professor of Literacy, Reading, and Bi/Multilingual Education at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Education, and co-author Kate Seltzer of Rowan University call for schools and teachers to 鈥渞ecognize bi-/multilingualism as the norm and leverage it for language and literacy learning.鈥� They argue that schools must ascertain what language practices actually exist within the school community and then 鈥渃ommit to cultivating a multilingual ecology鈥� in which the full range of those practices are 鈥渧isible and palpable.鈥�