Last year, my colleague LaShawn Routé Chatmon and I wrote this piece in EdWeek — “5 Steps for Liberating Public Education From Its Deep Racial Bias.” We made the case that in order to support the social and emotional well being of our students, we need to acknowledge and confront the legacy of racism and exclusion in our schools and communities — and its continued impact on all of our students. Doing so provides us with the opportunity to develop what Rob Jagers at the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) calls “Transformational SEL” — engaging our young people in a critical exploration of the issues that confront them and nurturing their sense of agency to lead positive change.
As we prepare to welcome students back to school it is critical that we take time to consider what has happened in the world, in the United States, and in each of our communities since our students were last with us. Our students are paying attention; they watch and listen to what we say and what we don’t say. Many of them will look to us for guidance and a safe space to make sense of the painful, frightening, and confusing things that have been happening in our country, at our southern border, in El Paso, Gilroy, Dayton, and in so many of our racially segregated communities plagued by violence...