How the #DisruptTexts Movement Can Help English Teachers Be More Inclusive
Katrina Schwartz in an interview on KQED an NPR station in San Francisco on January 5th , 2020
According to Ms. Schwartz, most English teachers love to read and share the literature that has touched them over the years. They want their students to value and love reading, too.
But sometimes the books adults love aren’t the stories that resonate with young people, for all kinds of reasons. As U.S. classrooms become more racially and culturally diverse, many students don’t see themselves reflected in the literature their teachers hold up as worthy of study, stated Ms. Schwartz.
The recent National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference offered numerous sessions featuring authors with traditionally marginalized identities, as well as teachers who are working hard to change how and what they teach.
Almost every session with this focus emphasized that educators interested in doing this work need to first examine their own beliefs and biases before jumping into the work.
Some of the leaders of this conversation are four educators of color– Tricia Ebarvia, Lorena Germán, Kim Parker and Julia Torres. They’re the founders of the #DisruptTexts Twitter chats and website, and authors of a forthcoming book.
Every Monday, they post reflection questions about texts commonly taught in high school under the hashtag #DisruptTexts. Over the course of the week, teachers respond to the questions, and engage with one another, in a “slow chat” that doesn’t require everyone to be online at the same time. When the chat is over, the organizers archive the chat and summarize some of the reflections and ideas that emerged.
“It’s about creating an equitable and inclusive curriculum, notice that I did not say diverse,” said high school English teacher Tricia Ebarvia, as she kicked off a session about the core values of the #DisruptTexts movement in a packed ballroom at NCTE.
Ebarvia urged educators to think carefully about the message their current curriculum sends to students about whose voices and stories are worthy of academic study.
Now folks, we have been teaching the writings of the Greeks and romans for over 1000 years.
I would like to know how these people now think that they have the power to determine what is worthy of academic study.
Ebarvia and the other founders have seen enough interest in this conversation that they’ve distilled it into four key pillars of their movement.
Pillar #1: Continuously interrogate our own biases to understand how they inform our teaching.
“Folks tend to skip over the necessary stage of interrogating themselves before jumping into diverse texts,” said Julia Torres, a #DisruptTexts founder and teacher-librarian in Colorado.
Bias often shows up in knee-jerk reactions to discussions about changing the texts students read. And if teachers haven’t considered the factors that influence their thinking, or how their experiences and upbringing might inform what they do in the classroom, then adding new texts to the curriculum won’t be as transformative for students as it could be. After all, teachers set the tone; they’re the models and wield power over students’ lives.
“Literature written by white authors tends to exclude or misrepresent the experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color),” Torres said. “We want own-voices texts. And there are lots of authors who will back up that desire.”
She also urged teachers to think carefully about how much space they create in their classrooms for students to voice discomfort with specific texts or their opinions about alternatives. “We have to really consider how are we rewarding conformity and punishing resistance,” Torres said.
As teachers dig into self-exploration work at the foundation of the #DisruptTexts movement, Torres boils it down to five points:
- Figure out where you are. Be honest about where you are. Recognize people won’t all be in the same place.
- Look for tools that will help you expand your world with your students. Listen to students.
- Be honest with yourself about whether you’re creating ways for students to push back safely.
- Consider ways to empower students by involving them in the practice of decolonizing thinking.
- Recognize the ways we are all complicit in perpetuating systemic oppression and consequently responsible for dismantling it.
Pillar #2: Center black, Indigenous, and voices of color in literature
A quick search of the most commonly read high school texts turns up a lot of white male authors: Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Poe, Hawthorne.
“So much of our literary canon is centered on the white gaze and written by white male authors,” said Lorena Germán.
The dominance of white-authored texts in the curriculum is a problem for Germán and the other #DisruptTexts founders. They don’t see those stories connecting with their students, and worse, some of those stories actively exclude their students.
“It is for white people, by white people, and about white people,” Germán said. “That is the message that is received. That is the message I received in school.”
Germán urged teachers to find books that explore “the intersections and the margins,” to look for complex identities that resist stereotypes. She’d like to see teachers fill what Ebony Elizabeth Thomas calls the “racial imagination gap,” the implicit message, even in fantastical works, that people of color are the villains and monsters.
Intentionally replace some texts. “There are some books that in and of themselves are problematic,” Germán said. “They feature characters that are straight-up racist or sexist. That is true. We can replace those texts.”
Pillar #3: Apply a critical literacy lens to our teaching practices
“It’s not just about having a checklist of diverse books,” said Tricia Ebarvia.
Ebarvia explained that at its core, critical literacy is understanding that the world is a socially constructed text that can be read and analyzed like other texts.
“There is no neutral,” Ebarvia said, which means school is not about acquiring knowledge, but rather thinking deeply about the meaning we ascribe to that knowledge.
Critical literacy is not a unit of study, but rather a way of reading the world. When teachers help students to read the world critically it can open up powerful conversations. It may even give students permission to share their lived experiences, or ways they do and don’t see themselves in school texts, in unexpected ways.
Pillar #4: Work in community with others, especially BIPOC
“Community is built on accountability,” said Dr. Kim Parker. She urged educators to work at de-centering whiteness in schools and in the curriculum.
She called on white educator allies to lift up the voices of BIPOC colleagues, especially those who don’t already get a lot of attention.
“We’re not trying to save anyone,” Parker said. “We’re trying to be in service with.”
That means honoring the knowledge and power in the community, the connectors, and the ways of getting things done. Be humble. Listen.
She called on white educators who believe in this work to stand up for it to administrators, parents, and other teachers.
So there you have it folks. We have already seen how political science and history are slowly being removed from the classroom while statues are torn down in nearly every public square in America.
Now we see this new movement designed to remove the writings of the greatest minds in the history of all mankind, simply because of the race or ethnicity of the authors.
Is this benefitting or harming our children?