Overview

Discussions of race relations in the high school classroom are an increasingly challenging yet integral part of fostering a more inclusive and empathetic society. As educators, navigating these conversations requires careful preparation, cultural sensitivity, and a commitment to creating a safe and respectful learning environment.

Below are suggested resources for educators on ways to facilitate conversations about race and social justice within the classroom. These resources draw from the expertise of fellow scholars and educators who have dedicated their work to understanding and addressing issues of racial equity in education. While these materials offer specific insights and strategies, they are not exhaustive, nor are they intended to serve as definitive guides. Instead, they represent a foundation upon which educators can build, adapt, and refine their approaches based on their own classroom dynamics and the needs of their students.

It is important to note that successful discussions of race and social justice require a classroom predicated on mutual respect and reciprocity between teachers and students. Educators must remain open to learning alongside their students, acknowledging that these conversations can be deeply personal and evoke a range of emotions.

For Educators

Afeni Mills, Afrika. “A Letter to White Teachers of My Black Children.” Teaching While White, June 2019.
This open letter was written by Afrika Afeni Mills who is an adjunct professor of education at Boston College. In this letter Afeni Mills asks white educators to consider the shortcomings they have had in their own education of the Black experience in America and how they may be continuing this cycle by not teaching themselves and their students about racial oppression currently.

Atkins, Melanie-Anne, et al. “The Healing Is Mutual: Students as Partners in Anti-Oppressive Education.” International Journal for Students as Partners, vol. 6, no. 1, May 2022, pp. 128–36.
This article is a reflective essay written by two college students and their professor and discusses how they all engage in an anti-oppressive pedagogical framework by acknowledging both the teacher and the students as change-makers within their classroom.

Banack, Arianna. “Discussing Race, Policing, and Privilege in a High School Classroom.” Bank Street Occasional Paper Series, vol. 44, no. 11, 2020.
This article is written by a white, female ninth-grade English teacher and discusses her implementation of a multicultural unit and the reactions and conversations that she and her culturally diverse students had about the texts that they read as well as her process for developing her curriculum.

Caingcoy, Manuel. “Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: A Systematic Overview” (PDF). Diversitas Journal, vol. 8, no. 4, Oct. 2023, pp. 3202–12.
This article provides an overview of the scholarship that has been written on culturally responsive pedagogy, which forwards acknowledging the diverse backgrounds of students and incorporating their perspectives into the content and pedagogical styles found within the classroom.

Cooper, Patricia. “Effective White Teachers of Black Children: Teaching within a Community.” Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 54, no. 5, Nov. 2003, pp. 413–27.
This is a qualitative study of three white public-school educators who were nominated as key educators in Black communities and their beliefs and pedagogical practices toward antiracist education.

Wright, Zachary. “I’m a White Teacher and Here Is an Opportunity I Use to Discuss Race with My Black Students.” Philly’s 7th Ward, 2017.
This is a short article written by a current white educator in a predominantly Black school district, who discusses his personal beliefs and standards towards being an educator in this setting.

For Majority White Classrooms

Anthony-Stevens, Vanessa, et al. “‘Race Is Not Really a Thing’: Race Talk Dilemmas in Predominatly White Classrooms.” Journal of Research in Rural Education, vol. 38, no. 3, 2022.
A qualitative research study about a white rural educator teaching an interdisciplinary unit on African American narratives of enslavement and freedom fighting to a seventh-grade class. The piece also gives a substantial overview of current discussions of critical race studies and pedagogy.

Bartoli, Eleonora, and Ali Michael. “What White Children Need to Know About Race.” National Association of Independent Schools, 2014.
Discusses the theory of “white racial socialization” and how it manifests within educational settings and ways in which educators and parents can attempt to circumvent this naturalization.

Shafer, Leah. “Talking About Race in Mostly White Schools.” Usable Knowledge, Graduate School of Education, Harvard, 2017.
Provides tangible questions about positionality and race to ask in a predominately white classroom as well as suggestions of how to implement discussions of race into the curriculum itself.

For Facilitating Classroom Discussions of Race

Furr, Susan, and Stephen Burton. “Conflict in Multicultural Classes: Approaches to Resolving Difficult Dialogues.” Counselor Education & Supervision, vol. 53, June 2014, pp. 97–110.
This study asks educators how they would utilize conflict management tools within multicultural courses. The responses are deeply varied and provide a multitude of tactics for handling such situations.

Vetter, Amy, and Holly Hungerford-Kressor. “‘We Gotta Change First’: Racial Literacy in a High School English Classroom.” Journal of Language & Literacy Education, vol. 10, no. 1, 2014, pp. 82–99.
This qualitative study looked at a peer group within an eleventh grade language arts classroom and how this group went about discussing race for one of their assignments.

Wicht, Sara, et al. Let’s Talk: Facilitating Critical Conversations with Students. 2nd ed., Learning for Justice, 2022.
This forty-page text is broken up into two parts. The first talks about ways to set up a classroom culture that invites difficult and nuanced conversations. The second provides ways to facilitate these conversations within said classroom.

Williams, Jasmine. “Exploring Equity Issues: Facilitating Race Talk in the Classroom: Lessons from Student Experiences.” Center for Education Equity, 2018.
This short piece gives a literary overview of discourse regarding discussions of race relations in the classroom. It also provides some practical steps for preparing for classroom discussions of race.

Developer Biography

Darian Wilson is a graduate student in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with an emphasis in literary and cultural studies. Her current research involves mapping the intersections of childhood, nationalism, and carceral educational systems. From this map, she wants to examine how this may culminate in the current construction and surveillance of neurodivergent personhood. Most recently she presented an essay on the socialist possibilities of neuroqueer rhetorics at the Northeastern Modern Language Association. Pronouns: she/they