Start here, start now-A guide for anti bias and antiracist work in your school community by Liz Kleinrock.
This is a super teacher resource book. It is simple to read, easy to digest and packed with practical ideas of how you can begin your anti-bias and anti-racist teaching in your school. The author thinks of all angles, it is clear she has worked in the classroom for some time and has wrestled with the challenges of being an anti-racist educator. She details any mistake she made in terms of her own culturally responsive practice as well so it never makes the reader feel inferior, which I know that, sometimes, I can feel I don’t know it all or I don’t know enough.
Chapter one is about where to start on your ABAR(Anti Bias, Anti Racist) work. She recommends, as does every other piece of research on the area of anti-racism, that you start with yourself and your identity. Defining what race is, defining your own privilege and viewing your students and families through an “assets lens”. This chapter gives plenty of teaching resources from “I am…” poems and “Identity maps”.
Chapter two deals with the teacher problem of not having the time to teach these lessons even though you might want to. She gives well thought out ways of integrating anti bias and anti racism into every curriculum area including PE where she details learning around body types and body shaming and movement with all body types.
Chapter three is the chapter that I am most interested in developing as my own practice and I would imagine the one content area that teachers need help with-dealing with difficult conversations in your class. What happens if a child says something racist about a person of colour, what happens if someone makes a homphobic comment? The author takes these exact scenarios and shows us how to move from a shaming of the student and a knee-jerk reaction to a “Calling in” conversation, one where both parties feel good about things. We are dealing with children and ignorance is to be expected on occasion. She talks about how we can try to open student’s minds to other perspectives but the need to interrupt when a child is blatantly racist but to think about how you would like to be called in if you had made a racist comment when you were a child.
Other chapters focus on dealing with parents and management’s possible negative reaction to ABAR, ABAR teaching and learning for young, developmentally appropriate work and finally STEM and ABAR.
This book is excellent if you don’t know quite where to get started. She gives you just enough practical activities to use but the space to think about ideas from a social justice point of view as well. Highly recommend it!