Antiracism 101 - Opening Session

This session will provide a general introduction to the concept of antiracism and what it means to be an antiracist educator.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Identify steps and begin the process of developing an antiracist lens.
2. Identify strategies to begin the process of becoming an antiracist educator.

Developing an Antiracist Mindset

The journey to antiracism begins with understanding what it means to be racist. This session will introduce racism as a societal construct. Factors that contribute to racism will be unpacked and examined within the context of how race intersects with gender, language, class, and religion. Additionally, participants are presented with ideas that support an antiracist ideology. Antiracism will be defined and explored within the context of critical race theory.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Define and distinguish between racist and antiracist.
2. Acknowledge the intersectionality of race on interrelating social categories.

This session will engage participants in understanding implicit bias within the context of a racialized environment. The influence of implicit bias on interactions with others and daily decisions will be carefully analyzed. Specific strategies to recognize and minimize bias will be shared along with strategies to address microaggressions.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Analyze contributing factors which lead to the formulation of bias.
2. Model practices to minimize implicit bias within a racialized environment.

Deepening our Understanding of Systemic Racism

This session will deepen our understanding of systemic racism by exploring race from a historical perspective. A thorough examination of how colonialism contributed to inequities imposed by the white race will be extrapolated as a contributing factor to systemic inequities.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Recognize how colonialism contributed to racial inequities.
2. Understand the pervasive nature of racism, at the individual, operates in a larger system and perpetuates systemic racism.
3. Acknowledge the pervasiveness of systemic racism within your organization and identify at least one action step to redress systemic racism.

Determining the Impact of Power and Privilege

This session will advance race conversations to assess the impact of power and privilege within organized systems. Critical to this assessment will be an exploration of whiteness, anti-blackness, and BIPOC; and how these social groups exercise power and privilege differently within the systems in which they operate. Additionally, participants will use an antiracist lens to formulate strategies to utilize power and privilege to dismantle racism.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Recognize the complexity of power and privilege exercised by different groups within organized systems.
2. Analyze how personal power and privilege can be used to support antiracism.

Dismantling Racial Disproportionality

This session will identify and unpack the root causes of racial disproportionality within the institution of schools. A review of the data will be presented and used to highlight racial inequities such as school discipline, special education, and gifted education. Participants will be challenged to apply an antiracist lens to identify a system, policy, and/or practice that contributes to an identified disparity; and devise a plan to actively work towards eradicating racism.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Develop a common understanding of how disproportionality operates within institutionalized racism.
2. Devise a plan to eradicate an identified racist system, policy, and/or practice within a school environment.

Designing Antiracist Student Supports

This session will identify supports needed in order for students to thrive in an antiracist school environment. The values normalized by the white dominant culture will be interrogated within the school context. Curriculum representation, assets-based instruction, and culturally relevant practice will be emphasized as promising supports to engage students of color.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Interrogate structures and practices that uphold the values of the white dominant culture.
2. Evaluate options to intentionally engage and support students of color.

Developing Sustainable Antiracist Environments

This session will build upon the knowledge of systemic policies and practices that perpetuate racism by analyzing current environments using an antiracist lens. Action steps will be developed to sustain antiracist systems.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Analyze the current work environment using an antiracist lens.
2. Identify actionable items needed to sustain antiracist policies and practices.

Doing the Work: Allies, Accomplices and Co-conspirators

The final session in the series will require a critical reflection of dispositions developed to support antiracist education. Participants will be challenged to move beyond allyship to more active engagement as accomplices and co-conspirators.

Learning Outcome:

1. Apply a critically reflective lens to analyze personal antiracist behaviors.
2. Identify opportunities to sustain antiracist actions.

This session will explore and unpack how to put anti-racism thoughts into practice in the education spaces. Participants will deepen their commitment to confronting racism and moving from talk to action.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the skills of interrupting racism.
• Develop networks of support and accountability
• Apply to practice how to sustain anti-racism work.

This session includes a review of the definition and understanding of race equity. Participants will reflect on how racial equity includes the concept of justice for communities that have suffered oppression through enslavement (African Americans), genocide (Native Americans), colonization (Puerto Rico and Hawaii), and theft of territory (Mexican Americans).

Learning Outcomes:

• Analyze how equity seeks reparation for those who are denied the same opportunities as whites due to a long history of legislated and institutionalized racism.
• Understand the intersections between racism and other forms of systemic oppression.

This session examines how implicit bias can turn even our best intentions into unwanted outcomes. This includes a targeted approach to address the negative effects of implicit bias and strategies to mitigate these systemic issues.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand how our biases reflect how we internalize messages about our society rather than our intent.
• Unlearn how one can form bias toward groups of people based on what we see in the media, our background, and experiences.
• Reflect how we internalize messages about our society rather than our intent.

This session will unpack how the legacy of colonialism and slavery contributed the inequalities existing in education. We will examine the ongoing realities of racism today, specifically how racism manifests in school culture.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify tools for dismantling institutional racism.
• Understand how racism and other forms of systemic oppression are still in existing in the education landscape today.

This session will examine how confronting white privilege is an essential step to addressing individual and systemic racial inequities in society. Participants will discuss how white privilege exists due to historical racism, enduring racism and pervasive institutional biases, which have significant impact within today's educational systems and society.

Learning Outcomes:

• Analyze privilege and its proximity to whiteness.
• Understand how privilege can be problematic, but can be used in advocacy efforts.

This session will take a deep dive into disproportionality in school discipline policies and practices. Disproportionality starts in the classrooms and cumulatively leads to visibly disproportionate patterns in schools, districts, states, and the nation as a whole. Participants will review research related to targeted school discipline practices and policies and make recommendations based on an anti-racist lens.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand disproportionality relating to school discipline practices and how they affect BIPOC students.
• Analyze research data of school discipline policies and practices and make recommendations.

This session will address how culturally sustaining curriculum frameworks can change the narrative of whiteness and Eurocentrism at the center of learning. Participants will explore curriculum that addresses social issues, including racism, linguistic racism, sexism, and economic injustice.

Learning Outcomes:

• Exemplify culturally sustaining anti-racist classrooom practices and perspectives.
• Recommend new ways to develop curriculum rooted in anti-racist ideas.

This session will address how educational programs, such as special education and gifted & talented, can function as racist mechanisms that segregate and oppress BIPOC students thereby impacting their social and academic outcomes. Participants will be engaged in discussions around how to identify and challenge these mechanisms through advocacy and action in their classroom and community.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify educational programs that function as racist mechanisms.
• Develop a plan of action for classroom and community to disrupt these mechanisms.

The final session in the series will have participants critically think and understand about specific behaviors and actions of co-conspirators. Participants will be challenged to create action steps to address the disruption of centering whiteness and how to advocate with anti-racist actions for BIPOC as co-conspirators.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify how to address whiteness and proximity to whiteness as a co-conspirator.
• Reflect on the rolls of co-conspirators as contributing to the deconstruction of systematic oppression.