The Anti-Racist Professional Learning Community
Many of us spent time during the summer engaging in anti-racism. Now what? How do we put into practice and continue our commitment to antiracism this upcoming school year?
Districts, schools, and other professional learning communities (PLC) will start the school year with goal setting. This is an opportunity to engage and commit to antiracism as a community.
In “The Anti-racist PLC Goal Setting” document we combined Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Framework with Educate to Empower’s Discover, Liberate, and Empower approach.
The process outlined in the Anti-racism PLC Goal Setting document will guide your PLC through goal setting that is rooted in antiracist pedagogy. It will foster opportunities to reflect, identify, and define your antiracist commitment for the year and will help you build a space that normalizes antiracist discussion and reflection. The final step will empower your PLCs to set goals by identifying 2-4 of Learning for Justice’s domains and standards. Together, you will liberate yourselves and work to build classroom environments and school communities that are decolonized and culturally sustaining.
As your PLC engages in antiracist and critical pedagogy, expect discomfort and welcome growth. Have your PLC engage in creating agreements to establish a safe space for courageous conversations.
In the words of James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” As your PLCs face and commit to antiracism, you are engaging in one of the steps necessary in disrupting and dismantling systemic racism in our school system.
Together, we will liberate ourselves from prioritizing skills and content over social justice. In PLCs nationwide, we will use identity, diversity, justice, and action as our guiding principles to discover, liberate and empower one another.
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Virginia Nguyen is a teacher and advocate with over 15 years of K12 experience in Illinois and California. Stacy Yung is a teacher and instructional designer with 12 years of experience in teaching and leadership. Together, they founded Educate to Empower, a professional learning resource for teachers interested in combatting racism and deepening our understanding of culturally responsive teaching.