BLTN: Changing Lives and Changing Systems
0May 28, 2021 by BLTN Staff
Bread Loaf Teacher Network fellows compose reflective reports at key moments in a year. At the close of summer, they reflect on their BLSE course learning and they propose collaborative plans for projects and exchanges in the year ahead. At mid-year, they share their learning from the first half of the year, often using that occasion to adapt to the realities of the school year (some years more “real” than others!). Finally, they close out their fellowship year with a retrospective report.
We’re often amazed–as we track the work of BLTN teachers–at the broad reaching impacts of fellows’ teaching plans. It turns out that thoughtful plans for collaborative learning and equitable anti-racist practices not only change student lives, but they also tend to move systems in the direction of empathy, equity, and humanity.
The slides below capture seeds of system change planted by several of our 2020-21 BLTN Fellows. After the slides, we highlight the work of two Massachusetts fellows, Genithia Hogges and Kurt Ostrow.
BLTN Fellows Seeding System Change
I advocated for the removal of a text from the first unit of our district curriculum. The text included racial slurs to describe migrant workers. I suggested replacing it with interviews with California migrant workers. The change was made, and I subsequently served alongside content specialists as a table captain in a district-wide professional development session. I participated in developing and leading PD sessions for white colleagues on ways to unpack our privilege and dismantle white supremacy in the classroom. —Anna Russell Thornton, Houston, TX 
I am a member of the district Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning committee, responsible for providing professional development and programming to encourage a more culturally responsive curriculum and school environment. I am the committee lead at my school and organize school-specific professional development modules, small-group meetings, newsletters, and various initiatives. Our current focus is on helping faculty members become more aware of their students’ cultures and how to celebrate and incorporate them in the classroom. In the future, we would like to create a student group to lead school discussions and various initiatives. -Hillary Howard-Fredrick, Nicholasville, KY 
I curated readings and materials to create an identity class at Lawrence High School that I intend as a supplement or a replacement to mandated curriculum. The school year has been all remote with a focus on Project Based Learning. I was able to incorporate Cruz Medina’s digital storytelling project to create a name identity project where students interviewed their parents about their names. After learning about their names, students prepared and presented their name stories to each other. …The seniors I am working with are doing a civic project and I will be using “What’s the Story?” to help students see examples of social action projects. -Yulissa Nuñez, Lawrence, MA 
I am currently on the Freshman Curriculum Alignment committee which is developing a differentiated and culturally responsive curriculum that will be piloted and rolled out when we make the transition to de-tracking our freshman English classes. (Currently our English track placement is inequitable and racially predictable, so this is really important work.) As a teacher with expertise and experience creating very scaffolded curriculum for students who struggle with executive functioning and literacy skills, I am a fierce advocate for a curriculum that holds those foundations, while creating a common experience. I am in the process of developing the curriculum for the new LGBTQ Voices elective at my school. I proposed the course this fall and it was approved!! I am SO HONORED to have received a Dixie Goswami Action Grant to support this work! -Liz Farrow, Oak Park, IL 
In my BLSE summer course, Professor Wandera emphasized the importance of culturally responsive pedagogy as part of our learning. I have since then utilized the same readings for my English I Honors course with great success and response from the students. All my English I students ended that introductory unit by creating a formal letter critiquing their educational experiences. Their reflections addressed the theme of culturally responsive teaching and the strengths and weaknesses they observed at SFIS, along with recommendations for inclusion and change at the school. Their suggestions ranged from creating more language based classes, learning and teaching about other cultures besides Indigenous Peoples (one of the main educational focuses of SFIS), and implementations of cultural exchange programs, to name a few. —Michael Martinez, Santa Fe, New Mexico 
Following the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, I was part of a group of teachers who started the Biddeford Equity and Race Advisory Committee (BERAC), which is a community of teachers working to increase racial equity in our district. Over the summer, we revised a policy on teaching about controversial issues and created two new policies related to equity goals, all of which have been officially adopted by the school board….Our district invited BERAC members to participate in a multi-week racial equity training run by New Hampshire Listens, which gave us the opportunity to talk about issues of equity and privilege with school administrators. —Veronica Foster, Biddeford, ME 
With a thematic focus on identity in our English 1 courses, we introduced the inclusion of a unit that explored the relationship among language, race, and identity to our fellow freshmen English colleagues in our building and have since been collaborating on its design using Dr. Baker-Bell’s book _Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy_…. The unit as outlined in _Linguistic Justice_ importantly “offers ALL [our] students and [ourselves] a critical linguistic awareness of Black Language and windows into broader conversations about anti-Blackness, racism, and white linguistic hegemony” (Baker-Bell 100). -Collin LaJoie, Kansas City, Kansas 
I began a journey of curricular and pedagogical reflection and introspection…. Each year, Bread Loaf continues to heavily influence my content, design, and delivery. The development of the identity, race, and language unit using Baker-Bell’s text … inspired me to go to many of her cited sources as well. What would it look like to put the English 1 course as a whole into conversation with bell hooks and James Baldwin? What would Geneva Smitherman say about the ways in which language is employed by the curriculum? By me? While my colleagues teach year-long English 1 courses, I teach two year-long and two semester-long English 1 courses. As such, our Professional Learning Community has been able to do a kind of back-and-forth dialogue and series of iterations made possible by the varied pacings. —Whitney Morgan, Kansas City, Kansas 
I’ve been given the opportunity to serve on the ELA Assessment Development Committee for the Massachusetts DOE. As a team of 12 BIPOC educators we’ll be providing feedback on the state assessments that are part of the graduation requirements for high school students. While I’m still learning what the work in this role entails, it has given me something else to look forward to and be excited about in relation to my work outside of my day-to-day job. —Mery Lizardo, Lawrence, Massachusetts 
I presented on anti-racist teaching practices this fall to all the Bellows Free Academy faculty. There wasn’t anything on anti-racism in our in-service schedule, so when there were openings for teachers to share something, I went for it. I used what I learned last summer from my tutorial with Andrea Lunsford and from BLTN, as well as Robin DiAngelo’s book _White Fragility_, Ibram X Kendi’s book _How to be an Antiracist_, and Isabel Wilkerson’s book _Caste_. I thought the presentation went pretty well, considering it was my first one ever, and we had some good conversations. It led to a few other teachers and me building interest in a social justice club at BFA, which I plan to help out with in the fall. —Hannah Mangham, St. Albans, Vermont 
My school colleagues and I have been using Layla Saad’s _Me and White Supremacy_ to structure book study discussions among our staff. This book study initiative was inspired by my summer seminar with teacher-researcher-activist Dr. April Baker-Bell. I enjoy hearing different voices gain confidence as the Circle Way enables “a leader in every chair.” Hosting this book circle for other Bread Loafers has made for more meaningful connections as we realize the limitations to personal reflection in professional settings. We enjoy the commonalities we have as educators and readers while relishing the comfort we have to express ourselves freely in our own homes. In a profession that loves ready-made solutions, these circles invite the uncertainty and questioning that go with slow, sustainable change. —Leslie Schallock, Verona, VA 
I have been using “the circle way” suggested by Saad in _Me and White Supremacy Workbook_ to facilitate a book discussion group and the conversations have been insightful. The emphasis in “the circle way” is on a non-hierarchical approach based on compassion and curiosity. No one voice is allowed to dominate over others and the responsibility is shared amongst all members for the quality of experience. While I had previously read the book, I have found discussing the learning together with a group to be much more powerful than individual reflection. Leslie Schallock and I offered a similar digital circle to BLTN members who are white or hold white privilege. Our BLTN circle has been meeting weekly to dig deeply into one small piece of the book each week. It’s been valuable to work with fellow educators and Bread Loafers as often our discussion of white supremacy relates to our practice. —Alex O’Brien, Essex Junction, Vermont 
I am currently teaching a new course, Cultural Diversity and Identity, which I planned during the Fall semester. We are learning about Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Marxism, Feminist Theory, Critical Disability Studies, and Colonialism and Neo-colonialism. Students are using these lenses to “uncover” hidden structures in American society and analyze how they contribute to individual and community identity formation. —John Hall, Louisville, Kentucky
Genithia Hogges: Kindness and Justice
From January through April, I have been responsible for designing advisory sessions for all grade levels. The themes chosen by the administration are kindness and seeking justice (two of the school’s six values), so I have designed a series of sessions that build from self-compassion (as a component of positive identity) to kindness towards others, and then to seeking justice. The sessions also invite advisors and advisees to do family interviews and share about where they and their families are from and what brought them to the United States. This provides all of us – students and adults alike – with the opportunity to learn more about our family heritage and allows us to share about the ways in which we are unique and the things we have in common. I’m hopeful that this sort of sharing will lay a foundation for authentic learning communities among students and faculty and move us in the direction of Restorative Justice to replace our school’s current demerit-based behavior management system.
Here are two slide decks from the series, the first emphasizing kindness and a growth mindset, and the second, from later in series, connecting identity, family history, and social justice.
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Kurt Ostrow: Stories from the Inside
Kurt Ostrow, who teaches at BMC Durfee High School in Fall River, MA, reported, “As part of the Diversity and Equity labor-management committee, I am facilitating a Storytelling for Social Justice workshop with 16 participating educators in the district; we are writing and sharing stories about our lives, inspired by stories written by my former students. The high school will also be offering Afro-American Studies next year as an elective, building on the ethnic studies program we launched last year with Latinx Studies and LGBTQ Studies.”
Kurt’s publications influence educators from BLTN, to the national and international audiences of WBUR in Boston, Rethinking Schools, and The New York Times. Kurt wrote in February, “I published an article in Rethinking Schools — “A Field Trip to the Future” — about a creative writing lesson on police abolition, part of my Another World is Possible unit. I presented on something similar at BLTN, and Cole Moran and Shaleisa Brewer have shared with me that they took some of my prompts and ran with them! I loved hearing that.”
Kurt shared some of the other articles he published this year, particularly about teachers’ access to the vaccine and the role teachers can play in the broader vaccination campaign. With Emily Berman — a high school science teacher in Chicago public schools — he then designed an interdisciplinary lesson set designed to boost students’ confidence in the vaccine, a version of which appeared on the New York Times Learning Network.
As Kurt transitions from high school teaching to an MFA program at The Ohio State University, we asked him about how publishing and sharing curricular innovations have mattered to him in his secondary teaching practice.
“My boss always says she thinks I’m going to become an administrator someday. She’s wrong about that, but she’s right that I hope to make change beyond the four walls of my own classroom. I see the teachers union as my primary vehicle for that — and now writing, too. After I study creative nonfiction, I hope to return to the high school English classroom in order to continue to tell stories of public education from the inside.”
Category BLTN Teachers, Featured, Spring 2021 | Tags:
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