“Stay woke”—words of warning that blues singer Lead Belly sang in a 1938 song about the Scottsboro Nine (nine young Black boys who were wrongly accused of raping two white women in 1931)—have been used, in Black communities for over a century to remind us to be aware, to be careful. Over the decades, the phrase became more associated with being socially and politically aware of injustices. This phrase that encouraged awareness of and fighting against social injustices has in the past two-three years become the center of what popular media has coined the “culture wars”. A group of politicians (and parents) has waged an all-out “war” against wokeism, deeming it not a focus on being socially aware, but promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs which in some political circles are characterized as anti-white and anti-Christian. Anti-woke campaigns have dominated recent political campaigns in the United States and led to a backlash against DEI efforts. 

Educators, including Bread Loaf Teacher Network fellows, their students, and their communities, often have found themselves caught in the middle, and often the targets of these campaigns with new state laws banning “woke” content: anything about or by LGBTQ+ as well as content about racism or sexism. Think book banning, eliminating courses deemed too woke, and firing educators who are accused of promoting critical race theory. So how do our educators engage in transformative, socially just pedagogies in such a fraught moment? It was this landscape and that question that led to our 2023-24 BLTN theme, “Teaching and Writing in the Anti-Woke Moment: Stories that Sustain Us.” This theme created a space for us to share how we negotiate teaching in conservative, progressive, rural, urban, public and private school community spaces—to share our stories. Whether in partnerships between BLTN fellows and Middlebury College’s Beyond the Page theatre arts program, participating in the BLTN book club, bringing together classes from schools in diverse geographical locations, or forming collaborations between NextGen youth and community organizations, BLTN teachers are telling important stories that bring attention to how they and students have continued to innovate and collaborate during these challenging times. 

Teaching in the Anti-Woke moment is not the only challenge that we face. The growing narrative about the irrelevancy of school (secondary and post-secondary, especially) challenges us to persuade a broad range of stakeholders about the role of education, especially the humanities, in enhancing our lives. Yet, many teachers and students are experiencing degrees of alienation. Clearly, there are many contributing factors, political and social. This is not an issue for educators to take up on our own. It is a community-wide challenge that requires all of us to take it on. That brings us to our 2024-25 theme: “Making School Relevant: Teachers, Students, and Communities in Meaningful Collaboration.”  As we move into the 2024 summer session, we look to how we can collaborate and with whom to create and reimagine schools and our classrooms, be they traditional or nontraditional, as valuable spaces. 

Dr. Beverly J. Moss is the Director of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network and Professor of English at The Ohio State University.