About five years ago, the Teacher Activist Group in Boston, MA invited me to speak at their 7th annual Boston-Area Education for Social Justice Conference. I had already been there a few times for keynotes and bore witness to the significantly evolving teacher activism landscape over those years, including the ascension of teacher-activist Jessica Tang to the president of the Boston Teachers Union. Sometime after my speech, the organizers asked me to sign books, which I was more than happy to do. At the tail end was a Black woman teacher who spoke to me at length about the state of schools for Black children. One thing she said stuck out to me to this day:
“Back then, the value of a Black teacher wasn’t just diversity. It’s because we were invested in expanding our children’s minds. My teacher was showing us various ideas from around the world, including world history and socialism. So many ideas and, even when we didn’t agree with them, we were better for having learned what they were about.”
Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.