“A flower does not bloom for itself, but for the world; do likewise.”

—Matshona Dhliwayo, Zimbabwean philosopher

When the bud reaches maturity, it slowly unfolds and opens up—it blooms. When the bud blooms, it is ready to produce a new generation. Likewise, we begin to reap what we have sown.

With a healthy, sustainable growth process, we yield fruit. With patience, consistency, and persistence, we begin to bloom and mature into the achievement of our potential. Over time, our buds unfold to reveal the beauty of our growth process. As you bloom, now is a great time to ask the question that people often ask first: What do I do next?

You have established a new normal. Now you can continue to build on what you have. You have settled into a practice that is sustainable and expandable. Remember that the growth process is cyclical, recursive, and seasonal. There will be seasons when evidence of growth is visible and seasons that seem fallow. During the fallow seasons, remember that rest is essential to the growth process. Farmers don't plant the same crop year after year. Some crops take more from the soil than others, so a different crop is planted the following year to allow soil to recover.

* * *

Tiffany, White Mom of Four

Dear former self,

I am so proud of you for taking the step to learn some hard truths about the realities of racism in America. I know it has been earth shattering. You feel anxious with the realities you see, the system in place that disadvantaged some that you didn't know you were a part of. You feel like you want to scream it out and fix it all at the same time. You are mad you didn't know this, that things were hidden from you. Good, all good emotions that come from this realization. Now you are fueled to want to make things better, but you don't know where to begin. It feels like you are playing catch up so you are frantic to do something important now. Should I march in the streets? Should I go around telling everyone how they are wrong? What do I do now?

This feeling is the first wave of change, but it is not the change you think. You want external change quickly but what really is happening is an internal shift. A shift in the way you see the world that also changes the way you interact with it. You smile at people you may not have even looked at before. You choose to be okay going to a store where more people don't look like you. You had always considered yourself a loving accepting person but you realized there had been some bias in your actions. Now you walk through the world differently, but it doesn't feel like enough, right?

To your amazement, you will start to experience another shift—a shift in attitude toward you. You will see family and friends start to feel uncomfortable with your choices, your stance, your voice. You will start to feel distanced and muted, and wonder what happened. You will learn that your shift can feel threatening to people around you and the way their world works. You want to pull back the curtain, but they prefer to not look. This part is painful because it is from people you care about. You valued their opinions in the past. This will be a fork in the road where you have to choose to either return to how things were or pursue this new path. But you know you can't go back, you can't unsee. So, you keep moving forward, wondering if you will be able to make a difference.

I have good news: You will! You need to see it for the long slow shift, like changing the course of a river. But changes will happen, and it starts in your home and in you. You are going to reexamine the school you chose for your kids and realize it is teaching a narrow viewpoint. You will remove them from the school you once thought so highly of and put them elsewhere. You are going to encounter many chances to face your own implicit bias with your children watching. You will have them at a play place where you see a large bus of Black children arrive and you are suddenly gripped with fear. Knowing what you know, you will pause, examine the root of that fear and see it comes from your childhood, when your mother ushered you off quickly from a playground when the “rough kids” arrived. You see how it all connects to become an implicit bias passed down probably for generations and you choose to not act on it. Instead, you sit there and look at each of the kids that just joined the fun and see them as you do your own.

“You probably like books” you think as you look at a young girl. “You might like basketball with my son” at another, “you might like science” to a third quietly in your head. And you make the fear dissolve with the truth that these are just kids, and your kids are fine. In fact, they are playing together oblivious to the burden you just released. It will be things like this that become the way you start living an antiracism life. And that is going to make ripples of change everywhere you touch.

So former me, don't get discouraged that you don't see change happening quickly. You are not in charge of the whole system changing overnight but you will be in charge of your whole world shifting to align with what you now believe. You will set your kids up to not have the same misinformation to continue the lies. You will break the cycle.

Love,

Your slightly wiser self

* * *

We have had the opportunity to spend years consulting, coaching, guiding, and supporting parents, teachers, teacher leaders, and children in homes, communities, classrooms, schools, and districts. Here we share about the fruit of our collective labor—what happens when you invest in and commit to a process of growing over an extended amount of time. In this chapter, we are sharing our recommendations based on our work, observations, challenges, and wins.

Tehia

I received funding through an institutional grant I applied for that allowed me to conduct research on how teachers integrate antiracism into their curricula. The project ran for 2 years and allowed me to build teacher efficacy around developing lessons through an antiracism lens. The grant allowed teachers to attend a 2-day racial equity workshop sponsored by a community organization. Following the workshop, we spent a year expanding content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and building lessons.

Within the 3–4-hour monthly meetings, my graduate assistant and I presented content, led discussions, and dedicated time for teachers to create. Time for creating was essential and protected. The teachers and I set goals and used the dedicated time to work toward accomplishing the goals. Throughout the month, the teacher cohort and I communicated back and forth about the content, pedagogical ideas, and assessments among other topics. Each month, teachers built lessons and units.

In 3–6 months, teachers experienced a complete learning cycle:

1. They developed their content knowledge on a topic that piqued their interest (e.g., the Reconstruction Era).
2. They designed a lesson or unit.
3. They located resources to use for their lesson or unit.
4. They had their lesson reviewed by a teacher in the cohort.
5. They had their lesson reviewed by me.

The teacher then taught their lesson to their students as I or the graduate assistant observed. Once we completed the cycle, we began all over again. That cycle occurred over the course of a school year. However, depending on the school or district, the cycle can take place in the summer. Teachers were compensated and supplied with the resources they needed. Teachers received classroom coverage so that this work could be done during the school day instead of after school.

As Teachers Bloom

As you create great lessons, use language that addresses and names race and antiracism. In a case during a professional development (PD) cohort, the teacher's lesson plan was thorough and included indicators of teaching historical accuracy. However, the conversation between student and teacher fell short. When learning about systemic injustice, the students asked a question, and the teacher's response did not provide clarity. For example, as she taught about the Civil Rights Movement, the teacher gave them the task of reading a children's book that represents that time period. Then they had to complete a sheet where students wrote facts about what they learned. At the end, there was a conversation between the class and the teacher in which the student asked why the White man was mean to Dr. King. The teacher framed the response around the idea that everyone should be kind to one another. By not explicitly naming how racism was a factor in how Black people were treated during the civil rights era, the teacher left space for the students to believe individual harm or bad behavior was the issue, instead of America's systemic and institutional oppression of its Black citizens. The teacher missed an opportunity. Though during the lesson plan design phase, we talked explicitly about how to name and talk about racism, this teacher reflected a low sense of efficacy.

Regarding teaching any topic, but especially antiracism, when a teacher's sense of efficacy or confidence is low, my data shows the following is present:

• Content delivery lives outside of the teacher. The lesson is delivered by a book, documentary, or website, for example, and becomes the driving source of information for the lesson.
• There is less teaching engagement and discussion about the content and more delivery of the instruction for a task to complete.
• Reflection or a synthesis of the lesson is missing, so students do not have an opportunity to share what they learned, and therefore the teacher does not have the opportunity to correct possible misinformation.
• A connection between historical and contemporary events is lacking, which prevents students from seeing relevance in what they are learning.

There is no book, documentary, or other video that can teach the full and complete lesson without you. Technology and activities cannot replace you as the teacher, for any content area—especially antiracism. You are there to facilitate learning and to fill in the gaps for your students. As the teacher, you must fully understand the content for yourself so you can scaffold your students. If you don't fully understand the topic or content, how will your students?

Even when you get content online, you should be prepared to fill in gaps for your students. There are not many commercial resources that address race, racism, and antiracism within the lessons. However, whatever you have or obtain, you will likely need to add the content that is missing from the prepackaged curriculum. You will also need to anticipate questions students may have, as well as be comfortable with explicitly answering them. If you are uncomfortable with the questions students are asking, here are a few responses you can use:

• I need to think about that more (then write the question down so you can respond later).
• Let's unpack that question, can you elaborate (if you don't understand what they're asking)?
• Let's write down all the questions we have so I can organize them, then talk about them tomorrow.

When you build your racial competence, your confidence for having conversations about race in your classrooms will increase. One high school teacher said, “The more I do it, the better I get!” In another example, a colleague who teaches math education wondered about how he could teach about justice and belonging as a White, cis male with young boys. He started small. One day in his primary mathematics class, instead of using generic data for the students to work on their math skills, he used data on race and policing. He wrote:

I had what I think was the most authentic conversation about race and police and math yesterday in class that I've been able to have. I still have a LONG way to go in learning to build spaces for courageous conversations, but I got feedback especially from my Students of Color that it was appreciated. And I couldn't have gotten even this far without you.

This reiterates that creating space and time for teachers to learn, think, and act not only increases efficacy but also positively impacts students. Because he is a part of a learning crew that meets often to read and discuss articles, conduct a book study, or just be in conversation with one another, growth occurs individually and collectively.

Unlike this math teacher, many teachers end up avoiding a topic or content altogether, which contributes to the miseducation of young people. We have to move past the fear and equip children to critically think and disrupt injustice when they see it. In his 2018 book Not Light, but Fire, educator and author Matthew Kay points out that because of their identities, many children hear the conversations or are living in that “uncomfortable” realm. Therefore, they can handle uncomfortable topics and books. Although we may be afraid or underestimate our young people, we still need to teach an American history complete with Black history, Native American history, women's history, queer history, and disabled history.

One teacher taught a lesson on WWII but focused on the Black military members. In the lesson, the teacher showed how the Black military men were treated better in Europe than in their home country—the United States. When they returned home, the Black soldiers were treated terribly. A student said, “Why and how did this happen? Why haven't I learned about this sooner?” We need to be willing and prepared to teach about our country's massacres—both historical and contemporary. We need to teach about wars, government, and capitalism. We need to teach about organizing, activism, joy, and resilience. This is our reality, our lived experiences; therefore, we should help children to think critically about them as well.

You can begin with one book, one topic, one anchor concept or idea. Move from idea to lesson. You aren't going to be able to do it all right now or today. We recommend starting small, be okay with trial and error, and then see how the outcome feels. How did it feel to teach that content? How did your students respond? Build your personal confidence in taking risks with new content. Unpack where you will start. As an example, let's start with how we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We often use a very sanitized version of Dr. King. Once we build our own knowledge base of who he was, we realize he was much more than his “I Have a Dream” speech. As you build your content knowledge about a more expansive understanding of Dr. King, use these questions to guide you:

• Whose voice is present? Whose voice is missing?
• What story is being told? Is it a complete story?
• What perspective is the content being told from?
• What questions have you prepared for your students?
• What questions can you anticipate from your students?

Read Dr. King's Letters from a Birmingham Jail, Why We Can't Wait, and Where Do We Go from Here as primary texts to understand how he felt. In most curricula available, we aren't taught about his brilliance, how he attended college at 16, and how he had a whole team who supported his work. One important part of his team was a gay man, Bayard Rustin. We aren't taught about how Dr. King had many Black celebrities who supported his work, or the close relationship he had with Malcolm X. We aren't taught about the intentional disruption of his movement by J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and their COINTELPRO (Domestic Counterintelligence) program. Learn more about how to expand your MLK lessons by reading As You Prepare to Celebrate Dr. King (2022) on Brownicity's website.

We can expand our resources to ensure we provide students with a narrative that allows who we are learning about to be seen in their humanity. Gholdy Muhammad's (2020) book Cultivating Genius provides a great equity literacy framework and acknowledges the brilliance that already resides in teachers and students. The equity framework includes identity development, skill development, intellectual development, and criticality. Muhammad's framework provides a lens to explore all of Dr. King and other topics, not just the mainstream perspective that is often and easily shared.

During the first year of the grant-funded research project (2018–2019), one teacher shared that for her curriculum revision she wanted to expand her Greek civilization unit. We had lots of conversations about multiple perspectives and historical accuracy, which allowed her to see the narrow scope of her unit. She realized she needed to include African, Indigenous, Latinx, and other civilizations, which would be time intensive. Because that unit was upcoming and would take more time than she had, she decided to go in a different direction. She landed on a unit about activists. Her list of activists was diverse in its approach to race, geography, linguistics, age, gender, and interest.

The teacher had her students draw names of activists and then research them, create a poster, and present their findings to the class. After all the presentations were complete, the teacher displayed the posters outside the classroom. The next day, the poster of Claudette Colvin, a pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement, was vandalized. Someone drew and colored Colvin's lips as oversized and red, essentially making her look like a caricature from a 1920s Jim Crow minstrel shows. The teacher was furious and sprang into action. She threw out her plans for the day and taught a lesson on blackface and caricatures of Black people during Jim Crow. She helped her students understand why it was wrong to draw exaggerated features on the poster and shared the historical terror behind their actions. It took work for the teacher to pivot and use the unexpected incident as a reason to go deeper. She not only had to make the time to learn more about Jim Crow Minstrel shows but also had to prepare herself for the potentially awkward conversation about it. Did she have to do it? Absolutely! It is a disservice to stay silent when we see racism pop up in our classrooms. She was not a bystander that day. This is justice in action.

Efficacious educators:

• Take risks with the content and with their students. They are willing to discuss topics that are not status quo and allow their students to also be experts or designers of instruction.
• Facilitate lessons with content continuity. There is a more organized series of lessons around antiracism versus the additive “special lesson” that is taught once and is fragmented from the rest of the curriculum being taught.
• Challenge students with what they have learned and connect it directly to how they treat themselves and others.
• Make the content relevant, meaningful, and useful.

As Teacher Leaders Bloom

Recognize that educators need time to learn, think, and process rather than being catapulted into integrating new content and practices. Teachers need time to practice what they have taken time to learn in the PD or participate in one that includes time within the PD to learn, think, and work. The work of justice and belonging cannot be solely shouldered on educators. They are already tired and overworked with not enough time to accomplish everything. Committing to justice means that you must nurture your educators and create a space for them to bloom. When educators are provided time to do this work and have time to attend to what is important, they are able to accomplish great things. Educators are professionals and like any other profession should get what they need to be successful and carry out the mission of the school. As we maintained throughout the book, this work takes time—time to learn and process what was learned, reflect on how to integrate into the curriculum, pedagogically deliver, and design success.

Also, teacher leaders, do you have a plan and protocol for how you will respond to resistant educators, parents, or other constituents? How will you protect your educators who are aligning with the vision for justice and belonging? When the email or phone call comes from the disgruntled parent, what is the protocol for response? Consider educating the parent about the values and mission of the school, talk to both the teacher and student to get their sides of the story. By default, many of us do not want conflict and unintentionally throw our colleagues under the bus to appease someone who opposes antiracism in classrooms.

Shifting institutional and leadership responsibilities to individuals without vision, direction, or support is harmful and irresponsible. A culture shift requires feedback and commitment from parents, teachers, teacher leaders, and the community. Often, individuals—even children—are left to confront and dismantle institutionalized behaviors and practices. In this common scenario, individuals may have a lot of passion but very little knowledge or experience. In Chapter 4, we addressed how BIPOC may be expected to do all the heavy lifting and emotional labor for educating while White people settle for being sidekicks. Or White people with the best intentions may slide into the White savior trope. With one new charter school, the mostly White board designed the school from the ground up. There were lots of listening meetings, but the community was not really involved in the meetings. This was brought to their attention but was dismissed.

Wanting to ensure that the teachers were thinking about and acknowledging ways to disrupt racial harm that had been done to students of color in schools, a colleague reached out to this school to ask about teacher interview questions. Hours were spent curating questions that we thought would ensure they hired racially competent and exceptional teachers. Ultimately, our questions were disregarded, and deficit ideologies exist at that school. There was a prime opportunity for a culture shift, but leaders chose not to take advantage of it. Furthermore, they asked a BIPOC to spend time composing questions, then completely disregarded those questions. It was clear the mostly White board had preconceived notions about the populations of students, and the White savior mentality became part of the school culture.

Schools may have a statement of valuing diversity, or even a statement prioritizing antiracism, but those statements must show up in the school culture. We stated in earlier chapters that performative behaviors have no place in antiracism. You have to decide what your position will be before a situation arises. Educators are harmed when there is no prerequisite work done to prepare for protecting them, in which case teachers are left to defend themselves. That is a surefire way to reduce the morale in a school, and leave educators scared of what to teach. That is the antithesis of what should be happening in schools where antiracism is a priority or deemed valuable. If teachers are upholding the mission and values of the school, support them in doing so.

Educators must be compensated and supplied with the resources they need to be successful. Compensation may be:

• Class coverage (so this work can be done during the school day and not after school)
• Payment
• Content area books (to build your content knowledge)
• Web access to a resource
• Conference attendance
• Mentoring
• Other needs that can be negotiated between teacher and administrator

Resources for your instruction can include classroom books, teaching supplies, subscription services directly tied to instruction, or other needs decided by the teacher. There is a distinct difference in our opinion between compensation and resources. Compensation adds to teachers’ skill sets and professionalism, and resources allow teachers to teach more effectively. Both are needed.

As Parents Bloom

Reading Tiffany's letter to her former self illuminates the hard work and time that has to occur at home. Reflect on what you've learned so far, and consider ways to share the content with your kids. Jennifer Harvey's 2018 book Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America gives insight on how to have conversations with your children as well as the other adults in your life who may (or may not) be on this journey. What have you learned that you can share with your children? What books, shows, documentaries, or moments can you experience with them, then unpack what you all know to ensure you are opposing racism?

Additionally, parents, this is also a great time to discuss how you can support your teachers. They are in schools risking their own livelihood to embody what we have been talking about in this book. Let your child's teacher know you are there to support them as they build the capacity for all children to be in a space that is just, and where all children belong. Begin with one email, phone call, or visit at the beginning of the school year or even before it begins. Here is an example email you can craft to make your own:

Dear [Insert teacher name],

I am [your name here], the caregiver of [your child's name]. I want to take a moment to let you know that we uphold the ideals of [school name], school where diversity, equity, and inclusion are valued [or whatever statement may be in the mission statement or value system]. In our home, we are working to help my child/ren understand what justice means and how it looks in our everyday lives, which means we discuss race explicitly. I want you to know that my family and I are here to support your endeavors to teach the students in your class about the world they live in so they are prepared to function in it. Here are a couple of websites I follow that help adults support children in developing racial literacy: [Brownicity and EmbraceRace—are examples, insert your resources]. Please let me know how I can support you in your classroom. I am happy to volunteer when I can.

In unity,

Family [Family Name]

You can send the email at the beginning of the year, but your work as a parent does not end there. You may also need to send a similar email to administrators. They need to know what you are expecting to happen in their classrooms. The sole risk of discussing justice should fall not just on the teacher but on the administrator as well to support teachers. Other actions we can take to support your child's teacher throughout the year is to:

• Send in books they can use
• Send in gift cards so they can purchase the books they need
• Use your social networks to connect them to people who have expertise or experience that can be used in the classroom

Most teachers are not getting all of the materials they need to teach their students. Most schools are cash strapped and have limited resources so may not see the value in purchasing books that address race. Many teachers are purchasing these items out of their own pockets. We are sure that you know that teachers are severely underpaid and are doing a lot of the justice work on their own time, which they are not being compensated for. If financial support is not an option, send in websites, documentaries, podcasts, or other digital resources you may find. Consider creating an electronic list of all the resources you find with your teacher so you have a shared document you both can access.

When your child comes home and they are so excited about what they learned or how what they learned was just put into action, please share those moments with both the teacher, and the school administrator. Teachers need to be affirmed, validated, and celebrated for teaching for justice and belonging! Similar to parenting, teaching is delayed gratification. Teachers, like parents, need to know about those moments when students experience them. Those moments are confirmation that we are on the right track. We need to see those sprouts!

Other actions we can take to support our teachers and leaders include:

• Attending school board meetings so you can stay in the loop of what is going on
• Emailing the school board members when they are proposing oppressive actions
• Joining your PTA

Yes, these recommendations are time intensive, but you don't have to do them all. Do not forget your crew. One parent can attend school board meetings, one can be on the PTA, one can send emails, and another can curate the resources list. Gather this crew and talk about what each of you have learned, and how to support one another. The people who want to suppress learning about race/ism in the classroom brazenly take up political arms in order to do so. Those of us who know that teaching and learning about race/ism propels us toward cultivating justice and belonging need to proactively, strategically, and boldly show up in political spaces so that our position is known. Our motivation to act should not be in response to fear tactics, but a move inspired by our heart for humanity and supported by evidence-based research.

The New Normal

You've got this! Take this journey moment by moment, day by day, month by month, year by year.

Tehia

I have been working with a local school district for several years on their text equity within their elementary English language arts curriculum. We began with working with classroom and school libraries. I wanted to make sure the books on the shelves and in the students’ hands offered the windows and mirrors we discussed in earlier chapters. Then we moved to classroom lessons. One teacher created an assignment where students had to find someone who made an impact on the United States that reflects their culture, race, or heritage. The teacher's rubric had the students’ name contributions and also how they were oppressed by an -ism. The teacher intentionally did not want students just to celebrate but also to name the hardships and identify the systems that caused the hardships. Another elementary teacher said, “Each month I am more engaged with learning more ways to improve my lesson plans with a cultural responsive text equity approach.” That excited me because I hear the increased sense of efficacy in their comments. After meeting with the group in January to prepare for Black History Month, I asked them in March how their Black History Month lessons went. One teacher said:

They really enjoyed it. They had never heard of Marian Anderson, but knew the author of the book because it was the same as Esperanza Rising, which we had read earlier in the year. They knew Jackie Robinson, and baseball was high interest for some of them. They also got really excited to make connections to the picture books that we had read throughout the year and identify challenges that other people had overcome in their stories.

The teacher helped the students make connections to their schema via the author and a previous story they read and used their interest areas to make the learning relevant to them. I was excited for the students. A highlight of my career is watching these same elementary teachers who attended my PD cohort discuss on a local news segment (about children and race) how they are ensuring text equity is present in their classroom every day.

Now we have expanded to working with middle school and high school ELA (English and language arts) and English as a second language (ESL) teachers on curricular planning with text equity in mind. They are doing phenomenal work. They have vertically aligned instruction for Grades 6–12 so all ELA teachers can see what diverse anchor texts are being read, how it aligns to Learning for Justice's social justice standards, and what activities and assessments will occur. See Appendix E for the Content Analysis document. They are doing powerful things, and I'm so fortunate to be the facilitator of it. Our next step in the PD process is to observe one another teaching the lessons designed for text equity. They want opportunities to learn from each other because the teacher brilliance is in the classroom next to and across from them. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing the blooms.

Similar to this school district who prioritized justice and belonging, it is up to us to define and create just and belonging spaces. As designers of education, we consider the whole learning process—attention, memory, language, processing and organizing, writing, and higher-order thinking. These components interact not only with each other but also with emotions, classroom climate, behavior, social skills, teachers, and family. We then align strategies and tactics. Mismatching a strategy yields no gains, frustrates students and teachers alike, and fails to produce the desired result. For example, educators know that stress, shame, guilt, fear, and rage cannot teach, heal, or restore anything.

We don't have to cultivate and grow in silos. And we don't have to hide our growth. We can connect and join forces with like-hearted families, teachers, and schools. Families and communities riddled with apprehension and confusion about antiracism need to see your growth and hear your stories. Our fruit can help them understand that antiracism education is about liberation and transformation not just for some children, families, or schools but for all children, families, and schools.

We are saying it again for the people in the back: Growth takes time, so make time to grow into antiracism to cultivate justice and belonging. Aligning inner work and desire to see the fruit of our labor with the natural process for learning and growing will help stabilize us. We can be rooted in community with others, receive support, share best practices and avoidable missteps, and encourage one another. Recently, Brownicity was attacked on social media by a popular right-wing conservative group. A local noisemaker attempted to earn battle credit among her peers by making false claims about our intentions. Fortunately, we are seeded and rooted in a community—social and professional—where our work is notable and celebrated. The accusations hurt our feelings but did not pause our progress. As a matter of fact, people were concluding that Brownicity must be doing great work if this group has targeted us.

Reflection and Practice