By Guest Contributor and Tumwater High School English Teacher, Emma-Kate Schaake

Humble Beginnings

Three years ago, our equity team was the new kid in school and we had all the hallmarks of not quite fitting in.

We dressed a little differently; Black Lives Matter shirts and rainbow pins. We asked questions while our peers rolled their eyes, understandably exhausted on a Friday afternoon. We visibly perked at the mention of data as everyone else sighed.

Together, we read articles, analyzed school data, and challenged our perspectives. We wanted to examine our privilege, change our classroom practices, and dream big for the future of our school.

Year one, we hosted a staff professional development session on white privilege and, let’s just say, it didn’t go well. People reacted defensively and resisted the very definition of white privilege. They then shared that we wasted their time, because our school is mostly white anyway.

 We had high hopes for systemic revolution, but progress on the ground was slow. We were asking staff to dig deep and examine what they knew about their lived reality, which was inevitably uncomfortable.

White Awakening

After our country added George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaed Arbery’s names to the long list of murdered Black Americans, there seemed to be a white awakening. This summer’s protest signs and disturbing videos sparked conversations about police brutality and anti-blackness. Even from a safe space of white privilege, the reality of what people of color have faced for decades was inescapable. 

We saw this reckoning in our school community too. In June, our high school principals hosted an equity zoom meeting and over 60 colleagues joined us; leaps and bounds from our group of five. We were there to grieve and to brainstorm into action: how can we be an antiracist school?

A year, or even six months ago, the word antiracist only really appeared in academic circles. If it made it to the mainstream, it sounded downright incendiary. But by June 2020, Ibram X Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist was a bestseller, and his work was redefining the racial conversation across the country, including in our school.

Kendi explains, “The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘antiracist….One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in between.”

This societal moment gave us a clear fork in the road. Continue as we have, loving our students and doing our best with the perspective we are comfortable with, or get uncomfortable and learn how to be antiracists and continue loving and fighting for our students.

Progress, Slow and Steady

Faced with this choice, teachers continued to meet for the rest of the summer. We wrote community values, brainstormed what equity would look like online, and created monthly opportunities for our colleagues to engage in reflective and communal equity work.

As Kendi says being antiracist is active.  “Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.”

Examining white privilege is essential to antiracist work because it cracks through the protective veneer around our identity stories. If someone is proud of their hard work and never taking a “handout,” it’s jarring to learn they didn’t get by on rugged individualism alone. But when we only praise our own achievements, we’re missing the bigger picture.

I have worked hard to get where I am today, and I also experience privilege as a white straight, cis, middle class female. Both of those realities can exist at the same time, and it doesn’t diminish my personal worth.

When our current news cycle is infuriating and terrifying, it’s all too easy to become passive, to fall back on complacency at our own powerlessness. But, our students need us to fight for them, do the work, keep learning, and have tough conversations.

In our last book study for Kendi’s book, my group named the necessity of white people staying engaged in this work. Yes, it’s uncomfortable to talk about race. Yes, we need to do it anyway.

Beyond that, we wrestled with the need to do more than talk and move into action, especially if our values are challenged or we meet resistance. We need to dig into our curriculum, question our colleagues, donate for change, and use our voices to vote. The learning curve for people with privilege, and white privilege specifically, is steep and often painful, but infinitely necessary.

Although this conversation didn’t solve a single headline, it was encouraging. This time last year, I wouldn’t have imagined having that authentic discussion with more than a trusted peer or two. Now, it’s part of our discourse on teaching, learning, and leading.

We are no longer the new kid looking for a seat at the table. We’ve made new friends and reaffirmed the value in our purpose. We don’t have all the answers, but we are asking the right questions.

About Guest Blogger, Emma-Kate Schaake

Emma-Kate Schaake is in her fifth year of teaching high school English in Tumwater, Washington. She is passionate about educational equity in curriculum design, classroom practices, teacher leadership, professional development, and student voice. She writes about her ongoing journey to unlearn myopic history, self reflect, and think critically about her role as an educator. She can be found on Instagram @mschaake.