Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools

"Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools" Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library

The film conveyed a topic on Abolitionist Teaching: "This teaching method, according to Bettina Love, comes from a critical race lens and applies methods like protest, boycotting, and calling out other teachers who are racist homophobic, or Islamophobic. She added that this method teaches about Black joy and always putting love at the center of the strategy. Abolitionist teachers encourage educators to talk about racism and homophobia in their classrooms; they organize marches and boycott," she added.

https://abolitionistteachingnetwork.org/

The Speakers Tina L. Love, Goldie Mohammed, and Tina Simmons expressed concerns that the current US curriculum is not responsive to the black histories and identities and their desired future selves. "The hiring practice does not reflect explicit, black-oriented questions to teach black students," Goldie Mohammed pointed out, "How we educate kids today is almost like how we have educated children in Europe in the 14th to 16th century."

Bettina Love quoted the social justice lawyer Derek Parnell explaining, "The idea of managing inequality is what we do in education, so we are in a position to remove inequality." Bettina explained that in Georgia, there is a program called "Beating the Odds." Beating the Odds shows how a school's performance compares to similar schools across the state. Beating the Odds is a statistical analysis that provides a contextual understanding of a school's College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI) based on student characteristics outside the school's control. The primary purpose is to complement the CCRPI as an accountability measure in performance contracts between schools or districts and the State Board of Education, including charter schools, charter systems, and Strategic Waiver School Systems (SWSS). She pointed out that this kind of program is not equitable for low-income students. "All these things are barriers, and instead of removing the barriers, you rather measure me against the barriers," she added.

Tina Simmons explained that "She is a proponent of Social-Emotional learning if it does not create harm. Good intentions do not reflect equal good outcomes, she mentioned. SLS is another way to distinguish between black children, brown children, and white children. The SLS labels them as children who do not know how to control themselves, and the SCL program should be applied to them to control their behaviors better." We are using tools that disenfranchise who are already disenfranchised, children. You are giving children trauma-informed instruction without addressing the trauma of racism and the trauma of white supremacy. We are putting a band-aid on to the root cause of the issue. We need to understand that whatever you apply to a school system right now, the way it is, seeking white whiteness and seeking white supremacy, can variably very quickly be used as a weapon. That brings us to the question of abolition. This word is out there in a way, and more people are thinking about it.

ABOLITIONIST TEACHING

The speakers explained the idea of Abolitionist Teaching.

What does it mean for schools? Are we talking about abolishing schools? "We are not trying to cancel buildings. We are trying to eradicate the conditions that make it possible to standardize tests to a point where I do not know what grade I am in anymore. We try to abolish requirements where they were not hiring black and brown teachers. Abolitionist teaching is about eradicating, not reform or to re-imagine. We want to cancel the conditions that perpetuate that oppression to Black around. When I say Abolitionist teaching, I think about not only defunding the police but no police in schools, therapists in schools, healers in schools. We are talking about building a curriculum and do away with standards, Eurocentric standards. Our babies do not learn about their history, culture, and the beauty of who they are,” Bettina explained.

The beauty of being an abolitionist is to have you know where Robin Kelly talks about this freeman dream, the brilliance of Harriet Tubman to lead revolts to be a spy to go back and forth like she was brilliant. Abolitionist teaching the one thing that you have to say is that my God looks at these people and if you do not see that in our little black babies, you cannot be an abolitionist. You cannot open your mom and say black lives matter; you cannot be an abolitionist. I am tired of hearing how to use my white privilege to help a black or brown person. My response is, "how can you be more human?" y. How can you be more human because this thing of abolitionists works in equity and culturally and historically responsive education is humanizing. Seeing humanity as one body and when one arm or lamb is telling. Oppression and marginalized hurt, and if you do not feel anything, you do not deserve to be called human.

Goldie Mohammed expounded that “We must abolish the state learning standards they are limited if we are going to repeal; we must cancel the teacher evaluation we have to repeal the curriculum. Connect with families and with communities and give them the power of their voice is crucial. How do we empower the families and let them know that their voice matters, and their voice can make changes? Hence, those are just little acts of resistance. Look back to all the literature level community organizing like that's what teaching is teaching should be revolutionary teachers should be community organizing and teacher teaching should be community driven, so that's little smart.”

Goldie Mohammed rationalized that, “For pedagogy we must create a culturally and historically responsive curriculum. We must revise or modify the curriculum that's given to us. So, I say while you do have that curriculum which is typically embedded in skills ask yourself like how this unit plan can help my students to learn something about themselves or others. By asking that question you are making the unit better. Ask yourself how this unit plan makes my students become smarter about something outside of equation citing textual evidence outside of the skills right when new people place things in my teaching. What kind of histories in my unearthing that they may not have learned about? How would this unit plan advance my students thinking about equity power and anti-oppression? If you are just teaching within this model that's already doing abolitionist work the model came from abolitionists it is a more advanced model so that's something that you can do. If you are a school leader you can change the interview questions you ask new teachers, you can change your mission statement. Is your mission statement just grounded in skills as achievement or is it also grounded in identity intellectualism and criticality? You can also collect the data you want to collect it does not have to be the state mandated tests if you want to know. How much your students have advanced in their identity development then assess it if you value it. Assess it collect the data. You tell your own narrative and do not wait for the administrators or anyone to tell you what your story is for the school. Ask what role do you think teacher unions could play in the overall project of abolition?

Tina rationalized that, “Destroying capitalism is a part of her freedom dream and part of the long-term goal. We have 50-year plan for freedom and anti- capitalism is part of that 5060-year plan towards freedom and you got to remember that this country was built off of stolen black labor.”

THE GUEST SPEAKERS

    

Tina L love is an award-winning author and the Athletic Association endowed professor at University of Georgia she is the author of we want to do more than survive abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom.

 Goldie Mohammed is an associate professor of language and literacy at Georgia State University she also serves as the director of the GSU urban literacy clinic she is the author of cultivating genes and equity model for culturally and historically responsive literacy.

Tina Simmons is an activist and educator and student of life from the Bronx NY she's the assistant director of the Yale Center for emotional intelligence and an associate research scientist at the Yale child study center she's the author of the forthcoming book white rules for black people.