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Current Year: '25-'26 School Year
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- September: What is keeping us together, focused, and motivated to do this work in 2025?
- October: Revisiting the Helms White Identity Model
- November: Learning from White Anti-Racists of the Past
- December: How can we identify and challenge white supremacy culture in ourselves and our institutions?
- January: How can we create classroom culture that resists white supremacy and that nourishes Black joy?
- February: How can we co-create joy with students?
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Current Year: '25-'26 School Year
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February Staff Pick: Lily on Joy (March 2021)
https://www.barwe215.org/march-how-can-we-identify-and-challenge-white-supremacy-culture-in-our-classroom-culture-how-can-we-co-create-joy-with-students.html
Essential Question: How can we co-create joy with students?
If this is your first year doing this series, you might consider using our Inquiry Series 3 material for the year or hosting an orientation meeting using our September material before moving on to the current month.
Don't forget to talk back!
Overview:
In preparation for sending this message to all of you about my pick of the month, I decided to try out this month’s ask with my third grade students. I wondered, what would happen if I asked my students about how we could have more joy in the classroom? Would even just asking the question, allowing for there to be transparency in my goals as a teacher, bring more levity into the cold winter days as we returned from the break?
I began the morning meeting with a pass-the-greeting of, “Have a joyful day ____!” Then I shared that I needed their help with my homework assignment. I explained that at my teacher meeting last night we talked about how we want to ask more teachers to work with students to make their classrooms happier places, and I wanted teachers to ask their students directly what they would want to see in their classrooms. Then I shared that I needed to test things out with them. I had them on board, their eyes showed their excitement about being asked to do something important. I drew the Y chart on the board, and asked them to share what it would look like, sound like, and feel like to have more joy in the classroom. I wrote everything they said, and prompted very little. Of course things got a little pie-in-the-sky, as you can see from the picture, but a few things resonated deeply with me that I want to point out.
They want things quiet and they want to be able to yell. They want to play on their computers, to watch tv, to eat ice cream. They want to feel respected, to make eye contact with each other, to be laughing. What I took from this was that they wanted some freedom to be kids, to do things that kids do, and to have some of their choices for how they want to act be accepted.
I’ve been mulling over this activity with my students a lot this last week. What it boils down to for me is that we ask so much of our 8 year olds. So, so much. And I’m committing to laughing with them, to offering them spontaneity, and to giving them every ounce of power within their school day that I can. And, asking them to guide me when I get bogged down with all the rules and regulations made by people that may never have even spent a day in a classroom full of 28 children.
This focus simply on joy may feel difficult to pivot to following weeks of beautiful anger and connection in action in Minnesota and around the country, and escalating violence from the state. We are so inspired by the direct action and organizing in Minnesota, especially the teachers unions helping to take the lead. We see clearly that ICE is white supremacist violence. We have come to believe that anger and grief and joy are connected, and all essential for resistance to this violence. Our classrooms need to be spaces where children and teachers can be safe and joyful, where they can breathe and connect.
So I challenge you this month, what happens if you ask the people you teach, what can we do together to create more joy in the classroom?
Discussion Guide:
When we sent out this discussion guide in 2021, we used the Co-Constructing Spaces of Joy tool and the Classroom Culture Audit to reflect on our classroom culture. These handouts were inspired by Jess Lifshitz’s curriculum audit we used in January of that year.
For this month’s meeting, we again encourage participants to come ready to make a plan for future action. We’d like readers to plan time to have a conversation in their contexts about what a more joyful space would look, sound, and feel like, and then debrief the experience with a partner from their BARWE group (or from outside your group! Invite them to your meeting!)
Facilitation Reference Guide:
Feedback Form:
Please check out our NEW talk back form! We are asking readers to respond to a SINGLE question based on your reading, reflecting, and discussion this month. Please talk back to us. We'd love to hear from you!
Thank you all for your feedback so far, please keep it coming!
Pass The Hat:
In addition to being accountable to our colleagues and students of color, we believe it is important to be financially accountable to people of color who are doing this work on a daily basis. Each month, we will recommend an organization led by people of color, in education and beyond, doing the work of pushing for justice.
This month, we are recommending that you donate to The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction, a political education program for aspiring revolutionaries and movement leaders from those communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration. Their home is Philadelphia, crossroads of Harriet Tubman and Octavius Catto, W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Maroon Shoatz, a critical hub for abolitionist militancy in the past and a thriving and powerful movement ecosystem today.
Through participatory and collective study of political economy, the history of global resistance movements, and the theoretical and practical aspects of social change, they aim to teach a new generation of organic intellectuals not only how to understand the world, but more importantly, how to change it. You can donate to support here.
At the end of each monthly discussion, pass a hat (or a box) and collect donations for the designated organization. You can then have one group member go online and donate in the name of your school. If you want, you can add “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” after your school name.
https://www.barwe215.org/march-how-can-we-identify-and-challenge-white-supremacy-culture-in-our-classroom-culture-how-can-we-co-create-joy-with-students.html
Essential Question: How can we co-create joy with students?
If this is your first year doing this series, you might consider using our Inquiry Series 3 material for the year or hosting an orientation meeting using our September material before moving on to the current month.
Don't forget to talk back!
Overview:
In preparation for sending this message to all of you about my pick of the month, I decided to try out this month’s ask with my third grade students. I wondered, what would happen if I asked my students about how we could have more joy in the classroom? Would even just asking the question, allowing for there to be transparency in my goals as a teacher, bring more levity into the cold winter days as we returned from the break?
I began the morning meeting with a pass-the-greeting of, “Have a joyful day ____!” Then I shared that I needed their help with my homework assignment. I explained that at my teacher meeting last night we talked about how we want to ask more teachers to work with students to make their classrooms happier places, and I wanted teachers to ask their students directly what they would want to see in their classrooms. Then I shared that I needed to test things out with them. I had them on board, their eyes showed their excitement about being asked to do something important. I drew the Y chart on the board, and asked them to share what it would look like, sound like, and feel like to have more joy in the classroom. I wrote everything they said, and prompted very little. Of course things got a little pie-in-the-sky, as you can see from the picture, but a few things resonated deeply with me that I want to point out.
They want things quiet and they want to be able to yell. They want to play on their computers, to watch tv, to eat ice cream. They want to feel respected, to make eye contact with each other, to be laughing. What I took from this was that they wanted some freedom to be kids, to do things that kids do, and to have some of their choices for how they want to act be accepted.
I’ve been mulling over this activity with my students a lot this last week. What it boils down to for me is that we ask so much of our 8 year olds. So, so much. And I’m committing to laughing with them, to offering them spontaneity, and to giving them every ounce of power within their school day that I can. And, asking them to guide me when I get bogged down with all the rules and regulations made by people that may never have even spent a day in a classroom full of 28 children.
This focus simply on joy may feel difficult to pivot to following weeks of beautiful anger and connection in action in Minnesota and around the country, and escalating violence from the state. We are so inspired by the direct action and organizing in Minnesota, especially the teachers unions helping to take the lead. We see clearly that ICE is white supremacist violence. We have come to believe that anger and grief and joy are connected, and all essential for resistance to this violence. Our classrooms need to be spaces where children and teachers can be safe and joyful, where they can breathe and connect.
So I challenge you this month, what happens if you ask the people you teach, what can we do together to create more joy in the classroom?
Discussion Guide:
When we sent out this discussion guide in 2021, we used the Co-Constructing Spaces of Joy tool and the Classroom Culture Audit to reflect on our classroom culture. These handouts were inspired by Jess Lifshitz’s curriculum audit we used in January of that year.
For this month’s meeting, we again encourage participants to come ready to make a plan for future action. We’d like readers to plan time to have a conversation in their contexts about what a more joyful space would look, sound, and feel like, and then debrief the experience with a partner from their BARWE group (or from outside your group! Invite them to your meeting!)
Facilitation Reference Guide:
- Set a day and time for your group to meet - Make sure to send reminders. If you’re meeting in person, snacks are always a good idea!
- This month’s work is based on the topics from February 2021. Take time to engage in that discussion before you do this month’s meeting and audit.
- Prepare yourself to facilitate by reading through our Norms and Discussion Protocol.
- Prepare yourself for March by setting a date and time, inviting colleagues, and looking out for our next Discussion Guide on March 1st.
Feedback Form:
Please check out our NEW talk back form! We are asking readers to respond to a SINGLE question based on your reading, reflecting, and discussion this month. Please talk back to us. We'd love to hear from you!
Thank you all for your feedback so far, please keep it coming!
Pass The Hat:
In addition to being accountable to our colleagues and students of color, we believe it is important to be financially accountable to people of color who are doing this work on a daily basis. Each month, we will recommend an organization led by people of color, in education and beyond, doing the work of pushing for justice.
This month, we are recommending that you donate to The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction, a political education program for aspiring revolutionaries and movement leaders from those communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration. Their home is Philadelphia, crossroads of Harriet Tubman and Octavius Catto, W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Maroon Shoatz, a critical hub for abolitionist militancy in the past and a thriving and powerful movement ecosystem today.
Through participatory and collective study of political economy, the history of global resistance movements, and the theoretical and practical aspects of social change, they aim to teach a new generation of organic intellectuals not only how to understand the world, but more importantly, how to change it. You can donate to support here.
At the end of each monthly discussion, pass a hat (or a box) and collect donations for the designated organization. You can then have one group member go online and donate in the name of your school. If you want, you can add “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” after your school name.