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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?
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Current Year: '25-'26 School Year
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January Staff Pick: Lily on Joy (February 2021)
https://www.barwe215.org/february-how-can-we-create-classroom-culture-that-resists-white-supremacy-and-that-nourishes-black-joy.html
Essential Question: How can we create classroom culture that resists white supremacy and that nourishes Black joy?
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:
This fall as I entered my 11th year of teaching, I was beginning to feel like I needed to start planning for my future of not being a classroom teacher. We’re tired, you know? The new curriculums, the new initiatives, and now the new mandates coming from the current administration are making our work harder and harder. We have more students and families in crisis. We and our administrators are responding to attacks on trans rights, increased ICE presence, and endless rules about what we can and can’t say or do in our classrooms. It was becoming too easy for me to focus on what we can’t do and how we can’t do it and rarely what we are going to do to fight back.
Then, one day, I found myself full on belly laughing with my homeroom. I can’t even remember why, but it struck me, how often did I laugh with my class? While this article from May 2020 does focus a lot on racist SEL lessons, there is a simultaneous strong message of “what’s missing from SEL is joy.” Laughter and joy is inherently healing so I’m stepping into 2026 with a commitment to laughter in the classroom, please join me.
This month, we move our focus from curriculum to classroom culture, and specifically social-emotional learning, discipline, and policing of students. In recent years, social-emotional learning, or SEL, has become widespread in educational settings as part of a move away from traditional punitive discipline practices. It is often thought of as healing, just, and responsive to student needs. However, SEL is not in itself an anti-racist practice, and implementation of SEL can reiterate white supremacy culture in many ways. We encourage you this month to take a closer look at social-emotional learning in order to investigate its connection with white supremacy and the biases it can perpetuate and reinforce. Our primary article, “When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing,” is written by Cierra Kaler-Jones, an academic and fellow with the Communities for Just Schools Fund. She offers us the opportunity to interrogate the values and norms embedded in our application of SEL, and to begin to integrate SEL within an antiracist and culturally affirming framework so students can fully reap its healing rewards.
In our additional readings this month, we’ve grouped articles by topic in case you choose to focus on a different facet of Classroom or School Culture and Discipline.
Primary Article: When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing by Cierra Kaler-Jones*
Guiding Questions:
Additional Readings:
If you feel one of these is better suited to your group, feel free to use as a primary. We have placed an asterisk next to readings with BIPOC authors.
More on SEL
General Classroom Culture and Community Building
School Police
Dress Code/School-wide Policies
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 Gaza Circus School, a school with a simple but powerful mission: to bring joy, hope, and a sense of community to the children. The circus was a sanctuary where children could learn the beautiful arts of gymnastics, acrobatics, juggling, and aerial performance. Over the years, it grew into one of the best circus schools, a place filled with laughter, talent, and big dreams. The school has been completely destroyed, and all of the equipment, lighting, and curtains were lost. You can donate to support the current fundraiser 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/february-how-can-we-create-classroom-culture-that-resists-white-supremacy-and-that-nourishes-black-joy.html
Essential Question: How can we create classroom culture that resists white supremacy and that nourishes Black joy?
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:
This fall as I entered my 11th year of teaching, I was beginning to feel like I needed to start planning for my future of not being a classroom teacher. We’re tired, you know? The new curriculums, the new initiatives, and now the new mandates coming from the current administration are making our work harder and harder. We have more students and families in crisis. We and our administrators are responding to attacks on trans rights, increased ICE presence, and endless rules about what we can and can’t say or do in our classrooms. It was becoming too easy for me to focus on what we can’t do and how we can’t do it and rarely what we are going to do to fight back.
Then, one day, I found myself full on belly laughing with my homeroom. I can’t even remember why, but it struck me, how often did I laugh with my class? While this article from May 2020 does focus a lot on racist SEL lessons, there is a simultaneous strong message of “what’s missing from SEL is joy.” Laughter and joy is inherently healing so I’m stepping into 2026 with a commitment to laughter in the classroom, please join me.
This month, we move our focus from curriculum to classroom culture, and specifically social-emotional learning, discipline, and policing of students. In recent years, social-emotional learning, or SEL, has become widespread in educational settings as part of a move away from traditional punitive discipline practices. It is often thought of as healing, just, and responsive to student needs. However, SEL is not in itself an anti-racist practice, and implementation of SEL can reiterate white supremacy culture in many ways. We encourage you this month to take a closer look at social-emotional learning in order to investigate its connection with white supremacy and the biases it can perpetuate and reinforce. Our primary article, “When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing,” is written by Cierra Kaler-Jones, an academic and fellow with the Communities for Just Schools Fund. She offers us the opportunity to interrogate the values and norms embedded in our application of SEL, and to begin to integrate SEL within an antiracist and culturally affirming framework so students can fully reap its healing rewards.
In our additional readings this month, we’ve grouped articles by topic in case you choose to focus on a different facet of Classroom or School Culture and Discipline.
Primary Article: When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing by Cierra Kaler-Jones*
Guiding Questions:
- What is your reaction to the idea that SEL can be a form of policing? Discuss and unpack these reactions: where do you think they stem from?
- The author uses the example of hair braiding as a way of students comforting each other (with consent). What student-led healing practices have you seen in your own school or context?
- Where do you see the tenets of white supremacy culture showing up specifically in SEL practice at your school?
- Often SEL focuses on ways to not express anger, but Audre Lorde’s quote in the article reminds us that righteous anger is valid and useful. How can teachers hold space for rage in a way that affirms and encourages their students (and does not add to the trauma of other students)?
- Kaler-Jones says, “We must not lose the importance of co-constructing spaces with young people to lean into creative expression and joy.” What does joy and creative expression look like in your setting? What are the current barriers to you co-constructing these spaces with students and what are some steps you can take to overcome them?
Additional Readings:
If you feel one of these is better suited to your group, feel free to use as a primary. We have placed an asterisk next to readings with BIPOC authors.
More on SEL
- “
General Classroom Culture and Community Building
- “The Future of Healing: Shifting from Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement”*
- “What Happened When My School Started to Dismantle White Supremacy Culture”*
- “Forging Partnerships With Our School Communities”*
School Police
- “What Would a World Without Cops Look Like?”
- “Why There’s a Push to Get Police Out of Schools”
- “We Need to Talk About an Injustice”*
Dress Code/School-wide Policies
- “Controlling the Student Body”
- "Time to Take A Look At Your Dress Code"
- "Redesigning for an Anti-Racist Classroom Series: #2 Discipline Policy"
- “Capture the Opportunity: Steps to Redesign School-Level Structures for Equity”*
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!
- Send this month’s Primary Article to your group. Look through the additional readings to see if there is another reading that might be better suited to your group and its interests.
- Prepare yourself to facilitate by reading through our Norms and Discussion Protocol.
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 Gaza Circus School, a school with a simple but powerful mission: to bring joy, hope, and a sense of community to the children. The circus was a sanctuary where children could learn the beautiful arts of gymnastics, acrobatics, juggling, and aerial performance. Over the years, it grew into one of the best circus schools, a place filled with laughter, talent, and big dreams. The school has been completely destroyed, and all of the equipment, lighting, and curtains were lost. You can donate to support the current fundraiser 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.