If this is your first year doing this series as a group, we recommend working through Inquiry Series 3.
End of Year Feedback: Give us feedback!
BARWE has an important ask for all readers and users of our materials! This spring, the BARWE core met to discuss where we have been as a group and where our work is heading. We recognize the value of our ongoing Inquiry Series and want to continue supporting teachers across the country in this aspect of the work. We're also considering how to more actively support and build with those working where violent and oppressive laws and policies are being passed around the country. We are sincerely asking BARWE readers to submit a feedback form this month. It will be crucial in our decision making process!
Overview:
As you close out the school year, we encourage folks to have a BARWE meeting with your school or organizational group to reflect on your work this year. As you meet with your group to close out the year, we’re asking you to look back, as well as to look forward.
Looking Back:
Over the past five years, BARWE has released discussion and inquiry resources designed to help educators (and anyone else!) interrogate their implicit biases, recognize the way these biases show up in their classrooms, and take action to create radical spaces where resisting white supremacy culture is the norm. With this in mind, we aimed to help create joyful classrooms and schools where Black, Indigenous, and students and colleagues of color could grow, thrive, and feel valued.
This year’s Inquiry Series featured not just this integral identity work, but also challenged us to be more accountable to those we are in community with every day in our schools. Through building more authentic and accountable relationships with our BARWE groups, our students, and our communities, we open up greater possibilities for transforming our schools into the antiracist sites that we need for a more just and equitable society.
We recognize that what is valued in a culture of white supremacy -- fear of conflict, perfectionism, guilt, and shame -- often keeps us from feeling safe to be vulnerable and take the risks required to build these truly accountable relationships. We offered this Accountability Resources document to help folks continue to pair reflection on the mistakes we are bound to make in this work with practice taking accountability for the harm we have caused. The accountable relationships we are seeking to build allow folks to name when they caused harm, and structures in place for them to participate in the healing required. This leads to stronger communities where all feel safe participating in this work.
Looking Forward:
We are preparing an announcement regarding our summer program which should hit our social media channels and your inbox soon! Please be on the lookout for more information regarding speakers, dates, and times. We hope you’ll join us in continued conversation about what accountability can look, sound, and feel like in our communities!
For the past two summers, teachers rallied across the country at historic sites to speak out against anti-history education bills and to make public their pledge to teach the truth. The teacher-led rallies received national media attention, providing a valuable counter narrative to the oversized coverage of the well-funded anti-CRT movement.
Once again, we invite educators, students, parents, and community members to rally across the country and pledge to #TeachTruth and defend LGBTQ+ rights on June 10, 2023.
Please check this map to find planned Teach Truth Day of Action events near you! We encourage you to join or plan an action in your city! This slideshow is full of ideas and examples from past events. You can also fill out this form in order to receive resources and support from the Zinn Education Project.
Primary Resource:
Guiding Questions:
Facilitation Reference Guide:
Feedback Form:
As we grow in year five, we hope that one person in your group can take a few minutes to fill out our feedback form to let us know how it went.
Here is a takeaway from a previous meeting:
End of Year Feedback: Give us feedback!
BARWE has an important ask for all readers and users of our materials! This spring, the BARWE core met to discuss where we have been as a group and where our work is heading. We recognize the value of our ongoing Inquiry Series and want to continue supporting teachers across the country in this aspect of the work. We're also considering how to more actively support and build with those working where violent and oppressive laws and policies are being passed around the country. We are sincerely asking BARWE readers to submit a feedback form this month. It will be crucial in our decision making process!
Overview:
As you close out the school year, we encourage folks to have a BARWE meeting with your school or organizational group to reflect on your work this year. As you meet with your group to close out the year, we’re asking you to look back, as well as to look forward.
Looking Back:
Over the past five years, BARWE has released discussion and inquiry resources designed to help educators (and anyone else!) interrogate their implicit biases, recognize the way these biases show up in their classrooms, and take action to create radical spaces where resisting white supremacy culture is the norm. With this in mind, we aimed to help create joyful classrooms and schools where Black, Indigenous, and students and colleagues of color could grow, thrive, and feel valued.
This year’s Inquiry Series featured not just this integral identity work, but also challenged us to be more accountable to those we are in community with every day in our schools. Through building more authentic and accountable relationships with our BARWE groups, our students, and our communities, we open up greater possibilities for transforming our schools into the antiracist sites that we need for a more just and equitable society.
We recognize that what is valued in a culture of white supremacy -- fear of conflict, perfectionism, guilt, and shame -- often keeps us from feeling safe to be vulnerable and take the risks required to build these truly accountable relationships. We offered this Accountability Resources document to help folks continue to pair reflection on the mistakes we are bound to make in this work with practice taking accountability for the harm we have caused. The accountable relationships we are seeking to build allow folks to name when they caused harm, and structures in place for them to participate in the healing required. This leads to stronger communities where all feel safe participating in this work.
Looking Forward:
We are preparing an announcement regarding our summer program which should hit our social media channels and your inbox soon! Please be on the lookout for more information regarding speakers, dates, and times. We hope you’ll join us in continued conversation about what accountability can look, sound, and feel like in our communities!
For the past two summers, teachers rallied across the country at historic sites to speak out against anti-history education bills and to make public their pledge to teach the truth. The teacher-led rallies received national media attention, providing a valuable counter narrative to the oversized coverage of the well-funded anti-CRT movement.
Once again, we invite educators, students, parents, and community members to rally across the country and pledge to #TeachTruth and defend LGBTQ+ rights on June 10, 2023.
Please check this map to find planned Teach Truth Day of Action events near you! We encourage you to join or plan an action in your city! This slideshow is full of ideas and examples from past events. You can also fill out this form in order to receive resources and support from the Zinn Education Project.
Primary Resource:
- This year we offered BARWE users this notebook as a place to gather their thoughts and commitments throughout the year. Use your notes to reflect on this month’s essential question.
- The Accountability Resources document is available if your group is looking for more information. If you know of any resources that you think should be on this list, please email us at barwe215@gmail.com.
Guiding Questions:
- How will your work this year move your BARWE group towards being more accountable to each other and your community?
- What clear practices and strategies will now be included in our collective and individual practices?
Facilitation Reference Guide:
- Set a day and time for your group to meet. Make sure to send reminders.
- Send this month’s Primary Resource (notebook, Accountability Resources doc) 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.
- Pass the Hat and collect donations for Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign this month. Please be sure to indicate that your contribution is for the Teach the Black Freedom Struggle campaign
- Complete the Feedback Form.
- Prepare yourself for Summer by looking out for our Summer Series 2023 announcement (register here) in the coming weeks! Invite colleagues to join and share widely!
Feedback Form:
As we grow in year five, we hope that one person in your group can take a few minutes to fill out our feedback form to let us know how it went.
Here is a takeaway from a previous meeting:
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.
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.
This month we are suggesting donations for Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign. As the campaign says on their website, “Teachers around the United States face the challenge of how to teach in the midst of the pandemic and with daily news about threats to Black lives. The Teaching for Black Lives campaign of the Zinn Education Project (coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change) supports teachers with free lessons for teaching about racism and anti-racist struggles, distribution to school districts of the book Teaching for Black Lives, teacher study groups, a podcast, online classes for teachers, and more.” Donate here and make sure to indicate that your contribution is for the Teach the Black Freedom Struggle campaign.
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.
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.
This month we are suggesting donations for Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign. As the campaign says on their website, “Teachers around the United States face the challenge of how to teach in the midst of the pandemic and with daily news about threats to Black lives. The Teaching for Black Lives campaign of the Zinn Education Project (coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change) supports teachers with free lessons for teaching about racism and anti-racist struggles, distribution to school districts of the book Teaching for Black Lives, teacher study groups, a podcast, online classes for teachers, and more.” Donate here and make sure to indicate that your contribution is for the Teach the Black Freedom Struggle campaign.