Thank you for taking the time to read my first blog post.

Today, I will be writing about an article that I read. As I was on twitter searching under #edchat, this article intrigued me because of the topic of racism that it covered. Mr. Turner, a white, male teacher struggled with his students believing that he was racist. He, in fact, was not racist but he had to regain his students trust back.

At first, Mr. Turner was in denial and he got defensive because he himself knew that he was not racist. After accepting that what he had said to the students was inappropriate and insensitive, he began to think of ways to placate them.

• The first thing Mr. Turner did was he turned to his colleagues and other resources for better insight. He then began to look at things from his students perspective.
• He started a unit on race, identity, and power. They defined racism as “any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way”. They defined anti-racism as “the idea that all racial groups are equal”. The class as a whole practiced identifying racist ideas which were followed by class discussions.

This article really hit home with me. All through high school, I was the only black person in all of my classes. I felt uncomfortable when the teachers would talk about racism in history class or make a comment about black authors in English class. I would get offended at times. I knew my teachers were not racist but sometimes their comments made it seem so.

It is important for teachers no matter what race to speak to the class as a whole and not to single out any, one specific racial group.

If you would like to follow my educational journey, you can follow me @melody_jasper on twitter!

Thank you again for reading my first blog post!