Volta Adovor has a lot she wants Iowa’s teachers to know.
To start: Some kinds of hands-on learning can feel inappropriate, not illuminating. A lesson about the tight quarters Africans were packed into during the global slave trade doesn’t require students to lie down side by side on the floor, as Adovor was asked to do in 10th grade.
Being singled out can be hard, too. “If we’re watching a video of a Black man getting hung, which is something that did happen when I was in eighth grade, the teacher then should not ask me: ‘Oh, do you feel comfortable?’ ” Adovor said. Checking in with a student after class or sending an email in advance might work better.
Those are a few of the ideas Adovor and two other high school students included in a presentation they crafted last spring. Called “What We Need Our Teachers to Know About Race,” it was to be part of a conference put on by the Iowa Department of Education in April 2021 focused on equity in education. More than 650 educators had registered to attend.
But a few weeks before it was to take place, the event was postponed. A bill that would limit how teachers talk about racism was making its way through the state legislature, and state education officials said they were “mindful” that the bill could affect the conference.
“I was pretty mad,” said Adovor, who’s now 18 and a freshman at the University of Iowa. “It just felt like our voices were being silenced.”
New critical race theory laws have teachers scared, confused and self-censoring
The bill became law in June. It bans state agencies and schools from teaching “divisive concepts” at mandatory training sessions, including the idea that the United States or the state of Iowa is systemically racist or sexist, but it doesn’t apply to optional events such as the state conference.
Still, the education department has not rescheduled the event, and officials have removed more than a dozen related videos posted in the run-up to the conference. One was a workshop about how schools could better listen to student voices. (The conference “is one option that we continue to consider,” department spokeswoman Heather Doe said in an email.)
The deferred conference is just one illustration of the nation’s about-face on centering race and equity in teachers’ work over the past year. For students, though, the fallout has been both local and personal. After state officials asked them to share their time and experiences as students of color, the apparently open-ended postponement has left some feeling doubly dismissed.
“We wanted to give solutions,” Adovor said. “It was just us talking about things that we cared about.”
Iowa education officials announced plans to host trainings centered on social justice and education equity in July 2020, about two months after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.
At the time, school districts and education organizations across the country were promising to better serve their students and families of color and were acknowledging how they’d fallen short. A Virginia school district apologized for the role it had played in racially segregating its students. A Chicago charter school network disavowed a disciplinary practice it described as “white supremacist and anti-black.” Advocates successfully lobbied cities including Minneapolis, Oakland, Calif., Denver and Seattle to reduce the presence of police officers in their schools, pointing to the disproportionately large number of Black students who are arrested at school.
Loudoun County Public Schools apologizes for history of segregation
It was in that climate that Iowa’s education department started its many months of work on an event where educators, school leaders and state education officials could “engage on issues that impact educational opportunities for historically disadvantaged/marginalized students,” as a program draft put it.
As more schools have undertaken equity and inclusion training for staffers, some educators and parents have complained about what they see as heavy-handed and divisive tactics, such as putting teachers into groups based on their race or asking White people to acknowledge an inherent privilege.
This conference was to have borne little resemblance to that. Several sessions appeared to offer introductory information, with topics including “Equity Challenges and Solutions for Iowa’s English Learners” and “What is new since 1492 — An Overview of the American Indian Experience.” Others offered practical how-tos for teachers and school leaders looking to make their curriculum more inclusive or adjust school policies.
To start: Some kinds of hands-on learning can feel inappropriate, not illuminating. A lesson about the tight quarters Africans were packed into during the global slave trade doesn’t require students to lie down side by side on the floor, as Adovor was asked to do in 10th grade.
Being singled out can be hard, too. “If we’re watching a video of a Black man getting hung, which is something that did happen when I was in eighth grade, the teacher then should not ask me: ‘Oh, do you feel comfortable?’ ” Adovor said. Checking in with a student after class or sending an email in advance might work better.
Those are a few of the ideas Adovor and two other high school students included in a presentation they crafted last spring. Called “What We Need Our Teachers to Know About Race,” it was to be part of a conference put on by the Iowa Department of Education in April 2021 focused on equity in education. More than 650 educators had registered to attend.
But a few weeks before it was to take place, the event was postponed. A bill that would limit how teachers talk about racism was making its way through the state legislature, and state education officials said they were “mindful” that the bill could affect the conference.
“I was pretty mad,” said Adovor, who’s now 18 and a freshman at the University of Iowa. “It just felt like our voices were being silenced.”
New critical race theory laws have teachers scared, confused and self-censoring
The bill became law in June. It bans state agencies and schools from teaching “divisive concepts” at mandatory training sessions, including the idea that the United States or the state of Iowa is systemically racist or sexist, but it doesn’t apply to optional events such as the state conference.
Still, the education department has not rescheduled the event, and officials have removed more than a dozen related videos posted in the run-up to the conference. One was a workshop about how schools could better listen to student voices. (The conference “is one option that we continue to consider,” department spokeswoman Heather Doe said in an email.)
The deferred conference is just one illustration of the nation’s about-face on centering race and equity in teachers’ work over the past year. For students, though, the fallout has been both local and personal. After state officials asked them to share their time and experiences as students of color, the apparently open-ended postponement has left some feeling doubly dismissed.
“We wanted to give solutions,” Adovor said. “It was just us talking about things that we cared about.”
Iowa education officials announced plans to host trainings centered on social justice and education equity in July 2020, about two months after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.
At the time, school districts and education organizations across the country were promising to better serve their students and families of color and were acknowledging how they’d fallen short. A Virginia school district apologized for the role it had played in racially segregating its students. A Chicago charter school network disavowed a disciplinary practice it described as “white supremacist and anti-black.” Advocates successfully lobbied cities including Minneapolis, Oakland, Calif., Denver and Seattle to reduce the presence of police officers in their schools, pointing to the disproportionately large number of Black students who are arrested at school.
Loudoun County Public Schools apologizes for history of segregation
It was in that climate that Iowa’s education department started its many months of work on an event where educators, school leaders and state education officials could “engage on issues that impact educational opportunities for historically disadvantaged/marginalized students,” as a program draft put it.
As more schools have undertaken equity and inclusion training for staffers, some educators and parents have complained about what they see as heavy-handed and divisive tactics, such as putting teachers into groups based on their race or asking White people to acknowledge an inherent privilege.
This conference was to have borne little resemblance to that. Several sessions appeared to offer introductory information, with topics including “Equity Challenges and Solutions for Iowa’s English Learners” and “What is new since 1492 — An Overview of the American Indian Experience.” Others offered practical how-tos for teachers and school leaders looking to make their curriculum more inclusive or adjust school policies.