Date of Completion

Spring 5-31-2019

Document Type

Open Access Capstone

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

First Advisor

Bobby Ricketts

Second Advisor

Jeremy Szteiter

Community Engaged/Serving

Part of the UMass Boston Community-Engaged Teaching, Research, and Service Series. //scholarworks.umb.edu/engage

Abstract

In order to best educate students, white teachers must engage in significant internal and interpersonal work in order to interrogate their own racial identity and develop a capacity for anti-racist pedagogy and practice. The need for white educators to do this work is challenged by the dominant system of white supremacy that dictates the structures of the American public school system; further, educators are limited by the racist rules and policies of the individual districts and institutions in which they work. Through intentional, explicit community building with white teachers, we can hope to begin to move towards anti-racist institutional change. This paper discusses the general frameworks needed to understand how white supremacy interacts and influences public education in the United States, and then moves into some initial thoughts on beginning to do relationally-focused, internal work with white public school teachers.

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