A New Year, a New Black Lives Matter Conversation
The first time I tried teaching explicitly about racism was in 2014. That was my second year back in the classroom after a hiatus. The school year began about a month after Mike Brown was murdered by Officer Darren Wilson, igniting the Ferguson uprising. The previous year I had done a unit on the Civil Rights movement, and I'd done various lessons and units on Black history before that. But the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement pushed me to talk about racism more directly. This week I started a unit of study on Black Lives Matter and I'm noticing the ways I feel different about it than previous years. This year I'm teaching remotely which will change our learning in many ways, some still unforeseen. One major feature of remote teaching is the fact that there is almost always at least another adult in the "room." I rarely see them, but I know that family members are often within earshot. This is my first time teaching about race and racism with families pres
