Mica Pollock

Across the country, effort is underway to restrict discussion, learning, and student support related to race and gender/sexual identity in educational settings, targeting schools with state legislation and politicians' orders; national conservative media and organizations; Board directives; and local actors wielding media-fueled talking points. To date, few analysts have yet explored in detail educators' lived experiences of these multi-level restriction efforts and local responses to them. In this article, we analyze 16 educators' experiences of 2021-22 restriction effort and local responses, with an eye to potential effects on student support and learning. Educators interviewed emphasized

Across the country, effort is underway to restrict discussion, learning, and student support related to race and gender/sexual identity in educational settings, targeting schools with state legislation and politicians’ orders; national conservative media and organizations; Board directives; and local actors wielding media-fueled talking points. To date, few analysts have yet explored in detail educators’ lived experiences of these multi-level restriction efforts and local responses to them. In this article, we analyze 16 educators’ experiences of 2021-22 restriction effort and local responses, with an eye to potential effects on student support and learning. Educators interviewed emphasized their recent experiences with talking about race and LGBTQ lives, with many emphasizing threatened punishment by critics for discussing these topics. Context mattered tremendously: While some educators enjoyed support and freedom in race and diversity-related discussion and learning, other educators described intensive restriction effort emanating from local, state, and national pressures. Respondents also indicated that responses from local district leaders, school leaders, and other community members amidst such multi-level restriction efforts were crucial in effecting restriction or protecting the ability to talk and learn. Data from this interview study suggest that the nation may be heading toward two schooling systems: one where children and adults get to talk openly about their diverse society and selves, and one where they are restricted or even prohibited from doing so. The fate of our nation’s teaching, learning, and student support is up not only to the nation’s teachers, principals, and superintendents, but us all.

Purpose This paper aims to explore a national anti-hate messaging project, #USvsHate, and its call to students to create public messages refusing “hate, bias, and injustice.” Participants indicated that #USvsHate’s invitation to publicly express students’ ideas about equal human value functioned as a next step in furthering youth voice and critical consciousness toward societal inclusion and justice. Design/methodology/approach Using grounded theory, analysis drew from teacher interviews (n = 45), student focus groups (n = 30), anonymous participant questionnaires and student-created messages and backstories (n = 250) gathered between 2017 and 2020. Findings Participants indicated #USvsHate’s call to amplify student voice offered a next step to act upon awareness of social issues by denouncing hate while promoting inclusivity. Four invitations related to the project’s “anti-hate message” call emerged as important to participants: the invitation to comment personally on improving soc...

Background/Context: This article explores how the classic U.S. educator effort to stay politically “nonpartisan” when teaching became particularly complicated in an era of spiking K–12 harassment, when government officials openly targeted and denigrated populations on the basis of race, national origin, gender, sexuality, and religion. We share research on a pilot (2017–2019) of #USvsHate, an “anti-hate” initiative we designed and studied with K–12 educators and students in the politically mixed region of San Diego, California. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: #USvsHate sought to respond to a national spike in bigotry, harassment, and hate crimes by inviting “anti-hate” learning and messaging in an explicitly nonpartisan manner. Analyzing educator interviews and student focus groups from the project pilot, we explore a core tension raised throughout #USvsHate participation: Some participating educators feared that such work to include “all” as equally valuable wou...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is two-fold: (1) to offer a conceptual understanding of knowledge brokering from a sociometric point-of-view; and (2) to provide an empirical example of this conceptualization in an education context.Design/methodology/approachWe use social network theory and analysis tools to explore knowledge exchange patterns among a group of teachers, instructional coaches and administrators who are collectively seeking to build increased capacity for effective mathematics instruction. We propose the concept of network activity to measure direct and indirect knowledge brokerage through the use of degree and betweenness centrality measures. Further, we propose network utility—measured by tie multiplexity—as a second key component of effective knowledge brokering.FindingsOur findings suggest significant increases in both direct and indirect knowledge brokering activity across the network over time. Teachers, in particular, emerge as key knowledge brokers within thi...

This critical family history explores a common script about undocumented immigration: that undocumented immigrants unfairly have refused to “stand in line” for official, sanctioned immigration and instead have broken rules that the rest of “our” families have followed. Noting a hole in her knowledge base, the author put herself on a steep learning curve to “clean her lenses”—to learn more information about opportunities past and present, so she could see and discuss the issue more clearly. The author sought new and forgotten information about immigration history, new information about her own family, and details about actual immigration policy. She wrote this piece to share a few script-flipping realizations, in case they can shortcut this journey for others.

Background/Context Efforts to increase low-income, underrepresented students’ access to coursework increasingly tap computer-based course materials. Yet as we turn increasingly to computers for instruction, what might the in-person teacher still be needed to do? This paper presents seven in-person “teacher roles” that precollege low-income youth and their teachers deemed necessary for supporting students as they used computer-based materials. Data were collected across two years in 19 summer school classrooms where 400 high school students took computer-based college-preparatory courses supported in person by teachers and teachers’ assistants (TAs). We offer an empirically informed conceptual framework supporting next research on (and innovation of) equity-minded “blended” classroom practice. We define “equity” effort as active effort to meet the needs of each student and all groups of students; here, the effort was to sufficiently prepare each and all students for college. Purpose/...

This chapter describes the problem of avoidance of race talk, as well as shortcomings of race talk, and potential intervention approaches to improve the ability of educators to talk about race in ways that can help and not harm students of color. Educators all too often avoid discussing race entirely, or discuss it reductively, too quickly, or with insufficient information. Three avenues to address this problem are presented. First, educators can pursue more precise talk about student subpopulations and their needs. Second, educators can pursue more precise talk about the causes of racial disparities. Third, educators can engage in more precise talk about the everyday educator-acts that can assist or harm students of color. Examples of each of these solutions provide direction to educators who wish to improve the capacity of their schools and districts to engage with racial issues productively.

Professional development (PD) “for diversity” aims to prepare teachers to support students from varying backgrounds to succeed, often in under-resourced contexts. Although many teachers invite such inquiry as part of learning to teach, others resist “diversity” inquiry as extra to teaching, saying they cannot “do it all.” In this article, we discuss how preservice teachers at times caricature the requests of PD for diversity, hearing the task as a call to undertake superhuman tasks and to be people other than who they are. We argue that these caricatures require direct acknowledgment by both preservice teachers and teacher educators working in diverse contexts.

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This paper shares K12 educators' efforts to marshal local support for the act of basic inclusion: welcoming all communities as equally valuable. We share data from a national pilot of #USvsHate (usvshate.org), an educator-and student-led "anti-hate" messaging project. In interviews, participating educators revealed careers of "pushback" against even their basic efforts to include (mention or empathize with) marginalized populations. They also shared five key forms of "backup" they had learned to marshal to keep such topics on the agenda. Building on scholarship positioning basic and deeper inclusion work as the unarguable task of schools, we explore how keeping the freedom to undertake even basic inclusion efforts requires teachers to preserve agency through assembling local backup-supports from other people.

UC San Diego's CREATE STEM Success Initiative, led by staff at UC San Diego's Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence (CREATE), is a collective and sustained effort to leverage a university to create local K12 opportunities to learn. We share our Year 9 outcomes.

In an era of increased demand for antiracist inservice professional development (PD) and pushback against it, antiracist PD needs evidence of strong outcomes and a high bar for success. To this end, in this conversation starter, we ask how often inservice PD addressing race and racism with White educators really expects participants to demonstrate next steps to grapple with race issues toward improving educational opportunities for their students-the field's actual ideal. We describe self-critically how it can be quite easy to have low expectations for White teachers' inservice development particularly, by failing to really expect sustained inquiry into supporting students better.

FROM 2004: (I just reread this in 2022 and am thinking about what still rings true -- and does not. Input welcome!! -Mica)

As researchers try to understand, improve, and equalize U.S. schooling, we talk too little about how to study race well. It is particularly crucial, I argue, that researchers struggle to interrogate education's familiar racial practices more selfconsciously and strategically. I suggest that researchers "race wrestle" by struggling with race on two levels: researchers can (1) learn from the everyday struggles over race already taking place in U.S. schools and (2) struggle more actively with race talk and analysis in our own research. I argue that refocusing analytic attention on everyday struggles over race in educational practice and research is a necessary strategy for moving forward toward racial equality.

This paper launches public analysis of #USvsHate ('us versus hate'), a collective initiative to invite 'anti-hate' lessons and youth-made public messaging in U.S. schools. Building on multiple research traditions, the Authors designed and piloted #USvsHate regionally, then nationally, starting in 2017. Here, we explore the pros and cons of using an 'anti-hate' frame as an onramp to K12 work against bias, injustice, and racism particularly, in an era of emboldened bigotry. As antiracist project designers, we had specific hopes and worries regarding the 'anti-hate' onramp, particularly the worry that its focus on heightened cruelty might turn students' attention away from normalized bias and structural inequality. This paper tracks our initial effort to leverage a frame avoided by scholars, given its K12 utility and familiarity.

This paper launches public analysis of #USvsHate ('us versus hate'), a collective initiative to invite 'anti-hate' lessons and youth-made public messaging in U.S. schools. Building on multiple research traditions, the Authors designed and piloted #USvsHate regionally, then nationally, starting in 2017. Here, we explore the pros and cons of using an 'anti-hate' frame as an onramp to K12 work against bias, injustice, and racism particularly, in an era of emboldened bigotry. As antiracist project designers, we had specific hopes and worries regarding the 'anti-hate' onramp, particularly the worry that its focus on heightened cruelty might turn students' attention away from normalized bias and structural inequality. This paper tracks our initial effort to leverage a frame avoided by scholars, given its K12 utility and familiarity.

This paper launches public analysis of #USvsHate ('us versus hate'), a collective initiative to invite 'anti-hate' lessons and youth-made public messaging in U.S. schools. Building on multiple research traditions, the Authors designed and piloted #USvsHate regionally, then nationally, starting in 2017. Here, we explore the pros and cons of using an 'anti-hate' frame as an onramp to K12 work against bias, injustice, and racism particularly, in an era of emboldened bigotry. As antiracist project designers, we had specific hopes and worries regarding the 'anti-hate' onramp, particularly the worry that its focus on heightened cruelty might turn students' attention away from normalized bias and structural inequality. This paper tracks our initial effort to leverage a frame avoided by scholars, given its K12 utility and familiarity.

This commentary suggests that new school design is a fertile policy context for advancing research–practice partnerships. The authors represent four public universities that have created new school designs in partnership with urban school districts. Unlike the laboratory schools of previous generations, these university-partnered public schools were intentionally designed to disrupt persistent patterns of inequity and prepare low-income students of color to flourish in college. The authors argue that these schools provide a promising context for marrying research and practice to bring about fundamental change in schools, with potential for spread of innovation to districts and universities.

Racial/ethnic stereotypes are deep rooted in our history; among these, the dangerous Black male stereotype is especially relevant to issues of differential school discipline today. Although integration in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education was intended to counteract stereotype and bias, resegregation has allowed little true integration. Thus, old patterns continue to be reinforced through the ongoing processes of implicit bias, micro-aggression, and colorblindness. Thus, to effectively address inequity, the role of race must be explicitly acknowledged in addressing racial disparities in discipline. We close with a set of recommendations for talking about and acting on racial disparities.

Background/Context: This article explores how the classic U.S. educator effort to stay politically “nonpartisan” when teaching became particularly complicated in an era of spiking K–12 harassment, when government officials openly targeted and denigrated populations on the basis of race, national origin, gender, sexuality, and religion. We share research on a pilot (2017–2019) of #USvsHate, an “anti-hate” initiative we designed and studied with K–12 educators and students in the politically mixed region of San Diego, California.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: #USvsHate sought to respond to a national spike in bigotry, harassment, and hate crimes by inviting “anti-hate” learning and messaging in an explicitly nonpartisan manner. Analyzing educator interviews and student focus groups from the project pilot, we explore a core tension raised throughout #USvsHate participation: Some participating educators feared that such work to include “all” as equally valuable would seem partisan to critics and so be deemed off-limits. We focus on this tension in part to support educators continuing to grapple with it in a deeply divided country.

Population/Participants/Subjects: Pilot participants came from 12 diverse districts in our region, including 53 teachers and 427 students who submitted anti-hate messages to contests, with more than 3,300 students participating overall. We interviewed piloting K–12 teachers (18) and students (30) from traditional public schools and public charter schools.

Research Design: Unlike more structured interventions, #USvsHate’s core shared experience is its open-ended invitation to “anti-hate” teaching and messaging. As ethnographically trained researchers, we spent spring 2018 and the 2018–2019 school year studying experiences of #USvsHate’s lessons and messaging efforts, feeding input continually back into project design in a participatory process. Teachers and students joined interviews and focus groups voluntarily. We also talked with dozens more teachers in design sessions and recruitment gatherings.

Data Collection and Analysis: We used discourse analysis techniques piloted in studies on race talk to identify trends in participants’ responses and across individuals, coding for a key phrase found in focus group data: Across schools, students stated that #USvsHate offered a necessary chance to discuss “what’s going on.”

Conclusions/Recommendations: Students interviewed considered it obviously educators’ professional responsibility to address current incidents of denigration, harassment, bigotry, and threats targeting groups in schools, communities, and society—all of which they termed simply “what’s going on.” Educators agreed but that feared “anti-hate” work now might be deemed partisan and so off-limits to educators. We explore the deep complexity of this worry—and we explore educators’ and students’ attempting to discuss current events of harm as simply part of educators’ jobs.

This critical family history explores a common script about undocumented immigration: that undocumented immigrants unfairly have refused to "stand in line" for official, sanctioned immigration and instead have broken rules that the rest of "our" families have followed. Noting a hole in her knowledge base, the author put herself on a steep learning curve to "clean her lenses"-to learn more information about opportunities past and present, so she could see and discuss the issue more clearly. The author sought new and forgotten information about immigration history, new information about her own family, and details about actual immigration policy. She wrote this piece to share a few script-flipping realizations, in case they can shortcut this journey for others.

As hateful speech spikes on campuses, too many educators feel unsure of what to do.

Lawyers will debate the details in each case, but educators can hang on to some basic principles as they negotiate issues around speech in schools:

Educators should never passively tolerate hateful speech on campus. Instead, we forbid threat speech and harassment.

We challenge all speech that denigrates, disrespects or misrepresents “types of people.”

At the very same time, we treasure free speech, not as some “right” to disparage others without any consequences but as the ability to discuss ideas.