Not long ago, we held my high school’s open house night. As a teacher of predominantly upperclassmen, I have grown accustomed to sitting alone in my classroom on these nights or awkwardly running through my spiel with a parent or two from my class of 30. I wasn’t used to answering hard questions about the curriculum I teach. But on this particular open house night, I was thrown for a bit of a loop.
Towards the end of the evening, a Black father of one of my students came into the room. His other daughter, my student’s older sister who also graduated from our high school, was with him. She had a question for me and was not shy in the least about it. On open house nights, parents rarely ask questions, let alone my students’ siblings; I could tell this was important.
She said, “When I attended this school, I rarely if ever encountered authors or characters that looked like me in my English classes. How can I be sure that you are going to give my sister a better experience by exposing her to authors and characters that might better represent her experiences?”
My student’s sister was right to ask — and to worry. While the introduction of the College Board’s new AP African American Studies curriculum is good news, the course has also come under scrutiny for purging the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory and some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter. This comes on the heels of states across the country calling for books to be banned that highlight the voices of marginalized people.
Among 26 states that have banned books, Pennsylvania ranks second in the country in book-ban incidents with 456. At the same time, our state Board of Education has approved nine culturally relevant and sustaining competencies that teachers will be required to demonstrate in their classrooms. This speaks to the complex and polarized nature of educational issues in Pennsylvania, as groups who advocate against inclusive texts attend board meetings to speak out while proponents of inclusive texts work to ensure that creating culturally sustaining spaces and curricula is a legal standard in the state.
In my English curriculum, I pay careful attention to include as many authors of color as possible whose words give life to the experience of my students of color. We read James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni, to name merely a handful.
However, what ultimately validates my students’ experiences are the conversations that stem from these texts in my classroom; the discussions are what truly get to the heart of their experiences.
These validate them as human beings and let them know that I am listening. It is a natural and important connection to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement when reading about the giants whose shoulders the founders stood on. The opportunity to have this conversation should not be reduced to a choice project and banned from being taught as part of an official curriculum that is supposed to highlight the lived experiences of people of color.
It disheartens me beyond measure to read that the first AP African American Studies program has deleted authors from the formal curriculum that would allow students of color to not only see themselves in the work but also provide the opportunity for these students to speak to their experiences as people of color. I was left wondering how long it would be before the curriculum of the lived experiences of students of color would be banned from classrooms entirely.
The impact of telling my students of color that our classroom is not a space where we can talk about the anxieties, fears, joys and triumphs that are unique to their being people of color would be disastrous for them. Classrooms are places that can fundamentally change the lives of students for the better. I have seen this firsthand.
However, classrooms are also places that can single-handedly destroy a student’s concept of self and deplete their self-worth. Relegating the lived experiences of students of color to the margins of classroom discourse ensures that the latter is a greater possibility.
In the end, I said to my student’s sister, “By not doing the most basic of things — finding ways to honor the experience of my students of color by reading texts that represent them — sends the message that I do not see them, I do not value them and I do not care for them. This is unacceptable to me.” Her father spoke up this time and said, “I don’t have any other questions. I just wanted to say that I did not expect to hear what I heard tonight, but I am happy that I did.”
Paul Walsh is a high school English and creative writing teacher at Liberty High School in Bethlehem and a 2022-2023 Teach Plus Pennsylvania Policy Fellow.
