ENSURING EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS: UNDERSTANDING AND ...

ENSURING EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS:UNDERSTANDING AND REDRESSING

INTERSECTING OPPRESSIONS OF RACISM, SEXISM, AND CLASSISM

February 17, 2017

TODAY’S FACILITATION TEAM

Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance Center 2017

Director o f Operations Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance &

Great

Seena M. Skelton, PhDAssociate Director of

Continuous ImprovementMidwest & Plains Equity Assistance

Center

Camille Warren, MPAAssociate Director of

Engagement & Partnerships Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance

Center

Tiffany Kyser, PhD

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WE ARE THE EQUITY ASSISTANCE CENTER FOR REGION III, SERVING 13 STATES


One of the four regional EACs funded by the U.S. Department of Education under Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance Center provides assistance to state education agencies and public school districts in the areas of race, gender, and national origin equity.

PARTICIPANTS WILL:

• Recognize how power and privilege are deeply connected to identity.

• Reflect on positionality as it pertains to multiple identities.

• Understand the concept of intersectionality. • Identify approaches toward recognizing and

valuing intersectionality in the classroom.

5Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance Center 2017

ENSURING EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS MEANS CENTERING EQUITY IN EDUCATION

Midwest & Plains Equity Assistance Center 2017 6

Connecting across the isms to break down barriers to

learning 7

M U LT I P L E I D E N T I T I E S & P O S I T I O N A L I T Y “Every human being has an assortment of diverse identities, and it greatly matters which one is triggered by social situations, which hold up different kinds of mirrors.” ~ Cass Sunstein, Legal Scholar


FIRST LET’S UNPACK THE CONCEPTS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SOCIAL IDENTITY


Personal Identity The concept you develop

about yourself that evolves over the course of your life

(Study.com).

Social Identities How we are defined by our

group memberships.

THE ANATOMY OF OUR MULTIPLE IDENTITIES


Female

Monolingual Native English

Speaker

Black/African

American

Dis/ability

Heterosexual

POSITIONALITY

The multiple, unique experiences that situate each of us (Takacs, 2003, p. 33).


Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center 2017 12

DeanEducator

Classroom Teacher

WHAT IS YOUR POSITIONALITY IN YOUR SOCIAL CONTEXT?

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Share an experience when you were conscious of your positionality as you interacted with a child or an adult.

I N T E R S E C T I O N A L I T Y

It is important and vital … for critical consciousness around intersectionalities, so that people are able to not focus on one thing and blame one group, but be able to look holistically at the way intersectionality informs all of us: whiteness, gender, sexual preferences, etc. Only then can we have a realistic handle on the political and cultural world we live within. ~ bell hooks


WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY ?

(Crenshaw, 1989)

INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY• Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989)

coining the term “Intersectionality Theory;” with origins in anti-discrimination law, illuminating the specific kinds of discrimination Black women faced due to the disregard of their unique experience of intersecting oppressions of gender and race.


What possible systems of oppression might these students face?

KIMBERLE CRENSHAW DISCUSSING INTERSECTIONAL ERASURE

(Crenshaw, 1989)

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Luciana –Intersecting Oppressions Scenario

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What are the intersecting oppressions, Luciana faces that may be barriers to her benefiting from the learning opportunity the dual credit program offers?

How did the gender equity initiative appear to fall sort of addressing Luciana’s intersecting oppressions?

AVOID THE PITFALLS OF INTERSECTIONAL ERASURE

Be aware of the multiple identities of your co-workers, students and families.

Understand that categories of identity and difference cannot be separated and avoid abandoning one category of analysis in favor of (over)analyzing others (Miller, 2014).

Recognize the location of structural advantage of race, sex, gender, and ability privilege (Zachary, 2011).


A P P R O A C H E S T O W A R D R E C O G N I Z I N G A N D V A L U I N G I N T E R S E C T I O N A L I D E N T I T I E S


Thus, [educators] have an obligation to be aware of the seemingly unrelated factors that can impact a student’s life experience and response to the [instructional environment]/service and to adapt their methods accordingly (Smith, n.d. retrieved, 2017).

APPROACHES TOWARD RECOGNIZING INTERSECTIONALITY AND VALUING INTERSECTIONAL IDENTITIES

Intersectional Analysis

Intersectional Interventions

Intersectional Advocacy


INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS( C R E N S H A W & H A R R I S , N . D . )


Locate and visualize where various forms of discrimination overlapped rather than ran parallel.

African American Policy Forum, n.d.

EXAMPLE OF INTERSECTIONAL ANALYSIS


INTERSECTIONAL INTERVENTIONS( C R E N S H A W & H A R R I S , N . D . )

Move beyond single group or single issue-based interventions.


EXAMPLE INTERSECTIONAL INTERVENTION:CSP AND UDL CROSS POLLINATION

“race and disability as a social construction based

on relational system”“whiteness and smartness as

property” (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011)

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(Waitoller & Thorius, 2016, p. 372)

Scholars, Waitoller and Thorius present a framework for an inclusive education agenda, which suggests a cross-pollination between culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) and universal design for learning (UDL) as a means to building emancipatory pedagogies that attend to intersecting markers of difference e.g., dis/ability, class, gender, race, language, and ethnicity (Waitoller & Thorius, 2016).


INTERSECTIONAL ADVOCACY( C R E N S H A W & H A R R I S , N . D . )

Ensure advocacy approaches address

and engage members who are constituents of multiple social groups.

Attend to how debates across constituencies sound different when it is recognized that each

community contains members of the other.

Work towards the broadest articulation of a problem that would

embrace more than the interests of the most

advantaged


EXAMPLE OF INTERSECTIONAL ADVOCACY:LGBTQ+ STUDENTS OF COLOR


Talk About It

Affirm Complex Identities

Support Students’ Resilience

Intervene and Prevent

Partner with External Resources

GLSEN, n.d.

Intersectional Analysis

Intersectional Interventions

Intersectional Advocacy


ONLINE TOOLS AND RESOURCES

ONLINE EQUITY LIBRARY

EQUITY PUBS

EQUITY TOOLS


PLEASE PROVIDE YOUR FEEDBACK

Post-Session Questionnaire

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION!!


https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/sept_equilearn

[email protected]

317-278-3493

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Copyright © 2017 by Great Lakes Equity Center.The contents of this document were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education (Grant S004D110021). However, the content does not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and endorsement by the Federal Government should not be assumed.


mailto:[email protected]

REFERENCESThomas, A. (2014, April 8). My positionality. [Video File]. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz3RPZeqGFk

African American Policy Forum. (n.d.). A primer on intersectionality. Retrieved fromhttp://static.squarespace.com/static/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/53f399a5e4b029c2ffbe26cc/53f3 9c8e4b029c2ffbe2b28/1408473544947/59819079-Intersectionality-Primer.pdf?format=original

Annamma, S.A., Connor, D.J., & Ferri, B.A. (2016). Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability. In D.J. Connor, B.A. Ferri, & S.A. Annamma (Eds.), DisCrit: Disability studies and critical race theory in education (pp. 9-32). Teachers College Press: New York.

Casey, Z.A. (2011). The fight in my classroom: A story of intersectionality in practitioner research. Inquiry inEducation, 2(1), 1-13.

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum,139, 139-167.

Fraser, N. (1998). Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition and participation. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 19, 1-67.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.Gee, J.P. (2005). Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces: From the age of mythology to today’s schools. In

D. Barton & K. Tusting (Eds.), Beyond communities of practice: Language, power and social context(pp. 214-232). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1992). Culturally relevant teaching: The key to making multicultural education work. In C. Grant (Ed.), Research and multicultural education (pp. 106-121). London: Falmer Press.

Maher, F.A. (1993). Frames of positionality: Constructing meaningful dialogues about gender and race. Anthropological Quarterly, 66(3), 118-126.


REFERENCES CONT…Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. (2016, February 19). Kimberle Williams Crenshaw: Intersectional erasure.

[Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwERW_7JOw0

Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology, 33(1), 1-39.

Takacs, D. (2003). How does your positionality bias your epistemology? Thought & Action, 19(1), 27-38.

U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Right. (2014). Civil rights data collection: Data snapshot (college andcareer readiness). Retrieved from: http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-College-and-Career-

Readiness-Snapshot.pdf

Waitoller, F. R., & Thorius, K. A. K. (2016). Cross-pollinating Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Universal Designfor Learning: Toward an inclusive pedagogy that accounts for dis/ability. Harvard Educational Review,

86, (3), 366-389.


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