Several King County, Washington, activist teachers revealed to Crosscut how they inject race and “equity” lessons into their elementary classrooms.
Kent teacher Joanne Barber took advantage of violent Black Lives Matter protests last year “to teach more about race” in her second grade class.
“I am willing to be that teacher that has those hard conversations,” she said. “I would be doing a huge disservice to my students if I didn’t give them information that they could see themselves in.”
She told Crosscut learning that “racial history” is “just as important as reading or math.”
Barber teaches children 7- and 8-year-olds that slavery “led to institutional racism and implicit bias.” She also “weaves race and equity into every subject” and “every day in her class is filled with race education.”
Patricia Shelton, a curriculum developer in the Bellevue School District, told Crosscut, “In Bellevue, we have been working very hard in grades 5, 8 and 11 to de-center the traditional ‘white’ perspective and to center the voices of people of color.”
Shelton’s colleague, equity specialist Shomari Jones, said he successfully removed works such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird because they contained the N-word.
“There were so many instances of students feeling further oppressed by being in a classroom space where these books were being read aloud,” he said. “[These] have continued the racial trauma and racial stamina necessary for a negatively impacted student to endure when attending school.”
Activist teachers and administrators have begun meeting resistance from parents who argue such “equity” education is leftist indoctrination.
Ground zero for that fight has been Loudoun County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC. Angry parents attended a recent school board meeting to demand answers, only to have board members flee and order police to remove attendees.
“Loudoun County Schools continues to show an unabashed hostility to the First Amendment rights of student, parents, and teachers with whom they disagree,” Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools, told Breitbart News.
“It’s time for school boards across America to stop being held captive by activists and special interests and give parents a seat at the table to help guide the education that they pay for their children to receive.”
The crowd’s opinions did little to sway elected officials.
“We will not back down from fighting for the rights of our students and continuing our focus on equity,” Sheridan told NBC 4.
She demanded an end to “politically motivated antics.”
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.
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