Exclusive Footage: Private School Teachers Nationwide Implementing Race-Essentialist Curricula, Trained by Black Panther

Through teacher training lectures with titles like “Cultivating Anti-Racists and Activists in Kindergarten,” “Decolonizing the Minds of Second Graders,” and “The White People Way,” the nation’s leading accreditation association for private schools is instructing educators to adopt a race-essentialist and cultural Marxist curriculum for children as young as five years old.

The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) hosts professional development conferences for teachers at schools in their network, which promote a race-based curriculum and grading system — including tips on how to avoid transparency with parents — according to a trove of footage reviewed by Breitbart News. 

The principal professional development conference hosted by NAIS for teachers, The People of Color Conference, was started by “Educational Diversity/Equity Consultant” and former NAIS Director of Diversity Randolph Carter, who is a self-described Black Panther.

National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference

“The NAIS People of Color Conference (PoCC) is the flagship of the National Association of Independent Schools’ commitment to equity and justice in teaching, learning, and sustainability for independent schools,” NAIS boasts on their website.

Carter is the founder and associate director of a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization called East Ed, according to his LinkedIn, which offers services to PreK-12 schools across the country seeking to “develop a clear implementation plan that connects all diversity and equity work,” according to the now-defunct East Ed website that was accessed by Breitbart News via Wayback Machine. 

“As both the founder of East Ed and a member of the Black Panther Party, Randolph has devoted his career to promoting equity and diversity in education and communities,” his bio on the East Ed website said, when the page was active. “[W]hile at the National Association of Independent Schools, he directed their equity programming and founded two of their signature projects: People of Color Conference and Student Diversity Leadership Conference.”

Carter is also listed as director of another organization called Mid West Ed Collaborative, which states its mission is “to serve as a resource to schools, colleges, families and agencies and support the establishment of equitable, anti-bias, multicultural environments,” according to the Mid West Ed website. 

Despite having parted ways from NAIS, Carter is still active in the People of Color Conference he founded and participated in a recent one — which took place in December 2021 — featuring lectures such as “Small Activists, Big Impact: Cultivating Anti-Racists and Activists in Kindergarten,” “Decolonizing the Minds of Second Graders,” and “The White People Way.”

In one session of the People of Color Conference held just a few months ago, a lecturer provides tools and materials to help educators in the NAIS private school network train five year olds in kindergarten on how to be “social justice warriors,” according to footage obtained by Breitbart News.  

“Kindergartners are natural social justice warriors,” the NAIS teacher training titled “Small Activists, Big Impact,” begins. “And I think if we just build upon the mindset of the kindergartner, that is fantastic, you can get them to do fabulous things in the social justice realm.” 

“There’s a transformation period that happens. Kindergartners and a lot of kids, in the beginning, when they’re five and six, the mindset is a very self-centered mindset, right? ‘Me, me, me,’ just ‘me’ thinking, right? So we have to think about how can we start with, you know, ‘yeah, think about yourself, think about your identity, think about who you are,’ and then we’re gonna move, slowly move. So, I read this article by Professor Bree Picower, called ‘Using Their Words: Six Elements of Social Justice: Curriculum Design for the Elementary [School] Classroom,’ and it just was absolutely fascinating, and I thought that would be really helpful for me framing my year about what I hope to accomplish,” the lecturer continues.

National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference

Another lecture in the series features a teacher discussing how–dressed in a bullet-proof vest, goggles, and a gas mask–she participated in protests in Portland, Oregon, following the murder of George Floyd. Her activism “helped me think about my area of influence in terms of being a teacher and how to really push these concepts forward,” she explains in remarks titled, “Decolonizing the Minds of Second Graders.”

“Moving into how it shows up in my classroom, this idea of settler colonialism was something that I started to really understand as a root of a lot of the systemic racism in this country,” she added. “So I want to give you a definition of that; it’s an ongoing system of power that perpetuates the genocide and repression of indigenous peoples and cultures. And so, we are settler colonialists, right? We perpetuate that unless we are indigenous to the land that we are on.” 

National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference

In the same lecture, the speaker says later that “indigenizing the classroom” also includes avoiding terms that she perceives as “capitalistic,” such as the word “goal.” 

“Often in education we talk about ‘learning goals’ or ‘learning targets,’ and a part of indigenizing the classroom is also breaking down how … we view our classroom culture. So that word ‘goal’ to me feels very corporate and very capitalistic … so instead I really would like to flip that and use the word ‘intention,’” the lecturer explains. 

A separate session presented at the 2021 conference features a slide titled, “Burn Shit Down,” with a lecturer who describes herself as a vice principal urging educators to “[recognize] when systems are broken and [imagine] something new,” including examples such as “designing equitable grading practices.”

Another session in the NAIS conference explains tips on how to conceal curriculum planning from students’ families — advising teachers listening to avoid “[leading] people to feel like they have a say in the process when they actually don’t.”

“So as you’re in this planning process, there is the important question of how we share progress and what kind of transparency is going to be optimal. It’s what you’ll share, how you’ll share it, which constituencies need to hear what at what time. It’s a fine balance … because the on the one hand, the sharing makes it clear that this work is going on, this work as a priority, we’re excited about these changes. But in a way, sharing too much and kind of, like, giving more updates can sometimes lead people to feel like they have a say in the process when they actually don’t,” the speaker says. “Like that’s more opportunities for feedback that is obstructive or negative or asking a lot of pointed questions.” 

“So it almost invites pushback in situations where, you know, you have these people, people are in different places … being on board. So it is worth thinking through in what you know about your own community, and faculty, and families is the ways of sharing information and what’s going to be optimal for each group, and how much, and at what time.”

National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference

There was also a lecture at the recent conference describing “The White People Way,” where the speaker warned of “white people” even tacitly criticizing race-essentialist, “anti-racist” curricula.

“The next pitfall we’re going to talk about can often be a sneaky pitfall because of the pervasiveness of white supremacy culture within independent schools in particular,” the speaker says. 

“In order to recognize that you are experiencing the ‘White People Way’ pitfall, you can look for signs of white supremacy culture; so seeing things like a focus on perfectionism, a focus on power hoarding, not being willing to share, and a focus on product. Additionally, you may hear comments about, ‘oh, we need to meet people where they are,’ rather than pushing the work further. You may see literal white tears and that can be a tool to disrupt the work. You may also see policing of language and tone, or arguments about semantics — and we are seeing this I think, really strongly nationally with the backlash around CRT [critical race theory], we’ve seen it with white privilege and with a variety of other terms — arguing about those terms prevents us from moving forward on the work,” the speaker continues. 

National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference

Neither the NAIS nor Randolph Carter responded when reached for comment by Breitbart News.

The lessons imparted by the NAIS to teachers in the People of Color Conference are manifesting in private schools across the country. 

St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Oakland, California, now teaches “Fourth Grade Black Panther Party Studies” as part of its curriculum, for example. 

“Fourth grade learners received a distinguished visitor from the neighborhood. Ericka Huggins is a former Black Panther Party for Self Defense member, educator, and activist who shared her insights with our students,” the school boasts on its website.  

Choate Rosemary Hall, an elite boarding school in Connecticut ranked among the top schools in the country, hosted self-described “Marxist” and race activist Angela Davis to speak at the school’s annual “Diversity Day” this year. 

The school newspaper touted her keynote speech: “In accordance with this year’s Diversity Day theme, ‘Leveling Up: Black Power in the Next Generation,’ … Dr. Davis was selected to speak to the community, because her legacy has been a testament to what it means to ‘level up’ and because of her iconic status as a social-justice activist.”

An eighth grade history teacher at St. Matthew’s Parish School in Pacific Palisades, California, asked his class to discuss, “Can the Constitution be both a white supremacist and an aspirational document at the same time?” according to a post the teacher made on his social media, which also shows him studying NAIS PoCC materials in another post. 

And the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, has students sign an “Anti-Discrimination Pledge,” which states, “On my honor I commit to confronting racism and discrimination by working with my peers and teachers to help create a safe, supportive and respectful environment for everyone. Along with my community, I will participate in personal education that equips me with the skills to be anti-racist and that empowers this community to be inclusive to all of its members,” according to a copy obtained by Breitbart News. 

The materials cited in this report were provided to Breitbart News by a network of “Undercover Mothers” across the country, who are working together to expose and combat rampant political indoctrination in their children’s schools, declining academic standards, and opaque school governance and financial management — which they believe stems from the NAIS. The informal and independent group has participants from all across the political spectrum, including a number of moms who were once politically active Democrats.

NAIS member private schools across America are including provisions in enrollment contracts prohibiting parents from “[voicing] strong disagreement” with school policy or curricula, under threat of expulsion, so the identities of the mothers have been withheld due to fear of retribution.

“No parent of any socio-economic, or social, or racial, or class category wants to send their kids in kindergarten to become an activist,” one mother told Breitbart News. “There’s nothing you can talk about [in private schools] without a Marxist overtone, not even an undertone.”

“They want to simplify it in a digestible way, so they just refer to it as DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] or CRT — but it is a far more nefarious agenda that cannot be captured in a three letter acronym … And the simplest way to say it is to say it’s a Marxist agenda. Not because it’s hyperbole, but because they say so,” the mother, whose identity must remain concealed, continued.

“This isn’t about giving opportunity, this is about equalizing. If you cannot raise the floor — this is the fundamental failure of the left, of the even the center left — they could not raise the floor. So if you can’t raise the floor, to close the gap, you just drop the ceiling,” an Undercover Mother, and former politically active Democrat, told Breitbart News. 

Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News. Email her at ejmorris@breitbart.com or follow her on Twitter.