Most of my students and myself actually have felt this during their educational journeys. Ignoring a student's voice is the same thing as pretending they do not exist. We have to cultivate their voices not silence them.

Most of our students of color have felt voiceless for most of their educational career. Learning from teachers who talk at them instead of engaging with them in the learning process. Learning is communication, it is dialogue it is literacy.

Most students do not believe that their opinions even matter in the larger school community. The problem is their teachers are not cultivating the desire to fight for their rights. They are not teaching students that their voices actually matter.

Schools often forget that we are responsible for teaching and molding young minds. We should treat them with the same respect we expect from them regardless of their behavior but we often forget this.

This also helps students of color reclaim their own narrative and learn how to navigate the world. They are not trapped in the system of oppression. They do have options regardless of what society tells them.

This is a great way to help students understand the wide range of disparities within our communities of color. There are so many implications to systemic racism that should be taught within our schools at an early age.

Providing students with choices allows them to access learning in whatever way is comfortable for them. Students should be able to learn about things that interest them without being boxed in by subjective guidelines that have nothing to do with the learning goal.

The world is changing rapidly and education has not sped up to meet this new world. Education and literacy is access and communication. It is giving students the tools to navigate the world, and we need to start listening to them and their preferred methods of learning.

This is something that I make sure I provide to my black girls. They lack the freedom to simply be. To be loud, to laugh dramatically, to run around and express themselves however they see fit. This what I need to provide for them, a space to be free.

There have been countless times through my schooling that administrators have questioned my ability to put together great lessons. They often ask, did someone help you with this? As if to say that I was incapable of doing anything this good. My content knowledge has been questioned regardless of where I have traveled and I know this would not happen to a white student.

Mainstream media portrays black people as illiterate villains who only experience success through violence. We are dehumanized time and time again and historically white people are taught that we do not even feel pain on the same scale as they do.

The problem is that we are speaking two different languages. When people teach abroad, or go on mission trips to other countries, it is expected of them to learn the language and customs of that culture. It is the same when teaching black children. Their tones are often perceived as violent and combative when that is how they communicate at home and with their friends. Teachers have yet to learn the language of blackness and use it to communicate with their black students.

Literacy is how we make meaning of the world around us. It is communication at it's finest and the conversations that we have with the text in front of us. Just like it is hard for a non English speaker to read English, it is the same concept when we put irrelevant text in front of students who have never engaged with the topic.

I agree that literacy is interconnected. When I incorporate student interests or culturally relevant information, I am throwing my students a lifeline. The problem is is that it has been ingrained in our black boys that they will never be anything; that the only places they are going are to jail or the grave. We must first boost their learning confidence and then target the skills that are deficient.

The work starts with the administration. One of the problems that I have seen is the subjectivity of the content. There are people above my paygrade dictating what I can and can't teach based on their own personal biases or that of the school board. There has to be a collective sentiment that education should incorporate the views of ALL students that are not harmful to the general population.

This is something that I have noticed since high school. I was often the only black girl in ap and honors courses. Most of my counterparts where in cotaught or self contained classes. And I never saw any black boys in any of the higher level classes. This also plays into the low expectations that white teachers have for students of color.

These sources will provide accurate information for students in search of this information. I think that going to the source is the best way to learn the truth about culture.

It is a shame that the only group of people that is allowed to celebrate their culture unapologetically is white people. Whatever groups share they take a misconstrue the information or demonstrate irreverence for the sacred ceremonial processes.

Most of the history that we teach has come from teachers that are simply regurgitating information from white washed text books. I have seen history teachers misrepresentation commonly know historical facts and get upset when students who know their history call them out on it.

It has not been until the recent past that we have begun to shy away from the racist tropes of indigenous peoples. They are not just people walking about with headdresses and living in tee-pees. They have a distinct culture that should be celebrated respectfully.

This takes an emotional toll on all people of color. Every other day there is black person brutally murdered and the first thing I hear from black people is "He's going to get away with it". Historically our lives have never mattered, and there were laws created to prove this point. But when will we start seeing our young black kids as opportunities and not targets?

In academia, students of color are not seeing accurate representations of themselves. I was a student in predominately white institutions reading books where the n-word was used repeatedly and the argument was "this is classic literature". Why do students of color have to suffer in order to achieve in this system we live in?

We also see the hypercriminization of black people. We are not treated with the same care and tenderness as our white counterparts. There is no way that the girl was a threat to the officer yet she was met with excessive force.

This is exactly what we see in the media everyday. Most villains are played by black people in dark colors. This ties into the racial divide that we see today. Not only do we see this in regular tv but also cartoons, and Disney movies.

Most of the traditional pedagogy surrounding education says nothing about the teacher/student relationship. So often times, as we see in the media we have old school teachers belittling their students of color. I saw a video recently where a teacher told his black students that he believed that white people are the superior race. How much damage do you think this did to these kids? Kids can feel that underlying disdain and it negatively impacts their educational experience.

A safe space is always subjective to the teacher who is creating this safe space. Most students want to learn from and in environments that make them feel seen and heard. Teachers miss this mark often times because of their own personal issues. How can you give love and support to students when you have yet to offer yourself that same courtesy?

A lot of conversations that I have had with colleagues who do not identify as a poc is that they do not see the purpose of including these ideas instruction. This happens especially in areas where the majority of the school is white. All of these themes are interrelated and until we address this we are unable to provide students with the entire picture.

This is one of the things I stress to any new teacher that I encounter. We are not only teachers of content; but also teachers of life. We are with our students sometime more than their own parents are and it is a must that we tap into this part of ourselves.

We need to change the narrative around what a "writer" is. Students often feel a sense of anxiety when it comes to writing. They don't know how to start or what to say even when everything is provided for them. I believe we just need to get them writing and work that muscle so we can begin to see improvements.

This is common sentiment among diverse learners. They do not know how to meet the expectations of academic writing and we as teachers have developed a level of rigidity to streamline the writing process and make it easer for US to grade them.

I agree with this sentiment but there is also a responsibility of the parent. The parents are their children's first teacher. They are the ones responsible for igniting the fire and the teachers keep the fire lit. But I do agree that the curriculum is one sided and white washed and it is hard to create student buy in when none of the content was made by people who look like them.

Being a writing teacher the way we teach writing to students is very formulaic in nature. We give them a text and fill in the blank sentence starter for a claim and then tell them to create a meaningful title. Some young peoples' brains do not work like this and it frustrating trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

Teaching is a subjective practice. It should be tailored directly to the student's needs and abilities and how we can improve their skills using the skills they already have. We should walk together in learning no ahead of our students.

Students often rebel or act out when the learning target is too difficult for them or they do not see the point of the activity. How can we think of creative ways to help them hit their learning target in non traditional ways?

Just because students receive free or reduced lunch or they come from minority group does not mean that they do not have any advantages. They have challenges that make them work even harder to hit their learning targets.

We often times as teachers are inundated with so much work and so many critiques and criticisms that even when we are celebrated we never feel like it is warranted.