Study Group Coordinators’ Reflections

The Teaching for Black Lives campaign offers multiple opportunities — online classes, study groups, workshops, and the annual Teach Truth Day of Action — for educators to join a national network of teachers, school librarians, counselors, administrators, and school staff who are defying efforts to ban what students can learn in school by vowing to teach for Black lives.

Across the country, right-wing legislatures have passed laws outlawing honest teaching about race and inequality. Books have been banned. Teachers fired. But despite this repression, educators everywhere continue to find ways to help their students think critically about the history of this country — and how they can play a role in making the world more just.

The Zinn Education Project (ZEP) is committed to help nurture this work. Since 2020, ZEP has hosted hundreds of Teaching for Black Lives study groups. Study groups receive a copy of Teaching for Black Lives and a Rethinking Schools magazine subscription for each participant, a year-long menu of workshops and seminars to choose from, and access to a network of social justice teachers across the United States. 

Study group coordinators share their experiences in the video clips below.

T.J. Whitaker, Maplewood, New Jersey

Transcript

Why would you encourage others to host a Teaching for Black Lives study group?

I always tell this story, but one story from my study group experience that I hope encourages others is the importance of multi-level discussions. So often teachers from elementary, middle, and high school are having these discussions in isolation. Because our Teaching for Black Lives study group was multi-level, we were able to have some engaging discussions about how to get administrative support to use the resources, whether it be the Zinn Education Project or Rethinking Schools. Because sometimes the parental pressure that comes from outside, it’s for using those sources. So we’re trying to get admin on board to officially and formally support that use. And that’s just one example. But having multi-level discussions can offer that opportunity.

How did participating in a Teaching for Black Lives study group support or overlap with your organizing efforts for the Teach Truth Day of Action?

For me, Teaching for Black Lives study groups intersect with the #TeachTruth Day of Action because they are literal manifestations of exactly what educators should be doing every day in our local sites, like trying to find new and creative ways to engage our students with the content. So, in that way, Teaching for Black Lives study groups create space for teachers to be in the institution but not of the institution. As a result, our teach truth coalition, again, we’re going to be continuing this work and moving on, but the intersection is so obvious.

Actually, here in New Jersey, we had four sites for the #TeachTruth Day of Action: Princeton, Red Bank, Newark, and Madison. The Newark site was at Harriet Tubman Square Park, renamed from Washington Square Park a couple of years ago. We actually organized a countywide event, so probably about six or seven different school districts participated. Students, teachers, poets, organizers, activists. The event was very well attended and the energy was great. We’re hoping to solidify our coalition to continue the work moving forward.

Joyce McCree, Newark, New Jersey

Transcript

Why would you encourage others to host a Teaching for Black Lives study group?

I think the most valuable part of hosting a study group is seeing the conversations and discussions support the efforts of your goal. Our goal was to be less punitive and more student centered. We witnessed more staff and student joy being a part of each other’s personal stories, and we attended a lot of the invitation-only webinars and workshops. They were always captivating, enlightening, and full of information. We are forever bonded by that Rosa Parks movie screening. We were able to spread that experience to our whole school community. All of these Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online classes were life-changing and empowering for us, and being part of the study group enriched our staff and made us more intentional about teaching Black and brown children while respecting the unique, complex, and important nuances that that process required.

Lindsay Paiva, Providence, Rhode Island

Transcript

Why would you encourage others to host a Teaching for Black Lives study group?

Every year, our group looks for ways to base-build and really expand our reach beyond the educators in the study group so that we can have an impact on as many students as possible. We have like 1,800 educators in Providence, and so this year, what we did was we created Providence specific lessons, suggestions, and curriculum guides for the Black Lives Matter Week of Action. Because we’re under state takeover, there’s a lot of restrictions about what we can do, but we were like, “Have no fear. Use this guide, because you can definitely use it.”

The other thing that I’m so excited to have this platform to say out loud, that I want to scream from the rooftops, is that we got the district to secure funding and pay teachers to attend PD for the Week of Action. So to prep together we made the multileveled guides and we also had time together that was paid to plan and say, like, “Next week, I’m going to do this,” and then to have an accountability buddy to check in with you to make sure that it got done. We were at capacity, like we planned it in four days and we had a full house. So, we’re excited for more opportunities with the district.

How did participating in a Teaching for Black Lives study group support or overlap with your organizing efforts for the Teach Truth Day of Action?

Rhode Island is small, so over the past few years we’ve really started to create a coalition of organizations called Teach Truth Rhode Island, in order to coordinate and strengthen the movement work locally. Our Teaching for Black Lives study group has really been integral in that work. We’re based in Providence, but we’re connected to educators across the state. So when the Day of Action comes around, I think for us, the Teaching for Black Lives study group has already been learning and moving in action together, because we do a lot of district-based and city-based actions. Then, by the time this time rolls around, we’re ready to jump into the work with the collective knowledge and context we need. But we also have a lot of organizing skills that we built throughout the year, so that we can just sort of put those into motion. Also, we’ve been doing a lot of proactive work, so we’re able to shift the script around reacting and really push for our demands.

We collaborated with a local public library for this action this year. We hosted a community event with different activities. We had a photo booth, we had button making, and a found poem station that was created by one of our English teachers. Then we had speakers from different identity groups who had been organizing around this work locally. So we had three elected officials, we had parents, educators, librarians. We also had this giant banned book puzzle, and we had a legislative action table with onsite phone banking and postcard writing to elected officials. Then we had a community art project, where we made a scrapbook together around what this work means to us, that’s going to be an installation in the library.

Ina Pannell-Saint Surin, Brooklyn, New York

Transcript

Why would you encourage others to host a Teaching for Black Lives study group?

For our study group, we focused basically on the Teaching for Black Lives book that we were given initially. Then our subscriptions to the Rethinking Schools magazine. It was through the wisdom of a lot of these Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online classes, like this one that we have tonight, these virtual classes; the kickoff event; the Zinn Education Project staff; that really kind of lit a fire under us and helped us to realize that we did have a passion project, which was to hold accountable, as children, as educators, and the families and community partners, to become co-conspirators with all of you, and the support that you’re giving us in the study group, and to try and use our anti-racism to really address the state education department about some of the failures that are existing for the children.

So, we have student voices and parent voices and educator voices all kind of converging together, so that we can write a report to send off to them, and this is all through the study group. I don’t think we ever imagined that we would transform into this kind of activism that we are, but we’re very, very grateful. I’m very pleased to know that we surprised ourselves and that we are really even closer and more connected together because of all the support that we’ve been getting from the Teaching for Black Lives study group. So, thank you.