Manassas teachers and residents on Tuesday will learn about new requirements for culturally responsive teaching, a tenant of Critical Race Theory (CRT).
CRT was the hotly debated topic during the November 2021 General Election that saw Republican Glenn Youngkin win statewide office.
Manassas Public Schools Executive Director of Human Resources Billie Kay will present information on the Virginia Department of Education’s revised teacher performance standards, and evaluation criteria to include a standard on culturally responsive teaching and equitable practices. The standard becomes effective this fall.
Information about the new standard will be presented at tomorrow’s meeting, according to the agenda posted on the school division’s website. The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at Jennie Dean, Elementary school, 9601 Prince William Street.
Last summer, Manassas teachers were told to confront race and racism head-on during the city school division’s annual convocation.
On Tuesday, August 3, the virtual event welcomed teachers back to the classroom before students are scheduled to return Thursday, August 12. Tyrone Howard, a professor of education and associate dean for equity and inclusion at UCLA, was the keynote speaker.
PLN obtained screenshots of Howard’s presentation, which states, “teachers can’t just be non-racist. They must be anti-racist.” The slides also encouraged city educators to specifically teach about the activist group Black Lives Matter, whose members led violent and deadly protests in cities across the U.S. following the death of George Floyd, a man who died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.
Ibram X. Kendi, the director and founder of the Center for Anit-Racist Research at Boston University, went by Ibram Rogers when he graduated from Stonewall Jackson Senior High School, now Unity-Reed High School just outside Manassas in 2000, wrote a book titled “How To Be An Anti-Racist.”
The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’
Multiple teachers shared the images with PLN anonymously out of fear of retaliation from the school division. They say they feel as if the administration is pushing them to become activists, in addition to educators.
