Reflection

How do you experience privilege and marginalization? Who do we privilege or marginalize in our classrooms? Whose voices are given space? Whose ideas are elevated? Whose stories are told? Who sees themselves and their own lives reflected in our curriculum and our classroom materials? Consider how your own practices could be perpetuating systemic privilege. How might you use your own privilege to make your classroom and school more equitable?


I experience my own privilege every day and I try to remind myself of that and try to fight inequities wherever I can. Right now I am in the process of buying a home with my fiance who also has a stable career and is white. The process is going fairly easy for us, but I am constantly trying to remind myself of how much privilege we really have because of incomes and skin color. This process can be very triggering for those of marginalized groups who may be discriminated against based on their ethnicity, race or job.
In the classroom, I try to elevate voices by reading stories that reflect characters of all backgrounds and all races in addition to working with colleagues who are writing curriculum to make sure that we are using social justice standards and checking our own biases as curriculum is developed.