WESTERVILLE, Ohio ― School districts may not know the exact specifics of how the next school year will start, but what is certain is teachers preparing for the new year will be confronted with the challenge of addressing racism and social injustice in the classroom. 

Fresh off of a Black Lives Matter rally put on by educators in Westerville, teachers are now taking what they heard from students and others and really trying to think about how they're going to respond to protest messages that have swept across the nation. For many, they already know that they're not going to be able to ignore the current events. While they know it's going to be tough, some are already doing the work before the real work begins in the classroom. 

For six Westerville teachers who all have more than 18 years of experience under their belt, they believe it begins with them as individuals.

“I truly feel like when we go back, and we all have had some trauma and things like that going, you know, going on, one thing is that we need to also make sure that we're checking in ourselves our own bias, our own microaggressions,” said teacher Tresa Rieves.

Kari Tucker began some of her own work years ago after realizing, “In high school, everything I learned was colonized. It was pretty whitewashed and I had to unlearn and relearn.” That's relearn history by reading a lot of books, including ones suggested and given to her by Black parents to help her have a better understanding as she taught kids.

“I took that as a learning opportunity and I've been going forward ever since with that,” she said.

For Kate Mantenieks, reading books on race led to sharing books on race in the classroom.

“There's a book called Let's Talk About Race and I just read it and you know, the kids kind of slowly started talking about it and one of the girls talked about this problem on the bus where another child said something derogatory about a student of color. And I said, 'What do you guys think, how can we help her?' Hands shot up, you could say this, you could do this. And I said at the end, 'Do you have some ideas of how you can handle that next time?' And she was like armed and ready to go," said Mantenieks.

Although what they’ve done in the past helped a great deal, they all acknowledge more has to be done moving forward. But Lee Rutherford said it’s about intentionality and making the classroom a space for critical consciousness.

“I think it’s being really intentional in our classrooms to make sure that those norms are set as well, that when someone says something that may challenge what you think or may challenge a view that is held in your home or something like that, that we know how to navigate that because I'm explicitly teaching that and those are the expectations in the classroom,” said Rutherford.

Damon Mollenkopf teaches American History to ninth graders. He’s already been integrating curriculum supplements that reflect the students he teaches, but understands now, “Just because I'm a content expert doesn't mean I'm an expert in everything and as a white man I think it's important for me to also model to all my students. You know, listen, this is something I never thought of and you make a great point and let's learn about this and I think it's important for kids to see adults admit when they don't know all the answers and it's important for kids to see adults apologize, it's important for kids to see adults learn."

For fifth grade teacher Linda Amici, she said it’s about addressing racism and social injustices in the classroom head on in addition to one on one work.

“Making space in my classroom for them to be able to think through and work through and understand, deepen the understanding of perspective and understanding of one another and how that could be hurtful or how that can be helpful or how we can better understand one another,” she said.

For all of these teachers, these things are just the tip of what they need to tackle more, but they say they’re ready to do the hard work so that their classrooms can be better spaces for all students. 

All of the teachers expect that as kids come back to school virtually or in person, they’ll be dealing with a lot of social and emotional challenges. So, they are preparing now to deal with that, along with any bullying that may occur as a result of the unrest across the country and the trauma that’s coming with it. The hope is that as teachers and administrators are intentional about building relationships with all students so further bias isn't developed.