How a Brooklyn school is embracing education about race, bias and identity

If librarian and special education teacher Esther Gottesman genders a book character before the author does, she says her class will probe her. Some 25 fourth graders ask her: Why would she know their gender before it’s been revealed?

Nationally, schools have increasingly transformed into political battlegrounds in the country’s culture wars – leading teachers to be fired, to quit, or shelve lessons they fear could draw controversy. But frank conversations about hot-button identity issues, gender among them, are baked into everyday classroom discussion at Gottesman’s school, Arts & Letters 305 United in Brooklyn.

Some of that openness and verve will be on display Saturday, when the public school hosts poetry readings, sign-making, and sets up a “banned books nook,” joining a host of others across the country participating in the “Teach Truth Day of Action.”

The nationwide event organized by the Zinn Education Project, named for socialist historian Howard Zinn, is a protest against the wave of legislation across the country cracking down on how race, gender, sexuality and bias are taught in schools. The Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, Stonewall Inn and multiple other organizations across the city will host similar events open to the public.

“We just really feel like there's a link between the people needing to learn real histories and truth and the racism that we experience out in the world,” said Principal Pilar Ramos.

“The question is not will students learn about race and gender. The question is how can educators, broadly speaking, cultivate inclusive ideas about race and gender to build schools that are welcoming communities to facilitate the kind of learning that students need in order to be able to flourish.

Kate Shuster, Alabama-based educational consultant

Ramos, teachers and parents alike said the school administration stands by its curriculum in the face of some pushback from parents to the school’s discussion of such topics, citing Department of Education regulations permitting their instruction and the school’s mission and vision that explicitly mentions equity, inclusion and anti-racism.

Students begin the year in Gottesman’s class by sharing and asking each other about their identities, like what pronouns they like to use to talk about themselves.

While they can opt in or out of those conversations depending on their comfort level, she said, “respecting other people's identities with empathy is a must.”

‘Elevating ‘historically marginalized voices’

While states like Florida are clamping down on the teaching of non-white history and the mere mention of LGBTQ+ identities, New York has been headed in another direction.

In April 2021, the New York state Board of Regents released a report acknowledging the impact of systemic racism on students and suggesting that schools across the state adopt “inclusive and culturally responsive” curricula, books, and policies that might elevate “historically marginalized voices” and bridge cultural divides.

“This is a call to action,” the report says. “Together, we will interrupt the practices that for too long have harmed New York’s vulnerable, marginalized students.”

More than 4 in 5 students in the city's public schools are people of color, with the majority being Black or Latino. But a 2019 study from NYU Metropolitan Center found that over 80% of the books in the most common curricula – for 3-year-old students in early childhood education to eighth graders – were by white authors.

In an effort to embrace “culturally responsive” education — the common term for teaching practices that consider students’ culture and identity — the city Department of Education is developing optional curricula centered on underrepresented groups.

The agency released an LGBTQ curriculum supplement two years ago and is piloting similar guides for Black studies, Asian American and Pacific Islander studies, and eventually Hispanic and Latino studies.

But some educational advocates have criticized the Mayor Eric Adams’ administration for backing away from a universal curriculum that would have baked such teachings into everyday learning. Meanwhile, some teachers and schools have done so themselves.

Candid ongoing discussions

At Arts & Letters 305 United, third graders recently learned about persuasive essay writing alongside the global gender education gap. And fifth graders wrote essays in their Mexican history unit on how the Spanish race-based hierarchical “casta system” fostered inequality.

The school was created three years ago with the goal of integrating students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. It’s the result of a merger between a disproportionately white school in Fort Greene and an under-enrolled majority-Black elementary school in Bed-Stuy.

According to DOE data from last school year, nearly half of the 670 Pre-K through eighth grade students were Black or Latino, about 40% were white, and roughly the same share qualified for free or reduced lunch.

Candid ongoing discussions about race and identity are an integral and fruitful part of the “intentional integration” process, according to Ramos.

On a trip last year to Storm King Arts Center, she said, Black students were harshly criticized by a security guard for touching statues, after a group of white students from the school were mounting and taking pictures with the artwork. And she says in the National Air and Space Museum gift shop in Washington, D.C. earlier this year, staff closely monitored Black students and accused them of shoplifting, while leaving their white students undisturbed. After both events teachers facilitated in-school group discussions, and students and chaperones wrote letters about their concerns to the host organizations.

“One of the things that I love about our school is that we're going to talk about it,” said Todd A. Rolle, who teaches spoken word, movement, and theater. “As awkward as whatever it is might be.”

'The culture wars'

Conservative backlash against classroom discussions on racism, gender, sexuality, and bias may have unintentionally increased awareness and interest among educators across the country, said Maurice Blackmon, teacher and restorative justice coordinator at Essex Street Academy high school on the Lower East Side.

“The culture wars that they're waging are awakening educators to what many are seeing now as a responsibility to do this and to employ this in our classrooms,” said Blackmon, former director of the Center for Strategic Solutions at NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools.

A wealth of studies also suggest that from a very young age, children ingest beliefs from their families and surrounding culture to develop concepts of ingroups and outgroups, said Kate Shuster, Alabama-based educational consultant who has written a collection of research briefs for the Center for Anti-Racist Education. And, she added, a sense of belonging is critical for positive student outcomes from academics to social and emotional wellbeing to even physical health and wellness.

“The question is not will students learn about race and gender,” Shuster said. “The question is how can educators, broadly speaking, cultivate inclusive ideas about race and gender to build schools that are welcoming communities to facilitate the kind of learning that students need in order to be able to flourish.”

And some parents even seek out such instruction.

Max Masure decided to send their daughter Josephine to Arts & Letters 305 United after sitting in on an elementary school class discussing reparations for Native American and returning land to tribes. Max, who identifies as trans and uses the pronouns they and them, is planning to create a committee within the Parent Teacher Association for LGBTQ parents and parents of LGBTQ students.

“I want a school that is actually aware of privilege and actually tells the real history,” Masure said.

On a recent Tuesday evening during the school’s biannual art expo, Masure’s 8-year-old daughter Josephine spoke about her drawings about climate change and environmental hazards in her third grade “changemakers” unit on social issues, displayed on a corkboard in the hallway.

“Rich countries are giving money. Malaysia is getting paid to take their garbage, which I don't think really makes sense,” she said. “And I think it's really wrong.”

The United Arts & Letters 305 Teach the Truth event on Saturday will take place from 2 to 3 p.m. at the nearby Hattie Carthan Playground in Bed-Stuy.

Correction: This story was updated to include Maurice Blackmon’s current role and clarifies that he is the former director of the Center for Strategic Solutions at NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of School.