Disrupting the (Hidden) Curriculum: Anti-Racist Approaches to Student Instruction and Assignments

Abstract

In an urban elementary school serving predominantly White and Latinx students, the second-grade teachers created an assignment that asked students to share how their families migrated to the United States. The mother of a Black student met with the teacher to discuss her discomfort with the assignment given that their family descended from enslaved Africans, not immigrants. The teacher was sympathetic but did not understand the issue and refused to omit the assignment. Unsatisfied, the mother requested a meeting with the principal to discuss the racist implications of this assignment and the potential trauma her son would experience.