“I Didn’t Have a Lesson”: Politics and Pedagogy in a Diversifying Middle School

Abstract

This article examines the tensions between a diversifying middle school’s efforts to create an antiracist school community and instructional practices that frequently marginalized the experiences, knowledge, and questions of students of color. It uses teachers’ responses to the 2016 presidential election as a window into the challenges of developing asset-based pedagogies in classrooms that include White students.