“This Is Going to Be a Learning Curve, Especially Because You're White”: Becoming an Anti-Racist Music Teacher in a Majority Indigenous Classroom

Abstract

This narrative case study explores the practices, experiences, and perceptions of Charlie, a White music teacher in upstate New York, who is striving to do anti-racist work in a majority Indigenous teaching context. Through the philosophical lens of White music teachers as “becoming”—growing, striving, changing, learning—the author suggests that White teachers can and should strive to do anti-racist work. Employing narrative inquiry, the author highlights ways in which Charlie grapples with his Whiteness while striving toward anti-racist practices by seeking Indigenous knowledge from culture bearers, collaborating with an Indigenous musician, problematizing surface-level multiculturalism within the school, and reaching for deeper curricular engagements with students’ lives inside and outside of school.