Reimagining SEL as a tool to deconstruct racist educational systems

Abstract

As educational leaders and higher education faculty, we are drawn to the work of deconstructing racism in K-12 by an undergirding principle—all students deserve the opportunity to thrive in safe educational settings. Scholars (Ladson-Billings, 2021; Love, 2019; Shores et al., 2020, among others) have clearly articulated ways that the American educational system was built upon whiteness and continues to serve some students better than others. Further, when a public tragedy like the death of George Floyd occurs, it can impact Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) students by layering additional hurt, fear, and anger on top of daily biases they face. Ongoing discipline disparities (Graves et al., 2021), lack of access to higher level courses (Ford & Grantham, 2003; Shores et al., 2020), and implicit bias of educators (Khalifa et al., 2016) underscore a few examples of the continued presence of structural racism in K-12 schools. This reality naturally reinforces feelings of insecurity and fear for BIPOC students when their schools are not safe spaces designed for them to learn and grow (Ladson-Billings, 2021). Our call as educators is to deconstruct racist educational systems and policies and rebuild them in ways that serve all students (Love, 2019). This is the reason we have dedicated a special issue of Theory into Practice to an ongoing search for ways to deconstruct racism in K-12 schools. Deconstructing racism in schools continues to take on many forms, and can be oper-ationalized through anti-racist teacher education, culturally responsive leadership, authen-tic community engagement, critical policy analysis, curriculum revisions, evolved recruitment practices, and creating alternative approaches to instruction, among other approaches. As a continuation of this work, it is the intent of this special issue to explore how social emotional learning (SEL) approaches can be used to support the deconstruction