Taking It Personally: Racism In Classroom From Kinderg To College

by Ann Berlak, Sekani Moyenda (Contributor)

When Sekani Moyenda, an African American elementary school teacher, accepted an invitation to speak at a graduate education class, neither the students nor Ann Berlak, their professor, could guess that her presentation would spark an outpouring of emotion and a reexamination of race from everyone involved.

The "encounter -- as it was called -- was an expression of Moyenda's anger at the institutionalized racism of our educational system, a system whose foundations are reinforced and whose assumptions about race are reproduced in the graduate school classroom. Forcing everyone involved to rethink their own race consciousness, Taking it Personally is a chronicle of two teachers and their own educational progress. In processing their own responses to the encounter, along with their students', Berlak and Moyenda meditate not only on their own ideas on teaching and learning, but also redefine the obligation a teacher has to his or her students.

Personal in its approach, yet grounded in significant currents of educational thought, Taking it Personally will be a must-read for any educator or educator-to-be who is committed to teaching in our diverse classrooms.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

232 pages, Hardcover

First published April 29, 2001

Reviews

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a powerful book about when Ann, a teacher of multicultural education in a teacher preservice class, invited Sekani, a militant Black teacher to present in her class. It led to an explosive session in which issues of racism and white privilege were brought to the fore. The book is their exploration of what went on that that class the the implications for White teachers teaching children of color.
My criticism is that Ann does too much psychologizing and making assumptions about what her students think, and that Sekani's anger at Whites make her message less clear, though it does illustrate the depth of the oppression she feels. Her reasoning that she has a right to distrust all Whites because it is Whites that have done her wrong could be the same reasoning a store detective uses to follow Black costumers, saying that they are the one's he has seen stealing. If she believes these reasoning are different, she does not make it clear how or why. Despite these criticisms, this is a book worth reading for those who work with students of color.

[Ariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a pretty good book on racism, but I still feel like it falls into the talking around things trap quite a bit. I kept waiting for it to really dig in and that never happened. What was there I thought was good, though.

[Meg Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminded me of The Black Notebooks-- so much raw feeling. It didn't pull any punches. It made me wish I could have witnessed what actually happened in that classroom.

[Becky Sinclair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Highly recommended to anyone working in urban schools.