Minnesota Proposing Teachers Integrate ‘Racial Consciousness and Reflection’ to Receive License

Minnesota Proposing Teachers Integrate ‘Racial Consciousness and Reflection’ to Receive License

Fox News discovered the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (MPELSB) proposed new teacher licensing requirements to replace the ten “Standards of Effective Practice.”

MPELSB listed eight possible new standards, including a “Racial consciousness and reflection.”

Oh man, they must have looked up “Progressive Buzzwords” because the board implemented those words throughout the document.

I see buzzwords like “equity,” “white supremacy,” and “intersectionality,” which Legal Insurrection has dissected numerous times. From the document (emphasis mine):

• A.The teacher understands multiple theories of race and ethnicity, including but not limited to racial formation, processes of racialization, and intersectionality.
• C.The teacher understands how ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, deficit-based teaching, and white supremacy undermine pedagogical equity.
• E.The teacher understands the histories and social struggles of historically defined racialized groups, including but not limited to Indigenous people, Black Americans, Latinx Americans, and Asian Americans.
• G.The teacher understands the impact of the intersection of race and ethnicity with other forms of difference, including class, gender, sexuality, religion, national origin, immigration status, language, ability, and age.

The other seven standards have “subsections focused on racism, cultural differences or bias.”

I read through the document and picked out a few parts within these sections.

I understand people learn in different ways, and some have learning disabilities. It doesn’t help that the schools push teachers to pass students to receive funding instead of looking out for the child’s needs.

Teachers must identify the disabilities, why a student might have emotional outbursts, etc. But the board recommends:

L.The teacher understands the diverse impacts of individual and systemic trauma, such as experiencing homelessness, foster care, incarceration, migration, medical fragility, racism, and micro and macro aggressions, on learning and development and knows how to support students using culturally responsive strategies and resources to address these impacts.

I had success by not making my students feel like victims. Instead, I concentrated on their strengths and gave them an adult they could turn to when they needed to talk. I never took “culture” into consideration.

The recommendations under “Instructional strategies” sound fantastic, encouraging teachers to pay close attention to the learning needs of the students.

But then: “H. The teacher encourages and knows how to nurture critical thinking about culture and race and includes multiple perspectives and missing narratives [to] from the dominant culture in the curriculum.”

While planning for instruction, teachers should make a point to use “resources written and developed by traditionally marginalized voices that offer diverse perspectives on race, culture, language, gender, sexual identity, ability, religion, nationality, migrant/refugee status, socioeconomic status, housing status, and other identities traditionally silenced or omitted from curriculum.”

How does that work for science and math? Renaissance literature? Why is this important? I’m thinking back to my English teaching days, and there weren’t many opportunities to apply this requirement.

Or this requirement with plenty of buzzwords: “H. The teacher creates opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity.”

Teachers might have to take a “Cultural competency training” program:

“Cultural competency training” means a training program that promotes​ self-reflection and discussion including but not limited to all of the following topics: racial,​ cultural, and socioeconomic groups; American Indian and Alaskan native students; religion;​ systemic racism; gender identity, including transgender students; sexual orientation; language​ diversity; and individuals with disabilities and mental health concerns. Training programs​ must be designed to deepen teachers’ understanding of their own frames of reference, the​ potential bias in these frames, and their impact on expectations for and relationships with​ students, students’ families, and the school communities, consistent with part 8710.2000​ and Minnesota Statutes, section 120B.30, subdivision 1, paragraph (q).

Under professional responsibilities, a teacher should explore “their own intersecting social identities and how they impact daily experience as an educator.”

The teacher must also assess “how their biases, perceptions, and academic training may affect their teaching practice and perpetuate oppressive systems and utilizes tools to mitigate their own behavior to disrupt oppressive systems.”

The MPELSB also wants the teacher to recognize his or her “responsibility to question normative school knowledge, conventional teaching and other professional practices, and beliefs and assumptions about diverse students, their families, and communities that adversely impact learning.”

The board hopes the teacher can identify “gaps where the current curriculum does not address multiple perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds, and incorporates curriculum to fill these gaps.”

The changes to standards began in 2021, but it looks like the board will resolve it soon. The post-hearing comment period closes on September 13.

This is insanity. Then again, Minnesota Public Schools have a new rule that “if a minority teacher is set to be laid off, the district will instead fire the next least senior teacher who is white.”

The officials said: “To remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) mutually agreed to contract language that aims to support the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups as compared to the labor market and to the community served by the school district.”

It’s never about the student. When I taught in Texas, it was about passing students to receive more funding from the state. Gotta have those positive passing and graduation numbers! That’s way more important than the quality of education and well-being of the children.

But go ahead Minnesota. Your agenda is more important than education. Parents are obviously sick of it because enrollment in Minnesota public schools has been dropping for more than a year.

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