"Why are you always red?"

Passing a student I teach in between classes, he asked, "Mr. Andrews, why are you always red?"

"You mean my face?!" I asked back.

"Yeah."

"I dunno.  I'm a white guy who gets warm." That seemed to satisfy him.

The vast majority of students at my school are people of color.  The majority of adults at my school are white.  This both matters and it doesn't (though it matters more than it doesn't, and as a white man I may still not really grasp how much it matters). 

It matters because of all the research (that I don't need to repeat here, go find it for yourself if this is new) that shows students tend to learn better from people who look like them (which in the United States often means people who share similar lived experiences). There is also a lot of
messed up discipline stuff that goes on between white teachers with a weak foundation of culturally responsive pedagogy and their students of color.  (I actually think it functions similarly to interactions between majority white police forces and citizens of color, but that's something much longer I'm working on).

It also doesn't matter because a school that cares about community and relationships takes people as they come - this means students and teachers. During my year of graduate school I decided that to be a good teacher, I wanted to be able to teach anyone.  I think good teachers respond to the skill levels, cultures, and lived experiences of people in their classroom.  No matter where that is or who it is. Right now I'm really excited to be working with students who come from all over the world and speak many languages. I'm learning to be an excellent teacher for these students.  But I'd want to be an excellent teacher if I suddenly found myself in a majority white Midwest private school too.  

Could the white teachers at my school (me included) grow a lot as culturally responsive educators? Yes. Yes!  Would the school be stronger if we had more excellent teachers of color? Certainly.  AND, I know that the teachers at my school care about our students a lot. A lot. Good intentions are worthless if students are having bad, even damaging, educational experiences.  But good intentions also allow for growth. Right now, I think many students at my school are having good experiences and many are not.

Monday through Thursday, my last period of the day is (as of now) really frustrating.  There's a group of freshman in there who can't shut up.  I need to figure out how to leverage that high social energy, but right now it takes us 15 minutes just to get class started.  I've been sharing my emotions about this with them openly.  The other day, while I was trying to get their attention (it felt impossible), I noticed my face was burning up.

I said loudly, "My face is probably really red right now."  Suprisingly, lots of voices went off.

"There are two reasons for this.  First, I'm a white dude." This got some laughs and smiles.  "Second, I'm feeling really angry right now."  I then proceeded to let them know why I was feeling angry and how I was ready to get class started (so we could start the damn game I spent hours preparing...I didn't say this to them).

I've found that some white teachers who have done some decent reflection on their racial or ethnic identities rush into conversations about race with students of color (with good intentions).  I certainly want to have deep conversations about race and racism with the students I teach. But I also don't want to force these conversations on them through required reading and graded work.  That may come, but not yet.

For now, I'll make slightly self-effacing comments about my rosy cheeks.  I hope students will pick up that I'm comfortable talking about my own race casually, and perhaps they'll be the ones to initiate the more difficult conversations.