I graduated from @peelschools and experienced a very ‘traditional’ English education that included Shakespeare and a Eurocentric literary canon. (1/10)

*Thread*

Even at the tender age of 15, when I decided to become an English teacher to change this, I knew it was wrong and exclusionary. Fast forward to 2005 when I started teaching English. Not much had changed.

English departments still privileged Shakespeare and other ‘classic’ European texts. When I finally made the shift to department head, I had the ‘power’ to buy resources that reflected Peel’s diversity.

Did this mean that I only bought books by and about Black people? No, it meant that I strove to include traditionally excluded voices *not silenced, because every group has a voice* like those belonging to the following communities: Black, Indigenous,

Muslim, LGBTQ+, disabled, women, racialized, underserved, and marginalized.

In my less than 3 years working at @lassinspires, I have *personally* curated 70+ CRP texts for students. I have included that list here, deliberately excluding the

other wonderful contributions made by awesome colleagues in that department, to make an important point. When you hire black women with anti-racist values, you disrupt and transform the system. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xgwGBhG-jFYiXNSiWqqqSGWyHMqFg666niijIVkb280/edit

So, if @peelschools educational leaders are serious about serving students, they will start hiring intersectional anti-racist educators instead of maintaining the status quo. Hiring the same people simply because they are the incumbent and then ‘encouraging’

them to do the work that underrepresented groups are yearning to do, is simply institutionalized racism and thinly veiled white supremacy. One final note: This list is *not* impressive

(and it would have been longer if I was allowed to buy more books this semester). It is problematic for many reasons. This is the least we can do to ensure that students see themselves reflected in the curriculum. Students need even more choice than this.

And, they need different assignments in English that do not revolve solely around essay writing. I will address that in a subsequent thread.