Shared Perspectives: Empowering Classroom Communities

As we head back into a new school year, we are sharing this excerpt from Hot Button: Teaching Sensitive Social Studies Content edited by Bart King and Giacomo J. Calabria. This piece was written by Chance Las Dulce, who has been an educator for the past 7 years at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. He currently teaches high school English and Ethnic Studies in Tacoma, Washington. For more teacher experiences on this topic, buy the book here.

I have been an educator for the past seven years at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. I am currently teaching high school English and Ethnic Studies in Tacoma, Washington. I identify as a multiracial man, and I passionately help my students discover who they are so that they can better understand the world around them.

The most important component to the foundation of a classroom is an authentic and caring relationship with our students. To establish this, we need to re-imagine our classrooms and educational spaces. One way of doing this is by decolonizing our educational system, which means shifting from hierarchical power structures to one more focused on community.

At the start of the school year, one of my first activities with my students is to construct agreements that reinforce the community we’re building in our classroom. I present a guiding principle known as In Lak’ech, a neo-Mayan moral concept most famously described by Chicano playwright Luis Valdez as meaning, “You are my other me.”¹ The expression communicates the interconnectedness between people in our community and across the world, and its foundational belief is that our successes and survival are contingent on each other.²

This concept reflects the community I hope to see in our educational spaces: one that communicates our interconnectedness and where we view each other as a whole. In our society and schools, we are often trained and even indoctrinated to focus on ourselves as individuals. It is an egocentric outlook, which is undesirable and even destructive in a diverse and shared environment. When we view ourselves as a community of students, educators, administrators, families, and other people, it forces us to change perspectives to one more befitting empathy and mutual respect. The latter environment is far better suited for difficult conversations since it requires us to understand that each opinion of the subjects we discuss affects us all. In Lak’ech helps students see the benefits of such an altruistic learning environment while empowering them to resist the many covert signals and messages seeking to divide them.

After a discussion of In Lak’ech, I give students full autonomy to decide how we want our classroom to function and what our norms should be. I ask them to agree on these in groups before we talk through them as a class. (As an aside, using groups is another strategy for building community and fostering collaboration rather than individual seating arrangements or independent work.)

As we talk about what each group has come up with, I employ another decolonial teaching tactic. We have been trained to believe that democratic structures of decision making are what is “fair.” However, a decision that 49 percent of a group favors and 51 percent opposes is not serving the needs of everyone. In Indigenous communities, the decisions are made by consensus, meaning everyone comes to an agreement. I use this same model when I teach. As a community, we must come to an accord about how our class will function. Community agreements will only work as intended if everyone participates in it, not just a majority. An all-inclusive process deconstructs the traditional power system of our educational spaces by giving students complete control over how their class should operate. It also teaches students how to care for one another in a community. It ensures that everyone’s voice is heard and valued.

Another way that educators can facilitate difficult conversations is to create environments where such discourse is commonplace. I think that part of the reason these conversations are even considered “difficult” is because they are not held in schools as frequently as they should be, which deprives both students and educators of valuable experience in them. So many experiences and injustices have either been diluted or erased to preserve the spurious “master narrative” that those in power throughout US history got there through hard work. To fight against this message of white supremacy and Manifest Destiny, we need to center Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) voices in our classrooms. This means not only amplifying the voices of our BIPOC students, but also making sure that they see themselves in our curriculum. In my classes, nearly every text that we read is by a BIPOC author. This accomplishes two things. First, it exposes students to the histories, narratives, and perspectives of BIPOC voices and other marginalized groups and identities. Second, because of this exposure, it’s not disorienting when my students have discussions on their readings. It’s what they’ve always done.

My students know they will discuss difficult topics at length in my classroom, and together, we learn not to shy from them. I believe that if more teachers commit to featuring marginalized voices, it will create rich opportunities for our students to facilitate the kinds of meaningful conversations that students want and need to have.

1. Jorge Huerta, introduction to Luis Valdez, Zoot Suit and Other Plays (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1992), 10.

2. Brian W. McNeill and Joseph M. Cervantes, eds., Latina/o Healing Practices: Mestizo and Indigenous Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2008), 13; Javier Calvo de Mora and Kerry J. Kennedy, eds., Schools and Informal Learning in a Knowledge-Based World (New York: Routledge, 2020), 123.