Tina Durand (left) and Christina L. Dobbs. Photo by George Annan

Teaching & Learning

Let’s Talk About Race

A candid conversation about how and why teachers should create space for students to examine race

In March 2025, Dean Penny A. Bishop sat down with two BU Wheelock faculty members to discuss the thorny topic of conversations about race in the classroom. Christina L. Dobbs, an associate professor and program director of English education for equity and justice, and Tina Durand, a clinical associate professor and program director of the PhD in counseling psychology and applied human development, make the case for why teachers should have these tough conversations and offer some practical advice for how to do so in thoughtful and developmentally appropriate ways.

The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Penny A. Bishop: What do we mean when we say ‘create space for talking about race?’

Christina L. Dobbs: Critical consciousness [a concept developed by Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire] is the ability to recognize, analyze, and then do something about oppression when you see it. In my work, I think primarily about teenagers. We have lots of evidence to suggest that kids often blame themselves for their circumstances, for their outcomes, for their achievement, and that when we talk to them about things like, well, perhaps you go to a school that doesn’t have as many resources as some other schools—and what is that about?—they show better outcomes in lots of ways. They have better achievement, they’re more resilient, they’re more likely to be civically engaged. They’re happy to tell us they want to talk about those things. And so it’s not just talking about the fact that sometimes things are inequitable—it’s also encouraging [young people] that they could do something about that. And young people throughout the history of the United States and across the world have always led movements toward more equitable societies.

Tina Durand: I’m also thinking about young people and adolescents. They might have an understanding of race as a dimension of identity, but it’s not always nuanced, particularly if you’re a white person. They have not been socialized to have to think about that. So yes, it is a dimension of who we are and a dimension of identity, for sure. But we also, in our racial groups, have a social identity. That is, the racial groups we’re a part of matter, and they impact our experiences in groups. How those are stratified means that we have access and experiences that are different.

The other dimension is that a critical racial consciousness is an understanding of how race is salient in institutions and how inequity is embedded in our institutions, like schools. We can look at these things with young people, look at the data, but they can feel and see them. They can see who’s represented—in our presidential office, in our leadership positions. They can see and think about and need to understand that they are in segregated schools, perhaps, and in segregated communities, and that those things did not just occur by chance.

So having a deeper and a richer understanding of the salience of race in society, in institutions, helps them to understand themselves in the world better. And as educators, isn’t that what we are supposed to do—help them have a richer understanding of themselves and others in a democracy, in an engaged citizenry?

Bishop: Is race-conscious teaching good for kids?

Dobbs: We have to do things well for them to be good for kids. We did a study recently where we led teacher teams to do this work of talking about critical consciousness. We did a study in five schools across the United States with lots of different compositions. One of the schools was primarily kids of color, almost all of them Black. Another school was almost all white kids and white teachers, and a range of sort of compositional diversity in between that. At the end of the study, we talked with kids who, both on surveys and in interviews, reported in huge numbers that [the conversations about race] made them feel closer to their classmates and feel safer in their schools and more belonging in the sense of their community.

Bishop: What does it look like to discuss race in developmentally appropriate or responsive ways?

Durand: I remember reading a book [to my kindergarten class]. It was called In 1492, about Columbus’ journey into the New World, here in America. And it was a rather sanitized version of that history. A young student said to me, “My mom told me that Columbus and the explorers weren’t always nice to the Indians that were here.” There’s a spontaneous comment, and you have an opportunity as a teacher: What am I going to do about that?

And I think I answered it fairly simply. Would I go into what genocide is? No, not with young children. But I did provide some acknowledgment: Yes, that’s true, the Indians were here first. This was their land. They had things that they knew how to do, they had things that they shared, and explorers came in and changed that. Does it feel good when you’ve built something and you have ways of doing something and somebody comes in and changes it? So those are the kinds of ways, I think, in early childhood, to make it relevant, but in a developmentally appropriate way.

In middle and high school, of course, we can address these constructs perhaps more directly. One of the things as a developmentalist that I love about the adolescent period is it is a wonderfully rich, pivotal period of perspective-taking and identity development and expanding critical thinking skills and cognitive capacities. We can start with the very broad construct of culture. What’s culture? What are all the dimensions of culture? Race is a component of that, but it’s not the only thing. We can talk about those kinds of issues around dimensions of identity and traditions. Things like stereotypes—and challenging those—are another way in. Those are very salient to young people. They are highly sensitized to the social environment. Thinking about curricular content, we don’t want to relegate something like history and race only to particular courses. How do we infuse that into our content and our curriculum? And what are the careful questions in middle school and high school that we can ask? For example, whatever we are reading, whose perspective is this from? Who’s left out of this story? Who benefits? What does it mean to be color-blind? Is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing? All of those critical thinking questions are exactly what young adolescents and adolescents are cognitively poised to be able to engage deeply in.

Bishop: How should we be preparing and supporting educators in a climate where they are often asked to avoid bringing up race in the classroom?

Dobbs: One thing to think about is, what are your local school policies about how curriculum gets made? The more people are involved in the work of thinking about what we do and talk about with students, the less likely they are to be afraid of that same curriculum.

The other thing I would say to teachers is to not work alone. To those teachers who are out there doing it alone, I admire you: I think that’s an incredibly courageous thing. But if you do feel afraid, building coalitions of people who do this work together makes it much easier to navigate—to have colleagues, have a feedback loop, to have a sounding board, to have all of these things that you might need. And then to find spaces where you can learn about how to do this work. If you had an education where some of this was silent and you didn’t learn about it, that is not uncommon. So if you have learning to do and you feel like you want to do that work, there are lots of tools and resources. I do know that taking some of those more proactive steps can help you to feel more supported in doing this work.

Durand: There are parents out there who believe in this work, who want this work to be done, and want to support us. Building and working with families is part of our work. And with those families that are resistant, it’s hard. But engaging in those questions, like, tell me more about what you are thinking? What is it that you’re worried about? So you can start with listening and with questions, and have that process of education, which, again, I acknowledge is hard. We teachers are already doing a lot, but I do think families and parents as stakeholders also can be powerful resources as we seek to do this in community.