West Virginia Pre-Service Teachers Learn About Black Lives Matter at School

By Leah Danville. Based on an interview with Dr. Tiffany Mitchell Patterson, Assistant Professor, West Virginia University.

Dr. Tiffany Mitchell Patterson

Dr. Tiffany Mitchell Patterson is an Assistant Professor of Secondary Social Studies in West Virginia University’s College of Education & Human Services Department of Curriculum & Instruction (CILS). On Tuesday, February 2, she hopped on her two-hour Zoom class with 12 pre-service secondary social studies teachers for the first monthly lesson on how to implement a Black Lives Matters (BLM) curriculum into their future classrooms. The class, comprised of  people in their 20s and 30s who are almost all white, quickly identified similarities between the BLM movement and guiding principles in their own lives.

“Working in the West Virginia context, it's really important to breakdown what Black Lives Matter is and isn’t, so really thinking about what they may have heard I began class with a quick poll on how many students felt comfortable with their understanding and knowledge of the Black Lives Matter movement and bringing it into a classroom and then how many students felt prepared,” said Mitchell. “Most students said they were comfortable with the idea of bringing it into the classroom but almost everybody said they didn't feel like they were prepared to do that work, and there were a few that said they were not sure.” For the students that felt unsure about bringing a BLM curriculum into their classrooms, they took it upon themselves to look through and familiarize themselves with the BLM curriculum guide for 2021 prior to class. Mitchell’s class came ready to learn. 

Using resources from Teaching for Change’s D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice’s middle and high school resource section, Mitchell focused her first lesson on familiarizing her students with the 13 Principles of the Black Lives Matter Movement. “It really became a lively discussion because many students didn't realize the 13 principles are things that they really did believe in, they just had not seen what the principles were,” said Mitchell. “It was like ‘oh empathy!’ and ‘wow I could do a lesson about globalism and we could talk about, you know, the diaspora and, like, the slave trade or Black people’s history around the world,’ like, they were really getting excited about that because they didn't really know what those principles were.” A spark was also ignited around the ‘Black Families’ principle. According to Mitchell, “a lot of students were saying that they never thought about how family life is not really portrayed in schools. They didn't particularly like that negative things about Black families are often portrayed in the media, and they thought that school was a really great way to start shifting those narratives.” 

The 13 Principles of the Black Lives Matter Movement has provided Mitchell’s class with a metaphorical road map for how to bring the BLM curriculum into their schools but also expanded their thinking beyond the week toward the Year of Purpose, a movement asking educators to reflect on their own work in relationship to antiracist pedagogy and abolitionist practice, persistently challenging themselves to center Black lives in their classrooms. Mitchell has gotten word that students are already sharing Teaching for Change’s resources with their networks: “One student shared it with her aunt in Arizona who then shared it with the principal at their school, and it's now got them really thinking about how they can incorporate this.” 

By the end of Mitchell’s two-hour class, her students not only felt hopeful about successfully implementing justice-oriented education in their classrooms, but Mitchell felt encouraged. “In the beginning, there was more interest than pushback, they just didn’t have the appropriate information to learn about it,” says Mitchell. “You know, they have a lot more work to do, on varying levels, but I'm encouraged that they are at least willing to put in the work to grow in learning to it and that's saying a lot.” 

A spark was ignited for a group of majority-white pre-service teachers in West Virginia on February 2, 2021. With the guidance of Mitchell and resources from the Black Lives Matter at school curriculum, the Black Lives Matter movement was demystified and humanized and demonstrated an alignment with these educator’s intrinsic values. 

“It’s crazy how the simplest documents that Teaching for Change has, with the definitions of the 13 principles, is probably one of the most powerful ones. For people not oriented to that work, or for young people, it is a great conversation starter.”