Chapter 8 of book “Unbalanced: Memoir of an Immigrant Math Teacher”

(I am publishing chapters of a new book. Each chapter can be read on its own. To start from the beginning, see here. Here is the book description:

Parent. Math coach. Climate science researcher. Software engineer and manager at Microsoft. Investment analyst, trader, and risk manager at a hedge fund. Entrepreneur. A forty-five-year-old new teacher.

This is the story of a first-generation immigrant becoming a high school math teacher in the United States. After achieving the American dream, he set out to teach his favorite subject — math. He inspired students to learn, grow, and build confidence in themselves. After two years, he received his first and only performance review in the most unexpected way — an ultimatum: change or leave.

His experience was emblematic of our time. In education school, he encountered a culture that labeled learning questions as “ideologically violent” “white supremacy”. He thought real schools might differ, but he was naive. He found that school culture fostered student fragility, teachers were not set up to be accountable for learning outcomes, and the system was more focused on social justice than learning.)

CHAPTER 8 “IDEOLOGICALLY VIOLENT WHITE SUPREMACY”

For the third time, I tried to finish reading the assigned paper — and failed.

It was the seventh week of my master’s program in teaching at the University of Lake Wobegon (ULW), where I was preparing to become a high school math teacher. As I biked to campus on a sunny afternoon, the Gothic-style library loomed over the main square, its fountains reflecting the snow-capped mountains beyond. But the usual throngs of people were nowhere to be seen. The campus was completely abandoned. It was April 2020, and the whole country was paralyzed by a pandemic. I had started and would finish the program online, earning a degree without ever setting foot in a classroom for the entire period.

The paper in front of me, titled “Desettling Expectations in Science Education,” was required reading. The authors invented the word “desettle” as the opposite of “settle,” aiming to disrupt “settled expectations” in education in two ways: by reexamining “settled” scientific knowledge and by challenging “the set of assumptions, privileges, and benefits that accompany the status of being white” — essentially, white supremacy — as “settled” social expectations in education.

The lead author, Dr. Megan, a graduate of ULW, was by then a highly published professor at a prestigious university and a member of the Board of Science Education of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Megan was the pride of the ULW education department, and our instructor had an expression of total awe whenever Dr. Megan’s name was mentioned.

The paper described a seventh-grade science classroom discussion on “What is a living thing?” Jonathan, an African American student, argued that the sun should be classified as living: “If the sun is nonliving, how can it produce the flowers?” A European American student offered an analogy to show why the sun should be classified as nonliving: “Like for Jonathan’s (reasoning), we have to have water (as a living thing) even though water is not living. We still need it like plants need the sun.” The teacher agreed with the European American student and said the sun should not be considered a living thing.

The paper then concluded that Jonathan’s idea was “deeper,” “more dynamic,” and “closer to contemporary scientific thinking” and that “Jonathan encountered the rippling effects of settled expectations through which the thinking of a European American student was treated as a valuable asset, while his thinking was essentially dismissed.”

At this point, I had to stop again to recollect my thoughts.

About two-thirds of the students in our class were fresh out of college. There were only a few like me who had worked in the world outside of education. George was one of them. When the instructor asked the class for thoughts on the paper, George raised his virtual hand (through a button on Zoom) and said: “The conclusion based on the color of students seems hard to justify. If the student asking the question was white instead of black, would the conclusion still be the same?”

“Bingo!” I said to myself. This was the exact question I had in mind. More generally, how reliable were these far-reaching and important conclusions based just on a few classroom observations? I had been reading similarly styled papers assigned by the program for weeks now. Once the impressive words wore off, I was baffled by the underlying logic, which was at odds with what I had learned from twenty years of work experience. After hearing George, I finally knew I was not the only one.

George’s question caught the class by surprise. So far, there have been few disagreements in the classroom, and the atmosphere was extremely polite and agreeable. The instructor couldn’t answer the question, and in the next class, we had the honor of having Dr. Megan herself join us on Zoom, speaking from her study with a huge shelf full of books in the background.

Dr. Megan spoke for thirty minutes without interruption about her “desettling” theory, supporting it with additional evidence that further stretched our understanding. During this lecture, she gave “Rocks Can Talk” as another successful example of “desettling” settled expectations in science. When she finished, my normally active and inquisitive classmates were utterly silent for what felt like an eternity. The theory was so advanced that nobody knew what to ask.

Finally, I asked her questions like, “What should I do if this ‘desettling’ conflicts with my core knowledge? what if a student of color tries to ‘desettle’ ‘1 + 1 = 2’?” She gave an eloquent answer, where every sentence made sense, but together, it left me confused. Nevertheless, I thanked her sincerely and promised to think more deeply about it.

Several classmates privately thanked me for daring to ask what they were afraid to ask in such a respectful way. I was pleased with myself for a moment, but my skepticism didn’t go unnoticed by the instructor. In the next class, I noticed a newly added slide on class norms, which were the basic rules governing how we should interact with each other in the class. Normally, class norms were something our teacher wouldn’t hesitate to spend fifteen minutes of class time discussing, but this time, the new norm was simply announced with no discussions at all:

“If you are having a hard time making sense of the content, please first think about why YOU might be struggling with it, instead of dismissing the knowledge as not realistic, accurate or pragmatic.

• The dismissal is a deeply violent move and reflection of assumed and asserted power and privilege to decide that anyone’s being and experience are only valid if you deem it to be
• It’s core to how white supremacy was/is constructed.”

This norm didn’t exist in the previous slide I saw two days ago, so it must be related to the discussion with Dr. Megan. George and I were the only students who had shared our struggles with “making sense of the content.” Was this a warning that our behaviors have violated this class’s basic — although newly introduced — rules of communication? Have we committed a “deeply violent move” and become constructors of “white supremacy” by asking learning questions? How could our earnest words be “ideologically violent”? I was scared and dared not ask again.

Later that week, George got into trouble again during an online discussion assignment about the significance of historical events. Eager to redeem himself and expose Christopher Columbus, George nevertheless exposed himself to other interpretations by writing:

“Whether we like it or not, powerful white male figures have been responsible for many events in history, and those stories need to be told. However, providing multiple perspectives on who those individuals were, as well as some additional details about their lives that may not be so flattering, actually creates a more engaging and interesting subject.”

I believed that George was simply stating that those white males were responsible for historical events, including the atrocities committed, and not trying to beautify them. However, a lot of classmates vehemently protested his insensitivity to the indigenous people. The instructor’s comment below caused poor George to write a long thread of apologies in panic mode:

“I am going to ask you to tread very carefully around this notion that ‘powerful, white male figures’ have been responsible for many events in history and those stories need to be told, the argument that you are making here can be perceived as ideologically violent and these stories, which many have roots in white supremacy, have been told many times.”

Maybe the instructor’s intention was benign, but being associated with “ideologically violent white supremacy” behaviors twice in a week was too much for someone who asked learning questions to pursue the truth. In the weeks that followed, I heard George half-joking about quitting the program despite having paid the high tuition required as a non-resident of our state. He had just quit his job as a professional photographer and relocated from Florida to train as a teacher here, driving across the country in an old car with his pregnant wife. He really wanted to be a teacher. But did he know what it would take to make it through a teacher’s education?

Like George, I had traveled a long way in life to be trained as a teacher. Could I survive the teacher-training program if I kept saying the wrong things?

NEXT -> Chapter 9: Creative Insubordination

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