A Pedagogy of Insurgency: Teaching and Organizing for Radical Racial Justice in Our Schools

We understand the terrors of this historical moment: rising white nationalism and white supremacist violence, xenophobia, homophobia, sharpening economic inequality, homelessness and underemployment, neoliberal assaults on workers and the environment, Islamophobia, attacks on immigrants, kids in cages. While schools are guilty of perpetuating some of these terrors, they have also been sites of significant movements for justice. Drawing on the organizing for Black Lives Matter in School, in this article I discusses the power of teachers, school communities, and professors to organize against white supremacy through activism and teaching. In doing so, I suggest that, given the tenor of our times, we must be committed to a pedagogy of insurgency.