Matthew R. Kay

Matthew Kay teaches English in Philadelphia, working at a public high school with academic admissions standards and a very diverse student body. He asks his students to wrestle with race in his classroom, and his approach is "dialogic" -- classroom discourse is the means of education. After working directly with his students, he began running professional development sessions on how to productively discuss race. In 2018, he released Not Light, But Fire, a book aimed at educators that synthesizes his approach.

The first four chapters of the book discuss the "how" of tackling race conversations in the classroom:

1. Race conversations require feeling safe. Building an actual "safe space" depends on teachers' actions (not words). Ensure students' well-being and the health of the community comes before the lesson (burn the first five minutes of class, have students share good news, have students practice giving high-grade compliments, always let students save face/maintain their dignity, model language that lets students build on each other and disagree). Explicitly name and regularly refer to classroom norms (listen patiently, listen actively, police your voice, talk to the other students and not the teacher, be succinct, disagree without being disagreeable, it's okay to agree to disagree).

2. Teachers need well-developed interpersonal skills; without them, race conversations will devolve and damage classroom culture. Reflect on your racial experiences and perspectives. Prepare for the unexpected (like a student not knowing about the Holocaust) and be able to shift gears. Learn about facilitating discussion and conflict management: Orient interlocutors to the topic (not too much or too little -- maybe clearly acknowledge aloud your own experience; anticipate conversations with potential conflict and orient for it); summarize at the close of each comment and especially at the end of class; make sure to distinguish facts from your beliefs (teachers have power); react calmly and re-summarize when someone struggles to articulate a controversial thought and is accidentally offensive (teachers set the tone); send the message that growth and not teacher approval is the goal; name when a conflict occurs and whether it is a conflict over facts/data (your experience says X but facts say Y), process/methods (how we can determine Z), purposes (jokester is uncomfortable, others think jokes are inappropriate), or values (without taking sides or calling fouls, recognize a stalemate and where the agreement is, so students can keep generating win-win solutions together).

3. Teachers need to think about how to structure the conversations. Use all the basic forms of classroom conversation (whole-class discussion, small groups, and one-on-one conversations); personal journaling can also be good preparation. Race discussions shouldn't always or even mostly be discrimination discussions. Plan units to have threads that connect to a main theme so students see the education as purposeful. Make the connections between the topic and student lives obvious, and give students the hard problems to wrestle with -- the ones with no clear answers. Do reflection activities for explanation/interpretation/application/perspective/empathy/self-knowledge. Gather classmates' key quotes. Don't extend extra time for discussions even if they're going very well.

4. Race conversations must have clear and respectable educational purposes. Some common catalysts aren't really justifiable without strong curricular ties (addressing guilt, being cool, pointing out an elephant, gaining status, enjoying chatting). Ensure students have a chance to find what they can actually influence and do something in that sphere. Ensure students can follow new lines of inquiry. Encourage students to publish. Don't just pop-up a conversation apart from the curriculum unless it has a clear purpose; underprepared conversations are risky.

The final four chapters give examples of how these principles manifest in lessons that Kay teaches (the n-word in Kindred, students' names and themes from varying texts, Native Son and cultural appropriation, and a pop-up conversation about the 2016 presidential election). The epilogue applies the usual professional development methods to developing skills at handling race conversations.

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I tend to find books aimed at teachers to be excellent for teaching group engagement skills, so a book that bridges education and race was right up my alley. There's a lot of value in this book, though its applicability to non-classroom settings takes a bit of reflection. It's also quite dense; I simultaneously found it hard to pick up (it's only 250 pages and it took me 6 weeks to read) and very hard to put down (I stayed up very late multiple nights, thinking fruitlessly "just one more page"). After finishing it, I could tell it was valuable, but apart from one or two anecdotes that will stick with me, I couldn't have immediately told you what I learned.

All that to say -- I think this would make a great book club book for educators, and a great independent read for folks who are very interested in pedagogy and effective modern English classes, which are exactly the groups Matthew Kay is targeting. For folks primarily interested in having race conversations in their everyday life, well, that's not at all this book's purpose. (In fact, one of my take-aways from Kay's book is that effective conversations engaging race are probably not even possible outside a closely knit community with a shared relevant purpose and a highly trained facilitator.) I'd recommend this book with zero reservations for its target audience.… (altro)