Sarah Scott Middle School eighth-grade literature teacher Shannon Loudermilk explains how her students are able to learn about Black history with their laptops on Tuesday at the school. Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza
Sarah Scott Middle School eighth-grade literature teacher Shannon Loudermilk explains how her students are able to learn about Black history with their laptops on Tuesday at the school. Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza
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At Sarah Scott Middle School in Terre Haute, educators and students celebrate accomplished Black individuals and tackle tough issues during Black History Month.

The school offers a full range of activities, from student research projects to daily announcements on Black trailblazers.

Staff decorate doors and bulletin boards with notable figures including NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. A school banner showing a clenched fist reads, “Racism has no place here.” Students will sign their names like a “pledge” and the banner will hang on the wall in the cafeteria.

The school does not shy away from tough discussions. “We’re taking racism head on,” said Scotia Brown, school principal.

In one activity, students will go through various stations that explore racism and how to “be the change” that advocates against it.

During a teacher professional development day, students had the opportunity to watch “Colin in Black and White,” narrated by Colin Kaepernick. It’s a dramatization that explores the former NFL player’s high school years and experiences that led him to become an activist.

“Each year, our challenge is to create a program that is rich and engaging and takes it up another notch so students have a deeper understanding of the contributions we all make to society,” Brown said.

The school continues its rich history of Black History Month celebrations, despite a national political climate and efforts by lawmakers in other states, and Indiana, to limit how race and racism issues are taught in schools.

Legislative efforts to curtail discussion of race

Last year, Indiana legislators introduced House Bill 1134, a so-called “divisive concepts” bill that opponents said would limit how teachers approached race and other issues in the classroom. It failed after drawing protests and heated debate at the Statehouse. A related bill prompted a Statehouse news conference by the Indiana Educational Equity Coalition on Feb. 14. It includes the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA), the Indianapolis Urban League and NAACP, the Indiana Latino Institute, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana and other groups.

The groups raised concerns about Senate Bill 386, authored by Richmond Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz, a bill that would limit classroom discussions about race, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. The proposal targets teaching about race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and other factors.

The legislation also would create a way for parents to file a complaint with the school district over classroom instruction. The bill was scheduled to be heard in the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 15 but was pulled from the agenda late the night before.

Meanwhile, in Florida, a new education law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis requires lessons on race to be taught in “an objective manner,” and not “used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view,” according to a Washington Post article. The Florida law also says students should not be made to “feel guilt” because of actions committed by others in the past. DeSantis and other proponents of the law, which went into effect last summer, contend some teachers have inserted political beliefs into lessons related to race.

Similar efforts have occurred in other states this past year.

While no such legislation has been passed in Indiana, the state and national debate have had an impact, although educators have different perspectives on how and to what extent.

Impact felt at college level

Those efforts to limit instruction, including last year’s HB 1134, the so-called divisive concepts bill, have led to “one of the more potentially significant and, I think, ugly and damaging periods of attack on the teaching profession, particularly for social studies instruction,” said Dan Clark, coordinator of Indiana State University’s Social Science Education program. He believes the purpose of K-12 social studies instruction is to educate good citizens, who know their nation’s background and are equipped to fully participate in American democracy.

Clark hopes his students will impart a vision of American history “that both inspires but also does not shy away from ‘the warts’ and national failings — i.e. they don’t sugar coat the history.”

He has a special unit in his upper-level methods course where the class discusses the necessity of covering controversial topics. “We never instruct [ISU] students to ‘indoctrinate’ in such lessons. The whole purpose is to help their [future] students learn how to research, form and defend their reasoned opinion,” Clark said. But the controversy of HB 1134 last year, even though it failed, has had an impact on his college students, he said.

“When we discussed how to approach controversial subjects this past term, I was shocked that many of them voiced a real concern over even teaching about slavery or Jim Crow. I mean, my mouth about dropped,” he said. “You must teach about this. But they were skittish because it so obviously involved white supremacy and systematic racial oppression.”

His students also had concerns about covering Jim Crow laws and resistance to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

To Clark, those topics are simply fact with little controversy involved. “What scares me and should scare all reasonable citizens,” Clark said, is that these efforts to limit what is taught “will significantly alter the presentation of our racial history.” His students “feel pressure to downplay its worst sides lest they upset some white students. It is just ridiculous.”

It’s also affected recruitment of students into the profession, he said. Overall enrollment at ISU is down, anyway, but in just a year’s time the number of majors in the social studies education program went from in the 90s to now in the 60s.

“Predictably after last year’s proposed laws attacking teachers, we had the smallest freshman class of majors since I have been here,” Clark said. “My social studies education students are fearful that they will not be able to teach even the standard curriculum without problems. I have never seen this before in my 20 years at ISU.”

Elsewhere in Indiana

Alexander Cuenca, Indiana University program coordinator for middle/secondary social studies education, said that what he hears from student teachers and educators is that instruction on these issues hasn’t changed at this point, particularly since HB 1134 did not pass last year.

“It is roughly status quo in the treatment of Black history in schools,” he said.

During Black History Month, those teachers who have done things on a surface level — such as an assembly — continue to do so, while those who have traditionally taken the opportunity to engage in deeper conversations about race and racism in the U.S. haven’t changed.

Controversy in Indiana and other states hasn’t impacted how teachers approach these issues, yet, but if laws are passed this year seeking to limit how these subjects are taught, there could be an impact in the future, Cuenca said.

He said his students are committed to teaching about these difficult topics because they have grown up with issues of race, racism, protest and gun violence “right in front of their face … it’s meaningful to them in a way that’s different than it was to other generations.”

His students remain excited about their chosen field, secondary social studies education, and they are entering it with eyes wide open. “It’s no longer a surprise that teaching has been used and social studies has been used as kind of a political weapon,” he said. They know there are efforts to pass legislation that attempts to minimize voices and minimize different kinds of representation in the curriculum.

Cuenca does tell his future teachers that when they look for jobs, to ask school administrators if they will be supported in efforts to teach about race and racism.

Concerning trends

The national political climate and efforts to limit discussions on some topics concerns Marie Theisz, social studies teacher at Terre Haute North Vigo High School; she teaches Advanced Placement classes.

Efforts to limit how educators approach race and racism “probably puts people more on edge. I’ve been around awhile, and I’m a little more confident and feel like I can really support and rationalize what I do as a teacher,” she said.

Theisz added, “I think if you are a newer teacher coming in, you’d kind of feel like you are walking on eggshells, especially in these states that have passed laws.”

She said she’s always been “really aware of making sure to really hit a lot of different groups that have been marginalized throughout history. That’s just something I’ve always done.”

But now, history teachers “feel kind of under attack for what we do and what we’re supposed to do, even by [state academic] standards.” If HB 1134 had passed last year, it would have gone against state standards both in history and English.

Another concern she has is the possibility of school boards trying to restrict curriculum or resources, something happening in other parts of the country.

The national climate does have an impact on those considering going into teaching, Theisz believes. “If you’re going into a teaching area and you feel like you might be under attack or have to defend yourself, of course you might shy away from it, and I hate that for our new teachers.”

In years past, the number of social studies teachers was greater than jobs available. “We used to have a surplus,” she said. That’s no longer the case.

Most recently, North has had two vacancies filled by long-term subs. “That would have never happened five or 10 years ago,” she said.

In her room, she has posted on a bulletin board the following: “I have the courage to teach hard history.”

She wants kids to understand what it was like to live in various time periods, whether they are learning about immigrants, different races or even women’s history. If certain resources or books were removed from the curriculum, “I don’t think it would be a true picture of history.”

Many juniors in North Vigo English classes are reading “Dreamland Burning,” historical fiction related to the 1921 Tulsa race riot and massacre. “The kids don’t put it down,” Theisz said.
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