Designing Curriculum for Critical Consciousness

A White Teacher’s Process

Abstract

This manuscript describes a white teacher’s experience of teaching texts authored by writers from historically marginalized cultural groups in a high school classroom. I wrote this self-study as theoretical guidance for teachers who also want to contextualize conversations about race. The scholarship of bell hooks motivated me to adopt the pedagogy of teaching for critical consciousness. I begin by introducing the theory of critical consciousness, the prevalence of white teachers, and the need for teachers to begin identifying white culture with their students. Then, classroom work is connected to conceptual approaches of centering race to demonstrate how to address whiteness. I connected concepts from scholarship on racial relationships to my own reflections to explain the qualities of a pedagogy that aimed to challenge the status quo of teaching while white.