Box of delight

When Dawoun Jyung, a sixth-grade math teacher at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in New York City, heard about the Atlanta spa shootings that took the lives of eight people—including six women of Asian descent—she felt a mix of “fear and devastation, lament and disbelief,” she recalls.

At the same time, the violence wasn’t entirely unexpected—the recent surge in xenophobia and brutality against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and against Asian American women in particular, builds off a long history of such racism in America. And so, Jyung says, “this is not new pain. This has precedent.”

Educator Dena Simmons on engaging in antiracist work in the classroom.

Let’s say that you, like me, have a renewed commitment this year to ensuring equity in your classes. Let’s say that you’ve been to the seminar—“Antiracist Education” or “Racism in the Classroom”—and afterward you read books such as How to Be an Antiracist. Now you’re ready; you want to do what some people call “the work.” But then you get to your classroom and don’t have any idea where to begin.