Texas teachers are feeling more pressure than ever as they start welcoming students back into their classrooms.
“I’ve been with UEA for 22 years and this is the worst political environment for public schools and public school teachers that I’ve seen in a long time,” Poole told The Texas Newsroom.Last month, for example, a group of community members and conservative activistsRacial Equity Committee“When we talk about racial equity, we are transporting oppression from the past and replacing it on this generation,” Farryn Wright, a community member, told the board.
“Here we are … there’s so much excitement, and teachers are excited to have their students back, but you just hear all of this constant criticism and it weighs on them,” he said. One of them is Dr. James Whitfield, the former principal — and first African American principal — at Colleyville Heritage High School in Tarrant County.
One critic — a white man— said that Whitfield asking community members to be anti-racists was a signal to“For these people they would love nothing more than for school to be for straight, white, Christian people,” Whitfield told the Texas Newsroom. “ that are just going to believe a romanticized history and just fall in line and not really think critically just be about, as they say, reading, writing, arithmetic.