Standards and Stories: Educational Policy and White Supremacy in the Lives and Work of White Teachers

Abstract

In this chapter, I work with the stories of two white teachers, Darrin and Aubrey. In my previous writing about their stories, I was focused on challenging how the research literatures on the racial identities of white teachers tended to reduce these teachers to and imagine them as little more than the embodiment of white privilege. Here, I return to Aubrey’s and Darrin’s stories to consider some of the ways that educational policy – specifically, state teacher standards – impacted (or did not impact) their lives and teaching. With Darrin, I concentrate on his interactions with an African-American student named Antonio in their theater class and explore how the problems Darrin faced with this brilliant student might have played out differently if Darrin’s earlier teacher training had taken shape in a different educational policy context. With Aubrey, I examine struggles she faced in her student teaching experience. These struggles point to how Aubrey was plagued by unrelenting demands – from the university and the state – for professionalism and adherence to white supremacy. I close the chapter with two suggestions for teacher educators who work with white future teachers.