Find Your People

by Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides & Carlin Borsheim-Black

Wow, how much things have changed since we last wrote for this blog. And how much everything is still the same.

When we last wrote in June 2020, we were working hot on the heels of so much energy and momentum to effect change with regard to racial equity in light of George Floyd’s murder and the beginnings of the Black Lives Matter movement. Teachers wanted strategies for doing antiracist work in their classrooms, even in the midst of the challenges of pandemic teaching, and we were able to share strategies for boosting white teacher racial literacy, building alliances with others interested in doing this work, and using discipline-based strategies for addressing race and racism in literature study. 

Teachers still want to do this antiracist work and seek out effective strategies for literature instruction. Yet, the political climate today is even more volatile, threatening, and unpredictable for many teachers in the field.

So, today we write to share research we have been working on since that initial blog post and the publication of Letting Go of Literary Whiteness, research that we hope helps teachers pursue this work that could not be more important in this moment for everyone. 

In summer of 2023, I (Carlin) interviewed English teachers from across the United States, who ultimately told me that the book challenges, the legislation, and the public scrutiny of their teaching at school boarding meetings and on social media were having their intended effect: that English teachers were feeling threatened, isolated, and at times unauthorized to talk about potentially controversial issues (i.e., race- and LGBTQ-related topics) in their classrooms. Many said that they were holding back–self censoring–from teaching particular books or having particular conversations out of fear of possible backlash, even when they had not been on the receiving end of direct pushback and even if they felt confident in their administrators’ support.  

Now, in March 2025, Ginsberg & Chae are reporting findings of a huge survey of English teachers from across the United States that indicate that while overt censorship is on the rise, “soft censorship”–in a variety of forms–is having a huge effect on what and how English teachers teach. In some cases, librarians are quietly removing books from shelves; administrators are using pre-approved booklists to enforce de facto censorship; and English teachers are avoiding topics or books to protect themselves and their colleagues from public and sometimes aggressive pushback. 

The reality feels dire. But, we can also find hope and inspiration in English teachers’ acts of resistance. For example, many of these English teachers also told me that they and their colleagues are getting organized in a variety of ways to protect their curriculum and ultimately their students. They are:

• formalizing the process people go through to challenge books;
• bringing curriculum through more formal review processes for protection; 
• offering strategic choices within their classrooms, making it possible for some students to opt out of reading particular titles without eliminating those titles for everyone;
• increasing their transparency and communication with parents to offer rationales for their teaching;
• organizing like-minded colleagues, parents, students, and community members to speak at school board meetings, serve on curriculum committees, and run for office.

Perhaps above all, many English teachers told me that they are strengthening their resolve to resist in the ways they are able. While few English teachers go into teaching expecting to navigate scrutiny, many English teachers are accepting them as realities for teaching in the current political climate–and preparing themselves to defend what they know is right and important for all students. Others are finding strength in community, supporting one another and holding one another accountable as they stay committed to antiracist pedagogy in their classrooms. 

From fall 2021 until spring 2024, for three years, I (Sophia) ran what started as a research study and ended up as a white racial affinity group that functioned as a professional learning community. I invited any pre- or in-service teacher who had taken coursework with me that year on antiracist ELA to join. Six white female teachers, with 0-25 years of experience, working in middle schools (2), high schools (3), and at the college level (1), in Massachusetts (5) and in Tennessee (1) joined the group. We met once a month, on Saturday mornings, over Zoom, for 90 minutes. In these meetings, we followed a protocol:

1. Celebrating antiracist actions taken since last month
2. Writing in response to a race-related prompt
3. Sharing a concrete strategy that one of us used to enact antiracist ELA that others might want to try
4. Troubleshooting challenges teachers faced in their classrooms and schools.
5. Reflecting on one take-away from the day’s meeting. 

The women in this group—all busy, all facing difficulties outside of their teaching lives—stayed with the group that entire first year, requested a second year, and then a third. And now, in 2024-2025, they asked if they could study the implementation of antiracist ELA in their classrooms to potentially write about it in real, messy, non-victory ways in case it might help others. 

Here are a few take-aways from our three years working together, insights gleaned from monthly meetings and in interviews:

• Accountability: Each month, before our meetings, I sent out a questionnaire which began with the question, “What antiracist action have you taken since our last meeting?” As one middle school teacher shared, “I knew that question was coming, and if I didn’t have anything to say, I knew that was a problem.”  After we reacted, usually emotionally, to some race-based challenge in someone’s school, the next question was, “So what needs to happen? What are the next steps?” At the next meeting, we checked in to see what transpired, not letting things go until some actions were taken.
• Perspective: With one member of the group working in the harsher context of Tennessee, the five Massachusetts-based teachers constantly commented on the fact that, they had to do this work—even if it felt risky—given how much harder it was to do it in states with more legal strictures. Similarly, the younger teachers looked up to the more experienced teachers as role models for how they wanted to be deeper in their careers. And the more experienced teachers would often say how impressed they were with the newer teachers who were risking their jobs to do this work, so they had to keep at it as a result. Having perspective energized these women to stay at it.
• Community: As one member stated, “We already know that everyone in the room is committed, so we can get past the why and go straight to the how of doing this work.” Teachers appreciated sharing space with like-minded others, especially for teachers without many allies in their professional or personal lives. 

For teachers reading this blog post, perhaps you can identify some allies—at your school, your district, from a graduate course or professional development experience—whom you might join to meet together and support each other to persist with this work at this difficult, difficult time. 

I can say, that every month, I wondered what, if anything, useful could transpire from these meetings. And each month, I left rageful, sad, so proud to be in this profession with these women, and energized to keep things going forward. I never imagined these outcomes, but they came through for three years in a row. 

Find your people. Gather. Share resources. And persist. 

Works Cited

Ginsberg, R. and Chae, K. (In press, 2025) National report of quiet and soft censorship in United States public schools. National Council of Teachers of English’s Special Issue of Censorship. National Council of Teachers of English.

Ginsberg, R. and Chae, K. (In press, 2025) National report of teachers experiences with school justification for censorship. Reading Research Quarterly.

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Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides is Professor of English Education at Westfield State University where she teaches literature methods courses about race and social class.

Carlin Borsheim-Black is professor of English education at Central Michigan University where she teaches English methods courses and advises the NCTE student affiliate.