TEHIA

Teachers need to understand how children grow and develop so that we can match the content and curriculum to how students learn. I earned my PhD in educational psychology with a focus on cognition and instruction. I love to explore how children learn and how teachers teach. I am fascinated by the organizational structure of our brain and memory. The human brain can process 11 million bits of information every second. Our brain organizes and stores as much of the incoming information as possible. Many of our experiences are stored in our brains in schemas, or as I like to illustrate to my students, filing cabinets. Schemata help us to organize and interpret information (Hammond, 2015) and can drive behaviors and thoughts to become automatic (Ormrod, 2013).

Within our filing cabinets are drawers, and within each drawer are folders. The folders are the experiences we have: what we learn about in school and interactions with others. In each folder are pages with bits of information on them. Those bits of information are the details we store, both consciously and subconsciously. For example, when my son was 1, he developed a schema for a dog. He knew a dog walked on four legs, had a tail, had fur, and barked. When he then saw a cat—another four-legged, furry animal with a tail—my son associated the cat with the dog and barked at the cat. We then had to help him understand the difference between the two.

Sometimes we are aware of what we've learned, but sometimes we aren't. The conscious (aware) and unconscious (unaware) knowledge we acquire becomes our schemata. Hammond (2015) relays that our schema development is also connected to our racial and cultural experiences. Such experiences impact how we teach and learn. For example, we can learn and internalize a stereotype without being overtly taught. A White mom asked, “I have never had a negative experience with an African American man, so why as I am sitting in my car do I lock the car door when he passes by?” Without her permission or recognition, harmful messaging had shaped her schema for interacting with African American men.

The brain stores our experiences and then reconnects with those thoughts and behaviors to strengthen our schema. However, when we encounter something—a person, event, new information—that contradicts our schema, we experience cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of confusion or disequilibrium that results from attempting to hold conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. Our brain has to work to understand what is going on.

Years ago, I brought my family with me to a professional conference. My partner travels for work as well and has all the platinum-titanium-plutonium status levels and regularly gets upgrades on flights and hotels. On this trip, our family was upgraded to the concierge (top) level of the hotel. We entered the elevator and pushed the button for the floor of our room. Then a White man entered. He pushed the button for his floor, which was below ours. When we all arrived at his floor first, he stood there assuming that we were getting off on his floor. I let him know that we still had one more floor to go. He responded, “How are y'all on a floor higher than me?” With a confused look on his face, he walked out of the elevator. Before I could respond, the elevator doors closed.

In that White man's mind, my Black family could not be on a higher floor. With a schema informed by White superiority, he thought he was better than us. His cognitive dissonance was expressed through his question and ugly tone as he walked off the elevator. In that 3-second moment, I was in shock. My brain couldn't process the question I was asking myself: Did he just say that? Is this dude for real? I wanted to stop the elevator doors from closing and have a quick conversation with him! His seeds of deficit beliefs caused him to say what he was thinking based on what was in his schema.

Now, if you want to debate or defend this man's thought process as you are reading, I need you to pause, take a deep breath, and ask yourself why. Why do you want to defend his position? The “not all” commentary is neither useful nor productive. Individuals don't just keep racism, bias, and prejudice contained in their bodies, beliefs, and words; they express it through norms and institute it through systems.

Let's imagine past the individual and examine this man's environment—home, church, schooling, for example. His environment helped develop his schema for racial rank. Clearly, in his environment, White people are at the top of the social hierarchy (or exclusive hotel resort), and Black people are somewhere, anywhere beneath. Furthermore, what if that man worked, lived, or engaged with Black people on a regular basis? What types of microaggressions or macro White supremacy behavior have they been subjected to?

The beauty of our brains is that they are “malleable organs that respond to the environments we are placed in and the challenges we face” (Eberhardt, 2020, p. 15). Our brains are like a muscle in that we can make them stronger. We can rewire the brain by having more and more diverse experiences to override schemata informed by harmful stereotypes. We can also become aware of our biases that are dangerous to other people.

COGNITIVE LOAD

We want to warn those of you go-getters who want to read this whole book and do all the reflections and practices in a day, or even a week. Our brains and hearts are not microwavable. They need time to process and internalize what we read, learn, and feel. If you try to consume too much of this book too quickly, you will tend toward superficial growth. Neither you nor our children deserve superficial growth.

Processing and trying to retain too much too soon via text and video can contribute to cognitive load, which is when we are taxing our brain to learn and act (with and without media support) at the same time. Cognitive load is the amount of memory being used when learning new information. It's like the memory on your phone or computer—when the usage is high, learning becomes less efficient, or harder to store. To continue with the filing cabinet metaphor, when the drawers or folders have a lot of information coming in at the same time, it is more difficult to store the information efficiently.

Based on Mayer and Moreno's (1998) cognitive load theory (which focuses on multimedia experiences, but I believe is applicable here because our learning is in multimedia formats), there are three types of cognitive load: intrinsic, germane, and extraneous. Intrinsic load is the degree of processing that has to be done with the subject matter that is difficult, or new. For example, there is a lot more intrinsic load for me when I am learning a new statistical method versus when I am learning about new historical information to use in my class. The intrinsic load is high when I am learning statistics; because it is complex to me, I have to be in an environment with no distractions. To make it less overwhelming, I have to use strategies to make sure the information makes it into my schemata, like chunking the information together so I'm not learning the information bit by bit. When I'm learning history, I can chunk the information chapter by chapter because I have other information to connect the new information to. To ensure the information sticks, I often ask myself, What do I recall in that chapter? What was the most important information from that chapter?

The second type of cognitive load is germane load. This is when new information is integrated into existing schemata. When germane load is high, we have more schemata available to integrate the new information. If germane load is low, the brain has to build more schemata for the new information, which makes the intrinsic load high. When germane load is high, it is easier to integrate new information into the schemata that already exist. To efficiently maximize germane load, we want to spend time reflecting on what we learned, think about how old and new information are related, and practice what we've learned. We need opportunities to practice.

Extraneous load is the third type of cognitive load. It actually doesn't have anything to do with learning at all. It is about the extra things running in the background of your brain. Examples of extraneous load for me would be my to-do lists: Did I pay for my boys’ extracurricular activities? When is their well visit checkup? What groceries do I need to pick up for my partner to make dinner tonight? Did I respond to that email? Or maybe I'm playing and replaying a conversation I had with someone: Ugh, I should've said this instead of that; I need to follow up with them to make sure they got what they needed. When all those noisy thoughts are running in the background, it's difficult to learn and retain new information. It is difficult for information to be absorbed into schemata when I'm thinking about a hundred other things.

Here is a scenario ripped from the pages (or schema) of antiracism education and training. Often, when people are attending a group session where they should be laser focused on learning, an internal monologue is crowding their hearts and minds:

• I don't want to say the wrong thing.
• I don't want them to think I'm racist.
• Did I just commit a microaggression?
• Why don't I already know this?

As you can imagine or perhaps relate, the internal monologue gets in the way of learning. So although we've moved on to something else, the learner is still stuck on a previous point that was made. Because the participant allowed the extraneous load to lead, they missed information that was beneficial for them. Ways we can reduce the extraneous load include centering yourself before you begin a task. So you're not trying to remember all the things you need to do, write down your to-do list. Do a couple of breathing exercises or journal for a few minutes so you can release your thoughts onto paper.

Because of what we know about cognitive load, your brain needs time to process, store, and make new connections to all the new information, thoughts, and experiences. We encourage you to not skip over the reflective and practice activities at the end of each chapter. Let's work with our brains, rather than have our brains work against us. Just like you cannot will a seed to grow quickly, you cannot will yourself to process this content quickly.

Our brains are one of the many tools we have to confront racism. Our hearts, our experiences, and our desire for human connections are also tools to overcome racism. Once our brain becomes critically aware of what we are internalizing, we can decide what goes in the schema. Adults and children can do this. Children are being socialized about who they are on a daily basis. Socialization happens in homes, schools, and the community. From what they watch on television to their phone apps and social media, they are being informed on who is pretty, smart, kind, or fair. Consequently, they are also being socialized on who is ugly, unintelligent, scary, or dangerous. Their brains are making meaning with all of the social messaging. I shared in my TED talk (Starker Glass, 2022) that as caregivers we must tell our children who they are before the world tries to tell them who they are not. We have all had that moment where we realized that we were a particular race. Some of those experiences were good, and some of them were not so good. But we all had them. My line of thought is, if I can tell my boys who they are before the world does, then that first encounter with interpersonal racism may hurt a little less. I know it will happen, but I want it to less painful. If I can help all children see the humanity in one another, maybe there may not be any hurt at all.

Because I grew up in San Diego, California, my school and community environment was very diverse. Black, White, Filipino, Samoan, Mexican, and every combination in between was a representation of my friends and my schooling experiences. As a child and through high school, I loved to roller-skate. That was my time to enjoy the latest music, hang out with my friends, and skate. Lacing up my skates allowed me to just be who I was and leave the worries of the world behind. From skating lessons to teen night and all-night skates, I loved being at the skating rink. The rink was also where I had my first racialized experience. I was in sixth grade. I knew I was Black before that, but I don't think I was aware that other people knew I was Black or that Black people had to be Black in a certain way. I was taking a rest at the water fountain, and a Black girl and her friends came up to me and said, “Are you Black or White?” I remember looking at her, confused for a moment, thinking, “I know they see my brown skin. Why would she ask me that?” And after a moment, I responded with, “I'm Black.” She gave me the side eye, which indicated that she wasn't convinced. She said, “You're not Black.” Then she and her friends skated off as if to dismiss me. I began to wonder if being Black was a good thing or a bad thing. I remember experiencing a moment of cognitive dissonance. The schema I had for myself was being questioned. I looked around the rink, and I realized that though the majority of my friends were from diverse backgrounds, they were not Black. I suppose that because she did not see my Black friends, who were not at the rink that evening, she discounted my racial identity.

That experience stuck with me. I share that experience with my college students when we discuss our first racialized experiences. We all have had that moment when we had to acknowledge race—ours or theirs—and the personal and social implications of this awareness. What did you think of yourself or others racially? Was their race a positive or negative thing? How did you treat yourself or someone else because of race? Furthermore, what was your moment?

When we understand how our brains function—how we consciously and unconsciously store information and how we can do that efficiently through cognitive load—we can reflect on what is already in our schemata and treat ourselves and others accordingly. Then we can engage in a diversity of experiences to help us grow.

LUCRETIA

Before I began my racial healing journey, I was complicit with the misunderstanding that racism touched only Black people. Therefore, my version of cultivating justice and belonging was entirely ethnocentric. I cared only about the liberation, healing, and well-being of African Americans. But during my graduate studies at Iowa State University in 1997, I was introduced to antiracism and multicultural education underscored by a study abroad in post-apartheid South Africa. I began to grow in my understanding of how race was codified, not by biology but by unjust laws and social practices. I grew to realize how racial inequity was established, not by personal choices but by racially coded social mechanisms compounded over time. Once I understood the disease of racism, I understood how it harmed everyone, not just Black people. Because education launched me on my journey, I am adamant in my conviction that much can be gained through formal instruction and good pedagogy rooted in antiracism.

At the same time, the small historically Black campus ministry of which I was a part initiated a shift to become a multiracial church. In other words, we would no longer be a Black church but would actively expand beyond our cultural norms to cultivate a belonging space that includes people who are not Black. Decades before I arrived on the Ames, Iowa, campus, this church was birthed out of the university's Black Cultural Center, which served as a haven for African American cultural identity in the historically White space, amid corn fields. The Black Cultural Center Church had since become home to Black students from all over the country with a shared Christian identity, values, and a desire to be in community with one another.

Historically, to avoid addressing the hypocrisy of racial injustice in a nation touting that all men are created equal, White Christians segregated churches. White Christian enslavers who baptized Africans into a compromised, demented version of Christianity continued to hold their African Christian brothers and sisters in bondage and forced them to worship separately. Subsequently, Black churches matured into their own Christian identity and grew to become a refuge for Black spiritual expression and ground zero for organizing the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, the Montgomery Improvement Association, formed by Ralph D. Abernathy, Edgar Daniel Nixon, Ray Robinson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, organized the movement through a multitude of Black churches and associations. The reliance on nonviolence was both spiritual and strategic. It resonated with the traditions of Black churches. Meanwhile, White churches continued to splinter into more denominations over the conflict between those who wanted to preserve a White supremacy–centered existence and those who wanted to become a just and belonging faith community.

Within this historical context, the notion of worshiping with White Christians felt unsafe to me. I did not want to worship with White people. Meeting academic requirements for courses like multicultural and antiracism education was simple. More challenging and complex was the heart work and mental labor required to transform a refuge established for a Black community into a belonging space where people from various racial groups felt at home. Nurturing such a shift demanded community investment into vision casting, strategic planning, and facilitating personal growth. For example, because music and worship style are significant to any church's culture, we had to be willing to listen to, incorporate, and embody music genres that were outside of our cultural preferences. At that time, I had little to no exposure to Christian music beyond the Black gospel expression, and this adjustment was excruciating.

Collectively, we stepped back from what was normal to us so we could see the culture of our community. We analyzed ways our practices unintentionally barred access to our community. We consulted with people from White churches and with people whose church culture was different from ours. We learned what would make our church more accessible and welcoming to people who are not accustomed to or familiar with Black church culture. We then began to integrate changes that fostered a shift; some changes were abrupt, and some were gradual.

One of the most significant changes made was to the name of the church. The name Black Cultural Center (BCC) church reflected its origins and birthplace. As you can imagine, resolving to remove the historical significance of the name was difficult. But we wanted the new name to reflect a different vision of belonging—Body of Christ Church (BCC). We also made changes at the leadership level. Some Black leaders stepped down from their positions so that White people could be added to the leadership team. In a short time, the White leaders who helped in the planning phase served as liaisons for inviting White people to the church. I know that Black leaders making room for White leaders feels counterintuitive to antiracism. But remember, the goal was to deconstruct the structure that historical racism informed and current practices maintained. White people needed to have the opportunity to be in community with BIPOC in non-White spaces—not as saviors but as servants.

We made cultural adjustments as well. Most of us from Black church backgrounds were accustomed to church services lasting 2–3 hours. But we were told that White people may not be willing to church for that length of time. I thought to myself, Oh well, they can just leave early! Fortunately, though, I was not the leader. We shortened the length of our church service to about 1.5 hours. Not to worry—the socializing and bonding that had occurred during our lengthier gatherings shifted to an after-church group lunch. These gatherings became fixed, fostered belonging, and helped to cultivate authentic friendships.

To include music and songs beyond the Black gospel music tradition, we chose to integrate additional styles of Christian music into our personal lives. At that time you could purchase cassettes and CDs only by going into a music store. Our pastor encouraged us to “walk to a section of the store that you don't usually visit, and buy from a genre that you don't usually listen to.” He encouraged us to cross over the aisle between Black Gospel and White Christian music. We did. New White parishioners integrated Black gospel music into their personal lives, while we Black parishioners infused contemporary White gospel music into ours.

A church, like all institutions, is made up of people from various backgrounds. And with a diversity of lived experiences, each of us engaged in our own personal transformation. Each of us had to be willing to grow within. To contribute to a space that became home to people from various backgrounds, we each had to hold and nurture the vision within ourselves—the way a seed holds the vision for what it will become. Personally, I grew to see White folks as able to become colaborers in dismantling racist ideas and structures instead of only as architects and perpetrators of oppression. I gradually felt more comfortable with White people in an intimate, sacred space, like church. And in this new belonging space, I saw some White parishioners become aware of their own racialized identity and take intentional steps toward antiracism.

I was able to help my church community realize its vision only after I made the decision to grow myself. Fortunately, at that time during my graduate program, I was enrolled in a series of antiracism education courses, where I was introduced to an analytical framework for examining race/ism in the United States. Through formal instruction, I was equipped with a historical, political, and social context for understanding how racism was formed and is sustained. During that semester, I built a sound knowledge base and an understanding of harmful ideologies and systemic dynamics. I also elected to participate in other helpful learning experiences like workshops and conferences. I was able to broaden my awareness of my own racial identity and the racial identity of others in relation to our interconnected society. Like a seed, I embodied the vision for the future church and was able to help manifest it.

When we are aware of how institutions and systems have shaped our thinking and behavior, we can take the responsibility to help reshape and reform—first ourselves, then systems and institutions.

So where do you begin? Like we did, you begin with your own growth. First, take the responsibility to learn beyond reading a book or listening to a speaker. Learning involves processing and organizing, writing, higher order thinking, language, attention, and memory, all interacting with your emotions, behavior, social skills, and learning environment. We understand what learning requires for other life essentials like math, science, and reading. But for some reason, we don't engage in a learning process for antiracism, which is equally significant. Be willing to engage in experiences that expose you to facts, histories, stories, perspectives, ideas, and ideologies that may be new to you. Embrace change. Challenge and adjust cultural norms that keep you from expanding. Grow your own capacity to create change.

A common request we hear is, “Please help us change our school, workplace, or church.” We've been asked to “fix” the students when a racist incident occurs in school. Some of the funniest requests are when we are asked how to change a racist in-law. We think it's funny that the racist is always an in-law, never a blood relative! Before we can equip our children and students, heal our school community, or help our in-laws, we must begin with ourselves. Beginning with you is the most accessible but most challenging of this growth journey. Zoom in and reflect on your own thinking and practices that could stunt your growth toward a new vision.

Also, zoom out and examine structures and policies that were originally and historically designed to sustain exclusivity—for example, White spaces created by White people to center Whiteness. Learn the history of where you live, teach, and work. Be curious about its roots, how it came to be what it is—racially, ethnically, culturally, and economically. Be willing to challenge anecdotal information and cultural norms that do not align with your new vision. For example, read authors, scholars, activists, and theologians that are outside your cultural bubble—the sociocultural context in which you immerse yourself (Henriques, 2014). Actually, make deliberate efforts to step outside your cultural bubble. One of the best and most reliable ways to do this is to interact with and develop relationships with people who live in a very different sociocultural context. Invite them to show you barriers, lack of perception, and oversights that will prohibit you from creating spaces that support children's potential and aspirations.

REFLECTION

1. Describe your racial schemata. Growing up, did you talk about race/ism with adults at home or in school? If so, what did you talk about?
2. How are you socializing yourself, your children, and your classrooms about race? What conversations are you having with your children and students about who they are racially? What conversations would you like to have if you have not begun?
3. Identify changes that need to occur within your heart, home, classroom, or school that maintain old structures and practices that will not serve the new vision.

PRACTICE

1. Knowing your starting point will help you determine how to move forward. We have witnessed well-meaning parents, teachers, and education leaders jump into diversity, equity, and inclusion or antiracism initiatives without clarity about where or why they are starting. If a classroom teacher is ready to transform their curriculum to include multiple perspectives, but the students’ parents resist this approach, growth will be compromised. Similarly, if a school leader is ready to shift school policies and practices to foster belonging and justice but classroom teachers are afraid to talk about race/ism, early growth will be stalled. Consider who, in your circle (including yourself), is ready (or not ready) to cultivate justice and belonging.
2. Create a list of how you will reduce your intrinsic and extraneous load. How will you maximize your germane load?