Who Are We?
Black Lives Matter at School is a national coalition organizing for racial justice in education. We encourage all educators, students, parents, unions, and community organizations to join our annual week of action during the first week of February each year.
Liberate With Local Lesson Plans
- Inspire by utilizing the Elementary Visual Art Curriculum prepared by Monica Heiser and Athanasia Kyriakakos here.
- Transcend by teaching with and learning from the Freedom Flights curriculum here.
- Every city has an “Avenue.” However, Baltimore’s Historic Pennsylvania is something else. Explore the Avenue with “The Avenue: Baltimore’s Black Arts District Then and Now from the brilliant mind of Matthew Cipollone here.
- Teach and learn about Redlining and its current devastating effects on Baltimore City with the lesson plan “Teaching in the Era of Black Lives Matter in Science” from Baltimore’s National Academy Foundation here.
- Deepen your understanding of Black History Month and redlining by exploring this rich power point from educators and artivists at Baltimore’s National Academy Foundation here.
- Sharpen your understanding of math by going deeper with “Math’s Ancient African Roots here.
Get Involved
Want to coordinate Black Lives Matter at School events with other educators across the country? We have multiple tools and resources for your toolkit. Use the resources below to organize, mobilize and educate at your school, community and community school.
- Explore and adapt curriculum from Baltimore’s Teacher Democracy Project here.
- Explore the 2021 national curricula here.
- Deep dive into the 2021 Curriculum Resource Guide here.
- Get the Starter Kit. The Kit here includes everything you need to host your first Week of Action.
- Read the 13 Guiding Principals here.
- Support and Share the Demands here.
- Reconnect with the curriculum from 2019 here.
- #FUNDBLACKFUTURES by purchasing items from the BLM at School Store here.
- Connect with what educators are doing in New York here.
- Grow leaders and healers with the Baltimore Grassroots Curriculum here.
- Jump-Start democratic decision making by reading the readings found here.
Read and Share the Demands
What do we want? Justice!
In this era of mass incarceration, there is a school-to-prison-pipeline system that is more invested in locking up youth than unlocking their minds. That system uses harsh discipline policies that push Black students out of schools at disproportionate rates; denies students the right to learn about their own cultures and whitewashes the curriculum to exclude many of the struggles and contributions of Black people and other people of color; and is pushing out Black teachers from the schools in cities around the country. With this analysis, educators in the BLM at School movement developed these demands for the movement:
- End “zero tolerance” discipline, and implement restorative justice
- Hire more black teachers
- Mandate Black history and ethnic studies in K-12 curriculum
- Fund counselors not cops
Align With the 13 Guiding Principles?
The Black Lives Matter Movement is guided by the following principles. We seek to expand student understanding of these principles through the week of action.
1. Restorative Justice
We are committed to collectively, lovingly, and courageously working vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people. As we forge our path, we intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.
2. Empathy
We are committed to practicing empathy; we engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.
3. Loving Engagement
We are committed to embodying and practicing justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.
4. Diversity
We are committed to acknowledging, respecting, and celebrating difference(s) and commonalities.
5. Globalism
We see ourselves as part of the global Black family and we are aware of the different ways we are impacted or privileged as Black folk who exist in different parts of the world.
6. Queer Affirming
We are committed to fostering a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking or, rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual unless s/he or they disclose otherwise.
7. Trans Affirming
We are committed to embracing and making space for trans siblings to participate and lead. We are committed to being self-reflexive and doing the work required to dismantle cis-gender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.
8. Collective Value
We are guided by the fact all Black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status or location.
9. Intergenerational
We are committed to fostering an intergenerational and communal network free from ageism. We believe that all people, regardless of age, show up with capacity to lead and learn.
10. Black Families
We are committed to making our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We are committed to dismantling the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” that require them to mother in private even as they participate in justice work.
11. Black Villages
We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, and especially “our” children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.
12. Unapologetically Black
We are unapologetically Black in our positioning. In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a necessary prerequisite for wanting the same for others.
13. Black Women
We are committed to building a Black women affirming space free from sexism, misogyny, and male‐centeredness.
For more information, reach out to Cristina Duncan-Evans at cduncanevans at baltu.org or Chris Bilal at cbilal at baltu.org or Rebecca Yenawine at rebecca tdpbaltimore.org. We can’t wait to connect with you.