“I didn’t know you were Mexican, you don’t have an accent.” A teacher casually says to a student. What message is the teacher conveying to the students? Is it racism? Is it xenophobic? If the teacher responds, “I didn’t mean that way!”, when confronted by the student, is it still racism? What’s the difference between a microaggression, microinsult and microinvalidation? How these terms connected to our understanding of a system of oppression? Teachers are the gatekeepers of the knowledge and have the power to validate the knowledge that is valued, but do teachers question their own language in schools? Do we think about how our words impact our students? This workshop allows for educators to discuss and analyze the pressures of teaching and how they can be intentional about their language and learning to be transparent when they have made an oppressive "word choice”.No one is exempt from the internalization of oppressive language and unlearning such language in our schools is essential to creating anti-oppressive spaces.

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