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MISHAWAKA, Ind. — REAL News Michiana has discovered the Penn Harris Madison School Board approved sending a teacher to Washington D.C. for professional development in Critical Race Theory. At it’s latest board meeting last week, the board voted 5-2 in favor of sending Penn High School Math Teacher Angela Yarrell to the ASCD Annual Conference, despite concerns raised by parents prior to the vote. (A school board agenda with the request can be seen below).
ASCD CONFERENCE
The ASCD Annual Conference is being held in Washington D.C. next month. The conference is featuring a speaker by the name of Bettina Love, who is currently a professor at Columbia University.
According to Love’s bio on the ASCD website, “Her writing, research, teaching, and educational advocacy work meet at the intersection of disrupting education reform and strengthening public education through abolitionist teaching, antiracism, Black joy, and educational reparations. Love’s scholarship is focused on advancing how the U.S. education field understands and critiques school reform and the systemic and structural racism of public education within the U.S.; and advocating for abolitionist approaches in the field of education that seek new possibilities for eliminating educational harm.”
Below are just a few recent posts on her social media accounts supporting the terror group Hamas, claiming children are being punished in school for being black and describing conservatives looking to protect children from pornographic material as racists.
ANGELA YARRELL
Yarrell, the teacher who was approved to attend the ASCD event for professional development, has been criticized for her promotion of Critical Race Theory in the past. Last year she was called out for a video she had posted online, pushing CRT and its importance in the classroom. She has since deleted the video. Yarrell is also listed as the staff sponsor of Penn High School’s Black Student Union. She has been a Math Teacher at Penn High School since 2015.
PUSHBACK FROM PARENTS
During PHM’s school board meeting on February 12th, one parent spoke out about the professional development, asking the board to deny Yarrell’s request.
“This is the second month in a row you’re voting to approve to send PHM educators to the Association for Supervision in Curriculum Development. ASCD will feature one, and only one, presenter at this event. Her name is Dr. Bettina Love.” The parent stated. “Her Twitter account features a YouTube interview in which she boasts that destroying capitalism is her ultimate goal. And, that anything white people have or earned today was stolen. She’s a self-proclaimed Critical Race Theorist.”
“(Love’s) theory is that the U.S. has engaged in the spirit murder of black children.” The parent continued. “Love wrote a 12 page manual for teachers titled ‘Guide for Racial Justice and Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning… she instructs teachers to ‘disrupt whiteness and other forms of oppression. She insists that whiteness is a plague on our country. She states America’s schools are a place of whiteness, white rage and white supremacy, all of which function to terrorize students of color… So, in case you’re confused about what I just outlined for you, in case it hasn’t been clear yet, this is Critical Race Theory.”
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I just edited out the portion of my video with Mr Warner in it. It should be reflected within a few hours. After speaking with him, I realized that I misunderstood his comments. He’s a great teacher with good intentions!
This is quite disturbing.
For the record, I was asked about “culturally relevant teaching”. While this has the same initials as “critical race theory” (CRT), I was not under the impression that I was being asked about “critical race theory”. If I were, I would have rejected to comment.
To be honest, I don’t even know if “culturally relevant teaching” is a practice that is taught in higher academia. Education (and many other corporations) cycle through new-sounding terms in order to sound relevant to make it seem like they’re always progressing and learning something new, when in reality, things don’t really change that much.
In regards to teaching in a “culturally relevant way”, I always try to use examples from what is popular in the culture at the time. For example, video games are part of not only American culture but global culture as a whole. I like to bring up culturally relevant games (Fortnite, Madden, etc.) to make analogies to concepts in my biology class.
Just because two phrases share the same initials doesn’t make them the same thing. If so, the World Wrestling Federation and the World Wildlife Fund would cause quite an entertaining ruckus. Now that I think of it, The Undertaker versus an endangered panda bear would be quite the sight to see.
I hope this sheds a little bit of light on the situation.
-Andrew Warner
Hi Andrew, we spoke about this before, and I believe you had good intentions with your interpretation of it. That’s why I’ve removed your clip from my video. I meant to do it way earlier (after we spoke), but forgot. Unfortunately, other teachers have a different interpretation of culturally relevant teaching, and use the topic for political activism instead of connecting with students.