by Wyatt Eichholz
Woke K-12 teachers ranting about their leftist agendas are ubiquitous on social media, particularly the Twitter account “Libs of TikTok.”
As universities ramp up their efforts to train K-12 educators on how to teach components of leftist and woke ideologies, Campus Reform decided to give parents and community members a look in the classroom with information on the higher education programs and academic theories that trained some of teachers behind those infamous videos.
White Supremacy
This fall, Virginia high school teacher Josh Thompson took to TikTok to explain why PBIS, a student disciplinary model, is a form of “white supremacy with a hug.”
In the video, Thompson, a graduate of Virginia Tech University, argued that making sure students are “sitting quietly” in one’s seat is one of the behavior patterns that “come from white culture.”
“So if we’re positively enforcing these behaviors, we are, by extension, positively enforcing elements of white culture, which, therefore, keeps whiteness at the center, which is the definition of white supremacy,” Thompson said.
Thompson holds advanced degrees in English Education and English from Virginia Tech. The university curriculum for the English Education program include courses such as “Topics in Diversity and Multicultural Education,” “Gender in Education,” and “Schooling in American Society.”
Commenters to the video pointed out that “These rules are created in American culture, which has many races.” In response, Thompson said that argument was invalid because it did not approach the subject “in a racialized way when it comes to power and power dynamics.”
“So when we think of power in terms of race, whiteness has the most power,” Thompson said. “So while there are people of many different races and cultures living in America, the fact that whiteness is the dominant racialized power structure, that is the problem and that is why we have to involve race in all of our arguments and considerations.”
Critical Race Theory
Thompson’s accusations of White supremacy echo the tenets of Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory is an academic framework that insists that “America is institutionally racist and that people are inherently oppressive or oppressed based on skin color,” Campus Reform higher education fellow and former Department of Education press secretary Angela Morabito has explained.
Lawyer and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw first coined the terms “intersectionality” and “critical race theory” while teaching at the UCLA School of Law. She now teaches at Columbia Law School and serves as the executive director of the African American Policy Forum.
The AAFP’s most recent initiative is “Truth Be Told” a campaign to commemorate George Floyd’s birthday and advocate for critical race theory in schools.
“Classrooms are a primary battlefield for the current attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the teaching of truth,” the AAFP’s Call To Action page reads. “In recent months, lawmakers in over two dozen states have attempted to regulate how teachers can discuss racism, sexism, and issues of equality and justice.”
In a video posted on TikTok earlier this summer, Iowa teacher Megan Geha called on teachers to be “activists” and fight for the ability to teach Critical Race Theory in schools.
Geha said in the video:
“Today is the first day our country has recognized Juneteenth as a national holiday and yet I’m getting ready to go back to school in the fall and my governor has put into place ridiculous legislation that many governors across the country have put into place, such as, I can’t teach anything divisive, I can’t teach critical race theory, and I can’t teach about racial equity. So, teachers: in the past, we’ve been activists. After the s**t show of last year, we need to stand up and do what’s right for our kids right now. So, this is a call to action, teachers. We’ve got to stand up and fight for our kids because this is bull***t. We can’t lie to them.”
Geha, who has a master’s degree in Teaching Special Education from Morningside University – previously Morningside College – lists “activist” as one of her hobbies on her high school’s website.
Additionally, Geha has an English degree from the University of Iowa. That school’s program currently requires “one class (a minimum of 3 s.h.) in multiethnic literature and culture” from a list of 13 courses.
Of the 13 courses, eight focus exclusively on African American literature while only one course is on literature by Asian Americans, while no Latino- or Hispanic-focused course is mentioned.
She was also one of a wave of teachers responding on social media to legislation adopted in several states across the U.S. that would limit or ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools.
The AAFP has called on K-12 educators to “join us in A Day of Action and the kick-off to BLM at School’s Year of Purpose by uploading a lesson about structural racism that you will teach on October 14th.”
“We also invite educators to take the pledge to teach the truth,” the organization said.
Another prong of their approach was focused on higher education. “We invite Higher Ed educators to read and sign our Higher Ed Faculty Open Letter,” read the document. “We encourage you to review the examples of faculty senate resolutions, engage in using the senate resolution template, and consider adopting similar language at your own university.”
In addition to materials directed specifically at K-12 educators and at college professors, the organization published several media guides to provide “a coherent messaging platform for three key stakeholders: public education, racial justice advocates and voting rights activists.”
As the messaging guide explains clearly, “Critical race theory originated in law schools, but over time, professional educators and activists in a host of settings–K-12 teachers, DEI advocates, racial justice and democracy activists, among others–applied CRT to help recognize and eliminate systemic racism.”
In other words, the first and leading proponent of Critical Race Theory when it was just taught in law schools now recognizes it has been incorporated into K-12 education. “And that’s a good thing,” Crenshaw writes, “because we must support our teachers’ freedom to teach the truth about our accurate history.”
Similarly, on a school district in Tahoma, Washington, a now former equity volunteer named Alicia Busch had a compilation of her TikTok videos uploaded on Twitter. Identified as the equity team leader for her district, Busch said in the videos that she doesn’t “give an f***” about a people of “whiteness” and referred to the “American dream” as “white supremacy.”
“There’s no safe place for BIPOC to exist when whiteness is present,” she said in a clip.
A representative for the Tahoma School District confirmed that Ms. Busch was a volunteer on the equity committee but withdrew as a volunteer following the controversy surrounding her videos.
The Tahoma School District also clarified in a document that Critical Race Theory “is not part of Washington state’s standards for teaching, and it is not part of Tahoma curriculum.”
“At Tahoma,” the document said, “we are not teaching students that certain races are superior to others, that individuals of certain races are inherently racist, to discriminate against others, based on race or any other distinction, [or] to hate certain races, the United States of America or its political parties.”
However, the TSD also said that they “strive to be anti‐racist.”
“That means we are working to develop the skills to dismantle racist actions, policies, and institutions, replacing them with those that support racial equity,” the district said.
Gender and Sexuality
The progressive ideologies promoted in classrooms range farther than just racial issues, however. Teachers are also using their classrooms as a place to train young children in matters of sexuality and gender.
In one TikTok video that surfaced on twitter Oct. 15, a teacher named Nairobi Makeba, records herself in class with her students rehearsing the way she prefers to be called according to her non-binary identity
Homeschool pic.twitter.com/d9VWSBALL0
— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) October 15, 2021
“So like I said, a lot of people have a question because I’m a non-binary teacher,” Makeba, said. “So, to my fourth grade class, what do you guys call me?”
The class replied in unison, “Teacher Robi.”
“And y’all are cool with that?” Makeba asked
The students replied, “Yes.”
“Exactly! It’s that simple.”
In another video, Makeba coaxes the student through a series of questions about what she expects to be called in class and how she wants her students to respond.
“So I have one of my students here, and I wanted to answer this question for you all. What do I do, or what do you do if you mess up and say Miss Robi or Mrs. Robi? What happens then?”
The student said, “Then I’ll just say, um, teacher Robi.”
In other words, teachers do not keep progressive ideologies of sexuality and gender to their personal social media pages, but actively interject it into the lives of students as young as ten.
Mask Mandates
Teachers have also used social media to sound off on the topic of masks and vaccines, or rant against Republicans and conservative parents.
In another incident, a student filmed Utah teacher Leah Kinyon ranting about former President Donald Trump in a chemistry class because people were not taking vaccines.
“I hate Donald Trump,” Kinyon was caught on tape saying to her class. “I’m gonna say it. I don’t care what y’all think. Trump sucks.”
At one point, Kinyon, who has a degree in biology from Bingham Young University, veered into openly attacking the parents of students who were hesitant about vaccines.
“Most of y’all’s parents are dumber than you. I’m gonna say that out loud,” Kinyon said. “My parents are freaking dumb, okay. And the minute I figured that out, the world opens up.”
Kinyon went on to say, “You don’t have to do everything your parents say, and you don’t have to believe everything your parents believe, because most likely you’re smarter than them.”
After an investigation, her employer said that she is no longer employed by the school district, according to Fox 13 Salt Lake City.
Jenna Gillis, an English teacher with a degree in communications from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, compared the lack of mask mandates in Texas schools to a “a mass shooting that we know is coming, but cannot do anything about” in a video this summer.
“This year, there is this overshadowing apprehension that’s clouding my normal back to school thoughts,” Gillis said in the video. “And it’s with thoughts like, if I die, who’s going to take care of my children? And if I end up in the hospital, how am I going to pay those bills? And if I give covid to my students or my own children, and they die, how am I going to live with that?”
Ultimately, Gillis said she was tired of fighting with parents over the masks. “We want parents to know that we are on the same team,” she said.
One class in the Texas A&M program, “Intercultural Communication,” teaches students “an investigation of the process by which persons and groups of different cultural backgrounds create understanding. Types of knowledge, skills, and sensitivity necessary for intercultural communication are developed.”
Another course, “Communication and Sexuality,” has students “focus on communication and sexuality, specifically exploring sex and gender identity development and expression, intersections of race/ethnicity and sex/gender, how communication impacts various types of relationships, the role of communication in sexual activity, and power abuses related to sexual activity, with specific focus on consent and sexual safety.”
Higher Education
As Campus Reform previously reported, the Pennsylvania State University College of Education is currently implementing a plan for “transforming education” along the lines of progressive ideologies.
In a lengthy strategic plan, the school outlines the steps it will take to hire faculty and staff, rewrite curricula, and fund research oriented around “anti-racism” and “social justice” in order to train a generation of teachers well-versed not only in the subject matter of their classes but also “global citizenship, climate change, social justice, understanding of systemic racism, democratic participation, civics education, mental health and well-being, and inclusivity.”
The plan states Penn State’s intentions to “engage collaboratively with families, community members, educators, and policymakers within the state, nation, and around the world” in order to address “pressing social issues, including poverty, essential literacies, racism, inclusion, mental health and well-being, and climate change, among others.”
That is the very same language that is then repeated by teachers across the country to children. For proof, look at another one of Geha’s videos.
“Critical Race Theory is not teaching our white children that they are bad or racist,” Geha said in a second video. “No, critical race theory is literally un-whitewashing our curriculum. It’s teaching the history of this country, warts and all.”
“So until White people, and especially white men, start stepping up and doing their part, these systems and structures are going to stay in place. We need to tear them down,” Geha concluded.
Campus Reform made its best efforts to reach out to individuals mentioned in this story but was unable to contact certain individuals who wiped their online presence. Some of the videos mentioned in this article have been deleted from TikTok.
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Wyatt Eichholz is a Senior Alabama Campus Correspondent, reporting liberal bias and abuse on college campuses.
Photo “Teacher Robi” by Libs of Tik Tok.
