Educational Studies

A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association

ISSN: 0013-1946 (Print) 1532-6993 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/heds20

Skinfolk Ain’t Always Kinfolk: The Dangers of

Assuming and Assigning Inherent Cultural
Responsiveness to Teachers of Color

Monique Cherry-McDaniel

To cite this article: Monique Cherry-McDaniel (2019) Skinfolk Ain’t Always Kinfolk: The Dangers
of Assuming and Assigning Inherent Cultural Responsiveness to Teachers of Color, Educational
Studies, 55:2, 241-251, DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2018.1500912

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2018.1500912

Published online: 20 Sep 2018.

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EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, 55(2), 241–251, 2019
Copyright # American Educational Studies Association
ISSN: 0013-1946 print/1532-6993 online
DOI: 10.1080/00131946.2018.1500912

Skinfolk Ain’t Always Kinfolk: The Dangers of

Assuming and Assigning Inherent Cultural
Responsiveness to Teachers of Color
Monique Cherry-McDaniel
Central State University

This article details the dangers of assuming that teachers of color are either inherently culturally
responsive or prepared in teacher training programs to be more culturally responsive than their
White peers. This article calls on Black feminist thought, and indigenous studies to describe what
I have termed settler teacher syndrome and to argue that, if not afforded a systematic and explicit
training in cultural responsiveness and sustainability, teachers of color have the potential to be as
dangerous to students of color as their White counterparts. I use personal narrative to detail my
work with teacher candidates at a historically Black college to further illustrate what is necessary
to prepare teachers of color to be the public intellectuals and change agents our schools so desper-
ately need.

The need to have teachers of color in classrooms is undisputed. Research over the last 30
years has demonstrated that all students, particularly students of color, benefit educationally
and affectively from having knowledgeable and well-trained teachers of color. Several studies
found that when paired with teachers of color, students of color earned higher standardized
test scores in reading and mathematics (Clewell, Puma, & McKay, 2005; Dee, 2004). Pitts
(2007) found that even when students of color were in the same building, and not necessarily
the same classrooms as teachers of color, they performed better on high school graduation
exams. In addition to academic improvements, researchers report that when teachers of color
are in the same buildings and classrooms as students of color, there were increases in advance
course placements (Klopfenstein, 2005; Meier, 1993), and college matriculation (Farkas,
Grobe, Sheehan, & Shaun, 1990; Hess & Leal, 1997). Research also reports that students
experience increased teacher expectations (Dee, 2004; Figlio, 2005; Oates, 2003; Uhlenberg
& Brown, 2002), beneficial student-teacher relationships (Dixson & Dingus, 2008; Lynn,
2006; Ware, 2006), and higher instances of critically conscious teaching (Perry & Steele,
2003; Thompson, 2004). These statistics have caused teacher educators, policy makers, and

Correspondence should be addressed to Monique Cherry-McDaniel, Central State University, 1400 Brush Row
Road, Wilberforce, OH 45384. E-mail: mcherrymcdaniel@gmail.com
242 CHERRY-MCDANIEL

researchers to assume a wholesale belief that teachers of color are inherently more capable of
teaching students of color than their White counterparts.
However, as an African American teacher educator at a public minority-serving institu-
tion, I have become increasingly concerned with the lack of attention paid to ensuring that
all teachers of color are properly prepared and adequately trained to meet the needs of stu-
dents of color, specifically as it relates to being culturally responsive and culturally sustain-
ing. My concern grew from my interactions with teacher candidates in their junior and
senior years, who had already gone through the requisite foundations courses meant to pre-
pare them for work with increasingly diverse populations. Although I was under no illusion
that these candidates still had much to learn even after those courses, I was taken aback by
the ways in which they understood schooling and the students they would eventually
be teaching.
Take, for instance, a classroom management course I taught 2 years ago. To spark a dialog
on the ways in which schools aim to control Black children’s bodies, I showed a video clip of
the South Carolina resource officer dragging a young Black girl from her seat and slamming
her to the ground. The teacher candidates, all African American and over 90% women, argued
that the young lady had been disrespectful and deserved to be treated like that by the officer.
Instead of contemplating the student’s motivations, they sympathized with the officer, and
speculated that he might have had a bad day dealing with similar discipline problems.
Similarly, teacher candidates' ideas about student achievement, graduation rates, and school
culture writ large were rife with stereotypical tropes about poor kids of color, who could learn
and be successful in school, only if they would try harder, act better, and if they had families
and communities who cared about them and their education. What is most ironic is that some
of those teacher candidates come from the very same communities they so readily disparaged.
Teacher candidates who were just semesters away from entering classrooms to practice on the
nation’s most vulnerable children, I found, were potentially just as dangerous and problematic
as research had shown White teachers to be.
All of the research I had previously read seemed to suggest, unequivocally, that teachers of
color were better for students of color. Haberman (1988) argued that the best predictors of
success for teachers in urban schools were life experiences, attitudes, and dispositions toward
inequality and difference, and he argued that selection of teacher candidates was more import-
ant than their training. Weiner argued that teachers’ class, race and gender were major factors
in what shaped their perspectives and practices. Others even argued for cultural synchronicity
as a major factor in the data on improved student achievement, stating that teachers of color
had access to cultural knowledge and cultural capital, which they called on to help build net-
works of understanding for their students. This and other aforementioned research was used to
intellectually fund a national campaign to recruit more teachers of color to teacher preparation
programs. However, amidst the clamor for more minority teachers, there were voices that
whispered the warning. Cochran-Smith (1991) argued that by virtue of their own experience,
minority teachers were not automatically prepared to teach students of color. Geneva Gay
(2000) argued that similar ethnicity between students and teachers may be potentially benefi-
cial, but it is not a guarantee for pedagogical effectiveness. Finally, Dillworth (2012) stated
that there is a failed assumption that there is a homogeneity of thinking that creates a sense of
 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES 243

community between teachers and students of color. These warnings are also corroborated by
statistics that indicate that although the number of teachers of color entering the classroom
has increased, their attrition rate has been even higher (Ingersoll & May, 2011). It was also
reported that their efficacy decreases once they enter classrooms. These developments seem to
suggest that we need to take a more critical and conscientious approach to preparing teachers
of color, and indeed all teachers, to become culturally responsive and sustaining, and willing
to make long-term commitments to influencing change in classrooms.
When I began to search the literature on what it would mean to train all teachers of color
to become culturally responsive and sustaining, what I suspected to be the issue was further
illuminated. Teachers of color were receiving similar or identical teacher preparation as their
White counterparts. Moreover, the training all teacher candidates received was inadequate and
almost resistant to training them to be culturally responsive and culturally sustaining. This
was a remnant of a historic push to focus on the technical training of teachers above all else.
There was also an unchecked and under-researched move to simply recruit and train teachers
of color to fill hard-to-staff teacher positions with no mandate to retain them.
When reports about the nation’s failing schools became a political hot button and more
rhetoric about teacher quality and accountability infiltrated our profession, colleges of educa-
tion devoted all of their attention to training teachers to be content area experts. They main-
tained the ubiquitous, but largely ineffective, multicultural education course(s), proven to be
taught with varying degrees of scope, depth, and criticality. Because this work was
approached so uncritically, much of the “diversity training” was aimed at “neutralizing dan-
gerous White women,” and teachers of color slipped through the cracks. We relied on the data
that suggested that teachers of color entered the classroom with a stronger commitment to
teaching students of color, but we never questioned what undergirded that commitment or
how it would be operationalized and sustained. Although there has been excellent work done
in the last 20 years in theorizing what it looks like to disrupt injustice in the classroom,
through concepts such as Ladson-Billings culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy, and more
recently Paris’ and Alim’s culturally sustaining pedagogy, that work has not been taken up
intentionally to fundamentally change the way teachers are trained. Some preservice teachers
of color, for any number of reasons, are heavily influenced by that work and have been
wholly engaged in the work of making students aware of themselves within a racist, classist,
and capitalistic society and teaching them how to work within and against the system.
However, others have been engaged in a campaign of respectability politics meant to socialize
and assimilate students of color into the current system. Those who were engaged in the latter,
suffer from what I have begun to call settler teacher syndrome, and have likely done as much
damage as their White counterparts.

Settler Teacher Syndrome Defined

Settler colonialism, briefly defined, is a distinct type of colonialism that is made up of both
internal colonialism—“the biopolitical and geopolitical management of people and other liv-
ing things within an imperial state” and external colonialism—“the expropriation of fragments
244 CHERRY-MCDANIEL

of indigenous worlds, animals, plants and human beings … to build the wealth, the privilege
or feed the appetites of the colonizers” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, pp. 4–5). The aim of settler colo-
nialism is to remove and replace indigenous people, to claim and exploit the land while devel-
oping a distinct culture, and establishing and maintaining ideological, material and economic
sovereignty. The United States and much of the Western world function within settler coloni-
alism and all of its citizens, while affected by it in varying capacities, work either to maintain
it or to subvert it. This includes teachers, who are arguably cultural gatekeepers, and serve a
very important role in organizing our ideological and symbolic worlds.
A teacher who suffers from settler teacher syndrome intentionally or unintentionally makes
instructional and pedagogical decisions that serve to maintain settler colonialism, in that it jus-
tifies and/or organizes settler colonialism (Cherry-McDaniel, 2016). For teachers who work
with students of color, these instructional and pedagogical decisions serve to further eliminate
(get rid of) or exceptionalize (mark as inferior) students of color for the purpose of perpetuat-
ing their dispossession, extraction and exploitation. The elimination and exceptionalization of
students of color happen in many ways. It happens to Native American and other indigenous
youth when teachers insist on teaching them in English, instead of their first languages. As a
result, these students often lose access to their first language and the culture and identity trans-
mitted through it, and thus are gradually eliminated (made less indigenous and more White).
This same thing happens to students who aren’t indigenous, but who have language traditions
or cultures different from settler/dominant culture. Teachers who suffer from settler teacher
syndrome teach students to prefer and value dominant culture over their own, and to adopt
dominant culture as a means of surviving and thriving in school and beyond; this is often
referred to as assimilation.
For students who aren’t able to be eliminated through assimilation, they are eliminated
through extreme and often violent forms of discipline enacted upon them. Teachers who suffer
from settler teacher syndrome have internalized and operationalized a belief that students of
color are everything colonialism said indigenous and other people of color were—unruly, dan-
gerous, violent, and unyielding, if left to their own devices. They disregard their students’
humanity in favor of enacting dehumanizing discipline regimes, including class rules and rou-
tines that are meant to control their students’ bodies. Students who aren’t controlled are elimi-
nated literally through suspensions, expulsions and alternative education options. This
socializes students of color to expect and accept being acted upon in violent and authoritarian
ways, and eventually creates a more exploitable labor force, thus forwarding the agenda of
settler colonialism—amassing exploitable bodies and land.
Not only do teachers who suffer from settler teacher syndrome actively work to eliminate
students of color, they also actively work toward exceptionalizing students of color.
Decolonial theorists define exceptionalizing as casting indigenous people and other people of
color as inferior for the purpose of justifying their exploitation and for the purpose of justify-
ing the hierarchical stratification of society, with indigenous and other people of color occupy-
ing the lowest positions within that structure. Teachers who suffer from settler teacher
syndrome have internalized and operationalized a belief that children of color are intellec-
tually inferior and incapable of learning to justify pedagogical and instructional decisions that
deprive students of color of quality education. Although statistics report that students of color
 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES 245

perform better on standardized tests when they are taught by teachers of color, it is unwise to
forget that students of color perform significantly lower overall than White students on most
indicators of academic achievement, and while they are not solely responsible for these statis-
tics, teachers who suffer from settler teacher syndrome contribute to those disparities by pre-
ferring curriculum that isn’t relevant to the students they serve, using teaching and learning
techniques that aren’t congruent with the ways students of color learn, and allowing erroneous
beliefs about the intellectual capabilities of students of color to justify a lack of rigor. As a
result, not only are students of color ill-prepared to perform well on arbitrary performance
indicators, they are also ill-prepared to take up literacies and ways of knowing to act as sub-
jects and articulate any form of citizenship and identity outside of the colonial imagination. In
short, teachers who suffer from settler teacher syndrome train students of color to internalize
their exceptionality/inferiority and become complicit with having their humanity separated
from their labor, thus forwarding the agenda of settler colonialism—amassing exploit-
able labor.
Why and how do teachers suffer from settler teacher syndrome? Tuck and Yang (2012)
describe settler colonialism as both external and internal. Internal colonialism involves the use
of “particularized modes of control—prisons, ghettos, minoritizing, schooling, policing- to
ensure the ascendancy of a nation and its White elite,” (p. 5) and external colonialism
involves the use of enslavement, low and high wage labor recruitment, and displacement and
migration from nations torn and devastated by US wars and economic policies, to continue to
build and fortify an empire on stolen/occupied indigenous land. In the same way police offi-
cers and soldiers are employed as technologies of the colony to maintain supremacy and con-
tinue expansion, so too are teachers.
Teachers who suffer from settler teacher syndrome, act within a system of schooling meant
to solidify an epistemological and ideological foundation for settler colonialism, and do so
with little critical consciousness. Having been indoctrinated into settler colonialism, and by
seeing the system of schooling as neutral and normal, teachers who suffer from settler teacher
syndrome are employed as cultural gatekeepers and function to maintain systems that are
harmful to students of color. One could also use Hill Collin’s (2000) matrix of domination, a
Black feminist construct, to explain the phenomenon. Hill Collins (2000) described the matrix
of domination as structural, disciplinary, hegemonic and interpersonal in nature: “The struc-
tural organizes oppression, the disciplinary manages oppression, the hegemonic justifies
oppression and the interpersonal influences oppression” (Cherry-McDaniel, 2016, p. 3). In
both the settler colonial framework and the matrix of domination framework, teachers are
both actors and acted upon. Their places within a system of domination is dependent upon
them not being furnished with the opportunity to critically interrogate the system they are so
intricately linked to. I argue that suffering from settler teacher syndrome is not wholly a con-
scious condition, but rather an (un)intended consequence of functioning within settler coloni-
alism. I’d also like to think that they suffer from lack of knowledge, and can, therefore, be
(re)trained and (re)taught to think and function differently within settler colonialism.
For teachers of color who suffer from settler teacher syndrome, this is especially compli-
cated. Teachers of color have never had the benefit of full and complete citizenship within set-
tler colonialism. They have more than likely been subject to instances of elimination and
246 CHERRY-MCDANIEL

exceptionalization, themselves. Moreover, most teachers of color occupy a more fluid space
within settler colonialism, and thus articulate their identities and interests very differently.
What is constant, however, is that people of color, within a settler colonial context, are
always subject to having their humanities separated from their labor, and thus can occupy
easily the space of settler as a fungible being, able to stand in for settler without question or
problem, as long as their function is beneficial to the maintenance of the status quo. It is
only when teachers of color define themselves and their interests separate from settler colo-
nialism that a critical question is created—how does one function within a system meant to
maintain settler colonialism in ways that decidedly challenges it, and what does such a
teacher look like?
Let me return to the research. When Haberman studied urban teachers, he found that
the most successful teachers in urban areas were not simply teachers of color, but fit a par-
ticular profile. They were between the ages of 30 and 50, of color, had raised children,
had held other jobs, and had learned to live normally in a somewhat violent context. Read
differently, the most successful teachers had lived within and navigated settler colonialism
and the matrix of domination, as a person of color, for at least 30 years, without being
killed or imprisoned (they were eligible for a teaching license), with a modicum of agency
over their own labor, and had helped at least one other person to navigate the system, as
well. They had developed a critical consciousness that helped them to survive and they
were interested in teaching others to do the same. This is not the profile of the typical can-
didate in a teacher preparation program. Although teacher candidates of color have more
than likely experienced the negatives of settler colonialism, there is no guarantee that they
articulate those experiences in ways that challenge the existence and relationship between
the colonizer and the colonized, or that they are motivated or equipped to help students of
color to do the same. They likely have not been provided the knowledge, language, or
space to do so. This is the job of teacher preparation programs, many of which would also
benefit from the space and knowledge to better articulate their identities and responsibil-
ities to students of color within settler colonialism. I do believe, however, that this work is
worthwhile and possible. I posit that to prevent and fight against settler teacher syndrome,
we must start where teachers are trained and make three systemic changes. First, teacher
preparation programs must more closely integrate coursework and field experiences to
afford teacher candidates the opportunity to form, interrogate and operationalize their
teacher identities and commitments to teaching students of color. Second, teacher prepar-
ation programs must more intentionally partner with schools and communities of color to
afford teacher candidates and teacher educators opportunities to learn with and from com-
munities of color how best to educate and train strong, intelligent, capable students of
color. Finally, teacher preparation programs must rethink efforts to recruit teachers of
color to include efforts to support and retain them after they’ve graduated and enter class-
rooms. The remainder of this piece will be used to suggest three concrete and feasible
projects—the use of reflective communities of practice, approximation activities, and
immersion programs—all of which would serve to satisfy the three aforementioned pro-
grammatic changes necessary for teacher preparation programs.
 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES 247

Systemic Use of (Critically) Reflective Communities of Practice

Teacher preparation programs are not equipped on their own to train teacher candidates to be
culturally responsive or culturally sustaining, nor could they ever be. Although teacher prepar-
ation programs have a great deal of knowledge and influence, that will never be enough to
compete with a social and political machine which controls the ways schools change and func-
tion over time to maintain the nation state. There is a need for mutually beneficial partnerships
between all of the sites where teacher education and training happens. Several researchers and
teacher educators have written about the positive results of using reflective communities of
practice to increase their capacity to train teacher candidates. This same concept could be
used to train and educate future and practicing teachers for the purpose of eradicating settler
teacher syndrome.
In reflective communities of practice, teacher candidates, teacher educators, practicing
teachers and community members come together in what Grant and Gibson (2011) call
“generative metacognitive spaces.” To intentionally train culturally responsive and cultur-
ally sustaining teachers, critical reflective communities of practice could come together
to study the effects of current schooling on students of color, and through collective
research and learning in community, they will be able to locate, interrogate, and reshape,
if necessary, their identities and functions within the current school climate. Critical
reflective communities of practice would be able to observe, name, and codify teaching
techniques and methods, teacher dispositions, operating systems, and other mechanisms
that undergird the project of schooling, and deem them effective or ineffective, according
to how they affect student learning and identity formation. What is observed to be harm-
ful to students will be named and studied for the purpose of locating its roots and remov-
ing them from any site of teacher preparation or practice. What is observed to be
beneficial to students will also be named and studied for the purpose of locating its roots
and then taught and duplicated across the multiple sites of teacher preparation
and practice.
Practicing teachers would have an opportunity to interrogate their practice in supportive
communities, and have the resources to change and grow as teachers capable of, and commit-
ted to, teaching students of color in good and just ways. Teacher candidates will have an
opportunity to connect the theory of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies to the
reality of the classroom. They will have an opportunity to begin trying on dispositions and
cultivating habits of mind that transcend methods and techniques, for the purpose of more
consistently and persistently enacting good and just teaching. Teacher educators will have
access to the pulse of the classroom and will be able to more directly link what is being taught
in coursework to what is actually happening in schools, thus providing more opportunities for
teacher candidates to connect what they think to what they do. They will also be in a position
to learn and consider the complicatedness of fighting within and against schooling as a tech-
nology of colonialism. Finally, communities of practice will serve as a mechanism to support
and retain teachers of color as they matriculate through teacher preparation programs, and get
classrooms of their own.
248 CHERRY-MCDANIEL

Systemic Use of Approximation Activities

For critically reflective communities of practice to work as a major component of teacher

preparation programs, there must be well-crafted activities that serve to bridge the space
between the theory and the praxis of teaching. Teacher candidates must be supported to
become culturally responsive and sustaining teachers in ways that are as authentic as possible,
but without the threat of putting vulnerable students in harm’s way. The work that some
teacher preparation programs have been doing to approximate the work of teaching for teacher
candidates is ripe for exploration.
Teaching approximations allow for teacher educators to create and/or replicate commonly
occurring teaching scenarios for use with teacher candidates as they study, interrogate, and try
out different acts and dispositions of teaching. Borrowed from other professions that train peo-
ple to perform highly skilled work, such as medicine and aviation, approximations in teacher
education can be used to train teacher candidates on how to perform commonly encountered
tasks of teaching in culturally responsive and sustaining ways. For instance, teacher educators
might create an approximation of a writing conference where teacher candidates learn how to
give feedback to students of color without disparaging their language traditions, and while
demonstrating high expectations. Likewise, teacher educators might create an approximation
of a parent-teacher conference where teacher candidates learn how to speak to and about
parents and students of color in ways that communicate a commitment to their success, and in
ways that respect the knowledge and ways of knowing parents of color bring with them to
support their children. In most cases, these skills aren’t cultivated at all, or are practiced in
actual settings where both the teacher candidate and the student are exposed and vulnerable
to harm.
Teaching approximations could also be used as more effective assessment tools for ascer-
taining the skills and dispositions a teacher candidate has. If a teacher candidate’s perform-
ance on a teaching approximation indicates that s/he is missing key dispositions, skills, and
beliefs necessary for teaching in cultural responsive and sustaining ways, then teacher educa-
tors are able to intervene by remediating the teacher candidate or counseling the candidate out
of the profession. If used as assessments, teacher preparation programs may be able to do a
better job of studying and noting candidates who might be more effective with particular
groups of people, and making career recommendations that truly result in cultural synchron-
icity, and the potential retention of teachers of color in the classroom.

Systemic Use of Immersion Programs

Finally, teacher preparation programs must address field experiences. The idea of integrating
coursework and field experiences is not new for teacher preparation programs. However, the
connections typically made between coursework and field experience are technical in nature.
Teacher candidates learn methods for teaching subject area knowledge, or for managing class-
rooms, and are then sent to schools to practice those methods on real students. In these instan-
ces, schools are not considered sites for study, but are instead considered sites for practice,
 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES 249

and presented as natural and fixed. Teacher candidates learn how to function within schools
as they currently are, and behave like the teachers who are already there. This approach does
nothing more than perpetuate the status quo. What would be more effective is recasting
schools not as entities in and of themselves, but as dynamic community sites able to be
studied and changed for the better. This will allow teacher candidates another opportunity to
think about what it means to be and do the work of a culturally responsive and culturally sus-
taining teacher. Teacher candidates must also be given multiple opportunities to learn from
the communities they might eventually teach in. Through field experiences, teacher prepar-
ation programs have the power to control and construct those opportunities.
New developments in immersive field experiences for teacher candidates are also ripe for
exploration here. Piloted in several teacher preparation programs, teacher educators have been
able to arrange immersion experiences where teacher candidates live and intern in commun-
ities of color. Teacher candidates have host families, who act as their guides, and host schools
where they are able to study life and schooling in a particular context. Through these experi-
ences, teacher candidates are able to note the strengths and assets of communities often cast
as inferior and devoid of any value. To be clear, these immersion experiences must be as
intentionally planned as approximations of practice, because they have the potential to be
incredibly influential on the ways that teacher candidates understand communities of color.
Specifically, if planned properly, immersion experiences can be used to cultivate in teacher
candidates the habits of mind for learning about and learning from communities of color, and
provide teacher candidates valuable opportunities to interrogate the ways in which they inter-
act with and act upon students of color.
Imagine what could happen if teacher candidates were introduced to Olivos’ (2006) theory
of bicultural identity, and then immersed in a community to study more critically how immi-
grant students and their parents navigate schooling experiences that are hostile to their identi-
ties. What if teacher candidates studied how school personnel interacted with immigrant
parents, or how teachers supported English language learners, or how seemingly common and
innocuous school policies and procedures disenfranchise immigrant communities. Imagine
what could happen if teacher candidates were reading scholarship on the school-to-prison
pipeline and then immersed in a community of color to study more critically the mechanisms
that serve to unfairly target Black girls and boys, and to propose a plan to disrupt and change
practice. The possibilities are truly endless, provided that the partnerships are there and the
work is done to ensure that erroneous thoughts and beliefs are not reified through the immer-
sion process. Through the use of carefully crafted immersion experiences, teacher candidates
can be trained to truly be culturally responsive and sustaining, by providing high quality learn-
ing experiences in the classroom, and actively working to change the school climates they
teach and learn in.

CONCLUSION

As a professional community, we have done a disservice to students of color by assuming that

teachers of color are inherently capable of teaching in culturally responsive and sustaining
250 CHERRY-MCDANIEL

ways. Our assumption has led to an overall uncritical approach to diversity training in teacher
preparation programs, and little to no reform in this regard. Acknowledging that teacher prep-
aration, like schooling, does not happen outside of settler colonialism, and intentionally work-
ing against efforts to institutionalize the employment of settler teachers to practice on our
most vulnerable students is the only way to remedy this problem. First, we must acknowledge
that although teachers of color may be exposed to similar lived experiences as students of
color by virtue of their positions in settler colonialism, there is no guarantee that their thinking
is synchronous with their future students’ thinking. There is also no guarantee that teachers of
color understand and articulate the experiences they have had with settler colonialism in ways
that are critical of it, and that disrupts it in the classroom. Second, we must acknowledge that
although some teachers of color suffer from settler teacher syndrome, their value in the class-
room, if (re)trained and (re)taught to be culturally responsive and sustaining, is worth the
investment. Finally, we must actually make the investment, by restructuring teacher prepar-
ation programs to include more opportunities for teachers to learn and be trained in commu-
nity with other professionals, more opportunities for teachers of color to learn and practice
more culturally sustaining pedagogies and practices, and more opportunities for teachers of
color to interface with communities of color in ways that honor difference. Doing so will
allow all teachers, including teachers of color, to more critically articulate their identities as
teachers fighting against settler colonialism in schools, and operationalize their identities in
culturally responsive and culturally sustaining ways.

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