ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how school climate, particularly the school climate around race and culture, shaped what the teacher and students brought to the classroom and how their actions within the classroom shaped student outcomes. Every school has ways of interacting around and teaching about race and culture that students respond to in different ways. The chapter demonstrates how the students in Ms. Pollitt’s class develop their critical consciousness, that is, their ability to understand inequality, through reading Dear Martin. By reading Dear Martin and discussing redlining in their community, Ms. Pollitt helped the students become aware of racism as something that not only exists between individuals but as something that permeates societal institutions. The chapter ends with suggestions for how schools can promote critical consciousness through embracing discomfort and embracing student perspectives.
