Education Week - July 15, 2020 - 10

Teachers Pay Teachers Works Toward Anti-Racism
But lesson-sharing site doesn't screen for racist content
By Sarah Schwartz
Last month, the lesson-sharing site
Teachers Pay Teachers was one of
the many education companies that
put out a statement about combatting systemic racism, amid ongoing
protests in response to police brutality against Black people.
The statement, from TpT CEO
Joe Holland, called for the organization to support educators teaching
about racism and social justice. He
pledged to highlight the work created by Black teachers on the site,
provide free anti-racist professional
development, and start a grant program to support the creation of antiracist and social justice educational
resources.
But the statement didn't address
one of the concerns that teachers
have long raised about the site: TpT's
content moderation policy doesn't
catch racist or insensitive lessons.
A search of lessons on the site in
late June found at least two dozen
lessons that discuss slavery that involve simulation or reenactment,
which experts agree can minimize
horrific events and cause emotional
hurt to Black students.
Among those lessons on the TpT
site were:
* an activity designed to have students "experience" the conditions
during the Middle Passage,
* a journaling exercise asking students to imagine why formerly enslaved people might be nostalgic for
slavery, and
* an activity designed to have students create their own version of the
Three-Fifths Compromise.
These kinds of activities humanize
enslavers and recreate racist power
dynamics in the classroom, said
LaGarrett King, an associate professor of social studies at the University
of Missouri's College of Education.
"Teachers believe that these
games help facilitate learning, when
all they're doing is enacting psychological violence on your students-
both white and Black, but particularly your Black students, because
that history connects to who they are
as people," he said.
After this story was initially published on Education Week's website
July 2, TpT removed 20 of the 24
resources referred to in the article,
including the three described in detail. "We investigated the resources
described in the article and immediately removed the content that
violated our Inappropriate Content
Guidelines," the company said, in a
statement. "We take violations very
seriously, and promptly review and
remove these types of resources once
they are brought to our attention."
Though these specific lessons
were removed, the site's policy on
moderating content is unchanged.
TpT hosts third-party content, like
a social media platform, rather than

publishing content itself the way a
curriculum company would. That
means that any teacher-seller can
post resources to the site without
prior review by members of the
company's team. TpT relies on user
reports to flag inappropriate content.
These lessons would have remained on the site if they had not
been brought to the company's attention. Still, other lessons-including
at least one aimed at teaching about
police brutality-have been removed.
Ashley Tucker, a Black special education teacher in New York City, had
her lesson about the killing of George
Floyd taken down May 31 after users
filed reports saying that it violated
the site's content guidelines.
A back-and-forth with a modera-

Last month, TpT announced its
three new initiatives, committing to
"speak up, take action, and partner
with educators to work for change
in the wake of recent tragedies and
injustices against Black people in
America."
"I think like most companies, we
are reflecting and saying, how can we
be part of change in this moment?
How can we work towards a better
place in our society? And we don't
have all the answers," Holland said,
in an interview with Education Week.
In the past few weeks, the company has featured Black creators on
its social media pages and blog and
launched a free professional-development series. The first webinar
convened sellers to discuss their ex-

from New Jersey, has seen a lot of
this new content on TpT recently, and
in other venues for lesson-sharing.
"All these edu-influencers are creating new content, but if you look
before May 2020 you can't see anything [on anti-racist teaching] from
these educators," she said. It makes
her worry that teachers searching for
resources might think they've done
enough to teach about racism by adding a worksheet.
"We have to hold ourselves accountable, and that includes companies that profit off of education.
So there has to be more of an investment," she said, in curating resources.
Hosting reenactment lessons on
the site could make teachers think
that this kind of activity is acceptable,
said King, the University of Missouri
professor. But he added that racist
lessons are hardly a problem unique
to TpT.

Teachers believe that these games help facilitate learning,
when all they're doing is enacting psychological violence
on your students ... "
LAGARRETT KING
Associate professor of social studies, University of Missouri

tor left Tucker, who has facilitated
training on anti-racist pedagogy at
her school, unsatisfied with the site's
rationale for requiring changes to her
lesson. The incident, she said, made
her "think more critically about sharing my resources that way."
Lesson-sharing sites have their
benefits, King said. "If you have wonderful lessons, teachers can share
their lessons and get paid," he said.
But he added that there should probably be a broader vetting process on
the site.

Who Curates Resources?
Holland, TpT's CEO, said that the
company is continuing to invest in
content moderation, and that racist
material and offensive content aren't
tolerated on the platform. The company provides an educational video
series about their policies for teachers to consult, and a list of "3 Questions to Ask Yourself " for teachers
who aren't sure if their resources follow the guidelines.
But the company doesn't plan to
start reviewing content ahead of publication on the site. "For us to do that,
we would essentially take on the role
of a publisher," which the company
is not equipped to do, said Holland.
"We have a huge volume of content on Teachers Pay Teachers, and
we recognize that even with the best
reporting tools, there is inappropriate content. And that's as frustrating to us as it is to our educators
and our community," said Michelle
Cummings, TpT's vice president of
content.

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 15, 2020 | www.edweek.org

periences as Black teachers and strategies for anti-racist teaching.
TpT also created a grant program,
offering creators up to $1,000 each
to develop resources related to antiracism and social justice. The application process will be judged by
a panel of TpT staff as well as outside experts, who are yet to be announced, and will take into account
"[p]revious experience in teaching,
facilitating, or creating content about
anti-racism and/or social justice topics ... as well as lived experience."
Tanya Marshall, an elementary
multilingual teacher and a TpT author who spoke on the PD webinar
last month, said she applauds the
company's effort to highlight resources created by Black teachers.
"There are white teachers who undervalue the contributions of their
Black colleagues, and they see our
work as being of less quality," said
Marshall, who is Black. She sees this
dynamic play out in schools, and she
has wondered whether it also exists
on the lesson-sharing site.
"With our seller community, you
notice some pockets of sellers collaborating and pushing their resources
forward. But their collaborative
groups are segregated," she said.
Many white teachers who are new
to anti-racist pedagogy are looking
for resources now, and it's important
that they turn to educators with a
background and experience in those
topics, Marshall said. She would be
wary, she said, of teacher-authors
who are addressing race in their lessons for the first time this month.
Alicia Discepola, a white educator

"Curriculum violence is everywhere," he said. "These teachers are
being taught in a system that enacts
curriculum violence. They had curriculum violence enacted on them,
so they're regurgitating that."

An Evolving Process
Tucker, the New York City teacher
whose lessons were removed, said
she aimed to tell the human stories
of Black people who had been killed
by police.
Tucker has created lessons over
the past few months that memorialize Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Michael
Brown, and most recently, George
Floyd. She taught the lessons with
her students, who are teenagers with
special needs, and then posted them
to her TpT store.
In late May, about a week after
Floyd was killed, Tucker got a notice from the company that her lessons had been removed from the site
after TpT had received a number
of reports that her resources violated content guidelines. The guidelines prohibit discriminatory content,
or content that trivializes traumatic
experiences.
After Tucker responded, asking
why the resources were taken down,
a member of TpT's Marketplace Integrity Team replied that upon further review, the lessons "generally
do not violate our Inappropriate Content Guidelines." The team member
added that the decision was in part
responding to "concerns about allowing TpT Sellers to profit from the
memory of murdered individuals."

Tucker was told that she could
put the lessons back up if she made
some changes. She would need to
remove a screen grab she had included in the original resource. The
image, cropped from the video of
former Minneapolis police officer
Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's
neck, showed Chauvin but not Floyd.
Tucker was also asked to include
detailed instructions for how the
lessons should be used, and to add
credits for the photos and art she had
included.
Tucker felt that the resources were
appropriate as-is, and she worried
that the reporting tool was too blunt
an instrument-while TpT community members could use it to report
racist resources, it's also possible that
some could try to censor work about
difficult topics.
TpT's moderators use rubrics developed by the Marketplace Integrity
Team and a group of former K-12
teachers to evaluate reported content.
Cummings, TpT's vice president
of content, said that Tucker's experience highlights the complex dynamic involved in moderating, but
also demonstrates that the company
does take reports seriously.
The company is "constantly in dialogue with the community" about
the moderation process, said Holland, TpT's CEO. "We're never going
to get it perfect, but we're constantly
improving," he said.

'They Weren't Doing This'
Though TpT gave her the option
to put her resources back up on the
site, Tucker decided not to do so. Instead, she bought the domain name
for TeachersPayBlackTeachers.com,
where she and a friend plan to host
their lessons.
She thinks the company should be
revising how they review content on
the site, perhaps in partnership with
an organization that has expertise in
anti-bias and anti-racist instruction.
"They weren't doing this before.
And now, of course they have to.
There have been a lot of companies
putting out statements," Tucker said.
"And [Teachers Pay Teachers] can
make money by saying, 'Click here,
this was made by a Black educator.' "
Marshall hopes that the work TpT
is doing helps teachers develop a
deeper understanding of the systemic inequities facing students and
teachers of color. And she's glad to
be a part of that work. But she wants
her fellow teachers to recognize her
content-area expertise, too.
"Even though I'm a Black woman
who works in education, I don't want
my colleagues to think, 'Well, for
anything that has to do about race,
we'll go to her,' " Marshall said.
"Yes, I'm here, and I'm willing to
talk about race. I'm willing to share
anti-racist teaching ideas," she continued. "But I'm also a literacy expert. I hope going forward, we can
collaborate on all efforts. Not just,
let's go to the Black sellers when we
need to talk about race."

http://www.TeachersPayBlackTeachers.com http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - July 15, 2020

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