Des Moines teacher talks about how she works around law banning CRT in class

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An Iowa teacher called Petra Lange was featured in the Daily Mail. According to the article, Lange detailed how she navigates Iowa’s anti-CRT law.

Lange, who teaches in the Des Moines Public School District according to her LinkedIn as well as Simpson College, said she “literally put the law in front of” her students.

The discussion came during an online forum titled UnBan Anti-Racism Education in Iowa and was centered on House File 802, which was signed into effect by Gov. Kim Reynolds earlier this year.

According to the Daily Mail, Lange said she tells her student there are concepts illegal for her to teach. She went through the concepts and, at the conclusion, was asked if it was illegal for her to be asked questions.

She told her students they could ask as many questions as they’d like because of a loophole in the law allowing for her to discuss CRT without violating House File 802.

“My courses are inquiry-based which means I do my best to put students’ questions at the center of the curriculum and then work to answer those questions,” she said. “I’ve had to work around HF-802 in really interesting ways.”

One student asked if America was systemically racist. Lange said she wouldn’t have been able to talk about that if a student did not ask.

According to Daily Mail, Lange said the law “represents systemic oppression.”

“I don’t even necessarily have to say it because they can see it,” she reportedly said.

The video appears to have been taken off YouTube.

Lange previously appeared on Interfaith Alliance’s “What’s Happening” on Facebook Live last year. She’s a member of SURJ DSM, which stands for Showing Up for Racial Justice. It’s a national network committed to pulling more white people off the sidelines and into the struggle against racism. Or at least she was at the time when she appeared with Interfaith Alliance.

Lange said SURJ has chapters across most of the states.

“Our goals really are about how do we make sure that as white folks we are educated in ways that we can participate in anti-racist movements in helpful ways — in ways that don’t necessarily harm the movement that’s already happening,” she said.

Lange discussed her work with SURJ DSM. She works in the equity education group. The accountability partners include a student-led group in nine different high schools across the Des Moines metro area.

She said they listen to those individuals and figure out ways to leverage the privilege they have and work to “disrupt those privileges and dismantle anti-racist pieces.”

One example of the work Lange and SURJ DSM do is . Al Exito mentioned the maps in Des Moines Public Schools are all based on the Mercator Model.

“Which means that they center Europe and America,” Lange said. “Like, they’re disproportionately larger than any other continent on that map. And so, um, what they asked us to do is then replace it with a – I can’t remember the name of the map that actually is accurate and represents what the world looks like and what our globe looks like.”

SURJ hosted a fundraiser to raise money to pay for all of Des Moines’ social studies classrooms — middle school and high school — to all get new maps that were “actual representations” of the planet.

They also work to make sure teachers are prepared to have the education needed to do “culturally responsive” teaching when they begin teaching.

Here are some of the posts Lange shared in February.

Lange said Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the 1619 Project, is one of her favorite Iowans.

She gloated on Feb. 4, 2020 that there were 180 students in the auditorium at Valley High School to hear about supremacy and privilege.

Author: The Iowa Standard