One Minnesota school system has been at the center of controversy over staff training on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and social justice.
“Rochester Public Schools provides training that has staff participate in a “Social Justice Stretch” [and] staff are taught to embrace LGBTQ ideology with the ‘Genderbread Person,’ [and] staff are told not to tell parents about their children’s gender identity,” according to a watchdog group called Parents Defending Education (PDE).
After sending an open records request regarding LGBT training within the school system, which cost the organization $15,000 but resulted in bringing several extreme social justice programs to light.
One of those programs was a teacher training staff meeting from December 2020, which highlighted how deeply the school system is involved with left-wing politics.
The staff meeting, run by the district’s equity team, focused on left-wing DEI and social justice initiatives.
“As part of our district’s strategic plan to increase all students’ access to effective, culturally responsive educators,’ and to increase student achievement outcomes, we want to build our internal capacity to grow and support our teachers as they deepen their critical consciousness and grow in their cultural competency,” the agenda for the meeting said.
Another staff meeting training program from November of 2023 included a “land acknowledgment” meant to guide teachers to instruct students on social justice concepts surrounding Thanksgiving like America being “stolen” from Native Americans.
That sentiment was shared in a September 2022 presentation by Amazeworks, a private company contracted by school systems to provide “anti-bias” training.
One slide from the presentation said the following:
We acknowledge that AMAZEworks is located on the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. We reside on land that was cared for and called home by the Dakota people, ceded by the Dakota in an 1851 treaty. We recognize and continually support and advocate for the sovereignty of the Native nations in this territory and beyond. By offering this land acknowledgment, we affirm tribal sovereignty and will work to hold others accountable to Native peoples and nations.
Further, we respectfully acknowledge the enslaved people, primarily of African descent who provided exploited labor on which this country was built, with little to no recognition. Today, we are indebted to their labor and the labor of many black and brown bodies that continue to work in the shadows for our collective benefit.
That presentation also instructs teachers on how to guide students in active reparations for Native Americans, including “land return” to Native Americans, attending protests but knowing “it’s not about you,” supporting Native American efforts to remove “harmful” mascots and giving money to Native American organizations.
Another presentation from November of 2022, called “Being Uncomfortable,” reinforces the idea of speaking to students about social justice issues and aims to have “a conversation into the effects of bias in our community.”
“Help staff understand the concept of implicit and explicit bias and how it can impact people’s perceptions and interactions with others,” the presentation said in its goals, along with [l]earning how to acknowledge our own bias in a way that doesn’t compromise possible positive connections with staff, students and others.”
It explains implicit bias as [a]ctions that unintentionally reflect prejudice and preconceptions. Despite being an unconscious action or thinking, it does display a pattern of familiarity,” and explicit bias as “actions that intentionally perpetuate preconceptions and prejudice. People of this type are acutely conscious of their prejudice.”
“First impressions matter since they will influence biases and preferences. Research shows that most people make a first impression of a person within seconds,” the presentation explains. “These Initial perceptions might support or contradict explicit biases.”
Another presentation used the “Genderbread Person” to explain the LGBT movement, which emphasizes that teachers should keep their students’ “gender identities” a secret from their parents.
PDE explained:
The ‘”Genderbread Person” is an image that educators use in an attempt to teach students that gender is on a spectrum The presentation also alludes that teachers can keep the gender identity of students hidden from parents by asking students: “Do your parents/guardians use this name/pronouns?” The next slide of the presentation is then more explicit: “Someone’s gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation are not behaviors you to ‘report’ to other staff or parents.” An exception is if “the student has expressed to you that it is okay to use their preferred name and pronoun with their parents or guardians.”
A final presentation explained “microaggressions.”
According to the presentation, one form of “microaggression” is “microinvalidations,” which are defined as “Verbal comments that negate, exclude or nullify the thoughts, feelings and/or experiences of a person in a marginalized community.”
According to the presentation, such comments include “I don’t see color” or “Everyone can succeed if they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X/Twitter.
