[00:00:15] Jon M: I’m Jon Moscow.
[00:00:17] Amy H-L: And I’m Amy Halpern-Laff. Welcome to Ethical Schools. Our guest today is Ahenewa El- Amin. Ms. El- Amin teaches AP African American Studies at Henry Clay High School in Lexington, Kentucky. Since 2021, 18 states, including Kentucky, have imposed bans or restrictions on how teachers can discuss racism and sexism. We’ll speak with Ms. El- Amin about the affects of the new law on how she and other Kentucky educators teach history. Welcome, Ahenewa.
[00:00:52] Ahenewa E A: Hey, nice to be here.
[00:00:55] Jon M: Ahenewa, Kentucky’s SB1 law reads, quote, “The understanding that the institution of slavery and post-Civil War laws enforcing racial segregation and discrimination were contrary to the fundamental American promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but the defining racial disparity solely on the legacy of this institution is destructive to the unification of our nation.” What does this actually mean?
[00:01:31] Ahenewa: Like most things that lawmakers put into bills, I think it is pretty ambiguous. For me, it means that like everything else, it means that I have a responsibility to teach things that are historically accurate. And I think the way the legislators wrote it, they meant for me to teach it the way that it was historically accurate, but avoid any personal feelings about it. However, I think it is impossible to teach history and not have the students, just by your very teaching of historical facts, not to have the students draw opinions. So I think that’s what they meant.
[00:02:15] Jon M: Well, when we’ve talked before, you mentioned that you think that the law is vague on purpose. Why do you think this is?
[00:02:22] Ahenewa: In many ways, I think it’s vague on purpose to scare school teachers or to scare the general public. I think laws are meant, in some cases, to scare people into acting a certain way. However, I like the fact that it’s vague, because vague means open to interpretation, and that means that I am able to interpret it in the way that I feel best works for my students.
[00:02:45] Amy H-L: Has Kentucky actually charged any teachers with violations of the law?
[00:02:49] Ahenewa: Not to my knowledge. Now, I did spend some time in Kansas City, Missouri, this past summer grading AP exams, and I do know that there were teachers in other states that have been touched by similar laws and had restrictions placed on their classrooms. However, while this law is in Kentucky, and while it’s always in the background of the way I teach, I do believe that I want to think the best of my state. I want to think the best of my state and its place in history. So, the governor has not enforced anything. I think the governor in Arkansas and in Florida, those teachers have a different path than I have here in Kentucky.
[00:03:37] Jon M: You have tenure and have been teaching for many years, I think 25 years? Something like that?
[00:03:43] Ahenewa: Started in 2000. So I always say 24, 25. By the time you get to be my age, you forget years. They’re all rolling into, I know I’m going downhill, I’m running downhill.
[00:03:54] Jon M: Do you think that the law has had an intimidating effect on newer teachers?
[00:04:02] Ahenewa: I love that question. I think teaching in general has an intimidating impact on new teachers. I think the last couple of bills have definitely made sure that teachers are intentional with the needs of their community, but I really can’t speak to that. I cannot speak to that because that is not my path. I’m tenured. I’m older. I’ve been teaching. My administration is largely supportive. I feel supported by my teacher community, the union, etc. So it hasn’t changed the way I teach. It hasn’t changed the way I teach and I would welcome any legislator to come into my classroom at any time. I think they would absolutely love learning in the classroom. So no, it hasn’t changed the way I teach. Sorry.
[00:04:52] Amy H-L: What are some examples of content that would be unacceptable under the law, or that teachers are afraid would be unacceptable?
[00:05:00] Ahenewa: So, I think that the way that the law is written and its nebulous nature, I think that it is expected that you have to teach that slavery existed. I think the way the law is written, I think the legislators wanted teachers to avoid saying slavery was bad, or more so that they wanted teachers to avoid pointing out the lasting consequences of slavery. However, as you teach history, students make those natural connections anyway. So. But I really, once again, I cannot speak to what they actually wanted, because there’s been nothing specific that has been published that says, “hey, this is an example of what exactly we don’t want.” So there hasn’t been any rulemaking or guidance. Like most things in education, we get suggestions and then we use our judgment and hope we’re doing the right thing for all students.
Kentucky, and I say this all the time, Kentucky is unique because like poet Frank X. Walker says, “we remain north and south, only state that has had a president for the Union and the Confederacy.” I think Kentucky’s teachers, maybe more than anyone else, owe it to our students to have a very balanced view both ways. And I try to do that in my own teaching. So.
[00:06:27] Amy H-L: When you said that in Kentucky, you’re expected to teach both ways, or you should teach both ways, what exactly do you mean?
[00:06:37] Ahenewa: So, and I don’t know if this is the expectation. To me, it’s an inherent expectation because I’m a Kentucky citizen. And because those words of Frank X. Walker, the former poet laureate of the state of Kentucky, it resounded in my heart, you remain north and south. Once again, presidents for the Union and the Confederacy. Plenty of issues of discrimination. Breonna Taylor most recently. Plenty of examples of things that have gone wrong, but then also so many examples of things that have gone right. We had Georgia Davis Powers and Mae Street Kidd, and Muhammad Ali is the number one nationally, the world famous athlete that we have that represents our state, and I think he does well. And what he did was talk. He did a lot of talking, and he did a lot of educating the world during a time in which the world felt one way.
But I think as a teacher, sometimes I feel the responsibility of the legacy of Muhammad Ali, the legacy of the state remaining quote unquote “neutral” during the Civil War. I feel the legacy to say the history shows it both ways. And I understand how you feel. You understand how I feel and let’s move on. So it’s inherent in the way that I teach. And I would say that most of my students appreciate seeing both ways and both sides of the story. As a matter of fact, I recently had a student say, you know, Miss El Amin, I’ve never ever thought about it from that perspective, and I’m glad I have it because it opens up my mind.
[00:08:02] Amy H-L: Could you give us an example?
[00:08:05] Ahenewa: I can give you an example that has to do with culture, and then I can give you one that has to do with race. The example that I was talking about was to a student who was not in AP African American studies, and we were talking about the study of eugenics and the history of AP in general. And so what I said was, I know that we get this. We talk about how some of these tests are biased, or at least have a history of bias. And I gave the example. I said, no minorities were in this group of students that we’re teaching to. And I said, I think that many of my students have a tendency in this demographic to just, you know, eschew any conversations that have to do with discrimination against, with the test. But because of where you live, because you are culturally, Kentucky residents, because of this, you too have faced some type of bias when these people have written these tests. And my example for that one was a brownstone. I said, if they mention a brownstone in the test example, you have no idea what a brownstone is because culturally speaking, you are used to ranch houses and front porches and et cetera. You’re not used to brownstone. So just by them throwing that word in a test, you would have a problem. You need to be able to see that that particular bit of just regional cultural discrimination that could happen in a test can definitely be applied to people who have a different racial upbringing than you do. So that is the one that I used. And he was like, Oh, had not thought about it that way. And we were able to have a fruitful discussion.
[00:09:35] Jon M: That’s a very powerful way of talking to a student.
[00:09:39] Ahenewa: Well, thank you. Thank you. I promise you, I did not, I didn’t intend for it to be powerful. It was just part of the conversation. And I thought, I like to think about these things, because, you know, the only way that we can see the world is through the glasses that we’re given. And sometimes we need to go and get a little perspective shift just so that we can see it through the world of others, so we can see other people’s lenses.
[00:10:03] Amy H-L: And what do you mean by racial upbringing?
[00:10:07] Ahenewa: So even if I was to talk about something as, and this is another example, once again, we were talking about standardized tests. Even if we were talking about something as innocuous as food choices, and I’m going to use food choices, but I’m going to teach vocabulary. And I said, you know, Becky had a customary breakfast of eggs and toast. And I give you your answer choices are going to be usual or unusual. And you know, those are your choices. Well, somebody who’s cultural upbringing involved a breakfast of rice and beans every morning is not going to find eggs, toast, and juice customary. So if you wanted me to teach a specific lesson about a specific historical thing and what the ways in which we can do that, you’d have to throw something at me specific.
[00:10:53] Jon M: But I’m how, speaking of Kentucky, I mean, which, as you said, had a very particular history in the Civil War, um, and I guess students have probably already taken Kentucky history in some of their earlier grades before they take AP history?
[00:11:12] Ahenewa: Yeah, in Kentucky, I think the fourth grade year is devoted to Kentucky studies, and there are some classes who do have Kentucky classes. Henry Clay, that where I teach, does not. I know Woodford County has like four or five sections. Henry Clay does not have any sections this year. Maybe they have in the past, but in fourth grade, they get a history of Kentucky. However, they get a fourth grade history of Kentucky, so it does not include some of the nuances and the lasting, um. Yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t include, it doesn’t include what I would teach at the high school level for sure.
[00:11:44] Jon M: And the students have probably forgotten anything that they learned in fourth grade by the time they get to high school.
[00:11:49] Ahenewa: Absolutely.
[00:11:50] Jon M: How do the students react when they’re talking about all the splits in Kentucky during the Civil War? Are there particularly Interesting and stimulating conversations that the students initiate?
[00:12:01] Ahenewa: I would say that one conversation that came up is we did a map of Kentucky and we talked about the story of Margaret Garner, whose story inspired Tony Morrison’s “Beloved,” and I said, you know what? This is a story that almost had to happen in Kentucky. The response, the violence that happened in that particular story almost had to happen in that particular county. I think it was Boone County, Kent County, Boone County. It’s up north where you can see Cincinnati. You can see the bridge. You can see the water. You can see freedom. However, you are under the yoke of slavery. And so when we talk about that, I pull up a map of Kentucky and I say, you have to understand, now, Kentuckians, enslaved people in Kentucky probably felt different than enslaved people in Louisiana. In Louisiana, whew, that was a heck of a journey to freedom. To Kentucky, you can see freedom. It is right there and trying to get that with Margaret Garner and the way that she reacted and Toni Morrison’s absolutely beautiful retelling of that one. Yeah, I think that inspires lots of conversations, because if you’re struggling for freedom, if you’re struggling for something, if you can only two steps away, how is your reaction going to be different than if you are 50 steps away? I’m just gonna let you know, when I shuffle walk a 5k, I’m a little bit more desperate to reach that finish line when I’m almost there then when I start. So yeah, that part of it, when we’re just talking about the geography of Kentucky, when we juxtapose that with the history of what actually happened in some of the atrocities that happened, then yes, students enjoy those conversations and they enjoy visualizing it. And it’s kind of interesting, too. I like looking at geography. in Kentucky’s place because oftentimes, even in my other classes, I say, hey, is Kentucky in the north or the south? And my students are pretty divided on that one. And I say, babies, let’s look at this. We’re a part of the southeastern conference. We’re in the SEC. And they say, oh, oh yeah.
And I don’t think they realize the extent to which the rest of America views us as a Southern state. Because Kentucky doesn’t necessarily always view itself, we view ourselves as kind of in the middle, kind of in the middle of the world. So when we’re teaching AP African American Studies, one of the first things that they do, they don’t talk about race, they talk about geography. They give us a map of Africa and they say, look at how geographically diverse this continent is. And I just give them a map, tell them what the climate is in the various regions, and we imagine the life of the people. And I like doing that because I like looking at the map of where Kentucky is and how that has impacted decisions, dialect, relationships with other people. So sometimes we talk about that and then we go straight and we talk about if you’re looking at people in the north part of Africa, what do you expect if they’re this close to these countries, and the people in the west are this close to the coast? What are we expecting for the culture to be like for the food to be like? Yeah, anyway. Sorry, I’m going off topic. That’s fun. And students love to do that. Students love to do that.
[00:15:20] Jon M: So when you’re talking about food, obviously African food has had a tremendous effect on Southeastern, if you will, cooking. And is that built into the AP course? Does it look at things like food and culture in that kind of way?
[00:15:35] Ahenewa: Oh, it does. I would encourage anybody to take the class, and I love the way the new community of teachers who are teaching AP African American Studies are bringing in different ways to connect it. Now for me, because I did a Fulbright study in South Africa, and because I read Roots when I was in the eighth grade I was not a very popular child and so it’s kind of lonely, and I would go into the libraries and I would read books and the books that changed my life. You’d never guess. But I would read books at Beaumont library and I would pick the biggest, largest books there. And it was at that time, it was Gone with the Wind and it was Roots. And I read them both in the course of a month. And I never will forget after reading Roots, I wanted to go to Africa and I gave myself, I wanted to go before I was 30.
And I ended up asking a man, you know, saying something flippant. I was being very flippant. And I was like, I want to go to Africa. And he was like, sis, you are an American with a passport. Go where you want to go. And so he helped facilitate a trip to The Gambia. And when I went to The Gambia, the food, the culture, et cetera, reminded me so much of the African Americans that I knew right here, even from the way that they spoke. And I tell my students this. Here, African American, I’m going to ask you, and part of it is Southern too. I’m going to ask you, hey, how you doing? Then I’m gonna ask you, hey, how your people doing? And how’s your people, people doing, your grandmom and them, are they okay? And when I went to The Gambia, that’s the way they talked, too. They started off with kairabe kaira-dorong . They, they, how are you? How are your people? How are your people’s people? And I was like, oh my God. That connection was there. And then the food. Well, it’s very similar.
So this year, because I had the connection with the people from The Gambia, because I had read Roots and ended up going over there, I was able to have a Gambian family bring food in for us to eat. The kids loved it. Then I said, Oh, we’re going to eat fish pies. And the kids were like, I don’t want to eat fish pie, Ms. El Amin. That doesn’t sound good. But then they ate it and they were like, Oh, this is just salmon croquettes. Like this is good And they ate every drop of it and it was It was fun and wonderful. So yeah, even when you’re talking about the geographies in those early lessons, that is what we talk about. And food and culture, it is huge They have a series called High on the Hog that traces it better than I can do. I’m a neophyte at this. i’m just learning to make these connections, but I love it. I love it and That is another way that I can bring in Kentucky culture, because Kentucky has definitely been impacted by the cuisine of West Africa. We are in the South, where slavery was a part of life and where those cooks cooked for people who ended up taking those recipes and making it part of Southern cuisine.
[00:18:27] Jon M: Do you think that any districts have been less willing to offer the AP African American history because of the law?
[00:18:34] Ahenewa: Okay. Now, so my opinion would be, oh, absolutely. However, I’m blessed and highly favored because I teach in Fayette County, and Fayette County has a population that is a little bit more diverse than some of the other counties. But I hesitate to say that because, well, I’m part of the Association to Teach Black History in Kentucky, and I’m the only African American in that association, and there are plenty of teachers from smaller counties who are bringing diverse culture and lessons about Kentucky’s history of African Americans to the forefront, and I’m here for it. I love it. I cannot remember the name of the county, but there is a whole county out there who kept records for all their students, even prior to desegregation, and they have an entire little museum. Now it’s a smaller county and it’s one that I haven’t been to yet, but I was just amazed at the work that Kentucky teachers are doing
[00:19:30] Jon M: Going back for a minute to some of the history of the AP course itself. Obviously, Florida Governor DeSantis, you know, banned the pilot, and then the College Board subsequently modified the course and was criticized for appearing to capitulate to political pressure. But from what you’re saying, it sounds as though you feel that the course as it exists now works for you.
[00:19:56] Ahenewa: I think the course is strong. I think the content is strong. Once again, I am not a college level history professor and there’s always chatter about what was left out. However, we learn American and European history for 12 years of our education in some way or form or the other. AP African American, some states only give you a semester of it. Here where I am, you get a full year of it. I think it does a beautiful job of bridging the history from ancient Africa to today in the time frame that it has. I have heard criticisms that the content is not as strong, that the curriculum is not as strong as it could be. That has not been my experience. My students find depths of things to talk about within the curriculum.
[00:20:48] Amy H-L: How do Black and white and other students in the class respond to what they’re learning about America’s and Kentucky’s racial history?
[00:20:58] Ahenewa: I will say that once students graduate, they have access to me, they can email me, they can call me, et cetera. And I will say that if I were to flip through my phone right now, I can tell you that within the last two weeks, I have received several text messages from students who took AP African American Studies during that pilot year and are amazed at the connections that they are able to make at the college level. And some of my students go off to go to some prestigious colleges. I have a former student at West Point, and he wasn’t part of the pilot program, but he was part of my other class. And one of his first readings at West Point was the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. So having introduced him to some of the readings and writings of Frederick Douglass, oh, that was good foundational knowledge for him at West Point. I have a student who is going to State University who just recently sent me a message that said, Ms. El Amin, thank goodness that you taught me about the paintings of Jacob Lawrence who talked about the geographical patterns of African Americans and he had that series of the Great Migration, and she said, because in my human geography class, we were talking about things, and I was able to make connections that impressed even the professor. And so, you know, I patted myself on the back, because that was wonderful. And anyone, I would say, that anyone’s solid understanding of the Haitian Revolution, oh my goodness. A solid understanding of the Haitian Revolution connects European history, American history, history of South America. It connects the whole world. It connects to what’s going on in Haiti today. And I will say this: I once again learned through my . Of this course, I didn’t know. And so, College Board had me spend two days, I think, on it. And the kids were like, Ms. El- Amin, this is the second week. And I was like, I know because it’s fascinating. It is absolutely fascinating. I went down a little rabbit hole on the Haitian Revolution. It was amazing. And it even popular culture, like after we had talked about the Haitian Revolution, it was so important.
We do fun things like watch Black Panther, took them on a trip to see Black Panther one year, took him on the trip to see Black Panther 2. And Black Panther 2, the fact that it started a disagreement with the French and ended with the son of the fallen Black Panther’s name as being named after Toussaint Louverture. I was like, people now we understood, and I’m not a big movie person, but I was like, oh, my God, connections were made. Connections were made and the students loved it. Loved it. So yeah, I think that students are responding positively to it. Unfortunately, our legislators or adults in general have a feeling that learning about hard things in history is going to negatively impact kids for the rest of their lives when in fact, I think it makes them opens them up to think critically about all situations The Haitian revolution is a miserable experience, but learning about the Haitian revolution will definitely impact your overall understanding of the world.
[00:24:12] Jon M: Absolutely. Thank you, Anehewa El- Amin of Henry Clay High School in Lexington, Kentucky.
[00:24:19] Ahenewa: Hey, no worries. No problem. Thank you for having me.
[00:24:22] Jon M: And thank you, listeners. Check out our new video series, What Would YOU Do?, in collaboration with Professor Meira Levinson of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and EdEthics. Go to our website, ethicalschools.org, and click Video. The goal of the series is not to provide right answers, but to illustrate a variety of ethical viewpoints.
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