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This toolkit offers advice, activities and further reading suggestions for educators who want to unpack the concept of whiteness and white privilege with themselves and with students.

In this toolkit, you’ll find discussion questions and activities that build on TT’s Digital Literacy Videos. The videos, questions and activities are designed to introduce students to the skills and competencies outlined in the Digital Literacy Framework.

It happens in every class. We’re discussing a text, a publication, a current event, a poem. The content doesn’t matter. It’s the phrase that counts. A student comments and uses the phrase “African American” or even “black people.” The student is white. The reaction of the class – almost all white – is swift. As if choreographed, all eyes turn to the one student of color. The spotlight of eyes shines down and he or she blinks back as if staring into the sun. The teacher should use this moment to open a discussion.

After a candid classroom discussion, this high school teacher marvels at the questions and concerns that educators like herself must confront at school.

Facilities and resources matter. How can educators bridge divides amongst schools?

Every morning, Leo's smile brightens the cafeteria at my elementary school. He hobbles in, holding his teacher's hand. His eyes squint at the bright lights. He squirms at loud noises. And always, he smiles.

Spanish teacher Tricia Kelly reflects on one of her favorite teaching days.

"She's just trying to act white." I remember those piercing but confusing words cutting me like a knife. I clinched my Super Reader certificate. My puzzled expression was taken as bravado by the African-American girls, who responded with a threatening question, "Do you want us to fix your face?"

This writer had a light-bulb moment about his student's family—and about himself.

This toolkit for “Anatomy of an Ally” addresses the complex and challenging work of being an ally and presents a framework for helping social justice educators think about their own ally identity development.