• By Paige Duggins-Clay, J.D. • Knowledge is Power • February 17, 2022 •

We invite you to help us collect stories from parents, students, educators and community members who want to report on the negative impacts of the classroom censorship bills on learning and engagement.

We encourage you to share this form widely with your networks in the hopes that we can better track and support outreach to individuals impacted by these harmful laws going forward.

Why? We know that it has been an increasingly difficult year for educators and school districts with the compounding crisis of COVID-19, staffing shortages, and student and staff mental health unmet needs. Instead of solutions to support children and teachers, state leaders are intent on adding to the chaos by chasing book bans and school censorship legislation.

For example, we have all heard about school leaders cautioning or requiring educators to speak “neutrally” about indisputably horrific instances in our human history, such as the Holocaust or systematic acts of violence against the Black community instigated by white supremacist organizations. We have also heard of attempts at the state level to limit schools’ ability to publish statements in support of Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ students, in addition to limiting the availability of courses and curricular materials related to civics, race and ethnic studies.

Such actions are unacceptable and potentially unlawful, and IDRA is committed to gathering accounts of incidents of this nature in order to inform our policy, advocacy and community engagement, as well as to assist, where possible, with connecting impacted students, families and educators to resources to combat the harmful impacts of these actions.

We reaffirm that every voice and every story matters, and we want to make sure we are hearing from you about how we can support educators, parents and school communities in response to efforts to censor your perspective.

Reporting a story will help IDRA’s work in many ways, but we will never publish information that would lead to the identification of anyone unless we were in direct contact with the reporting individual(s) and have permission. We look forward to hearing from you!

[©2021, IDRA. This article originally appeared in the February 17 2022, edition of Knowledge is Power by the Intercultural Development Research Association. Permission to reproduce this article is granted provided the article is reprinted in its entirety and proper credit is given to IDRA and the author.]

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