Protecting Ourselves, and Our Most Vulnerable Students, with Words

In this episode, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr., the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, talks about his experiences advocating for Black, brown, and LGBTQ students in often hostile education environments. Carver talks about the difficulties minoritized students and teachers are facing as well as some of the ways teachers and students can resist and attempt to protect their students in this atmosphere, drawing on his own experiences and those of other teachers. He will also share some works from his book of narrative poems about the experience of growing up queer and Appalachian, Gay Poems for Red States.