Ruth-Terry Walden is a teacher of many passions and pursuits. A lawyer by trade, she has honed her passion for antiracism and social justice her entire life. After serving as the director of the South Bronx community organization Neighborhood Youth and Family Services, she worked with the Yale School of Medicine, serving as the Assistant Director of Clinical Trials, Grant and Contract Administration.  Now, her passions have led her to becoming an educator in Stamford, having taught literature at Westhill High School for twenty years. With the right texts and sources, kindness and respect, and more than an ounce of fearlessness, Walden has built her classroom into a safe space for dangerous ideas.

Walden is unabashed in the nature of her work. To her, the literature of her classroom is the literature of protest, and the themes of resistance and direct action permeate everything she does, both inside and outside the classroom. “We need to remind students that they are agents of change,” she notes. “I try to let children understand that they can see the world in a way in which they can become advocates.” In her classroom, students are forging the tools of resistance on their own terms. “We need to show that they are not being asked to sit in the passenger seat, but ensure that they know they are being handed the keys.” From difficult conversations to schoolwide walkouts, Walden is supporting her students every step of the way. 

“Documents can either constrain or liberate.”

Such is the philosophy with which Ruth-Terry Walden approaches her work. Being a teacher of literature,  essays, novels, speeches, and other texts are key to building a classroom in which students can engage with the materials that matter to their own personal experiences. “I’m a traditionalist,” Walden notes, “in that I like to focus on these primary sources, because there are always so many ways to interpret them.” Even the final years of British rule in the Thirteen Colonies have proven ripe for reinterpretation in the age of Black Lives Matter and protests against police violence. “Just look at the Boston Massacre, and how it can be compared to Ferguson today. Why would there be thirty thousand British troops in Boston?” 

Recontextualizing the Redcoat army as American police forces brings the conversation into the present day. And while some students might originally be resistant to Walden’s unflinching support for contemporary movements, putting them in the context of the occupying army has done wonders for building bridges and conversations between the distant past and today. “We are able to breathe life into these primary source documents when we can see how both the British and the colonists tried to spin the story to their ends,” she says. As a result, the ensuing conversations not only encompass the comparisons between this era and now, but they also provide a window into how the discourse around difficult topics takes shape. 

“They either accept the content, or they don’t.”

Anti-racist educatuion requires an implicit understanding that students are co-learners in the process of building a more just society. “We use direct action to bring the other side to negotiation,” says Walden, noting that students in the classroom are called to think actively about the positive change they wish to bring into the world. “When there is a march, when there is a walkout, we’re not going to interfere.” In this way, students are empowered to take the actions that are necessary to bring about the changes they wish to bring about in the world. Not only do they learn radical ideas and ways of thinking, they are consistently reminded that they are political actors in a political world.  Not every classroom is on board with these methods and ideas, however. “Remember, a lot of what I’m doing, and anti-racist teachers are doing, is challenging the views that have been held by students, by children, for a long, long time,” Walden notes. “I have taught incredibly conservative children, and incredibly reactionary children. I want them to at least see the other side. Sometimes, nothing that I say or do can ever change their minds. There have been classes who will hold on to their white privilege no matter what kinds of radical texts I put in front of them. And ultimately, I have to respect their views because they are so ingrained. It was clear that there was nothing I could do. Did they see my side? Maybe. But I can’t know. I just know that I gave them the material, and that I did the best I was capable of doing.” Understanding the limitations of presenting knowledge is key to developing anti-racist pedegogy: In such an unequal and reactionary world, there are always limits.

“I live in the world of my students. What matters to my students has to matter to me.”

Having and building institutional support is often key to building these classroom spaces. “I was lucky!” Walden says, looking back on the administrators who helped her out early in her teaching career. “My first year of teaching, I looked at the curriculum, and I said, ‘I can’t teach these books.’ I looked at the [reading] list and it was all white people! And I had Black students in that class, I had Hispanic students, and I had working-class white students who often identified closely with a lot of the other folks in the classroom. And the administrator told me to do what I needed to do.” After Walden got a chance to confront the issues with the curriculum directly, she saw how engagement and outcomes improved within her class. Eventually, a lot of the texts were thrown out and replaced. “Eventually, it seemed that the only white men left were Shakespeare, Faulkner, and of course Steinbeck, because of his commitment to social justice.” 

“Let me give you an example. Remember Moonlight? The Barry Jenkins film? One of my children had a bootleg copy of it, before you could get it on DVD. And she knows how much I love using film in class. And she says, ‘Ms. Walden, I need you to look at this film and think about how you can teach it.’ And I sat in my room one afternoon after class, put it in my computer, and it blew me away.” After having the incredible opportunity to teach Moonlight alongside Baldwin’s legendary Giovanni’s Room, Walden was incredibly impressed with the writing that her students were able to produce. “I bring-cutting edge stuff in [to the classroom], and my students know that it’s coming. Moonlight. Dear White People. If it’s gonna foster these kinds of discussions, we’re gonna show it. I don’t even hesitate.”

“I know you got a mind! I know you got an opinion!”

Despite her incredible experience, Ruth-Terry Walden is always learning and developing new ideas, both inside her school and in the world outside. “When I became a teacher twenty years ago, I was changing careers,” she notes. “I knew I had these radical sensibilities, but I tried to suppress them at the beginning and toe the line.” This didn’t last long, however. “Eventually, one of my younger colleagues called me out, while telling everyone that I was not the reserved, conservative person that I appeared to be while I was holding my tongue.” From then on, Walden realized that she needed to be more active and unabashed in who she is, and how she sees herself as a teacher and a learner. 

Even as she travels the world to develop new ideas, and builds discourse around antiracism with her peers around the country, this fearlessness is her most important asset in making sure she defends her classroom as an anti-racist space. “You have to not be afraid,” Walden declares. “Fear is that thing around your neck. That’s the thing that stops you from being an antiracist teacher. I don’t want to be anything other than a classroom teacher. I’m not going to burn any bridges, because the bridge I’m standing on is very solid, and it is built on the foundation of my convictions. And I have no fear.” The tools of the trade, the sources and texts, are all valuable, and so are the interpersonal relationships built with students and other staff. But for Ruth-Terry Walden, it is her conviction that helps her make decisions that are right and just. “These are children I’m working with! I want to help build leaders for positive change. And I just can’t do that if I’m afraid. So that’s the number one thing. We have to get the fear out of teachers.” 

Unfortunately, this fear is an all-too-common barrier. “You have people who say, ‘I’m afraid of what will happen if I don’t teach the curriculum,’” Walden notes. “Well to them, I say: ‘Challenge it!’ It’s what you’re there for!” Even though our incredibly unequal pedagogical environments require liberatory responses from all corners of the education world, Ruth-Terry Walden recognizes the incredible importance of teachers and the work that is necessary to build the space of the classroom into one where students feel respected, valued, and loved. And that process, she says, requires a lot of work, and a lot of critical study of the world in which we live. But for all of its difficulty, the path of engaging with anti-racist thought and action can change the lives of the students who can learn and grow in spaces like these. But in order to lay the foundations to create those just and equitable classrooms, we must first strive to rid ourselves of the fear of not living up to, or directly flouting the standards and mores that restrict the changes we seek.

(Interview Conducted by Sidney Carlson White and Katherine Salinas)