Educators who initiate school reform work often find that attempts to raise student achievement and change school culture are derailed when staff members refuse to address issues of race. At the same time, staff members who collectively resist engaging in discussions of racism and racial inequality may be actively involved in their own individual…

This article describes an innovative pedagogy for developing culturally responsive dispositions: having teacher candidates write poems exploring their developing knowledge of themselves and urban students. While promising, the poems highlighted that teacher candidates may ignore racial identity, rely on heroic narratives, and make too-easy…