Navigating White Space in Education

Exposure Value

In photography, exposure value, in its simplest terms, is the quantity of light hitting a photographic film. Without checking and adjusting the light for the context or setting of each photograph, it typically results in overexposed or underexposed images. Both are the result of too much or too little light. Images such as these, like students who do not have their cultural contexts addressed or included in our teaching, suffer from being hard to read or labeled as imperfect. Unexposed images, ones that have yet to be developed, are where hope and surprises reside. Until processed and developed, their exposure value remains a mystery. Likewise, students attend school because they are by age, nature, and maturation undeveloped; our job as culturally competent educators is to ensure that the context for their processing is just right. Unfortunately, when we define the value of their exposure, embracing the stereotype or denying their differentiated needs for processing, academically undeveloped students view school as a mistake—a place where the darkness of silence, reprimand, and neglect are dominant. We must embrace that teachers, principals, school staff, and school culture all cultivate the habits for and value of their success, as well as affect the lens through which students tackle the world, including whether they view school as a place of luminous value or arduous invasion.

In many cases, students who are academically and socially unsuccessful are simply unexposed. There is no such thing as normal. There is no normal household. No normal upbringing. No normal standard for success. Our experiences shape our homes, our upbringing, and standards, and it is human nature to initially label those that differ from our own as negative or wrong. For example, I come from a family of preachers. Because of this, growing up, my cousins, siblings, and I were not allowed to play cards. My great-grandmother, and her mother before her, taught the generations of my family that cards “are the devil’s workplace.” When I asked why, after my cousins and I were gifted a pack at school, she said, “Because they always lead to loss … loss of money, loss of temper, loss of friends.” So we did not play and sadly turned over our new pack of cards to her strict hands. As time went on, we learned to sneak the cards and secretly play Crazy Eights and I Declare War, but when I started dating and enrolled in college, especially an HBCU, these two card games were not enough. Only one mattered. Only one gave me the ticket to acceptance. Only one validated my Black Card: Spades. And … I could not play. I was laughed at, mocked, and ridiculed because I did not know how to play. And I still do not know how to play. Spades in the Black community is symbolic of one’s Blackness. For us, Spades has been used to create bonding experiences within families and discourse communities of various levels. The better you can play, the better you are treated and respected because of your skills. So not knowing how to play at an HBCU or a friend’s backyard barbeque is sacrilegious. Did I mention that I still cannot play?

As a child, I could not force my great-grandmother to change her views on cards; nor did I expect her to. Her words were, and are, the gospel to my family and me; in fact, I value moments when her words come back to guide my actions in daily life more than anything I could ever buy … even though she handed me the keys to having my Black card revoked. What is important to note here is that family values differ from home to home and neighborhood to neighborhood. And BIPOC students who are not exposed to what White teachers value most or feel make for successful students, such as mastery and regurgitation of the King’s English, indefatigable resiliency, automatic compliance, and automatic receptance of universalized pedagogies, are not below, beneath, or behind; they are unexposed to your experienced “standard.” Teachers must learn each class’s history, culture, and expertise, then elevate and celebrate that knowledge by weaving in connective strands to curriculum that are authentic to their teaching style yet rigorously and culturally scaffolded enough to expose students to the skills needed to meet and exceed standardized grade level expectations. Then, and only then, will diverse students be successful with the standardized measures of academic success. It is our job to meet students where they are by establishing relationships that tell us where they have been and what matters to them, using those topics to expose them to what will help them to be academically successful.

Scripture: The book of the Prophet Isaiah 1:18 reads, “I, the Lord, invite you to come and talk it over. Your sins are scarlet red, but they will be Whiter than snow or wool” (CEV). Here, we have an invitation from the Lord to have a conversation with Him about whatever wrongs or sins we have committed. He assures us that no matter how bad the sin is, talking it over with Him will take us from a guilty to an innocent verdict. If the Lord promises to meet us where we are, regardless of what we have done, surely we can extend that to meeting students where they are to take them from static to dynamic. They have no control over much of what influences their success in school; extending them the courtesy of building their skills from where they are, just as the Lord will do for you, is a common courtesy. There is no condemnation in the Lord; therefore, there should be no condemnation for students who enter classrooms needing assistance and engagement from teachers in the form of culturally relevant teaching, verbalization of their value, and high standards and expectations with the scaffolded supports to reach and surpass them.

Prayer: Dear Father, thank You for challenging me to meet my students at their need. Enable me to establish relationships with them that inspire, motivate, and help them to recognize their strengths in order for me to reduce and grow their weaknesses. In Jesus’s name. Amen.