Pictured above, Flat Freire is bookmarking a page in a teaching magazine called “Teaching Tolerance”. This issue of the magazine focuses on the 2016 tips, tricks, and activities ideas for teaching about and discussing controversial topics in the classroom. In the second picture, Freire is pointing to a specific passage in which a student exhibits racism in the classroom. That particular chapter discusses how and why teachers should handle these tense situations by describing the real example of what Tracey Iglehart, a first grade teacher, did to combat racism in her school. To combat xenophobia in her school, Inglehart mobilized all of the teachers in her school to stage a “Teach In” the day Donald Trump came to their town. They hung up “Black Lives Matter” posters, created positive art abroad immigrants, and created a continually used shared google doc with a list of K-12 lesson plans that focused on teaching tolerance.
This story, and the magazine overall, is a phenomenal example of progress when it comes to combating racism in schools. While this passage focused on race rather than religion, this article seemed to directly relate to the fifth myth that Ballinger pointed out in her journal “So, You're a Muslim? (Not That There's Anything Wrong With That)”. Ballinger points out that is a myth that teachers cannot discuss religion in the classroom; in reality, it is very beneficial to facilitate these discussion, thus teaching the values of compassion, empathy, and understanding.