Authentic Caring is Vital to the Success of Students of Color

By Jennifer Chacon-Duran

Something I have noticed in my 12 years in public education is how little or how rarely my schools cared about me. This was nothing personal against me. My schools didn’t really care about any of their students. There were definitely a few exceptions over the years: my fifth-grade teacher, seventh-grade math teacher, Math 1 teacher, AP Biology teacher, and high school history teacher are all great examples of teachers who genuinely cared for their students. 

Now, as a UC Berkeley student minoring in education, I have learned about a very important topic: subtractive schooling and the politics of caring. This is a concept created by Angela Valenzuela in her book Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, where she talks about the importance of school administrators and teachers understanding that their students, specifically Mexican-American students, need authentic caring rather than “aesthetic caring” in order to succeed. 

After learning about this topic, it was very easy to understand that my teachers were able to make such a huge impact on their students because they authentically cared for us. The American public school system was not designed to care about its students, specifically its students of color, authentically. It was designed for aesthetic caring for its white students. They prioritize high test scores, attendance, and graduation rates, and when they don’t get that from their students, they simply leave them behind instead of figuring out the real reasons behind these actions. Sometimes, a simple “how are you doing today?” goes a really long way. 

Students of color cannot learn and succeed in institutions that don’t care about them. Many are already dealing with so much more at home and in our society.  They need a safe space to take a breather, learn, and grow both socially and academically, and our public schools should be that space for them.