Since 2020, the Zinn Education Project has hosted hundreds of Teaching for Black Lives Study Groups. Each study group receives copies of Teaching for Black Lives and a Rethinking Schools subscription for each participant, a year-long menu of workshops and seminars to choose from, and access to a network of social justice teachers across the United States.
In 2025, Daniah Aburomi, 7th-grade global studies teacher and Teaching for Black Lives study group coordinator in South Orange, New Jersey was interviewed to reflect on her experience. Listen and/or read her interview below.
Interview Transcript
Hi. My name is Daniah Aburomi, and I’m a 7th-grade global studies teacher.
Tell us about your Teaching for Black Lives study group.
We specifically asked that [our study group] become instilled in the half day PD program that the school has. Everyone has a half day PD; they go to their PDs and we say “bye” and head over to our Teaching for Black Lives session. And it’s phenomenal. Everybody who’s in the space is very much not doing it for check boxes. Everyone there is either somebody who usually participates in these programs or somebody for whom you don’t have to do any convincing. So it’s been amazing. I’m so lucky. We don’t get questions, like, “But why?” Everyone’s like, “Tell us what to do.”
Working in the space has been phenomenal. We did this before, for example, we did a Model Gary Convention, and our teachers participated, all the teachers that were with us worked in one capacity or another. This weekend, we’re going to have a Black Lives Matter at School Curriculum Fair. That’s also something we worked on. It’s been amazing because I’m also a member of MAPSO Freedom School. So the work and this Teaching for Black Lives has just . . . We share our work with our administrators and I always joke around in the email because I have to send them my agenda and I was saying, “In case anyone asks what we’re doing . . .” But we’re doing so much that it feels silly to even share it with them. It’s absolutely been a blessing.
How does participating in a Teaching for Black Lives study group impact your work?
I intentionally went ahead and set a PDP goal basically proving that I am teaching for Black lives with every single lesson plan that I have. Sometimes it’s not as easy as it is at other times, but I’m very fortunate because I teach global studies. The research I do allows me to pull out and include as much as I can. So overall, it has been like this beautiful feeling in the back of my head saying, “Oh, I’ve got to remember to do this. I’ve got to remember to do this. How am I going to do this?” So that’s how I’d say it’s been positively impacting my teaching style.
What reading or discussion inspired you to begin assessing your lessons?
Reading “Two Sets of Notes” was very jarring. Obviously I was fortunate because I had an education. My educational background, the program that I was in, the people I was surrounded by, they very much woke me up very early on. I keep reminding myself that when kids aren’t into the lesson that I’m teaching, or when kids are being a little more active, or whatever it may be, I just keep reminding myself, it’s me, it’s not them. So it just constantly reminds me that I don’t want my classroom being the kind of space where kids walk out and they say, “Well, we never learned this.” Or, “my education was this way.” That would be one of my many answers.
What feedback have you received from students?
It always makes me so happy. Something that I brag about is the amount of marginalized students who come to my room during free time, whether it’s a trans student who said to me, “I know if something happens, that you’re the one.”
We had an assembly recently, and one of my administrators was talking about how you want to make sure that you have a safe adult that you can talk to, if you can’t come talk to the counselors. So literally, my team of students, a hundred kids, some of them were with me, some of them weren’t with me and they were sitting with other teachers, and a bunch of them turned around and pointed at me. I was like, “Oh, no!” It was such a beautiful feeling. So just knowing that. And I know it’s because of what I teach, I know it’s beyond my personality. I know that the kids are drawn to me because they see that I care. They see that this is what I’m teaching them and that I have no tolerance for any sort of hate.
We had an incident in my classroom where somebody said something — and it was actually my first time where a student felt comfortable enough to say something that was racist. But we had a long conversation, and I literally started to cry in class because I couldn’t believe that this was happening on my time. And the kids came to console me, to hug me, to check on me, right, even though I was hurt for them.
Have you or any of your group members faced any pushback for anti-racist teaching?
It’s very interesting, because certain districts in our state are very progressive, but they’re progressive except for Palestine. A lot of teachers explain to me that the issue is there’s no pushback on LGBTQ books, and if there is, the district covers that. There’s not really much pushback on anything related to curriculums that are more “CRT friendly,” that isn’t really getting pushback. The major pushback from what I’ve heard from different districts in our state is that basically everything goes except for Palestine. The minute you want to bring up, just show an accurate map, or teach anything that basically teaches the historical narrative — that maybe there were people living in this place, maybe they are suffering, maybe they are indigenous. You could pick any historical inaccuracy that’s being portrayed, and that becomes a huge pushback.
Even in districts that have no book bans, pull up a book on Palestine and watch how quickly there becomes: “No budget.” “We can’t afford it.” “We’ve got to do an audit.” “We need this cleared.” Obstacles that are put up with no other content except for that. So as happy as I am to say that mostly my friends and I don’t face pushback, like I can teach almost anything I want there, there’s definitely that overwhelming feeling of, bring up Palestine at your own risk.
Tell us about your background as an educator and your heritage.
I think one of the driving factors of why it’s so personal for me is because I’m Palestinian, so teaching history is so important. My administrator says to other people when I’m becoming passionate about certain issues, he always reminds people, “It’s life and death for her.” This is literally life and death. Both of my parents are refugees, and just the amount of trauma, the generational trauma that we had. My father had to carry my mother. I tell people stories about her. When she was a little girl, she was pulled out of her house, she was six years old, and the soldiers lined them up and basically played a game with them where they had guns pointed at them. Again, she’s six years old. Still today, she has so much anxiety, and she’s almost 70 years old. She’s compulsive about things. “Make sure the door is locked.” It’s like, “Mom, no one can come in.” “Make sure the door is locked.” She double and triple checks the door because it’s just something that happened to her.
Understanding the impact of generational trauma makes me much more patient with my students who are marginalized. It’s so sad to say, but just thinking about what they went through and how stressed out their parents are, or how stressed out their grandparents were when they were raising them, having to fight the whole world before they got home, and then having to parent at the same time. I’m very fortunate because my parents are financially comfortable, I live with them, and someone picks up my kids and drops them off. Even with all that privilege, I still feel the impact of being the child of Palestinian refugees. So I can’t even begin to fathom my students who are economically disadvantaged, or they have parents who are in prison, or uncles or aunts affected by all the horrendous systemic issues we have.
So I would say it’s been a blessing to be who I am, because I feel like it manifests itself in my classroom with my treatment of students. But in regards to my work, originally when I joined my district, I wasn’t planning on joining MAPSO Freedom School, I kept telling them, “Just wait, wait. I need time. I have kids. I’m busy.” But then, as I became closer with the members of the group, it became so natural. I kept turning to them for support, and I kept realizing that whenever there was an issue with Muslim students in our district, the people I could turn to were MAPSO Freedom School. And I knew it had to be a two-way relationship. I couldn’t take away their time, the energy they were serving. And then I was kind of absorbing, playing catch up, like whenever they need something, I’m like, “Tell me what to do. Let me know how to help you.” So it’s definitely been awesome.