“I think, therefore I am Anti-racist” workshop

reading experiences and racial reflection in ninth-grade class

Abstract

This experience report aims to present and reflect on an anti-racist workshop developed with a 9th-grade class at a public school in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul, within the context of the first teaching experience of two undergraduate students in a Portuguese Language Teaching degree program. The proposal emerged from the need to build, within the school setting, a pedagogical intervention that would promote dialogue, critical reflection, and the problematization of racial relations, considering the tensions and forms of resistance that permeate this topic. To this end, the workshop brought together different language materials, especially the short story “Incidente na Raiz,” by Cuti, and the song “Negro é lindo,” by Jorge Ben Jor, in a version performed by Cidade Negra. The process was guided by contributions from Literary Literacy, the interactional conception of language, Dialectical Methodology, and discussions on white fragility and structural racism. Throughout the meetings, the activities involved reading, listening, debate, and writing, fostering students’ participation and broadening their reflections on racial inequality. The experience highlighted the power of language-based work in addressing social issues and showed that teaching is constructed through the articulation of planning, listening, mediation, and openness to the movements generated by practice itself.