Decolonizing Education: What It Means for K-12 Teachers and Students

Emily Affolter is an educator and scholar who works at the intersection of culturally responsive pedagogy, decolonizing education, and equity-focused teaching and leadership. She is the director and faculty for Prescott College’s Sustainability Education PhD program, where she works with doctoral scholars around social and environmental justice.

In this episode, Tim Villegas talks with Emily Affolter about what it really means to teach in ways that honor students as whole people, especially during a time when equity work is being questioned and challenged. The conversation moves between big-picture ideas—like power, history, and schooling—and the everyday decisions educators make in classrooms and systems.

Emily unpacks decolonizing education in plain language, framing it as an examination of history, power, and whose knowledge is treated as normal in schools. She explains how culturally responsive teaching is not a label or endpoint, but an ongoing, reflective practice rooted in curiosity, accountability, and relationship.

A major focus of the episode is reflexivity and why educators need trusted people to think alongside as they work within imperfect systems. Together, Tim and Emily explore how fear, expertise, and siloed roles can quietly reinforce segregation, including in special education, and how educators can begin to interrupt these patterns even when they cannot change the entire system.

Complete show notes and transcript: https://mcie.org/think-inclusive/decolonizing-education-what-it-means-for-k-12-teachers-and-students-1321/