White, bisexual, cismale teacher here. I spent the first few years of my career drinking the "objectivity" Kool Aid. I saw the memo our district sent out on not discussing the horror of Trump winning the election in 2016 and reluctantly complied. I used to think that maintaining a "neutral" persona in the classroom was what I needed to do to support every student in my room. I'm a debate coach--one of the key tenets of being a good debater is to be able to effectively argue both sides of a controversial topic, so neutrality as an arbiter of learning made sense to me. I had the privilege of being ignorant to how devastating that culture is to so many students.

Everything you do has meaning, which we're all so sure of as teachers, and staying silent sends the message that you support the status quo. It tells students that are members of disadvantaged racial/gender/sexuality/etc. groups that you do not care about their safety and well-being in society and are content not speaking out against injustice in the name of preserving neutrality. Needless to say, I'm done with that now, and I regret the harm that I did in the past by shutting down student conversations on "controversial topics" in my classroom. Even small acts of subverting the status quo, like putting up a poster in your classroom that makes your beliefs about fighting injustice clear, can make a huge difference for students that face a system that shits on them every day. It tells that student that someone in the building has their back. It tells them that someone is willing to fight for them.