Yuen: Trump’s anti-DEI rampage hurts future teachers — and kids

Allow me to introduce you to two white Minnesota men who have benefitted from a federal grant recently gutted by President Donald Trump because of his contempt for DEI.

Jakob Anderson and Nate McKenzie were both admitted to the University of St. Thomas' teacher training program in a state that desperately needs more teachers. They felt called to a career in education because they know the person in front of a classroom can change the trajectory of a kid’s life.

But this month, the university learned that the Trump administration was canceling the $6.8 million federal grant that provides scholarships to teachers in training because the program promoted diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Trump believes that DEI initiatives discriminate against white people.

Because, as we all know, private Catholic colleges in the Midwest are ground zero for the woke agenda.

Let me tell you a bit more about Anderson and McKenzie, who each earned a scholarship that allowed them to afford tuition to St. Thomas. The three-year grant, which the university received in 2023, was intended to provide about 120 scholarships a year, ranging from $10,000 to $20,000.

Anderson, 33, grew up in Northfield. About six years ago, he started working at Prairie Creek Community School in his hometown as a paraprofessional. Last summer, he graduated from the university’s residency teaching program, in which he earned both his licensure and master’s degree within an intense 15 months that mixed in classroom instruction with student teaching. He now leads a classroom of his own, teaching second- and third-graders.

Most of his students hail either from Northfield or the outlying farming communities. His small charter school emphasizes outdoor learning. Anderson regularly holds lessons in the elements, like when he took his bundled-up students on a “creek stomp” this winter to search for animal tracks and scat and pick up blockages like trash and tree branches to help the creek’s ecosystem.

Even with his $10,000 scholarship, which he said paid for about half of his tuition at St. Thomas, Anderson was still scraping to get by.

“It was life-changing to have that chunk of money to support my education,” he said. “I benefitted so much from it. I am able to give back because of the benefit I got.”

The Trump administration’s push to rescind the grant is “deeply saddening and scary to me,” he said. “The people in the program are exactly the type of people you want to be teaching.”

The St. Thomas program prepared him to reach all of the students in his class, no matter their socioeconomic or racial background. He’s intentionally filled his classroom with Anishinaabe artwork, books about Korean folk tales, origami paper cranes and poetry from foreign countries so that his students can see themselves and other cultures represented in images and literature.

McKenzie, 30, found the program’s emphasis on inclusion and equity eye-opening. A white male in a racially diverse cohort, he learned what it was like to be in the minority. He read assigned books on racialized trauma and plunged into conversations with his fellow grad students, many of them from communities underrepresented in the teaching profession.

“School made them different than how school made me feel,” said McKenzie, who remembers thriving in sports, which made school enjoyable for him. “I want to be the reason why people come to school.”

McKenzie has worked in special education for Minneapolis Public Schools. He speaks Spanish and has experience coaching in Special Olympics. He said the state needs more special education teachers, especially from communities of color. St. Thomas has pledged to cover the rest of his spring semester, but he does not know if he’ll be able to foot the bill for the summer.

When he thinks about Trump’s attacks, he feels both deflated and perplexed. The U.S. Department of Education announced this week that it has slashed a total of $600 million to organizations that train teachers on “divisive ideologies.”

“Is it really DEI that he’s against?” McKenzie said. “Or is it against teachers and education that he has some vendetta for?”

With just a month in office under his belt, Trump has put his antagonism on full blast. It’s staggering to keep up with his retribution.

It’s not just DEI and education that are under attack. Federal employees, paper straws, Gulf of Mexico, FBI agents, trans kids, immigrants, journalists, cancer research and quite possibly science itself are all in his crosshairs. (The winners so far include the likes of Rod Blagojevich, oil companies and Jan. 6 insurrectionists.)

The velocity of his cruelty is so staggering that it’s hard to keep up with the fallout. But teachers like McKenzie and Anderson illustrate the human collateral of Trump’s actions.

“The purpose of the program is to find and retain teachers,” Anderson said. “It’s a demanding profession that a lot of people don’t understand.”

Fewer educators in the supply pipeline will lead to larger class sizes for our kids, a deepening teacher shortage in rural Minnesota and less individualized attention for our children with special needs. I’d also argue that we will lose something when teachers feel muzzled by Trump’s fight against wokeness.

This Black History Month, ask yourself if your child is better off not knowing the story of Ruby Bridges, the first African American child to attend a whites-only school in Louisiana. Before I tucked my 7-year-old into bed last night, he said he learned about Bridges that day in class. He recognized her bravery in the face of white parents who hurled tomatoes at her. That’s part and parcel of our country’s past.

But our new education secretary, Linda McMahon, isn’t sure whether teaching Black history would violate Trump’s executive orders against diversity initiatives and “radical indoctrination.” At her confirmation hearing this month, she also could not say whether Trump would defund public schools that teach African American history.

This is madness. We need more teachers in the classroom who know Black history is American history. Who strive to engage every student. Who understand that knowledge is power, not a source of shame or divisiveness.

Let teachers teach. Let our children learn. If they don’t, the past is bound to repeat itself. And Trump will have succeeded with his own brand of radical indoctrination.