A short animated video narrated by Deborah Ball and produced by the McKnight Foundation in partnership with Ball’s colleagues at TeachingWorks, Alyssa Brandon and Antoinette Wade, has been named a finalist in two categories for the Shorty Social Good Awards. Teaching is Powerful builds on the idea of discretionary spaces advanced by Ball in her presidential address at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association. According to the entry by the McKnight Foundation:
Our strategy was to convert what had been a lengthy academic lecture into a short animation to vividly illustrate how subtle acts of teaching can perpetuate patterns of racism and oppression or, alternatively, contribute to a more just and equitable public education system. Such subtle acts might include how teachers pose questions; whom they call upon; whom they consider disruptive or simply curious; which students they expel out of the classroom to detention or the principal’s office; whom they praise and whom they critique.