Two of Sarah Miller’s former students were arrested while peacefully protesting the not-guilty verdict in the murder trial of former St. Louis police Officer Jason Stockley. The Clayton teacher was proud.
Miller, an American history teacher at Wydown Middle School, has taught her students for years how reformers, from 19th-century abolitionists to the first black U.S. congressmen, fought for change. She was proud to see that her two students had also identified a change they believed in, then stepped forward to make it happen.
Miller, who is white, grew up in Clayton and studied social policy at Northwestern University, said she understands why people are upset at the acquittal of Stockley, a white officer who was charged with wrongly killing a black drug suspect. Regardless of the specifics of the case, events such as killings by police seem to happen to African-Americans over and over, she said. But Miller did not join the protesters after the verdict.
“I decided that my way of protesting was to be the teacher that I am and to teach my students,” Miller told a group of about 60 St. Louis-area educators at a recent social justice teach-in at De Smet Jesuit High School. “I can teach them the roots of this, to historicize it, to help them understand the anger the community feels, to help them understand how they can make change.”
For some teachers, the Stockley case was a reminder about why they cover race, equity and social justice in their classrooms.
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