RALEIGH, N.C. – The federal government is funding summer training sessions for educators to push them into “uncomfortable” conversations about race and white privilege despite public backlash to similar efforts.

In North Carolina, scores of Wake County educators are participating in training sessions put on by Project READY, a joint venture by the University of North Carolina, North Carolina Central University and the county school system that’s funded through a three-year federal grant, The News & Observer reports.

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Organizers are working with mostly white educators in 30 schools with mostly non white students to create “culturally relevant” classroom instruction with a heavy focus on race relations, training Project READY proponents claim is crucial to improving a stubborn achievement gap between white and minority students.

According to The News & Observer:

The training is leading teachers to reconsider what material they’re using in class. Research shows that using culturally relevant material can improve academic performance for minority students, according to Sandra Hughes-Hassell, director of Project READY.

Hughes-Hassell said English teachers can use “All-American Boys” in addition to, or instead of, “To Kill A Mockingbird” to discuss similar themes about race while also getting a black viewpoint.

When discussing people such as famous scientists, Hughes-Hassell said, teachers can make sure to mention more than just white scientists.

“Do the resources you’re using reflect the culture of the students in your classroom?” she asked.

Teachers are reviewing sample lessons such as “bringing social justice to chemistry,” which shows how educators can talk about how dangerous levels of lead got into the water in Flint, Mich.

Teresa Bunner, one of the presenters at a recent teaching training session at Vernon Malone College and Career Academy in Raleigh, pointed to an experience she had in the classroom as a literacy teacher in Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools as justification for the laser focus on race.

A Caribbean-American student in one of her classes became agitated when teachers did not focus on the justified police shooting of black criminal Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and threw a fit in class because of it.

“For her to sit there and for nobody to be talking about it was comfortable for the teachers, but created an uncomfortable and unsafe space for her as a black student who lived and had many male friends and family members who were black and were looking at a reality and realizing tomorrow that could be someone I know,” Bunner told teachers. “We get to stay comfortable, but we make that an uncomfortable place for our students and then we can’t figure out why they don’t want to learn in our classrooms.”

Other training sessions included a focus on a lack of black professionals in the teaching ranks and at the central office and school board, “culturally biased” and “euro-centric” curriculum and testing, and how blacks are “under-represented” in advanced classes but “over-represented” in remedial classes.

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The race-focused approach to teaching hasn’t gone over well in other school districts.

At New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, more than 800 parents showed up to a school board meeting in February after students and teachers were forced into a mandatory “All-School Seminar Day” that focused exclusively on race and white privilege.

The event, which featured wildly liberal seminars on civil rights, transgender folks and people of color, police brutality and alleged minority voter suppression in 2016, was canceled by the school board for this year amid a flood of complaints.

More than 950 students boycotted the event, while parents complained about how it sowed division in the community.

Parents and taxpayers also became irate when they learned that the high school spent hundreds of thousands in tax dollars to send educators to white privilege conferences and host “professional development” that included “diversity training” for dozens of teachers, EAGnews reports.