"I didn't know you were that smart": brown teachers in the racial microclime of Surrey

Surrey, BC is the fastest growing school district within the province and many of these schools include significant numbers of racialized and Brown students and teachers. This qualitative study is investigating the experiences of South Asian teachers teaching in Brown-majority schools. The central questions of this study are focused upon how teachers of South Asian descent make sense of their place in a racial microclime like Surrey as they educate and mentor students who experience similar racialization process(es) as themselves. Seven South Asian teachers from the Surrey school district participated in the study through semi-structured interviews. Informed by scholarship on critical multiculturalism, anti-racist pedagogy and the theorization of racial microclimes, the data was coded and analyzed, leading to three themes: teachers' own understanding of race and racial identity in forming their Brown teacher identity, teachers' understandings of multiculturalism and teachers' understanding of role modelling.