Ms. Germán, who came to the United States as a child, teaches at the Headwaters School in Austin, Tex. She said she experienced classroom racism as a child in Lawrence, Mass. “They wanted to bring us into a classroom that required us to dismiss our way of being in order to assimilate — as if ours had no value,” she said.

She rebelled. “I was a menace,” she said. “My chemistry teacher, for instance, would not speak to me or respond when I raised my hand.”

Today, after nearly two decades as an educator, she practices “activism every day in the classroom,” she said. “This is not about politics. This is about working toward social justice. I am constantly asking myself how I can model that thoughtfully in my classroom.”

Ms. Germán’s ninth-grade students, for example, study graffiti and debate questions such as: Is it vandalism? Where does it come from? What does it mean? What does it contribute to society? Does it count as text? Is there a message there?

The students read Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese,” a graphic novel that centers on issues of conformity, issues of identity, particularly around race, she explained. “The discussions get pretty heavy.”

“My students are really engaged with the content,” Ms. Germán said. “Over and over, they comment on how modern it is. What they are saying is that it’s very relevant to their lives.”