Talking with Kids About Race: 10 hr: Full Circle

Layout for the course:

Part One: What? (expand more on the history of the creation of race and do some self reflection)

Part Two: Why? and How? (this is just some review from the readings we looked at in February)

Part Three/Four/Five/etc: Practice!

If you want to move more quickly, or more slowly than one week for each part, thats fine! Just let me know.

Week One

Find a partner, ideally this will be someone on your teaching team. If you don’t have a teaching team or your teaching team isn’t doing this project, join a teaching team, or pair up with someone else! Preferably there will be pairs, and one group of three if necessary.

Please make either a joint Google Doc, or each make your own Google docs, and share them with me. If you feel comfortable and want to do all your writing in there, thats great. If you’d rather your writing and reflections be more private, thats great too. Either way, lets use the Google doc to check in. If you do most of your processing on the phone, than just use the doc to give updates at the end of every unit about what you’ve done, maybe some briefs notes about your reflections, questions, etc.

Week One will mainly be spent listening to four podcast episodes about the creation of race, and then reflecting on them with your partner, either on the phone or through sharing writing.

Listen

Seeing White, Ep2: 28 mins

https://www.sceneonradio.org/episode-32-how-race-was-made-seeing-white-part-2/

Seeing White, Ep3: 33 mins

https://www.sceneonradio.org/episode-33-made-in-america-seeing-white-part-3/

Seeing White, Ep4: 36 mins

https://www.sceneonradio.org/episode-34-on-crazy-we-built-a-nation-seeing-white-part-4/

Seeing White, Ep13: 47 mins

https://www.sceneonradio.org/episode-44-white-affirmative-action-seeing-white-part-13/

Talk and/or Write

Reflect with your partner on the questions below. You could call or Zoom and do this, or you could use a shared Google Doc and both write. If you decide to write and share your writing, try to still find ways to engage. That could be making comments or asking questions about the other person’s writing, or reading each other’s work and then talking about it.

*Racial and Ethnic Identity Reflection please try to answer all the questions below in your reflection

*Do you identify with your race and or your ethnicity? or Were you raised to believe that your race mattered to your own life?

Note about the language: As the podcast demonstrated, all this is invented. That being said, with regards to the question above Race is referring to large categories such as White, Black, Native American, Asian, Pacific Island. Sometimes Latinx or Hispanic is considered a race and sometimes an ethnicity. Hispanic often refers to countries that speak Spanish, with Latinx referring to folks with ancestry in what is now Central and South America. However, because of colonization, people who speak Spanish and have Latinx ancestry, may be decedents of: the indigenous people of that land, Europeans who colonized the land, enslaved peoples brought to the land from Africa, or more recently, other folks who immigrated there. The term ethnicity is also an invented idea, but often refers to more specific cultural groups. Sometimes there are many ethnic groups in a country, or sometimes the entire country is considered an ethnic group. It largely refers to where exactly are your people from. Mine for example are from Ireland, Germany and Jews from Hungary. (Jewish is the only religion that is also an ethnicity………) So my race is White but my ethnicity is Irish, German, and Jewish Hungarian.

*Why or why not?

*If you are not indigenous to this land, what did your people experienced before they came here? How did they get here? Where they considered to be the race they are considered now? For example, Jews were not considered white 100 years ago, but are now.

*If all your family is indigenous to what is now called North America, what happened to your people when settlers came?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, consider why.

Week Two

Read

While reading consider: Does this challenge or change any beliefs you have been holding onto? How does your body feel reading it?

*Children are Not Colorblind by Erin Winkler

*Why Talk with Young Children (about race): section of my graduate thesis entitled Power Means Who the Police Believe

*How Children Form and Enact White Identity? from What If All the Kids Are White? by Louise Derman Sparks

Talk with your partner or write for yourself

*Think about the concerns you named in our workshop about ideas or messages that get in the way of doing this work with young children. Have these readings shifted any of your concerns or the stories you’ve been told that get in the way? What stories do you still have trouble totally letting go of?

Read//Review

*All of these readings below are found here

*Sequencing pyramids for race and colonialism

*Working dictionary

*Grounding in five senses

*Sentence frames

*Praxis wheels

*Chapter 3: Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria

Listen

*This American Life: Birds & Bees (all of it is good and the first one is about talking to kids about race but the one I’m especially hoping you listen to part three about Jill MacFarlane talking to young children about dying. Her work talking to young children about suicide has supported my thinking enormously.) If you are interested in hear her talk more (I’m sorta obsessed with Jill) you can read an interview I did with her.

Week Three

This week is very focused on role playing. When thinking about role playing with preschoolers, it is very focused on talking with them. For folks who teach younger children, consider the lower parts of the pyramid and situations the babies and toddlers might initiate, as well as scenarios driven by teacher. Because babies and toddlers have less language, think about other ways they communicate. For example, if a baby shows much more hesitancy towards a dark skinned parents, than lighter skinned parents, what could you say to that child? This is both practice for when they can respond, and even if they don’t understand the full complexity of what you are saying, they still comprehend so much.

When role playing as baby and toddler teachers, these role plays may be more focused on the person playing the teacher practicing how they might use language to talk about different scenarios, while the person acting as the child may be less verbal and more of a witness and listener.

Also for infant toddler loop teachers, because at some point your kids will be very verbal by the end of old tods, practice some scenarios where children are asking questions.

Brainstorm and write

*Write down any scenarios you can think of that you have experienced with a child related to race. If you have trouble thinking of your own, ask people in your life. Try to get 5. If you don’t have 5 from your own life, use the following ones for practice:

*you are standing in line at the grocery store child asks you, “why does she have brown skin?” referring to someone in line next to you

*a white child sees a picture of a child of color and says “they are bad!”

*a kid sees a Nepali person and thinks it’s another Nepali person

*you are reading a book with a child and all the people in the book are white

*you are walking through the hospital with a child and all the doctors are white and the janitors are black and brown

*you are playing with children and plastic babies with different skin tones in dramatic play

*you drive by a police officer pulling over a person of color and you pull over to watch, to create more accountability for officer—child asks why you are doing that

*you drive down the street and folks are in the street with signs that say NO WALL

*child says n-word, not directed at a Black person

*your co-teacher says to you “I don’t think we need to talk about race with the kids. They are so innocent, they don’t see color.”

*you overhear another teacher handle a racist incident between children without addressing the racism, just saying “thats not nice”

Talk/Video Chat: Role Play

Role play with your partner. If you have the ability to use video, I think that would be helpful. Chose 3 or 4 scenarios, ideally that one of you has experienced. Using the tools from the previous week, role play the scene. Each person should play the child and adult. One person will start as the child and then the pairs will switch. If you have three people, switch off who plays each role. Time yourself for 3 minutes for each person in each part. Try to stay in character the whole time. Whoever is the child, try to push the adult, ask lots of follow up questions. This is usually awkward for folks but everyone always says its also the most helpful!

Try to do perhaps two sessions of 1 hour of role play. The more you do the easier they will get!! Make sure each person plays the child and the adult. Build off each other. If someone says something thats clear and helpful, try out that language.

We will process these role plays on our call together!

Week Four

Talk/Video Chat Role Play: Part 2

Try to use the praxis wheel and do extended role plays. This helps us get some familiarity with the routine of the ongoing practice of this. Again aim for two sessions of 1 hour. Do as many as you can in that time, but don’t rush, the process here is what we want to practice. Choose a scenario you find especially challenging to imagine answering or engaging with. Each person play each part, like before. But after each person has played each role stop and go through each step of the praxis wheel.

*Identify what you need to understand with more nuance (often a historical) to better give an accurate and clear response. Do some research to try to learn more about that. Even if it is brief Google research, try to do it in the moment.

*With the new information, prepare for your revised conversation with that imaginary child ie your partner. You could write down what you want to say if that would help. Or practice saying it to yourself.

*Consider your life at school, your schedule, and think about when you might return to that conversation with your student.

*Return to your partners. Each take a turn explaining when in the day you would initiate the second part of the conversation. Then practice saying to your partner what you would say to the child, in this opportunity to revise or expand.