We had been striving to launch regular conversations with our community for a while. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery in the spring of 2020 and the #BLM protests that erupted as a result of these events, were the catalyst we needed to make the switch from planning to engage in these conversations with our wider community to launching these conversations. As the protests, some of which involved violence, were in the neighborhood of our school, brought up prior tragedies near our school such as the 9/11 and the truck that mowed down bicyclists on Halloween several years ago. While we engage students in developmentally appropriate conversations about current events and weave anti-racist instruction into the curriculum, we knew that we needed to bring parents into these conversations as well.
Liz Kleinrock, an elementary educator, talks about how she engages young people in talks about taboo topics, like race.
The Danger of a Single Story. Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about the danger of our assumptions.
Books about Civil Rights
Books for little ones to launch conversations about race
Stamped: Racism, Anti-racism and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi
Blindspot: The Hidden Biases of Good People by Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji
How to be Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Kids In a Racially Unjust World by Jennifer Harvey
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates