The content on this site includes articles, podcasts, movies, books, and more for Lincoln Public Schools educators, staff, and our community members to engage with in order to explore race and its many intersectionalities. Our intent is that educators, families, and community members will use these tools to consider their own racial identity, the identity of our students and families, and the institutional and systemic racism that we all live in and can perpetuate daily. The site is not an attempt to share a wide variety of differing opinions on race; rather it is explicitly focused on highlighting voices that teach about racism and help us enact antiracism. We must grow our understanding of race in our country and within ourselves for us to make progress toward collective work around antiracism; no amount of district, town, state-wide, or national work on its own will solve racism if we do not all invest in significant, intentional exploration on our own.

We are sharing this hub of resources with you with the strong hope that you include colleagues, friends, and family from the beginning in your reading, listening, watching, and thinking. We expect that faculty will utilize some of the resources here in Collaborative Practice groups, optional after-school groups, and district or school-based PD. The selections are grouped into overarching categories and each category lists shorter texts (including articles or blog posts), full books, podcasts and other audio, and videos (both short and feature-length). You could choose a category to explore across multiple forms of media, or you could select a medium that you want to dive into across multiple categories. While engaging in any of the content we recommend asking yourselves (or others you are talking about it with) the following questions:

• What assumptions does the author of the content hold?

• What do you agree with in the content?

• What do you question in the content?

• I used to think ____ but now I think ____.

• What parts of the content do you want to aspire to or act upon?

(adapted from the School Reform Initiative’s Four “A”s Text Protocol)

We have lots of ideas for how to grow the use of this site and subsequent dialogue and action among the Lincoln Public Schools and our larger communities. Stay tuned for our next steps as we evolve the site in partnership with many others!

A group of faculty and the assistant superintendent worked together to gather content. While each of these resources has been selected for different reasons, their inclusion here does not indicate that the district fully endorses every thought shared; race is an incredibly complex concept and experience and no one voice could represent a diverse group of people. In addition, some selections were chosen specifically because they might feel provocative to some and our hope is that faculty and staff embrace those provocations, knowing they can be a sign that our worldview and mindset are growing.

There are thousands of texts, podcasts, and videos that we could include and we fully acknowledge that this is merely a selection. Rather than attempt to make this site "perfect" and "complete" before sharing broadly, we are embracing the idea that perfection and completeness are not possible with this work; we would rather share our beginnings now and have the hub constantly evolve with our larger community's input. If you would like to recommend the addition of content you do not see listed, please submit your ideas using the button at the bottom of this page. We will keep adding to the hub, so please come back for updated and additional resources.

For faculty: as you explore, keep in mind some of the tools faculty explored in September 2019 around feedback that might serve you well here. These include the ladder of inference, pinch sorts, and radical candor -- these resources can be accessed in our district’s shared PD drive.

We have linked all web-based texts, podcasts, or short videos. Books and feature-length films can be borrowed through the Minuteman Library Network, borrowed through Kindle and other e-readers, purchased, or streamed on devices. In addition, many books are available as audiobooks, sometimes read by the author themselves. We also encourage the use of local bookstores, especially black-owned bookstores; in Massachusetts Frugal Bookstore in Roxbury and Olive Tree Books N Voices in Springfield are two well-known examples, though you might know more.