Border Crossers Workshop:
Why Race Should Matter to Educators
Wendy Rojas and Victoria A. Wilson
This past March, the Educational
Theatre program along with the Bilingual Education program had the privilege of
participating in a workshop on race and the classroom by Border Crossers,
an organization that “utilizes creative tools to
encourage educators in explorations of race and racism with young students.”
Facilitator J'nelle Chelune guided us
through a series of activities, lecture and discussion on the definitions
associated with race, political agendas and to help us discover where our own
conceptions lie. She used this to show how to teach race, empathy and build
a safe environment in our classrooms. In just one hour and a half, we not only
gained mind blowing statistical data but valuable activities and strategies to
apply to our own pedagogy.
J'nelle encouraged us to open our
minds from the moment the workshop started. In the first half we
"mingled" and told each other our own stories about who we are and
then explored the group understandings and misconceptions of race and
racism. We looked at the three types of racism (individual, cultural and
institutional) in relation to what children see and experience. What surprised Tori the most was the idea of
intention vs. impact: The government is pushing diary in its new nutrition
campaigns and free and reduced school lunches only come with milk. The majority of students receiving free
school meals are Black. Yet, about 80%
of Black American children are lactose intolerant (not to mention an
astonishing amount of Asian-American children as well) . Additionally, many of those children come
from religious or culturally backgrounds that don’t allow them to drink milk
(doesn’t everyone have soy or almond milk in their refrigerators nowadays
anyway?). We came to the conclusion that
although the government is probably not trying to poison Black or Asian
children, as educators it is our responsibility to consider the impact of our intentions
on every single student.
The second part of the workshop put
us in different groups, analyzing and writing about our reactions to several
plausible scenarios involving racial situations in school. We all chose to focus on the scenario of a
young Black American girl in an all White class that started to complain and
cry when her teacher pulled out a story on Dr. King Jr. – the same story that
was read in her class the year before and the year before that. We were reminded of the importance of
creating a culturally relevant classroom and the dangers of only using one face
to represent an entire race. We realized that it is not the norm for everyone
to be sensitive to students’ emotions or misunderstandings about themselves and
race. These situations are often ignored
due to the lack of comfort of both the teacher and students. It was helpful to discuss and role play as
the teacher and students in order to explore appropriate ways to use this
scenario to address race in the classroom.
After trying a few different approaches, we recognized that we really
are fully equipped to resolve a situation about race.
As people of color we (Wendy and Tori)
both had similar strong reactions to the workshop. Wendy's reaction was
blatant anger. It is hard to swallow the idea that although the NYPD has
clear data on their website, showing the miscorrelation between the population
majority in NYC and the majority of people being stopped and frisked. If
the city knows and even openly admits that it is stopping and searching Blacks,
who represent less than half of the city's population, and Latinos a great deal
more than Whites (who represent the city’s majority) then what more can be done
to stop it? It was also frustrating for both of us to hear some of the
responses of people who seemed to never have experienced racism in their own
personal lives and therefore could not comprehend the gravity of its effect on
youth. Discrimination happens often and
not everyone is fully educated or aware of these ongoing confrontations. For Tori, there was a mixture of responses.
The sense of urgency and hopelessness was definitely present, but it was
refreshing to see a group of racially diverse adults come together and
successfully talk about race – even if we did not agree with everything that
was said. Expressing ideas and
assumptions on race is always the first step to combating racism.
So what were the both of us able to
draw from this workshop? For one thing,
every educator needs to take workshops like this! Although race might be more of a social
construct then something that actually exists, it is so embedded in our society
that it can’t help but effect schools.
Therefore, it is important to educate ourselves about diversity and then
acknowledge the fact that these confrontations can, have and will happen in our
classrooms. It can happen in the most
subtle of ways so we must be observant and aware because the way we handle it
will impact our students’ willingness to take risks as well as their ideas of
themselves and each other. And talking
about race can be fun! Our job is to
enrich our students with the knowledge of culture and help them to respect and
celebrate the benefits and beauty of every race and every culture.
*If
you missed the workshop, we encourage you to take advantage of the resources
available in helping parents and teachers talk to children about race: http://www.bordercrossers.org/resources/
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