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told her that’s where many mothers with my skin color had been—standing up against the injustice of these laws. That was the pivotal moment when I learned that it was impossible to teach my daughter—or my students—about who Dr. King was without also telling the ugly truth about racism. My daughter was asking me to help her make sense of this story. To support her development, I would have to engage in conversations about racism.
Why Teaching Young Students About Race and Racism Matters
In addition to offering students the foundational knowledge they’ll need to navigate social justice issues, talking about race and racism creates a classroom culture where everyone works together to cultivate respect and mutual care. Educators Dorothy M. Steele and Becki Cohn-Vargas (2013) demonstrate that students thrive in school when they feel known and when their voices are valued. Only when students are allowed to take risks, challenge themselves, and learn to think critically about the world will the classroom become the safe space they need to thrive (Rogin, 2013). The social experience of the classroom plays a critical role in students’ learning. According to Vygotsky’s social development theory, knowledge is the product of the interaction between an individual and the environment, and understanding is social and cultural (Vygotsky, 1978). I wrote about this in an article called “How to Talk to Kindergarteners about Race” (Rogin, 2013):
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As teachers, we tend to assume that students have sufficient foundational knowledge about race that allows them to grasp more complex topics around racism and societal injustices and engage in respectful conversations with their peers (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2020). Imagine if we made these same assumptions in our approach to teaching mathematics. What if we assumed that students had basic number sense and plowed ahead with algebra or geometry without first finding out what students already knew about numbers? We know better than that; we know the confusion that arises when we don’t check for understanding, scaffold the learning, and provide appropriate supports. And yet, when it comes to the topic of race and racism, teachers often dive deep without doing any preassessments, with little or no sense of what students know or don’t know. It’s OK and appropriate to begin with the basics—including where skin color comes from and what race is and what it isn’t—no matter the student’s age.
