Racial Stress
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White students, who may be struggling to locate themselves racially and to begin to understand that this story of race in our country is about them, too (page 43). Lester (2005) goes on to say that some stories are true, and some are not true, and the story that one race is better than another is a story that is not true. After sharing this idea with your class, have students think of one thing about themselves their classmates wouldn’t know by looking at them. You may choose for students to write, draw, or share about their trait. This activity helps to reinforce the idea that we can’t truly know anything about anyone by looking.
Once you’ve clarified your definitions and thought of different ways to share them with students, it’s important to set consistent community agreements and expectations. Your classroom should have shared ground rules for how everyone will engage with conversations about race. I’ve had success with developing a class charter, surrounding students with positive associations, discussing skin color, and communicating classroom goals with families. The following sections look at each of these in more detail.
Develop a Class Charter One way of establishing shared guidelines is to develop a class charter, a socialemotional learning tool developed at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (Charter for Compassion, n.d.). In the first week of school, the class decides how they want to feel at school and what actions will bring these feelings out. When you have serious discussions, refer to the charter and hold each other accountable for making sure everyone is still feeling the way the students have chosen (for example, happy, excited, safe, and curious). Talk about what students can do when they have other feelings, which will naturally happen, but not ones students want to intentionally cause (for example, mad, sad, furious, or embarrassed). Communicate that it’s OK for students to take a brain break in the cool-down area of the classroom, draw a picture about their feelings, communicate verbally with the friend that made them upset, or get help from an adult. These protocols give a predictable structure to help support students when something goes wrong in their play, in their learning, or in the middle of a conversation about any topic, and especially topics that can elicit strong feelings.
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Set the Tone
