INTRODUCTION

When I first began teaching about Martin Luther King Jr. to my kindergarten students, I didn’t really talk about racism. There were several reasons for this. As a White teacher, I had limited firsthand experience with racism, and I had the privilege of choosing how and when to engage. Also, I didn’t know what was developmentally appropriate to share with five- and six-year-olds, and I worried that this information would divide my class. At the same time, there were themes that Dr. King personified that I wanted to share with my students and children— themes of courage, social justice, and using nonviolent strategies to make change.

At first, I thought I could talk about these themes in a general sense, rather than connecting them to the actual struggle of the civil rights movement or ongoing efforts toward racial justice. Each year when it came time to celebrate Dr. King’s birthday in my classroom, I talked in broad strokes about his dream of inclusivity. When reading books about his life, I rushed through or skipped over parts about segregation and his assassination. I recognized that students were not creating a deep understanding about the themes I cared about, but I didn’t yet know how to change this.

Inevitably, a student would call out, “He was shot!” and classmates murmured on the playground and in the corners of the room about the violence surrounding Dr. King’s death rather than talking about his life’s work. A White student would point to a Black student and say something like, “She couldn’t have sat at the front of the bus,” and the Black student would look at me, waiting for my response. Because I didn’t know how to proceed, and didn’t know how to include all the voices in the room, I would stop the conversation.