Set the Tone

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.

Surround Students With Positive Associations

It’s important to inundate students with positive associations and conversations about race, and particularly about Blackness, before they talk about racism or any type of societal injustice. Forming positive associations supports students in gaining appreciation for the topic and fostering curiosity and excitement rather than fear and shame. It’s easy for students to experience fear and shame during conversations about race if they don’t have a foundation of understanding, appreciation for differences, and protocols for how to communicate as a community.

I’m not advocating for a superficial celebration of multiculturalism. Teachers should engage in deep reflection to ensure that the classroom environment and the curriculum represent multiple identities and center voices that have been traditionally excluded from educational institutions. As researchers Dorothy M. Steele and Becki Cohn-Vargas (2013) write: When teachers limit their diversity efforts to pictures on the wall, an occasional assembly, or the celebrations of food and cultures in a way that does not truly engage students in learning about one another, their students miss opportunities to feel valued and to gain respect and curiosity not only about their different histories, languages, cultures, and perspectives but also about their own identities. (p. 67)

Chapter 5 discusses this topic in greater detail.

Discuss Skin Color

Before beginning any difficult conversation about race or racism, make sure you have spent a good amount of time discussing skin color. Reinforcing the idea that everyone has a skin color works against the idea that White is the norm. It’s also essential to engage in activities that decrease bias against Blackness.

In early conversations about skin color with your students, emphasize the facts about how we get our skin color (the sun, where our ancestors came from, and melanin). Emphasize that each of us has skin color, that there’s no such thing as good or bad colors, or better or worse colors, and that the only way to know anything about a person is to get to know who they are, to know their story.

For a deep dive on this topic, see chapter 3.

Communicate Classroom Goals With Families

Engaging families in the teaching, and learning from what they tell you, are another important part of beginning the work. Teachers should let parents and