Build Students’ Foundational Knowledge

When we teach a student to read, we start with the alphabet. We teach letter recognition, letter sounds, and basic prereading skills, such as rhyming, hearing sounds in words, and breaking words into discrete parts. We continually check for understanding and reteach when necessary, and we practice in some way, usually every day, in the classroom. Therefore, when we teach students to become competent in talking about race and racism, we can start by laying a strong foundation of understanding. The following list includes some foundational concepts you can explore with young students. • What race is and what it isn’t

• How race has operated and continues to operate in the United States and other countries

• Our own internalized biases or misinformed ideas

• What we can do to create more equitable experiences in our classrooms

• Definitions of common terms students will encounter in conversations about race (see the glossary, page 145)

As we practice talking about these definitions and ideas with students, we also work on how to communicate across differences with respect. As teachers and students build their capacity to manage racial stress, they’ll gain the tools for staying engaged instead of retreating into silence. To be able to do this work with students, teachers must already be doing the work for themselves. If you’re just beginning your personal work around breaking silence, investigating your personal bias, and adopting antiracist practices, you can explore helpful resources in this book’s glossary (page 145) and appendices A (page 147), B (page 157), and C (page 161). There you’ll find definitions of common terms, frequently asked questions, and books for students and adults about race and racism.

Now let’s look at two sample activities you could incorporate into your classroom to lay foundational knowledge about race.

Classroom Activity

WHEN YOU THINK YOU’RE DONE, YOU’VE JUST BEGUN

Race is a difficult and complicated concept. It’s different from skin color and ethnicity. It is a social construct, and yet is has real meaning and power. Students, no matter their age, need to know that skin color is not the same thing as race. They need to be taught that there’s no way to know by looking at someone what their race is and that there’s real danger in making assumptions about people based on what you think you know by looking at them.

Create anchor charts for these ideas, as you discuss them, just as you would to ground a writing lesson. In my classroom, we have an anchor chart at the Writing Center that reads, “When You Think You’re Done, You’ve Only Just Begun.” The chart lists specific things students can add to their writing when they think they are finished: they can add details to the picture, add a character’s emotions, or check for capitalization and punctuation. Create a similar chart customized to your conversations about race, and use it during classroom conversations. The steps will vary depending on the age you are working with but could include the following. • Challenge your assumptions. • Learn more. • Ask questions. • Challenge your assumptions again.

Classroom Activity

COUNTRIES TELL STORIES ABOUT THEMSELVES

Julius Lester’s (2005) Let’s Talk About Race is a great resource for helping students begin to define race. His definition is, in part, that race is a story that countries make up about themselves. Lester (2005) writes, “Just as I am a story, and you are a story, and countries tell stories about themselves, race is a story, too” (p. 16). We all have a race as part of the stories we tell about ourselves, which is helpful for