Black Lives Matter in classrooms

A Fight For Education

BY HOPE CALLAGHAN

Art Editor

For the past few months, the Black Lives Matter movements have reached a record high in participants and supporters all around the country, and it has been affecting our classrooms.

The three founders of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, began their equality journey in 2013 as a Facebook hashtag, although within the first year it was drawing large crowds of protestors who shared the same goal of battling and dismantling white supremacy. The organization got larger and larger as the years passed while the need for change became a more and more widely accepted idea.

Starting on May 26, 2020, the day after the death of George Floyd, the protests began again and the number of protesters broke records, making this movement the biggest in US history.

Recently many people have taken to the screens again to voice their opinions and share their thoughts on the way our world is changing. Websites like Instagram and Twitter have become a hub of ideas for both sides of the political spectrum.

Sophomore student Sabrina Solan has been using her Instagram platform to spread awareness on the Black Lives Matter movement and subjects similar to it.

“We have had time to learn more about it individually and come together as a group [because of the pandemic]” Sabrina said when asked about her view on how the pandemic has changed the spread of awareness of the BLM movement.

Although she has since stopped using social media, Mx. Nguyen, an english teacher, agreed that participating in the spread of awareness online is a good step forward our nation is taking.

“I did utilize social media to engage actively in changing [policies], she said about her experience with sparking change on social media.

The changes that we have been watching for the past few years in our local and national governments have led to changes in our curriculum and students are being taught about the things that are causing and driving those changes.

“I [think] talking about the subject is important for students [because] it’s something that many people here in the US are fighting for,” Sophomore Bella Prado explained when asked about her thoughts on the new topic students are learning at Sequoia.

Claire Heritier-Kerby, a sophmore Modern European History teacher, explained why teaching her students about the BLM movement was important to her.

“Ideally, history would be a class that lets students have the tools to talk about the world around them and that is just not always the case with the courses as we have them now,” she explains, “so in order to do that, we have to make explicit time for those conversations to happen”.

Throughout lifetimes of oppression, systematic racism, and white supremacy, black and African American communities have fought to have their stories told in our history books and the Black Lives Matter movements have pushed this dream into reality. Our education system is starting to understand its impact on the lives of students and their outlook on life positively and powerfully.