I teach black kids. (part 1)
I always do this. I always start the year off with every intention of updating my blog, and I'm good for a short stint... but then I get busy, and the blog falls way off the list of priorities.
I'm not even going to be mad or apologize for that. A lot has happened in the last five months, but I'll get into all that soon. Right now, I want to talk to
teachers. But I also want to talk to
non-teachers who know teachers or who have kids in teachers' classes or who drive by a school ever or who have ever had a teacher before in your life... yeah. That's you. If you landed here, I want to talk to you.
Teachers, we have a big job to do! We have been given the task of showing tiny humans how to be humans while in a school setting. That's a huge responsibility!
I remember my first year teaching fourteen years ago. I taught Pre-K that year. After the excitement of the first day of school wore off (so, you know, like October), I remember one day walking into my classroom at the end of the school day after all the kids got picked up. I just stood there looking around the room at the day's projects and books and games and toys... I just stood there in awe, and I asked myself out loud, "Holy crap. Who thought it was a good idea to put me in charge of all these children?"
And now, I still have the same thought often. I'm not saying I'm not capable. I'm fully capable of running my classroom. But there are so many things that go into managing a classroom full of these small people that no one ever tells you before you get started. And if you're not a teacher, you really have no idea.
But today, that's not what I'm here to talk about. I want to start thinking about what we can do in our classrooms every day to help support our students as they learn to navigate this world we live in. Together. The world that they will one day be responsible for taking care of, and I sure hope they do a hell of a lot better than we've done in the past. But they can't do better if we don't teach them better. And we can't teach them better if we don't learn to do better ourselves.
I think you know where I'm going with this. While I've known about the Black Lives Matter movement since it began and about some of the struggles my friends have had throughout their lives simply because they
look different from me, I guess I've never really taken time to dig deep into learning much about it. As we concluded in a conversation I was having with a friend, if it doesn't really affect us, we really don't have the capacity to worry about it.
But with this movement bigger than I've ever seen it before, I found myself fully immersed in it. (I have feelings about that, but I'm not sure I'm ready to share them yet.) I have been reading. A lot. I borrowed a book from the library, but I'll be honest... It's due tomorrow, and I haven't even finished Chapter 1. The stuff I've been reading is what my friends have been sharing via social media and then the research I've done to either back up or debunk the posts I've seen. I've been listening to my friends, and I mean
really listening, when they try to help by answering my questions. And I've been listening to complete strangers via social media, too.
And all of it has led me to one single conclusion. Because I know I'm not a rioter and I am not brave enough to be arrested, and because I don't pay close enough attention to the news to know if and when protests are happening around me anyway, but I still want to be supportive of the movement because I know our laws' words say we're all equal but our government's actions do not... Because of all of that, I have really been trying to figure out where I can make the biggest impact.
It's my classroom. My school. The students I interact with every day. I've taken on this responsibility of educating these tiny minds. I teach them how to handle their strong feelings and how to make a friend. I teach them how to read and how to add. I teach them hot to solve a problem in our classroom, and then I make them take those strategies to the playground, too. I do all of these things already, but I can do more. I can be more intentional. I can make sure I continue to purchase books for my classroom library that have diverse characters and show true historical events. I can make sure I continue to provide my students with basic art supplies to allow them to represent themselves and their cultures properly. I can reflect often to ensure I am giving students praise and corrections consistently and fairly across the board. But mostly, I can share what I have learned and what I find with my colleagues.
So I'll start small. Something so basic everyone can do it. Teachers, especially primary teachers, you need these in your life:
My kids have called them "skin-color markers" or "people pencils" or other variations that tell me they know exactly what I'm offering them... A chance to
actually draw themselves when I ask them to draw a picture of themselves doing something specific.
To be honest, you may not even feel like the kids appreciate what you're doing for them. But trust me. They do. The frustration on their faces that I used to see when they couldn't find the "right" color for them. I remember one boy getting so upset because he didn't want to color himself "apricot," and all the girls would just color their bodies pink or purple.
When I saw these in passing at Walmart about six years ago, I bought a couple of boxes. The kids LIT UP, do you hear me? They were ecstatic to be able to represent themselves more completely! This was quite possibly the best purchase I ever made for my classroom, and I'm sorry I didn't find the colors earlier in my career.
Now, don't you worry,
non-teachers. I didn't forget about you.
You want to know why this matters to you, right?
Let me give you a little math lesson. My first year teaching, I was setting up my classroom, and I had to purchase
everything I'd need to get started. From markers to erasers to dry erase markers to... well, you name it and I bought it. Between getting hired in August all the way to December, I saved every receipt, made sure I knew what was classroom and what was not, and I brought it all to the tax preparer. All $2,560 worth of receipts. Yes, I hadn't even earned more than maybe $10,000 in those first five months of school, and I spent 1/4 of it on kids that weren't even mine! And the best part? I didn't know teachers were only allowed to claim a $250 deduction, no matter how much more than that was spent! I don't save receipts anymore. I just go ahead and claim the $250 max and call it good. 🙄
That's where you non-teachers can help! Does your kid have a teacher? Do you not have a kid but your best friend is a teacher? Do you not have a best friend but you live near a school? You can gift the class any or all of these things! (And please, if you're going to gift, go for the class set because COVID has us all with mandates for no shared supplies. Each one of those kids is going to need their own set of everything.) The teachers are going to buy it if no one else does. We know that. But we also know teachers' salaries are shit. Imagine the smile you'll put on that teacher's face when you hand her a class set of brand new colored pencils! or markers. or crayons. We aren't that picky when you're gifting us stuff. 😉 (Of course, this really only means she will spend that $30 on something else the class needs, but now you've gifted her the freedom to do that! How great does that feel?)
I know this is only one small thing we can do in our classroom to support our students and help them embrace their own cultures, but a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Let's get stepping!
