Post Election 2016

Without going too political, I will say that this has been a difficult election year ending with a most difficult election week.  The day after the elections, I was sad to hear that many of my teachers did all they could to avoid conversations about the election with students.  I understand that our students are young (kindergarten through fifth grade), but they deserve to have their voices heard, too.  My belief in the need for conversation was validated by many other colleagues as I facilitated a Diversity in Action meeting yesterday.



I lead our school's Diversity in Action Committee and realize, now more than ever, that we have a lot of work to do.  Not only do we need to accelerate the closing of our achievement gap, but we also need to continue to teach tolerance at all levels.  At our meeting yesterday, I allowed committee members to choose an article from the November issue of ASCD's "Educational Leadership" magazine on the topic of "Disrupting Inequity."  In the article I chose to read titled, "Let's Talk About Racism in Schools" by Rick Wormeli, he states, "We can't truly create equal opportunities for all until our institutions take specific actions to end that thinking and those policies.  And, ground zero for an equitable, nonracist socitey is the K-12 classroom."  The K-12 classroom.  Not the 6-12 classroom.  We must not wait until they are in middle school to have these conversations.  Wormeli goes on to say, "We don't need to justify having focused conversations about racism in schools."  Why not take a minute to let your first graders tell you how they are feeling?  We can teach kids that we may not always agree, we must learn to work together.  We must teach our students that.  It IS our responsibility.  It is our job.  In my district, it is our mission.



As each member of the committee left the meeting yesterday, I asked them to find at least one way to move the work forward the following day.  I was so glad to see one member took that to heart and pulled together a multi-grade, ethnically diverse leadership group he's been working with on Fridays for the first part of the year. He called an extra meeting to have a conversation on "Campaign Consequences," allowed the students to share their thoughts and feelings, and called them to action asking what they can do to make a difference.  The session ended with students creating peace flags now displayed in the hallway of our school.

Fellow educators, I encourage you to have the conversations in your classrooms.  Teach tolerance.  I ask you to do what Wormeli asks of his readers at the end of the article and identify one person with whom you can have a conversation on race or just about the election.