Criminalizing our kids: How biased language reduces students to impossibility

Offender. Repeat offender. Recidivist. Perpetrator. Aggressor. Instigator. These terms, heard in courtrooms across the country everyday, should seem out of place in the halls of a school. Yet they have become all too familiar within the walls of our institutes of learning, these venues where we are supposed to be fostering a lifelong love of […]

How courageous conversations left the courage behind: Reflections on a room of Black and Brown voices

If you look up courage in the dictionary, one definition stands out: “strength in the face of pain or grief.” In this moment in our society where systemic racism infects all institutions of our society and embeds all structures within it, our communities are in need of healing. This healing though, must take place in […]

“It’s not about race.” For who?

The conversation about the impact of race is tense and uncomfortable, if it happens at all. On this day, it was not happening at any level of depth. Presenting to a rural middle school staff on culturally responsive education, we were provoking folks to consider how their own cultural lens might be influencing cross-racial and […]

Dear Spring Valley High School Teacher, there is another way.

Yes, there is another way. There is another way to engage and relate to students in your classroom. This way is not violent. Not adversarial. Not authoritarian. Not paternalistic. Not antagonistic. Not punitive. And it’s not about control or compliance with authority. This way, dear teacher, is about loving our kids. It’s about building intentional […]

Everyday Race Blog

Moving the conversation about race forward into action.

Month: November 2015

Criminalizing our kids: How biased language reduces students to impossibility

How courageous conversations left the courage behind: Reflections on a room of Black and Brown voices

“It’s not about race.” For who?

Dear Spring Valley High School Teacher, there is another way.