At this time my school is working on being an anti-racism space that is awareness and Agency in Access. To do this they started by having all administration take anti-racism classes and working with an outside company to look at everything that we are doing at the school. From the application to work in the school to different programs that we are running for families. They have created goals and different steps to complete to get to different steps. We have created classes for staff to take and assignments to make sure everyone understands how race is, how it is to live in.
I feel when making a youth space, it's very important that their voices are heard. Creating policies and guidelines of how the program goes should all be coming from the youths' voice. It also helps for them to break down how they want things to be seen. It also gives them a chance to reflect on anything that might have happened in their life that they thought was unfair because of their skin color.
Having just my white voice heard and creating all policies and procedures and guidelines for a youth program to run would not be fair and equal to the use that is part of the program. Helping them with guidance and understanding on how programming should work is how I should help them. When I say guidelines and understanding I'm talking about the laws and regulations that need to be abided by to have the program open and running. I need to make sure the youth have their awareness know in the Agency and have the Access to make the space.
The space for the youth has to imagine themselves to truly understand, integrate and accept the diversity that exists in our world as it was told up in the TEDTalk.
great your school is focusing on this and making it a priority.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post Ashly and your reflections on the work that your school is doing. I am curious to know more about the process--who is leading it? Internal or external? What is the timeline and what opportunities are there to reflect, assess and take stock of the process? How has this work been feeling for you and your colleagues?
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading Kelly's post, and it strikes me that the ways we define anti-racism and work towards anti-racist practices depends very much on how we define racism and white supremacy. How do you think a discussion of Tema Okun's characteristics of white supremacy would/ wouldn't align with the work at your school?
So cool to see all the work your school is doing towards becoming anti-racist and that you're using outside resources as well.
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