Blog, Diversity & Inclusion

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a long history of teaching and providing educational resources on the subjects of tolerance, inclusion, diversity, and race through their Teaching Tolerance Project. Their roots in the civil rights movements in the 1960s has made them a long-standing expert in this field.

Children today are seeing different examples of systematic racism and violence, and the information they are accessing and discussing is not always balanced and accurate. The Teaching Tolerance Project has developed a crowdsourced group of resources for classroom teachers to use in discussing current issues of race, tolerance, and institutional violence in America. Race, Racism, and Police Violence is a collection of lesson plans, resources, blogs and articles, with external resources, and includes information about how to respond when violence touches the classroom.

These are complex, divisive issues. Our children are trying to make sense of what is happening. Teachers can guide their discussions and provide them with a balanced view of what is happening and how to respond. Education Week has a list of resources for teachers and by teachers about how to address race and deal with students of all grade levels responding to violence in their communities.

The DC Public School system has adopted a group of resources teachers can use to facilitate discussions in the classroom called Preparing to Discuss Race and Police Violence.  This list of suggestions and resources was adapted from the Teachable Moments classroom lessons of the Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility.