Education Week - October 5, 2016 - 27

of skills and tools that will support them throughout their
lives. These include cognitive skills, such as early literacy
and numeracy, and social-emotional skills, such as following
directions, working in a group, taking turns, making and carrying out plans, and bouncing back after setbacks.
At this stage, children are also forming the foundational
understanding of the world around them, and, most important, of other people. Who has value? Who can be trusted?
Who is worthy of love?
It is up to us, as educators-teachers, parents, leaders, citizens-to create the conditions that will foster and support
children's empathy. This requires us, first, to take a hard
look at ourselves.
When boys of color are expelled from preschool at a far
higher rate than their white counterparts, it's time for us to
question our own perceptions as teachers and how we treat
the children in our classrooms. It's time for us to reflect on
our own failures of empathy.
And it's time for us to put together a new toolbox for ourselves and for the children in our classrooms, one that can
help us begin to close the empathy gap.
Many of the tools we need already exist. Resources for creating an anti-bias curriculum have been around for more
than 20 years. For us to begin using these resources, however,
we have to think differently about the purpose of education.
There's been a subtle and dangerous idea undergirding
much of our work: that black and brown children have deficits
we need to fix. Perhaps it's time to think about the deficits in
empathy that we need to "fix" in white children, in particular.
Or, better yet, we can put aside the language of "deficit"
and of "less than." Instead, we can recognize that each child
comes to us brimming with possibilities and empathy and
that we need to support them across the range of their abilities, which must include the ability to see each other as full
and complete human beings.
I despair for my own generation. But for the next generation, it's not too late. n

There's been
a subtle and
dangerous idea
undergirding
much of
our work:
that black
and brown
children have
deficits we
need to fix."

Having the Difficult
Race-Bias Conversation
In the first weeks of the school year, fatal police shootings of Tyre King, a
13-year-old black male student in Columbus, Ohio, and two black men-
Keith Scott of Charlotte, N.C., and Terence Crutcher of Tulsa, Okla.-have once
again raised deep concerns about the relationships between police officers and
communities of color. Such events can be difficult to process and discuss for
both students and educators, particularly those who experience or feel
vulnerable to racial bias. Education Week Commentary asked professors,
authors, and advocacy-group members to offer their guidance on how to frame
and tackle sensitive classroom conversations about racial bias and policing.
To read the range of responses in full, please visit:

Don't assume your
students have thoughtful
people to talk to about what is
happening in our nation. ...
Instead, think about all the
elements that make a
classroom work-leadership,
compassion, and insight."

JESSICA SAGER is the founder and executive director of
All Our Kin Inc., a Connecticut-based family child-care network;
and a lecturer at Yale University. She is a Pahara Aspen Fellow
and a Ms. Foundation Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.

MARCIA CHATELAIN
Associate Professor
of History,
Georgetown University

www.edweek.org/go/race-bias

Work 'small';
it's impossible to try to
'cover' all of the complexities
surrounding this country's
past and present challenges
around race and justice in
one activity or class
discussion."
OLUGBEMISOLA
RHUDAY-PERKOVICH
Senior Vice President of Community
and Member Relations,
We Need Diverse Books

Do some homework and then be ready to listen to and walk
with your students through these injustices. You cannot and do not
have to have all the answers-share your feelings with students as
you affirm theirs."
ALLYSON CRINER BROWN
Associate Director, Teaching for Change

Getty

"
cessfully, the difference is palpable. Educators and school leaders spend less time putting out fires and more time thinking about
how to help students succeed.
If educators and K-12 leaders learn how
to support one another, schools will be better equipped to create sustainable change
that will benefit our students in the classroom and beyond. n
DARA BARLIN is the founder of DARE Consulting,
an organization based in New York City and Los
Angeles that provides professional development for
educators and school districts.

Without trust,
our schools
are hampered
from making
necessary progress."

Open dialogues about
these issues are meaningless if
those who facilitate these
discussions lack empathy and
genuine concern for those who
are especially vulnerable to
state-sanctioned violence."
KEISHA N. BLAIN
Visiting Research Scholar
in Africana Studies,
University of Pennsylvania

In this context,
silence is undemocratic.
Conversations that lead to
community service, activism,
writing, reflection, critical
thinking, and coalitionbuilding are ultimately
democratic."
CORNELIUS MINOR
Lead Staff Developer,
Teachers College Reading
and Writing Project

-Compiled by Kate Stoltzfus

EDUCATION WEEK | October 5, 2016 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary | 27

http://www.edweek.org/go/race-bias http://www.edweek.org/go/commentary

Education Week - October 5, 2016

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