What our six-year-olds have to say about gender stereotypes

What our six-year-olds have to say about gender stereotypes

by guest bloggers Kevin Wood, Emily Silver, and Stephanie Grundy In January, a theater group performed a version of “Princess and the Pea” for our pre-K to second-grade school. The show focused a young woman whose only role was to…

Talking about Black Lives Matter to White Children

Talking about Black Lives Matter to White Children

by guest blogger Amy Dudley This past Martin Luther King Jr. Day my five-year-old daughter and I attended a day long Freedom Camp organized by some long-time educators, a passionate, intergenerational, multiracial group that included pioneers in anti-bias education, and…

When race and gender intersect: What I want my daughter to know about beauty

When race and gender intersect: What I want my daughter to know about beauty

by Sachi Feris On a trip to Walgreens, my daughter found some Doc McStuffins stickers—a Disney television series featuring an African-American girl who wants to be a doctor. I had purchased Doc McStuffins playing cards for my daughter a few…

Janet Alperstein, Raising Race Conscious Children

“Momma, why aren’t there more boy teachers?”

by guest blogger Janet Alperstein, Ph.D In the fall of 2005, I sat in my parents’ living room where a postcard on a bookshelf read “Raise Boys And Girls The Same”—and told them that my adoption plans were moving forward…

“Charity” is not enough: Why I want my daughter to be an activist

“Charity” is not enough: Why I want my daughter to be an activist

by Sachi Feris As a teacher in various New York City private schools, I always felt uncomfortable about the endless drives for “charity” intended to “help other people.” Rarely, were students helped to see these “others” as real people with…

What Malala taught my two-year-olds

What Malala taught my two-year-olds

by guest blogger Melissa Le I am a classroom teacher in a pre-school in Brooklyn, NY. I am Vietnamese-American—my parents are from Vietnam. For most of the children in my class, this is their first time in a school environment….

Guest Blogger Julie Roberts-Phung writing for Raising Race Conscious Children

In the face of Baltimore: Reflecting on conversations with my son about Ferguson

My son is 4. He is Vietnamese and White (Irish and Russian), I’m a White woman and his dad is Vietnamese, the first of his family born in the US.

During the weeks after the Ferguson non-indictment, I listened to many stories on the radio about Mike Brown. I thought about each one and whether the radio should stay on or off (when my son was present). I usually turned the radio off when there was a really gruesome description, but otherwise I left it on.

Black Lives Matter, Raising Race Conscious Children

Parenting and Baltimore: Where to begin

During the weeks after the Michael Brown and Eric Garner non-indictments, various White friends asked me whether I thought they should be talking about these issues with their school-aged children. My daughter was just two-and-a-half at the time and I was not talking about it with her…but to my friends with four and five-year-olds, I answered unequivocally “yes.”

How to explain racially-charged interactions (and gentrification) to my daughter, Raising Race Conscious Children

How to explain racially-charged interactions (and gentrification) to my daughter

As a born and bred New Yorker, I expect an occasional terrible experience with a stranger. My worst stranger story involves a White man who spit in my on 5th avenue. So it isn’t always about race…but sometimes it is.

Last winter, I was sitting on the steps in the lobby of an apartment building in my neighborhood, trying to get my one-and-a-half-year-old to put on her shoes. I had just gotten her to sit down and was forcing her feet into the shoes and fastening the Velcro when a Black man entered the building and commented “Stairs are not for sitting.”

A Passover Story for my Three-Year-Old , Raising Race Conscious Children

A Passover story for my three-year-old

There was once a little baby boy named Moses. Moses was Jewish and he lived in Egypt where the king, who was called the Pharaoh, did not like Jewish babies.