Awareness of Microaggressions

Well, last week was our last week of Children around the World Awareness. I have different races in my class. I told one students to get me a book from the book shelve. The book that she brought back to the Circle was The Color of all Of US. The book had different shades of skin tone people on the cover. Well, I have one student that always throws rude comments about skin tone. She told the student that was sitting in front of her that her skin is the skin tone that her Maw Maw doesn’t like. He skin tone was black. The student asked her why your Maw Maw doesn’t like my skin tone. She replied she always talks about Black people and how she doesn’t like black people. Keep in mind these kids are only 4 and 5. However, the Black student told her that regardless of her skin tone GOD still loves each and every one of us the same.

At that moment after observing this conversation I immediately begin talking about being different in our own ways rather its skin tone, gender, long hair or short hair. I explained to my students that we are all different but we are all humans and we must always respect the next rather the skin tone is the same or not. During this time, I experienced racial microagression.

I realized that we have to educate our younger kids more on life and explain different things to them. I feel that if her Maw Maw would’ve explained her feelings towards blacks a little better than the student probably wouldn’t’ said that to hurt her classmate feelings.