Kindergarten teacher makes video to teach kids about race

ABC ^ | 06 11 2020 | Katie Kindelan

[yesthatjallen]

A kindergarten teacher who created a video about race for her students says she hopes the video -- which now has nearly 100,000 views on YouTube -- helps inspire other teachers to make race an ongoing conversation in their classrooms.

"What I keep saying to teachers is you’re going to mess up, it's going to be uncomfortable but the outcome is so powerful that you would have regretted never saying something sooner," Vera Ahiyya, a kindergarten teacher at a public school in Brooklyn, New York, told "Good Morning America." "And kids can do it. Kids can have these conversations."

Ahiyya, who has taught kindergarten for 13 years, filmed a video of herself talking about racism and protests and reading the children's book, "Let's Talk About Race," as a way to engage her kindergarten students and their parents during the protests and unrest that have broken out across the country after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis who was pinned down by a white police officer.

"One way to stop racism is to call it out when you see it," Ahiyya says in the video. "That means, if you see someone being treated differently because of the color of their skin, you have the voice, you make the choice, to say 'This is wrong.'"

SNIP

[Maudeen]

Is this photo-shopped?

[PGR88]

I just HAD to look Ashleigh Shackelford up on the internet. Here’s how she describes herself.

Hunter Ashleigh Shackelford (she/ they) is a Black fat cultural producer, multidisciplinary artist, nonbinary shapeshifter, hood feminist, and data futurist based in Atlanta, Georgia, with roots in Richmond, Virginia. She is the creator and director of a Southern body liberation organization, Free Figure Revolution, which focuses on decolonizing antiblack body violence. With bylines in Wear Your Voice Magazine, For Harriet, Buzzfeed, and Black Girl Dangerous, Ashleigh illustrates the relationship between Blackness, fatness, desire, queerness, afrotechnology, and popular culture.

[Bullish]

Because every five year old is an intellectual giant.

Well, they probably possess a lot more raw common sense than their kindergarten teachers who've had it all 'educated' out of them.

[DoodleBob]

Jefferson owned slaves but he had some pretty smart things to say. Ironically, Dr Seuss' wartime cartoons were published in a liberal rag.

If I limited myself to spotless commentators, I'd quote one Guy only.

[dfwgator]

And like the liberals of the day, they only cared about the war once Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.

[Leaning Right]

> Again with the “conversation”. Regardless of the age, there IS NO conversation. It is OUR WAY, OR SHUT UP. <

Truer words were never spoken. These liberal “conversations” are really lectures. And if you disagree with any part of the lecture, you are a “hater”.

[EagleUSA]

*** Oh My God...My Eyes...Kill Me Please ***

[exDemMom]

Wow... teaching them to be racist at such a young age.

There’s no excuse for that.

[rktman]

Teach kids about race. Indoc continues. Us and them BS.

[Hojczyk]

Elementary kids are not racist....it has to be taught...

There parents may teach it to them...

[Zeroisanumber1]

Little kids know that racism is a pack of crap. One of my best friends when I was in kindergarten was Abu down the street whose family was from Egypt. I thought he was the coolest guy around because he told me about how his uncle once found a cobra while he was out on a hike and had a picture of it (in 1982!).

I don't think it's bad to reiterate the lesson for little kids. Letting them know that adults make mistakes and that we hope that they do better than we do is a good thing for them to learn.

[qam1]

"Let's Talk About Race,"

"Comments for this video are disabled"

smh

[SaveFerris]

Stout, Extra Stout and the new Hindenburg line.

If that thing had pockets it would look like a pool table.

Watch my sandwich.

[Gene Eric]

>> PayPal me!

LOL — gotta love the ironic capitalism.

[Mr. Blond]

At what age do we give them John Derbyshire’s “conversation”?

[The Westerner]

That picture, oh Lord!!

Those aging white women politely listening to that petulant, grotesque race hustler!

[Albion Wilde]

I don’t know what is actually in her video, but I do know that the slide away from Christianity has deprived many millenials of the simple song most children learned in American churches and summer camps:

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red, rown, yellow, black and white
They are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world

Growing up in the Civil Rights era, we sang this quite frequently. Yet it didn’t turn us into flaming liberals. It was just a basic Christian tenet, made simple.

[Albion Wilde]

That should be “red brown yellow black and white”/sp

[allwrong57]

that is correct, they’ll play together and never know anything different if the adults will just leave them alone.

[DoughtyOne]

Believe me, that crossed my mind as well.