Black boys are more than inequity statistics

I am proud of myself. I just finished Educational Leadership and it only the 12th of the month. The issue is on trauma sensitive schools. It has many pertinent and high quality narratives on addressing trauma with out youth. In this era of COVID where students have been dealing with issues unique to the childhood experience, examining how our children are impacted and what we can do about it is critical. 

For me the article that hit me the most was "Black Boys are More Than Inequity Statistics" by Elena Aguilar. She describes sitting at a superintendent meeting where a host of statistics were given about the challenges of being a black boy in school where solutions were not offered. I felt like I had been at that meeting but on school violence or trauma. Her comment was about so what? What are we going to do about it? Usually the statistic filled presentations are followed with some generic panacea ideas- my favorite was that we needed to start respecting students. I know of no teacher who thinks they are disrespecting students intentionally, but I do know that individual experiences filter the way we experience the world and perceive respect. Some workshop where video clips of "typical" interactions are followed by student interpretations of the interactions and ten brainstorming how to become more sensitive to the concern might be useful. 

If you want teachers to understand cultural interaction patterns that differ from their home culture, you need to a) showcase the pattern and b) discuss ways to productively leverage them. Our teachers do not want to promote racism but they do it unconsciously. We need to reveal the unconscious bias and develop alternate patterns of behavior and speech.

It is not about saying Black Lives Matter-it is about how do we show it. How do we acknowledge our personal biases and consciously work to better treat all our children.