Teaching is not easy for so many reasons. Educating young people can pose many challenges for a multitude of reasons. In this episode, Chris and AJ facilitate a discussion that centers around where to begin when covering challenging topics and having difficult conversations with students.

On Sunday, June 7, 2020, we hosted a live broadcast on our YouTube channel to facilitate a conversation about where, to begin with challenging topics and conversations in your school.

Select Topics:

• Racism
• Curriculum
• How to have conversations with students

We were joined on-air by the following awesome people who contributed to the conversation:

• Maria Fernandez
• Joshua Stamper
• Sarah Johnson
• Freddy Nunez
• Dan Kreiness
• Fade Ojeikere
• Toney Jackson
• Jill Dobrowansky
• Al Speigel

Resources:

• 10 Ways to Talk to Students About Sensitive Issues
• 15 Classroom Resources for Discussing Racism, Policing, and Protest
• First Encounters With Race and Racism: Teaching Ideas for Classroom Conversations

• AJ: Code Switch (NPR) – A Decade of Watching Black People Die (5/21/2020) – The last few weeks have been filled with devastating news — stories about the police killing black people. At this point, these calamities feel familiar — so familiar, in fact, that their details have begun to echo each other.
• In July 2014, a cellphone video captured some of Eric Garner’s final words as New York City police officers sat on his head and pinned him to the ground on a sidewalk: “I can’t breathe.” On May 25 of this year, the same words were spoken by George Floyd, who pleaded for release as an officer knelt on his neck and pinned him to the ground on a Minneapolis street.
• Chris: Throughline (NPR) – American Police (6/4/2020) – Black Americans being victimized and killed by the police is an epidemic. A truth many Americans are acknowledging since the murder of George Floyd, as protests have occurred in all fifty states calling for justice on his behalf. But this tension between African American communities and the police has existed for centuries. This week, the origins of American policing and how those origins put violent control of Black Americans at the heart of the system.