Our request....

I am participating in the Greater Kansas City Writing Project Summer Institute. The SI read Cross-X by Joe Miller, about the Central High Debate Team, and Some of My Best Friends are Black by Tanner Colby about the way race dictated the creation of Kansas City neighborhoods.  After reading, each participant was asked to come up with one question that they deemed significant, but did not have an answer for and that maybe there are no easy answers for. 

 

Each participant is sending the attached list of questions to their school administrator and others in education with the request that they choose one of the questions and respond with  their personal thoughts.  These responses will be shared in our large group during the program. 

 

I hope you can assist us in gathering a variety of reflections on these important issues.

 

6/11/2013 Questions over the books:

·         How can we create a place where dissonance can lead to growth?

·         How can you get others to see people for who they are and accept different as ok rather than as inferiority to the status quo?

·         Why aren’t there more black educators?

·         How can the terminology of “academic success” be altered in order to create the most beneficial experience to students?

·         How do we help without enabling and challenge without condescending?

·         How do we disentangle issues of class and issues of race?

·         How do we start dialogue about race and show respect?

·         How can we be advocates for our students without overstepping boundaries by imposing our own values?

·         Isn’t it human nature to define an “us” and a “them?”

·         How do we break the cycle of fear of the unknown or breach the gap that separates the races?

·         How do we move beyond the fear that compels people away from each other?

·         How can I create or encourage community?

·         What can we do to ensure integration happens organically when the very nature of ensuring something is the antithesis of organic?

·         Can I engage all of them?

·         How do we overturn racism in neighborhood covenants that still exist today?

·         How do we help older members of our society accept the coming majority/minority and not let fear rule their decisions?

·         Who are we inviting to dinner and who are we not inviting to dinner?

·         How do we change the climate of underperforming schools without demoralizing or under-appreciating the teachers who work there?

·         Are the scars of what JC Nichols did to Kansas City and therefore to our schools so deep that we are unable to pull our way out?