Racial Sensitivity School Model Paper

Racial Sensitivity School Program Model

Racism is still a systematic problem in the United States (U.S.). Many people try to deal with it by addressing individuals. The answer could be to address it in a systematic way. In our school systems, we now talk about many problems faced in our society: suicide, bullying, drugs, and sex. Many of youth today will witness or be subject to some form of racism, oppression, or discrimination. It is time to start addressing this problem in our schools as well. This paper develops a meso-level K-12 school model of a racism program to be implemented. The program is designed to be tested within one elementary, one middle, and one high school in a school system as a pilot program.

Rationale

American children

This year we have a book each semester for the children to read and discuss in class. The first is “Kira-Kira” by author Cynthia Kadahata. It is about an Asian-American girl and the racism her family experiences living in Georgia. The book for the second semester is “the Great Gilly Hopkins” It is about a young White girl named Gilly who has been placed in the foster care system and forced to interact with Black people. One of these people happens to be her new teacher, and Gilly does not like this at all. Both of these books have won the Newbery Award for excellence. Since this is the last year of elementary school, and there are many graduation programs and end of elementary school activities, the lessons for this year were limited to the books and discussions of

They have hopefully been able to practice things they learned in elementary during their sixth grade year. Now in the seventh grade, students are around 12-13 years-old. They have entered the adolescence stage. Their thinking is becoming more flexible and capable of more abstract and complex thinking, such as issues of morality and spirituality (Rogers, 2013). This year the children will begin to explore institutional racism. The first activity would be to use the “4 I’s of Oppression” model to look at how racism is learned. This concept says that racism is learned through four stages: through ideology, by institution, then interpersonal, and finally the individual (www.changeworksconsulting.org). This will give the students a new way of perceiving how racism is learned and how it could possibly be challenged. For this year, two museum trips would be scheduled, one for the fall to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and another in the spring to the National Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C.

The next phase of the program would be as high school freshmen. The children have moved on from middle school, and have entered the stage of development where they are taking on a more adult appearance and are looking for more independence (Rogers, 2013). These high school years, the material will call for more internalized thinking about how these situations happened, and