My last blog discussed activity ideas for helping young children become comfortable with racial diversity. Here are some ideas for teachers of elementary and middle school students:
–Make sure they know the science of skin color. A good book is All the Colors We Are: The story of How We Get Our Skin Color. This is a bilingual (English/Spanish) book with photographs and simple explanations.
–I like to follow or precede a discussion of the science of skin color with an artistic or aesthetic look at the beauty of different skin colors. I like All the Colors of the Earth, by Sheila Hamanaka. Although it is intended for ages 4-8, some groups of older students may be receptive to it also, especially in the context of an art class, an English lesson on similes, or a lesson on nature, landforms or agriculture.
–Next read If the World Were a Village (available in book and DVD) and If America Were a Village. I’ve written about how If the World Were a Village changed my daughter Meg’s perspective on being a “minority” (i.e. she may be in the minority in the U.S., but in the majority in the world as a whole!) It gives children and adults of any age a new perspective.
–You could follow If the World Were a Village with letting children choose a country to learn about. For younger elementary, options include the Count Your Way Through….Series of books or the Life Around the World Series of books (titles include Birthdays, Christmas, Shopping, Transportation, Clothes, Families, Homes, and School).
The Families of the World DVD series is intended for ages 5-10. Each 30-minute video shows a day in the life of both a rural and an urban family from the featured country. My kids like these a great deal. (I haven’t seen the Families of the USA video yet. I am curious, and glad to see it included in the series—sometimes the surprising lesson for children is how differently families throughout their own country live!)
Students in grades 5-8 may prefer the Teens In… Series of books, which has 34 titles including India, South Korea, China, Iran, Philippines, Brazil, Peru, USA, Mexico, Canada, Greece, Russia, Australia, Thailand, Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya.
DVDs for this middle age group include the Wonders of Asia Series and the Worlds Together Series, both available at www.cultureforkids.com.
–You can follow the If America Were a Village book with the excellent DVD series American Cultures for Children. They are intended for grades K-4, but I believe other age groups may enjoy them as well. These 12 videos cover a lot of material in 25 minutes each. I like them because they talk about unique aspects of the culture of origin, but keep the focus on how Americans of that heritage live today.
–Finally, younger elementary students will appreciate the picture book An American Face. A young boy who came to his adoptive family from Korea longingly awaits his citizenship day. He believes that when he is truly an American citizen, he will get an “American” face like his Caucasian parents. Instead he discovers that the face of the American judge presiding over the citizenship ceremony looks much like his own.
–To foster empathy for new students from other countries, try asking the students to imagine that they moved to a new place where almost everyone spoke as the adult characters in the Charlie Brown cartoons—senseless squawks.
–For older students, a good tool for developing empathy is the 18-minute DVD My Brown Eyes, by Jay Koh. This almost-wordless video shows a young immigrant boy preparing his lunch for his first day of school, after preparing food for his parents who work nights. The camera shows us the child’s perspective as he looks at his new surroundings and the people he can’t understand. ( This DVD is in the catalog of www.cultureforkids.com, and has special pricing for schools, individuals and public libraries—call and ask.)
For further ideas, see my blog Resources for Talking About Skin Color.