September will bring music to the hallways of Compass Charter School in Brooklyn: a rhythm of footsteps, notes of laughter and tears, a chorus of greetings and goodbyes and stories of summer.
September will bring thoughts of 27 four- and five-year-olds home with me every night. Who did I reach today? Who will I make greater efforts of reaching tomorrow?
September will bring Black children to my classroom, more than it has in six years of teaching, combined. I am one of two white teachers that will greet them, likely the first of many. We will spend two years thinking and questioning and creating together.
We are responsible.
“As educators, we have the power of choice in what we replicate of oppressive systems and what we don’t.”
Chris Neal, Center for Racial Justice in Education
We are responsible.
Everything we do, everything we don’t do either feeds or tugs at the racialized threads that weave through our schools and our communities. By we, I mean all of us. The teachers of white children, of brown children, of Black children. The teachers of children are responsible.
Kelsey Sorum 