Let's Talk About: Brentwood School & Antiracist Education with Gabrielle Sampson
But first, I would like to talk about the topic we will be discussing. And our main point of focus today are the initiatives being put in place by Brentwood School. Now, if you like to keep your hand on the pulse of what goes on in the American education system, then you've probably heard of Brentwood before and not for the things it does. Well, so what is Brentwood doing now? Well, it is implementing something called dialogue and community building sessions
Gabby
@Gabrielle · 3:31
I do want to give a little bit of the benefit of the doubt and say maybe their intentions were positive in trying to give parents of color a safe space to talk about their concerns
Gabby
@Gabrielle · 3:53
So the segregation that Brentwood did was not appropriate, but it also has to be made accessible to kids and explained in a way that they understand and hopefully won't misconstrue, which is where the Cupertino school missed the Mark
And it leaves out so much information, so much vital information that gives the student life learner whoever a well rounded perspective of what actually happened. And it leaves people with a very limited idea, limited perspective of what happened in the grand scheme of things. And I think that's one of the greatest faults of our system is that history, the way it's taught is incredibly biased, and it's not effective in creating people who have a well rounded understanding of our past
Gabby
@Gabrielle · 4:00
And number two, I think that making sure you have a diverse set of books, materials, examples, everything in the classroom helps to open up and facilitate that conversation for younger age groups where they don't quite have that context yet to have those sometimes tougher discussions about diversity, giving them these books that already exemplify diversity can kind of help facilitate and hold space for conversations or assumptions that they might be making when they're really, really young, right
We need to give them those resources so that they can have conversations about it, because when you don't, you end up with kids who see the differences between people but don't truly understand the role they play in our society today. And because of that, they don't understand how in some ways they can perpetuate these sorts of societal phenomenons. And that's because we've normalized a certain way of living and educating, like you said, and we need to do the opposite
Gabby
@Gabrielle · 4:08
And I think of books when I think of that as a big one, but also just in the workbooks and the examples that you're giving, making sure that the names are not just standardized American names, making sure that you're including diversity in that as well
It's not honest, and it sets students up to have a false perception of reality unless they go out there and find out the real information and all of it on their own, which they shouldn't have to do, because the education system should provide that for them. And when you have an honest education system, you have a system that shows students just how many opportunities they have in this life
Gabby
@Gabrielle · 3:08
But with that, I think there are a lot of awesome movements and individuals doing the work to work towards a better education system and something that I have really loved seeing, particularly on TikTok, but on multiple other I guess mediums as well is educators being tuned in to social emotional wellness and how integral that is to a child's development and really bringing that into their classroom and being attentive to it in their classroom
I'm excited about what other people may contribute after I open up the conversation, and I'm excited about the things that we've put out there through this conversation. So thanks again. And if you're a listener and you've been hearing our conversation, I would love to hear what your thoughts. What do you think about our current education system? What it's doing? Well, what it's doing? Poorly? What would you like to see?