Having Important Conversations with Children

07/03/2019

Having Important Conversations with Children

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

In the beautiful new book, You Can’t Celebrate That!, the foreword by Ann Pelo and Margie Carter explains that when one child said to another “You can’t celebrate that! Only people with white skin can celebrate that! That’s what my Dad said,” teacher Nadia Jaboneta had to make a decision about what to do next. As Pelo and Carter write:

“Nadia teaches us what’s possible when we choose to join in the conversation and learn alongside children. She writes about self-doubt and disequilibrium and about her determination to say something that directly engages the fraught moment of exclusion…and importantly, to carry the conversation beyond that moment with the children. Nadia calls the children’s parents, asking them to think with her about how to move forward; she talks with her colleagues and supervisors about what social justice teaching means in these real-time moments. Nadia’s story…illustrates the risks, vulnerability, longings, and courage that come with such acts of integrity...‘I feel new muscles developing,’ she writes ‘and I want to keep exercising them.’”

Connect 4 Learning - Flip the Curriculum.

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