I was a second-grade teacher in the 1960s and taught mostly African American students. When I saw that the school curriculum was lacking lessons on Black history throughout the year and across the curriculum, several colleagues and I pushed Indianapolis Public School officials for educational resources that reflected people of color.
Thirty days after retiring in 2014, I went back to work for the district’s Racial Equity Office, where I work today to remove bias and barriers that can hold back students of color.
We provide racial equity training. It’s two days of talking about racism and systemic racism. What we do is take people way back so they can see the policies and laws that were intentionally put on the books to hold people back. We've already trained over 3,000 people, and eventually, every single person in the district will go through this racial equity training.
Sometimes principals will put teachers on the bus at the beginning of the year and take them to the community where their students live—that does nothing but validate low expectations—if educators don't know the history of that community before all the blight and systemic racism set in. One of the neighborhoods here in Indianapolis was once flourishing with black-owned businesses.
In our journey toward racial equity, the Indianapolis district has committed to creating innovative and effective schools in which student outcomes can no longer be predicted by race or ethnicity. This vision requires major shifts in knowledge, attitudes, mindsets, belief systems, and practices.
My district has unanimously passed a racial equity policy they call Policy 1619, which is when the enslaved people came to this country, and they also passed a Black Lives Matter resolution, which is really powerful. We’re even celebrating Juneteenth as a district holiday. These are the moments that make me know this is all been worth it.
