Lawrence Public Schools

Taryn Steward has a daughter she loves, a daughter she describes as bright, goal-oriented (the 11-year-old dreams of becoming a veterinarian someday) and well-liked by her teachers at South Middle School.

But when news broke last month that one of Amiyah’s teachers had been indefinitely suspended for allegedly making racist remarks in class, the sixth-grader returned home from school one day in the aftermath of the incident, her mother recalls, confused and hurt and suddenly unsure of her worth as a person of color.

“She said she felt less of herself,” Steward, who is black, remembers of the conversation that followed. “It struck a nerve.”

Fortunately, Steward said, after she reassured Amiyah that “you can be whoever you want to be,” regardless of skin color, Amiyah seemed to bounce back from the incident. But in Lawrence and across the country, where racially charged acts of violence and an increasingly divisive political climate have dominated news cycles as of late, many adults have found themselves in similar conversations with the children in their care.

And addressing the complicated feelings kids may have about race, as Steward did with her daughter, is part of the “Courageous Conversations” taking place in schools across the Lawrence district.

School board members and district leaders in the wake of the South allegations acknowledged that institutionalized racism does exist within Lawrence public schools. And for years now, the district has sought to actively combat institutionalized racism with the implementation of “Courageous Conversations” as part of its Beyond Diversity training.

Danica Moore, a former teacher at Lawrence’s Hillcrest Elementary School, is now in her fourth year overseeing these efforts across all 21 Lawrence public schools. As the district’s equity facilitator, she frequently spends time in classrooms, offering guidance to teachers and students in their discussions about race.

Her first piece of advice to staff? Look inward before focusing your attention outward. There’s a lot you might discover about yourself, and how your racial identity impacts your perspective on different issues, in the process, she said.

“As individuals, we all have a racial layer to us, and if I don’t take the time to process on my own, it’s difficult to have those conversations anywhere else,” Moore says.

Conversations about race, she acknowledges, can often be awkward at first, especially among adults. And for some, such as Sunset Hill Elementary School teacher Jessica Miescher-Lerner, it’s often difficult to know where to begin when addressing a topic as broad and complex as race, particularly with students as young as hers.

She’s found some guidance in her time on the school’s eight-person equity team — the group of classified and certified staffers, led by Principal Darcy Kraus, that meets once a month to discuss issues of race — and through the strategies recommended by the “Courageous Conversations” program.

The program encourages kids to speak up, knowing they might feel discomfort at times, to stay engaged in the conversation and to ultimately realize that closure might not happen in every discussion about race.

Instead of reaching for answers or offering opinions, Miescher-Lerner first asks her students, “Can you tell me more about that?” And often, she finds, students are forthcoming with their feelings.

“Kids often have insights that adults don’t have,” says Miescher-Lerner, who teaches fourth grade. “I feel like kids intuitively know how to be kind and how to be truthful and how to do the right thing.”

That’s a skill, when applied in open and honest conversations on race early in life, that Kraus hopes will ultimately help students navigate these issues later in life without their teacher’s help.

In 2014, when it became clear that the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., had “hit close to home” for many in Lawrence, Danica Moore’s job was to ensure safe spaces existed for students and staff.

Part of that is the dedication of time and physical space to work through these issues. But on a deeper level, Moore says, it’s about kids recognizing where — and perhaps more importantly, to whom — they can turn in moments of uncertainty, anxiety or discomfort.

The much-publicized incident at South Middle School led Taryn Steward’s daughter Amiyah to question her relationship with her favorite teacher, a white woman. “She felt like she couldn’t even go to her teacher” in that moment, Steward remembers, because Amiyah was worried that the teacher she so admired might share the alleged beliefs of her now-suspended colleague.

Moving forward, Moore hopes to eliminate those kinds of fears from the ongoing conversation on race. For her, the concept of a “safe space” means knowing that resources — including the support of teachers, administrators and other staff who have gone through Beyond Diversity training — are available to you as a student, no matter what.

“We call this a journey,” Moore says. “It’s a journey with no end destination. It’s just an ongoing path as we grow and develop.”

A journey, she adds, that all of us — kids and adults alike — are making together, every day, through conversation.