photo by: Mike Yoder

Cara McNorton, a fifth-grade teacher at Kennedy Elementary, stands with a group of her students on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016. McNorton holds a letter from President Obama, a response to her letter to the President on matters regarding diversity equity work in schools. The students are all in the school Diversity Club.

Cara McNorton remembers the day the President came to town. At Kennedy Elementary School, where McNorton teaches fifth grade, students gave up their precious recess and PE time to instead huddle around a classroom screen, watching intently as President Barack Obama’s speech from the University of Kansas streamed in real time in front of them.

As the camera followed Obama entering the Anschutz Sports Pavilion stage, two boys — one African-American, the other of mixed race — sat in the very first row at their classroom’s viewing party, their hands clasped together in a moment of “pure pride,” McNorton recalled more than a year after the event in a letter to the President.

“It brought me to tears, because here these two boys were, seeing somebody of color in a positive light — the president of the United States, somebody who looks like them, speaking to them and the entire nation,” she said. “And it was really moving.”

Now McNorton and her students have something else to help remember the day: A letter from the president. It came in response to one McNorton wrote because she couldn’t shake the images from that historic day in Lawrence from her mind.

Last May, McNorton sat down and wrote the letter to Obama. She wanted to express her support, to let him know that his words that day in Lawrence — particularly his call for more civic engagement in the fight to end racial inequality in America — had not fallen on deaf ears.

In her letter, McNorton wrote about the work she and other Kennedy staff, along with her colleagues across the Lawrence school district, are doing to promote equity in schools.

Since 2009, the district has provided Beyond Diversity training (the two-day seminar aims to establish an infrastructure for deinstitutionalizing racism and eliminating racial achievement disparities) to more than 1,400 teachers, classified staffers and administrators.

McNorton underwent the program four years ago. As a new hire in the district, she was required to. But, McNorton said, remarking on the experience last Thursday, it changed her life all the same.

“For us at Kennedy, it’s our foundation. Without that equity work, nothing else matters,” she said. “What we’re teaching our kids doesn’t matter unless we see all of our students and where they’re coming from, and making sure that our curriculum is relevant and that our classrooms are culturally relevant.”

Equity work at McNorton’s school, where non-white children comprise approximately 33 percent of the student population, includes monthly staff meetings in addition to smaller groups dedicated to follow-up conversations. Those monthly meetings, McNorton said, are mandatory for all staff — teachers, custodians, office workers and support staff all commit 90 minutes, on the first Wednesday of every month, to discuss race and how to keep students engaged in the topic, both in and out of the classroom.

Adults, McNorton said, are often uncomfortable talking about racial issues. That’s why she’s been heartened to see her fifth-graders, all of whom elected to join Kennedy’s Diversity Club, approach these conversations so openly.

“It was so immediate for them. They were ready to do the work and they were ready to talk about it and they were ready to engage,” she said. “And I think we have a lot to learn from kids in that respect. They weren’t afraid.”

Earlier this summer, about a month before the start of classes at Kennedy, McNorton, who had all but forgotten about her note to Obama, received a response from the White House.

“As a Nation, we have made enormous progress in race relations over the course of the past several decades. I have witnessed that in my own life,” the letter read. “Still, important work remains to be done, and messages like yours keep me extraordinarily hopeful about America — about who we are and what we can achieve.”

Obama also wrote of the country’s “young doers and change-makers,” words echoed back to McNorton’s students when she read the letter aloud to her classroom last Wednesday. “They felt that,” McNorton said of her fifth-graders.

She remains excited and encouraged by the letter, which she plans on framing. It’ll likely stay at home with the other valuables, said McNorton, though the sentiments shared on that White House stationery will, she hopes, create a lasting impression on her students.

As kids, there’s a lot they’ve yet to learn. But their teacher is with them every step of the way.

“The more I engage in conversations with people, the more I learn. And the more perspectives I hear, the more I learn to just help me continue along my path,” McNorton said.

“I’m at the point now where I know enough to know that I don’t anything. Which is scary,” she admits, “But the President asked us to stay engaged and to keep working, and I think we can. I think we should.”