The Change is Now: A multimedia package

The past year has been filled with discussion about diversity. Here’s a collection of stories regarding what’s changed and what still needs work in the Prairie Village community:

In hopes of creating an inclusive place at East for students of color, Dr. Leonard is creating Kickback, a club for students of color to talk about their experiences at East. Read below to learn more about Kickback and the ways students can get involved. 

Q: What is Kickback?

“We are going to have a new club that I just created. I feel like something that we have been missing since Mr. Muhammad left is time for students of color to get together on their own and give them time to air their microaggressions. Sometimes, it’s just being in a room and feeling like the only one, which is the experience of a lot of students of color at East. We’re calling it Kickback, and our very first time that we will meet is March 30 during seminar. Mr. Pearson is going to be our sponsor. We are going to meet during seminar so that everyone can go to that, but it is designed so that students of color can go. I’m planning to follow up with him after that as far as things that we can work on as a community to be better.” 

Q: What is your goal for Kickback? 

“My goals are a couple of things. I want to establish a place for students of color to feel that they can go to talk about things that maybe they are uncomfortable saying when they are “the only,” the only person of color in a room. Mr. Muhammed would explain to me that sometimes you feel like it’s silly if it’s a little thing, and think “maybe it’s not that big of a deal, but it irritates me.” I just want a place for those students to feel safe and to kind of have each other in a community. I also want for us to listen, so Mr. Pearson is definitely going to listen, and not to divulge anyone’s secrets — if something needs to stay in that room it can stay in that room. But if he hears themes, like “this is happening all of the time in our hallways and we’re not doing anything about it,” then he’s going to share those things with me so that we can make changes that we need to change. Sometimes even in our best intentions, we’re doing things that are not helping the situation or in fact making it worse. I’m hoping that he can also get that information for us to do better.” 

Children’s Mercy Psychologist Dr. Ayanda Chakawa, PhD was asked to present to SMSD parents about talking to their kids about race. Chakawa wrote an article for Children’s Mercy last year on healthy ways to talk to children about race, and she talked about the ideas from that article in her presentation.

Q: How should East parents have that conversation with their kids about racism?

“Developmental psychology suggests using two strategies — cultural socialization and preparation for bias. Cultural socialization has to do with teaching pride and information about one’s group in heritage, and not in a way that makes one seem better than another. The preparation for bias is teaching children to be aware of and also manage the fact that there are some people who treat others unfairly because of the color of their skin or their culture.”

Q: What’s something that parents often overlook when talking to their kids about race?

“Some of the common things that seem to be overlooked are those seemingly smaller, day-to-day experiences that can be really negative. Racism can exist on interpersonal interactions, it doesn’t have to be just societal or institutionalized factors, and so negating the existence of it based on the fact that big things like segregation or slavery don’t seem to be happening isn’t accurate. So being mindful of the microaggressions and teaching your child or teen how to be mindful of how to identify when it’s happening and also when to catch themself in it. And also how to stick up for people.”

Senior Alyssa Jimenez is involved with Race Project KC, a social justice initiative focused on the role of racism throughout the history of the United States, specifically in the Kansas City area. Organized by the Johnson County Library system, Race Project KC meetings are held every two months to learn about and discuss the history of, and present-day, race issues in Kansas City.

Q: What is your involvement with Race Project KC?

“I’ve been a part of it since I was a freshman and it’s just a really fun club to be involved in. I get to meet kids from other districts and get to talk to them about racial inequality, stuff like that. We usually would take the whole day [to do activities] in like the past, like last year, but now we only take around two hours. Most of it is on Zoom. We have discussions and then we have just like a beginning and an end question and then we have breakout groups at the end. [Last year] we had a bus tour where we went around and discussed the history of Kansas City and redlining. We had a new one this year about health equity and how COVID has affected our communities, and about food insecurity. And then we’ve had one with the Nelson Atkins [Art Museum] talking about people of color and art.”

Q: Why do you think it’s important for teens to become educated and involved with diversity and racism?

“I feel like it should always be taught — not a lot of kids get exposure to it or they just feel like it’s not important for them to learn. [The Race Project is] a good way to get information and learn new things from other people and how people see [racism] in their perspective.”

The Prairie Village City Council voted for the Diversity Task Force set up in August of last year to become a standing committee in Prairie Village in January of 2021. Diversity Committee Chair Inga Selders and her fellow committee members are working toward ways to get volunteers involved, educating the community and creating affordable housing after their first meeting last week.

Q: Why is having a committee dedicated to prioritizing the improvement of diversity important to you and to the residents of Prairie Village?

I think over the years, the lack of diversity that we have right now is showing that we need to be moving forward on initiatives. Dating back to J.C. Nichols and the racial deed restrictions that were created and the redlining that is still evident to this day shows that we need to be working toward more racial equity and inclusion in Prairie Village. There’s a lot of issues where people of color aren’t uncomfortable even driving through our neighborhoods right now, much less purchasing a home and we want to bring down those barriers and figure out exactly why this is happening, and do what we can to resolve these issues.

Q: How have residents of privilege shown their support for the Diversity Committee and the work that you are doing? 

Overall we’ve had tremendous support from the community for this. We’ve had multiple residents reach out wanting to know how they can be involved and what they can do to support [us.] Actually through the committee, we’re really hoping here in the next few months we can start putting together some town [meetings,] so we can bring together the community and have some really intense, diverse conversations and be able to get some more initiatives working from there.

With the spark of attention towards social justice movements in the past year, the SMSD Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Coordinator, teachers and curriculum review teams have worked to improve inclusivity within literature and curriculum. 

But despite the district’s efforts to implement diversity, some students feel the process still requires improvement, as they aren’t seeing clear differences yet. 

Senior Morghan Golloher, who has been in the district since kindergarten, is ready to see change after experiencing a childhood that she feels lacked a crucial aspect of education: representation. 

“I had an atypical kind of experience in the Shawnee Mission School District going to predominantly white schools as a biracial child. I did not have the representation in my peers, in my teachers and especially in the history that we learned about and the literature that reflected that history.” 

Senior Morghan Golloher

Sophomore Anohita Paul agrees that the district’s literature and curriculum lacks diversity. Most books she reads for class are written by white authors, even “To Kill A Mockingbird,” which educators often display as a staple of representation. 

Paul and Golloher feel there are plenty of opportunities to feature authors from different cultures — Golloher thinks it would be even more beneficial to invite authors of color to classrooms so they can foster in-depth conversations that East teachers, a vast majority of whom are white, may not be able to fully understand. 

Golloher saw some progressive improvement in inclusivity while reading books with more diverse characters in middle and high school. East English teacher Samantha Feinberg thinks that is partly because they got older and their teachers felt the class was more mature to handle cultural topics. 

Golloher still feels the district and teachers should improve the way racial topics are communicated so that it becomes a normal discussion and that minority characters are represented in positive ways — not just as oppressed groups. She wants to see visible change, and the district has yet to communicate to students what they’re working on. SMSD Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Coordinator Dr. Tyrone Bates also sees this as something they should work on. 

“We need to do a better job of finding the platform to ensure students know, ‘Here’s what’s coming down the pipe, here is what we are currently engaged in,’” Dr. Bates said. “As we’re studying, and doing some practitioner work, it seems very distant and slow, but it is par for the course.”

In the past year, Dr. Bates provided the coordinator of the social studies curriculum review team with a rubric to look at future novels and classroom materials that SMSD can use both at the district level and for individual teachers. The rubric looks at several points like whether “The curriculum features visually diverse characters, and the characters of color do not all look alike” and “Characters of color are not assumed to have low family wealth, low educational attainment and/or low income.” 

The curriculum review team is trying to pull out harmful topics in literature, such as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” because the N-word is used around 200 times. 

Dr. Bates stated that the district-level screening of classroom material for diversity every year is a new district focus in alignment with their strategic plan, but there are teachers throughout the district who have commonly used a screening process for their personal classroom. 

“We also are going to provide teachers with a tool to help them in their classroom if they look at supplemental materials, making sure that they are debiased, that they are inclusive and representative,” Dr. Bates said.

To provide more reading recommendations for any interested students to dive into books and hold meaningful conversations, district-wide Project Lit groups — groups that read monthly diverse books to discuss them together — were implemented in the past year. The members are from all SMSD high schools and pick which book to read each month. So far they’ve read “Clap When You Land,” “Slay” and more. 

East librarian Jennifer Robinson said only one East student has shown up to the Webex meetings, but hopes that when they start meeting in person this month, the number will increase. They also struggled to advertise the opportunity with a mostly-virtual school year, so she’s meeting with other district members to find ways to increase involvement for next year. 

She feels as of this past year, Project Lit’s biggest impact on East was that it provides an opportunity for all of the recommended books to be added to the library. This year, her personal goal was to do a diversity audit on the library, where she goes through all of the books to notice what perspectives are missing in the provided literature. She noted that’s an ongoing process. 

“My goal is that when you walk in the library, you find a book that resembles you as a person,” Robinson said. 

Despite these actions from district employees, Golloher hasn’t clearly seen or heard about significant change and feels some teachers struggle to foster conversations because they haven’t been properly trained or provided with enough experience — she’s often singled out as the only person of color in her class. 

“A lot of the time, people become complacent and are unwilling to learn what is offensive now versus what may not have been offensive 20 years ago,” Golloher said. “Oftentimes, we don’t see the direct effect that it has on students, but when you’re in a conversation about diverse literature and you’re referring to the two minority students in the class, you’re having an issue there.” 

Paul also feels that diverse topics are often taught in culturally-insensitive ways, and she hopes teachers and the district will widen their knowledge and educate themselves on how to foster in-depth conversations. 

To help staff members understand the history of race and deep equity work and better discuss those in-depth topics, the district organized a required instructional fair where the staff could pick which sessions they attended. In past years, the number of a participants in a training session was around 30 — but this year the sessions were between 100-150, according to Dr. Bates. 

Feinberg feels teachers are typically more likely than most students to look at race as a taboo topic, but she hopes their perspectives have shifted due to the nationwide increase in attention to inclusive efforts. She also stressed that the district should hire teachers who are willing to facilitate important conversations, whether that be in elementary school or high school. 

Paul has noticed that outside of full-class readings, teachers offer up diverse options for outside reading, which she feels is great — but she thinks most students won’t jump to expand their mindset unless it’s required. 

Both AP and IB English curriculums already include several culturally-inclusive novels, according to Feinberg and Gibbs, and they’ve noticed students are often very receptive to full-class conversations when they’re held.

“There’s never a bad time to start these conversations and to continue these conversations to make sure that the students we have in our classrooms see themselves in the works that we read and for other students to be able to recognize that their experience isn’t everyone’s experience,” Gibbs said. “Literature is a powerful way to expose us to things that we aren’t familiar with.” 

SMSD virtual kindergarten teacher Diana Seaman feels that a student’s attitude towards diversity can be more accepting if the exposure to inclusivity starts early, and has always recognized how welcoming and receptive elementary students naturally are to diverse characters in literature. She’s intentionally collected diverse books for her own classroom, and this year specifically, she’s provided other teachers with recommendations to do the same. 

“When George Floyd was murdered and when Black Lives Matter protests happened around the world, I was really passionate that we need to promote a positive, culturally-responsive classroom. We need to look at people who are different from us and celebrate the differences instead of clinging to what [we] have always known.” 

SMSD elementary school teacher, Diana Seaman

Golloher feels that if her elementary school teachers would’ve learned how to foster diversity and hold conversations, her classmates would be more apt to respectfully listen to what other people have to say.

“Racism isn’t born, it’s taught, and if you start young when students are able to foster their own ideas and start to put together, ‘What is right, what is fair?’ and, ‘How do we treat one another, how do we want to be treated?” Golloher said. “If you start those conversations young, then they can identify the issues within their community, within their school environment. 

Feinberg thinks the district will always have improvements to make to foster as diverse and inclusive of an environment as possible — and much of that comes with representation and conversation. She hopes this year of social justice is opening up minds to alter curriculum and literature to represent all cultures and that teachers will educate themselves to better foster conversations. 

“Four years ago, when I [talked about diversity], people would be like, that’s kind of out of left field,” Feinberg said. “And now I think it’s more on the forefronts of everybody’s mind, although opinions and perceptions might vary, it is on the forefront of many more people’s minds. So the conversations have been different. And I think that’s really good.”

It’s been seven months since the Prairie Village Task Force held their first meeting, setting goals and providing encouragement to the community on how citizens can better diversify and educate themselves. 

Following that first meeting back in August, two follow-up meetings were held to formulate an actionable list of tasks for the City Council to vote on, with one of the items turning the task force into a standing permanent committee for Prairie Village. 

“We have about five or six or seven standing permanent volunteer resident committees,” Prairie Village Mayor Eric Mikkelson said. “But we didn’t have a diversity one, and that was [the Task Force’s] number one recommendation, so after the third and final meeting of the task force, we took that to the city council and it was approved and they became a full committee.”

According to Mikkelson, the newly named Diversity Committee held their first meeting in February and is scheduled to meet every two months.

East parent and residential Diversity Committee member Dr. George Williams attended the first virtual meeting of the year on Feb. 17 where they further discussed how to best recognize the history of Prairie Village and how to move forward with implicit bias training for the community.

The committee feels it’s important to acknowledge the homes association restrictions from 80 years ago that prohibited people of color from living in Prairie Village. Although those restrictions have been illegal for the past 80 years, the committee will continue to discuss the best way to showcase the history to the public. 

In addition to serving on the Diversity Committee, Williams is also the President of Stand Up For Black Live Plus Prairie Village — a social club standing up and advocating for neighborhood diversity, equity and inclusion.  

“Being involved with Stand Up For Black Lives Plus Prairie Village, the city has been very supportive of the work we have been doing,” Williams said. “Having support of the city is great because we are going to have things that we are going to be able to work together on and involve the committee members and also the city.” 

Diversity Committee member, Dr. George Williams

While current implicit bias training is being implemented with the police force, the Diversity Committee is looking to expand that training to more staff and the rest of the community.

Williams is currently working on curriculum for training that will be made available to the community — hopefully by April — called “Preparing for Diversity; Be a Better Neighbor.” 

In addition to the new training Mikkelson said the city has signed a new deal with a local group called United Community Services to coordinate with other cities in Johnson County about racial and equity issues. 

Despite the long list of goals being pursued, the Diversity Committee partnered up with Stand Up For Black Lives Plus Prairie Village and held a virtual Black History Month Celebration in February that included music, original poetry and history. 

“I think we’ve made some progress,” Mikkelson said. “We have a long way to go, for sure, but just getting the message out sends the right signal out. We may be mostly white, but we are embracing diversity and welcoming it.”

The Diversity Committee currently has 12 members — the newest member being Dr. John McKinney, the Shawnee Mission School District’s Director of Family and Student Services. 

Mikkelson appointed McKinney early last week and hopes the Diversity Committee can work with SMSD to solve issues together. 

“Since my time [as principal] at Shawnee Mission East and now in my role as Director of Family and Student Services at the district, diversity, inclusion and equity is a big part of what I’ve done throughout my career and continue to do,” Dr. McKinney said. “I saw this as a really unique opportunity to participate in something I believe strongly in, something I believe is important and also be a part of something taking place within my community.”

According to Williams, the Diversity Committees has multiple connections within the committee that will allow them to have relationships with organizations to benefit the community. 

As for the future of the Diversity Committee, they are already working towards planning a local event in honor of the one year anniversary of George Floyd’s death and Juneteenth. To stay updated on any future plans, all Diversity Committee meetings can be accessed on the website pvkansas.com.

Junior Emma Lee hopped on Instagram last June to find her feed flooded with pictures and stories about George Floyd — she was shocked.

She spent the next hour reading articles and scanning social media posts, trying to comprehend the brutal actions of the police against a Black man. But her research didn’t end there. Since then, Lee has read dozens of articles about what happened to Floyd and other Black Americans in similar police brutality cases and shares resources through her social media to help spark change. 

“It was kind of just a wake up call for me that I really needed to be conscious in my efforts to be anti-racist and to make sure that I’m supporting the Black community and not just thinking about myself,” Lee said.

To Lee, there’s a difference between not being racist and being anti-racist. According to Ibram X. Kendi, historian and author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” “not being racist” is denying when you say something racist and being anti-racist is admitting racist things you might’ve said ignorantly and correcting others’ racist remarks — something Lee encourages her peers to do.

But Lee’s not the only one taking action. Following Floyd’s murder this past summer, former East teacher and co-founder of Race Project KC David Muhammad has seen an increase in students getting involved with Race Project KC since last summer, as well as more white students speaking out about racial injustices.

“I think that I also saw a lot more diverse of a population stand up and speak out about it, and I think that’s manifested even in things like what we saw with the Prairie Village March for our Lives demonstration,” Muhammad said.

When sophomore Ava Cooper heard about Floyd’s death, she was also shocked, but even more shocked to learn this wasn’t the first time that there were thousands before — thousands that weren’t filmed. According to NAACP, Black Americans are disproportionately represented in fatal police shootings. About 22% of the 1,000 people killed by law enforcement each year are Black while the total Black population in the U.S. is only 13.4%.

Cooper researched the racial biases we see in today’s society, the history of segregation in the U.S. and exchanged articles and websites with her friends so they could further educate themselves. Now, when she sees a classmate saying something derogatory about people of color, she explains why what they’re saying is wrong and offensive using resources she’s researched.

“By eliminating that [racist mindset], which can hopefully be done by talking to them and trying to educate them, I feel like that will really benefit everybody in the school and hopefully make people of color feel like this is a safe and welcoming environment,” Cooper said.

According to White Ally Toolkit, an organization that’s led conferences for decades and provided people the tools to be a white ally, the most effective way to handle someone saying racist remarks is to use the RACE method — reflect, ask, connect, expand. Their website explains that if someone wants to change others’ mindsets, they shouldn’t shame them for their racist remarks but instead reflect on a time when they weren’t as educated and share why their perspective changed.

“We have to create an environment that says, ‘We respect all people, and they will be treated equally here,’ and people will see that and say, ‘Okay, this seems like a place I want to be,’” senior Jack Haulmark said.

Haulmark agrees with Cooper in that the discrimination they see seems to come from racial biases in the community. Haulmark believes that many of these racial biases are because of the extensive segregation in Kansas City neighborhoods due to redlining.

One time while on the Kansas-Missouri state line, Haulmark saw a group of Black kids playing basketball when another passerby assumed which side of the State Line Rd. they came from based on their skin color. Haulmark corrected them, acknowledging their assumptions were based on the preexisting racial stereotypes they’ve grown up in. 

“We’re all different, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t support each other,” Haulmark said. “That’s what we should be doing — we should be supporting each other and making sure we’re all treated equally and treated fairly because you wouldn’t [want to be discriminated against], so why would you want that for somebody else?”

Sophomore Bradley Walton also sees direct action as the best way to support people of color. When he hears someone saying the ‘N-word’ at school — to people of color or not — he sends administration an email explaining the situation. 

According to Associate Principal Dr. Susan Leonard, when administration hears about a student saying racist things, they first see if they’re willing to admit what they did was wrong and then provide them with resources to educate themselves. However, if a student is unresponsive in relearning, then administration looks at more punitive measures like a parent conference, detention or suspension depending on the circumstance.

“We have this moment where we can jump on this kid and kind of create a racist forever,” Leonard said. “Or we can say, ‘Hey, come to the table and let’s tell you why what you did was not okay.’ And we can change someone forever that way — they might even go home and change their family because of something they see differently, so I think education has power.”

Junior and student of color Lillian Williams hasn’t seen more East students step up and try to be a white ally, partly because she believes East students still need to work on stepping out of their comfort zones and having those uncomfortable conversations.

“You cannot make change without being uncomfortable,” Williams said. “And the same thing goes for me, I cannot change my ways or change my behavior without getting uncomfortable. It has to be unnerving, it has to make you feel something — you have to feel something. You have to feel.”

Walton, Lee, Cooper and Haulmark are trying to spark those uncomfortable conversations with their friends. However, most of their action is through social media, sharing resources on what it means to be an ally with their peers. 

While Muhammad believes the age of social media allows for a great way to share resources with others, he also advises that you check your intentions behind posting — that you’re not just posting because everyone else is.

“The question then is, ‘How much is that person really willing to do to disrupt the injustice that they claim they’re bothered by?’” Muhammad said. “Because what’s more beneficial is not only that [social media] post, but then you checking one of your peers when they say or do something that is hurtful.”

Former East teacher and co-founder of Race Project KC, Mr. David Muhammad

Muhammad and these students find it important to continue spreading awareness on social causes to make their peers more conscious of what’s going on around them — whether that be through social media or protests. 

“It was important for me to be [at the protests] largely due to the fact that there’s a lot of white people that think that Black Lives Matter is just Black people trying to get attention,” Walton said. “But that’s not the case at all, and I think it’s really important for my allies to be getting out there and showing how many people are standing behind this movement.”