Educating Ourselves on Issues of Race

June 18, 2020

Heart Tutoring expresses solidarity with the Black community and with all who experience injustice. In line with the organization’s growth mindset and student-centered core values, our team will continue to discuss and reflect on issues of racial equity, knowing the importance for our students and our community and for our ability to support each other on our team.

At Heart Tutoring, over 90% of our students are people of color. While math skills and confidence are an important piece of the puzzle in unlocking opportunity in their lives, our students are also impacted by issues of race.

The Heart Tutoring staff recently embarked on formal training series outlined in this May 2020 blog post. This is part of an ongoing journey to build sustained organizational practices that support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and culturally proficient support of our students and staff.

We invite all involved in Heart Math Tutoring’s mission to join in reflection, readings, and open and authentic conversation. Here are a few resources with new ideas and perspective that have been meaningful to our team recently:

• So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
• 13th (Full Netflix Feature on Youtube)
• Systemic Racism Explained (YouTube)
• Brené with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist (Podcast)
• Talking to Young Children About Race and Racism (PBS)

In your own personal research, you may find additional compilations of reading lists about racial equity, resources for talking with children about current issues, options for donating to nonprofits supporting racial equity efforts, minority-owned businesses to support, and pathways for advocating to elected officials. To Heart tutors reading this, thank you for your commitment to personally reflecting on issues impacting our community and ensuring our students experience empathy, compassion, and agency while in Heart Tutoring’s program.