Peyton Zaletsky, Reporter
@peytonzcourant
In a recent study done by US News, it was found that the school’s student population is 85.5% White and 1.8% African American. With this lack of diversity, a letter was written to the Board of Education (BOE) over the summer asking to improve racial education in order to educate more students about different races and racial issues. In response to this, the BOE changed its goals for the year, putting greater focus on improving its racial education in regards to diversity and inclusion. However, with factors such as COVID-19 and virtual learning, many are unsure if changes are actually happening in order to achieve these objectives. How are students feeling about these new goals, and have they seen any adjustments being made?
Before the “Letter to NCPS” was sent, students already believed the curriculum was lacking an emphasis on race. Senior Valentina Zamora was very involved with this letter, and even helped present it to the BOE. “I saw a lot of areas where we could improve upon the curriculum and make the NCPS system a more inclusive and diverse system for people of all backgrounds,” she said.
One of the new intentions of the BOE is to hire more teachers of color. Many students believe that with more teachers of color, conversations regarding current racial issues would be better discussed in class, and students could become accustomed to different cultures. Sophomore Tahela Denu said, “If we had a more diverse staff, kids could learn about different cultures. Teachers could give their perspective into things, and having a teacher that has faced these problems and can talk to students about them on a personal level could do a lot of good to prepare students for the real world.”
Another new goal to update the curriculum is to include topics regarding race. Some students do think teachers include racial topics in their lessons, but say that these topics often do not acknowledge current events. “I think the class where we talk about race the most is history, but that is [in]more of a historical context. In AP World we learned about the 1600’s and 1700’s, but that’s not modern day it’s historical,” Sophomore Julia Paine said. Although Julia is in favor of the BOE’s goals, she has not seen many adjustments being made yet. “Everything has felt very similar to how it has in the past..”
Some students believe that COVID could factor into why changes aren’t happening. “I know that the process outlined will take a lot of time, so we don’t expect changes to be immediate. Especially with COVID, we know the focus of the administration is to make sure we can all go to school safely,” Valentina said.
A more specific reason for the lack of change could be virtual/hybrid learning. “Teachers may feel like because they don’t see us as much, they don’t have as much time to teach us the same material that they normally would, so they don’t have time to talk about current events or make changes to the curriculum,” Julia said.
Despite these setbacks, students think that there are things teachers can be doing now to start the process of change.“I think having conversations is something teachers can easily integrate into class as we can take what is currently happening and use it as a discussion point,” Valentina said.
Additionally, students feel like NCHS should be doing more to celebrate Black History Month. Though a notable person of color was mentioned on the announcements every day last year, many felt this was not effective, and students seem to have better ideas for what the school could be doing instead. “They should do more to talk about different cultures. I think it is easy for people, especially when they are not exposed to a lot of diversity, to just lump Black people and people of color into one group, so they should talk more about different cultures,” Tahela said.
Another idea is to hold spirit days to celebrate Black History Month. One male ABC house student said, “A spirit day would be good. For Black History Month you could wear a black shirt because it’s just something that can spread awareness about it.”
Many students are excited for the upcoming changes and hope that the topic of race can become a normalcy in classroom dialogue. “Through conversations and education, students can learn about people from different cultures and different backgrounds from their own,” Valentina said. “This is what we will encounter in the workforce, so we need to learn about these topics now to be prepared for the future.”
