The listings below are helpful resources for parents and educators. Please also see our Resources for Our Children for additional resources. These listings have been crowd-sourced from parents in the Hunter College Campus Schools community. Additional recommendations are always welcome! Please write to us at mosaic@hcespta.org.
Publications, Podcasts and Films Recommended by HCCS Parents
Chloë Bass: Wayfinding | Solo exhibition by Past Mosaic Guest Speaker and HCCS Alumna Chloë Bass (St. Nicholas Park, Sep 28, 2019—Sep 27, 2020): “The Studio Museum in Harlem presents Chloë Bass: Wayfinding, the conceptual artist’s first institutional solo exhibition. This monumental commission features twenty-four site-specific sculptures that gesture toward the structural and visual vernacular of public wayfinding signage. The exhibition begins with and revolves around three central questions, poetically penned by the artist and featured throughout the park in billboard form: How much of care is patience? How much of life is coping? How much of love is attention? Through a combination of text and archival images, Bass’s sculptures activate an eloquent exploration of language, both visual and written, encouraging moments of private reflection in public space.”
The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TED Talk: “Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.”
Introduction to Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, edited by Bob Bigelow and Bob Peterson | Published by Rethinking Schools: “This lesson comes from the Rethinking Schools book, Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years. The book includes more than 80 essays, poems, interviews, historical vignettes, and lesson plans reevaluate the myth of Columbus and issues of Indigenous rights. Rethinking Columbus is packed with useful teaching ideas for kindergarten through college.” Go to www.rethinkingschools.org/RC to order the complete book.
Recommended Websites
DHK12 | Digital Humanities K-12. “DHK12 is a collaborative group of educators who seek to: use digital tools to make the humanities come to life, draw on the scholarship of women and people of color to diversify curricula, and support students as they do the work of historians by creating knowledge. DHK12 is part of an ethical and political imperative for a growing number of teachers and scholars committed to accountable and reciprocal research practices and knowledge-sharing. As producers of an open-access interdisciplinary curriculum and network, we are organizing academic knowledge production away from the profit motive of textbook publishers. Instead, we use primary source documents and digital archives and work collaboratively with local cultural institutions to teach DH thinking and skills to primary and secondary public and independent school students, incarcerated children, and those held in immigrant detention centers. DHK12 develops projects to teach students and teachers how to use computational text analysis, digital mapping and timelines, image processing, and 3D modeling to develop new epistemologies, ontologies, and ways of knowing and understanding public humanities and societal engagement.”
CONNECT NYC | Safe Families, Peaceful Communities: “Founded in 2003, CONNECT is a NYC-based training, educational, and advocacy nonprofit organization dedicated preventing and ending interpersonal violence. The hallmark of our work is our focus on preventing violence before it happens through our holistic, intersectional, and dialogue-based approach.”
Implicit Association Test (aka The Harvard Implicit Bias Test) | Project Implicit: “Project Implicit is a non-profit organization and international collaboration between researchers who are interested in implicit social cognition – thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control. The goal of the organization is to educate the public about hidden biases and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the Internet.”
Decolonize All the Things (D.A.T.T.) | The UNsettling Reflections of a Decolonial Scientist“ (Shay-Akil): D.A.T.T. is a political education website for the purposes of fostering digital spaces of de-colonization. The goal is for theories to match practice & progressively transform how we think about the world & live in it . . . With D.A.T.T., Shay-Akil aims to provide a free platform for decolonial scholarship that provides people with political education & critical thinking resources to foster empowerment & critical awareness outside of the repressive confines of colonial norms & regimes of truth.”
Teaching Tolerance | Southern Poverty Law Center: “Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.”
Dialogue Arts Project (DAP): “An innovative arts-based consulting group that is reimagining the current ‘diversity training’ experience. DAP partners with communities to create energizing training experiences in order to help participants collaborate & communicate more effectively across lines of social identity and difference.”
Presentations, Publications, Podcasts and Films Recommended by HCCS Parents
Parenting Resources
“KidLit Rally 4 Black Lives: Anti-Racist Resources for Children, Families, and Educators” by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich | The Brown Bookshelf: United in Story (June 4, 2020). Anyone who missed Thursday’s extraordinary Kidlit Rally 4 Black Lives, created by Kwame Alexander, Jacqueline Woodson, and Jason Reynolds, will find a link to the recording here, as well as additional resources for families and educators. At the very least, please watch Jason Reynolds explain the concept of systemic racism in a moving analogy that strikes a chord with youth and grownups of all ages—this begins at the 57:50 mark.
“Resources For Talking About Race, Racism And Racialized Violence With Kids” | The Center for Racial Justice. “This document was compiled by Center for Racial Justice in Education. It is not meant to be exhaustive and will be continually updated as we are made aware of more resources.”
“George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. What do we tell our children?,” an interview with psychologists Beverly Daniel Tatum and Erlanger Turner by Alia E. Dastagir | USA Today (May 31, 2020). “Experts in child psychology and race-based stress say these conversations are essential for all parents to have, and they underscore that there are developmentally appropriate ways to talk to children of all ages about racism and police brutality.”
“Antiracist Parenting During COVID-19 and Beyond” by Jardana Peacock & Rachel Parsons | Yes Magazine (May 19, 2020). “After conversations with our communities, we found many people were experiencing grief, fear, and isolation. While these feelings are a direct reaction to the coronavirus public health and economic crises, they’re also a response to the undeniable racial disparities these crises have exposed. Here, we discuss how to meet these emotions in the service of ending white supremacy, and how we stay connected to each other and to our community in a time of social distancing.”
“Talking With Children About Racism, Police Brutality and Protests” by Dr. Laura Markham | Aha! Parenting” (2014, reposted in 2020). Guidelines for age-appropriate discussions, from toddlers to teens.
“Your Kids Aren’t Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Roundup” by Katrina Michie | Pretty Good Blog (October 13, 2019). “So you’ve realized your kids aren’t too young to talk about race, so now what? We’ve rounded up some resources for you to start.”
“Why All Parents Should Talk with Their Kids About Social Identity” by Cory Turner | NPR’s Morning Edition (October 8, 2019): “A majority of parents rarely, if ever, discuss race/ethnicity, gender, class or other categories of social identity with their kids, according to a new, nationally representative survey of more than 6,000 parents conducted by Sesame Workshop and NORC at the University of Chicago. The researchers behind Sesame Street say the fact that so many families aren’t talking about these issues is a problem because children are hard-wired to notice differences at a young age — and they’re asking questions.”
“Race (+) Positive Tip Sheet for Talking to Kids About Racism” by Dr. Anica Camela Mulzac | Guidelines from Race Positive—Honest Reflection, Positive Engagement: “A Licensed Clinical Psychologist with expertise in human behavior and group dynamics, Dr. Anica has garnered over 10 years of clinical and research experience with numerous individuals, groups, and organizations exploring and addressing the impact of diversity factors on academic, personal, and professional experiences . . . To learn more about Dr. Anica’s unique approach to tackling Race + Diversity, read her latest published article Can Race Talks Be Positive?”
“Talking Race with Young Children” | NPR’s Life Kit Podcast (April 2019). “Even babies notice differences like skin color, eye shape and hair texture. Here’s how to handle conversations about race, racism, diversity and inclusion, even with very young children.”
“7 Reminders for White Parents Talking to Their Kids About Police Killing Black People” by Katie Tastrom | Yes! Magazine (July 10, 2017). “Don’t worry about traumatizing children. Show them that having strong feelings about horrible things happening in the world is part of being human.”
“Talking to Children After Racial Incidents,” an interview with Dr. Howard Stevenson | U. Penn Graduate School of Education (July 13, 2016). “Howard Stevenson, a clinical psychologist at Penn GSE, studies racial literacy and racial trauma. He works with educators and families to help them understand the emotions that racial incidents can bring about, and how to reduce their negative effects on health and well being. We asked Stevenson what ideas he had for adults who are searching for a way to discuss racial incidents with their children.”
“Talking to Kids About Racial Violence” by Haig Chahinian | New York Times (July 12, 2016).
Resources for Adults and Young Adults
A Catalyst for Humanity: A Conversation with Isabel Wilkerson (Feb. 1, 2021). What are the invisible social strata that define and divide America? How does this unseen ranking underlie racism? And how do caste dynamics systematically lessen the value of Black lives? Join Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, and esteemed social scientist David Williams for a conversation about embedded power inequities–and their cost to us all. Moderated by CNN anchor, Don Lemon.
“One World Ideas x Action: Alicia Garza and Chris Jackson” | A One World/Random House production (June 3, 2020). “One World’s mission has always been to find books for readers who want to rethink the past, understand the present, and imagine new futures . . . Alicia Garza is innovator, strategist, organizer, and cheeseburger enthusiast, she is the Principal at the Black Futures Lab, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, Strategy & Partnerships Director at the National Domestic Works Association, co-founder at Supermajority, host of the Lady Don’t Take No podcast, and author of the forthcoming book The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (out in October 2020).
“Summer Reading: Over 40 Books on Race, Racism, and the Black American Experience to Read Now, as Recommended by Rutgers-Newark Faculty” by Nora Luongo (June 3, 2020). “In these socially charged times, one of the most important things in the fight against systemic racism and our own internal biases is education. Faculty at Rutgers University-Newark teach and work at one of the most diverse university in the United States, and their research covers race and bias from across a wide range of disciplines in the arts, humanities, sciences, business and law. We put out a general call asking for book recommendations on the black experience in America, and the response was immediate and overwhelming. Below, our faculty recommend their current and classic favorites and tell us why we should read them now.”
“A History of Violent Protest” | What Next podcast episode (June 3, 2020). “Big structural change in America doesn’t happen without violence . . . What’s happening right now might make you feel uncomfortable and angry. Kellie Carter-Jackson says: that’s the point. Today on the show, why a nice, peaceful protest may not accomplish the structural change America needs.”
“An Open Letter on Anti-Racism and Allyship: Reflections on Recent Events” by HCES parent and award-winning public finance leader Natasha Holiday (June 2, 2020). From Natasha: “Hello MOSAIC community, I was moved to write the letter linked below last week when I was hurt and frustrated by the series of violence and attacks on black and brown bodies. I’m very thankful that my firm, RBC Capital Markets did not hesitate to amplify my voice and, in turn, amplify the voices of many colleagues who have been heartbroken and hurt by the recent events and to lead a call to action for expanded allyship. I wrote this piece for all of us who could not find the words…One love!”
“Q. & A.: Bryan Stevenson on the Frustration Behind the George Floyd Protests,” interview by Isaac Chotiner | New Yorker (June 1, 2020). The author of Just Mercy discusses “the roots of police violence in both slavery and Jim Crow, how to change the culture of policing, and the frustration and despair behind this week’s protests.” Note: The feature film version of Just Mercy will be available on all digital platforms free of cost through the month of June.
SpeakPatrice Presents: Coronavirus News for Black Folks by Patrice Peck. In February 2020, shortly before the shut-down, Mosaic hosted a phenomenal BHM panel event featuring seminal figures in the fields of archival work, journalism and digital humanities. Then the pandemic happened. Panel moderator Patrice Peck has since established the newsletter Coronavirus News for Black Folks, an enterprise that melds her writing skills, cultural reporting and vital imperative to address Covid-19 and its inequitable impact. You can read her inspiring interview about the project here. Click here to subscribe.
75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice by Corinne Shutack (this piece was published in 2017 but has been listed in context of 2020 pieces in light of the racist and anti-racist events of May 2020): Not only is this list full of meaningful actions; it’s full of perspectives and resources that will enrich understanding, empathy, and consciousness about racial justice. Imagine the collective effect if a quarter of the Hunter families commit to a tenth of the actions in this list.
Black Hunter Alumni Presentation in Celebration of Black History Month 2020 | Presentation organized by HCES second grade parents: This presentation explains to second graders why we celebrate Black History Month and who created it, and highlights notable Black Hunter alumni including: Audre Lorde, Kyle Baker, Ruby Dee, Ron Brown, Martina Arroyo, and Marie Maynard Daly. After the presentation (done in the computer lab), the kids were asked to create a collage around the portrait of their choice of Hunter alumnus and to incorporate some of the quotes they learned, cut out pieces of their bio, and to include words like “Celebrate” and “Perseverance.” (Art project was inspired by https://pin.it/i26vw2ewujuyvj). The students will display their collages on their desks and they can do a gallery walk through both classes to see each other’s work. A shout-out to Dalton High School students and teachers, who shared the original BHM presentation that inspired ours.”
“Ned Blackhawk Q&A: Understanding Indigenous Enslavement” by Monita K. Bell and Julia Delacroix: “Historian Ned Blackhawk explains why we must understand Indigenous enslavement to fully understand American history.”
“Disarming Racial Microaggressions: Microintervention Strategies for Targets, White Allies, and Bystanders” by Derald Wing Sue, Sarah Alsaidi, Michael N. Awad, Elizabeth Glaeser, Cassandra Z. Calle and Narolyn Mendez (Teachers College, Columbia University) | American Psychologist (2019): “This article introduces a new strategic framework developed for addressing microaggressions that moves beyond coping and survival to concrete action steps and dialogues that targets, allies, and bystanders can perform (microinterventions).”
Therapy for Black Girls | Podcast: “A weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a Licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible version of ourselves.”
Code Switch | Podcast from NPR: “Ever find yourself in a conversation about race and identity where you just get…stuck? Code Switch can help. We’re all journalists of color, and this isn’t just the work we do. It’s the lives we lead. Sometimes, we’ll make you laugh. Other times, you’ll get uncomfortable. But we’ll always be unflinchingly honest and empathetic. Come mix it up with us.”
Speaking of Racism | Podcast: “A podcast celebrating everyday activists who are disrupting, deconstructing, and dismantling racism.”
Rethinking Schools Magazine: The national education magazine “firmly committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy. While writing for a broad audience, Rethinking Schools emphasizes problems facing urban schools, particularly issues of race.”
“Teaching America’s Truth” | The Washington Post (August 28, 2019): “For generations, children have been spared the whole, terrible reality about slavery’s place in U.S. history, but some schools are beginning to strip away the deception and evasions…”
“The 1619 Project” helmed by Nikole Hannah Jones | The New York Times Magazine (August 14, 2019): “The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”
Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence by Kellie Carter-Jackson, Ph.D. (2019). “Force and Freedom takes readers beyond the honorable politics of moral suasion and the romanticism of the Underground Railroad and into an exploration of the agonizing decisions, strategies, and actions of the black abolitionists who, though lacking an official political voice, were nevertheless responsible for instigating monumental social and political change.”
“Privileged” by Kyle Korver (Milwaukee Bucks) | The Players’ Tribune (April 8, 2019). The NBA player offers a candid account of his own evolving understanding of systemic racism and privilege.
“Dear White Women” | A Social Syllabus by Rachel Cargle. A letter from the acclaimed activist and public speaker, reminding modern white feminists of their relationship with black women throughout history.
America to Me | Kartemquin Films’ 2018 Documentary Series: “Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life Itself) examines racial, economic and class issues in contemporary American education in the ten-part unscripted documentary series America to Me. America to Me spends an academic year at Chicagoland’s elite Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF), allowing its students, families, faculty and administration to tell stories of the pressures and challenges teens face today in their own words.”
Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow | Educational Supplement to The New York Historical Society Exhibit (2018). “The educational materials included here examine the activism for and opposition to black citizenship rights with breadth and depth. They are arranged chronologically in three units: Reconstruction, 1865-1877; The Rise of Jim Crow, 1877-1900; and Challenging Jim Crow, 1900-1919. Each unit includes primary and secondary resources intended for use by teachers and students, along with suggested classroom activities and discussion questions. These classroom materials include works of art, political cartoons, photographs, documents, primary accounts, and timelines that underscore how ideas of freedom and citizenship were questioned and challenged by discrimination and violence. The life stories in the materials profile the lives of both prominent and lesser-known individuals and highlight a range of attitudes and perspectives on the critical question of black citizenship.”
“Seeing White” | Scene on the Radio Podcast from the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University (2017). Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story . . . Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika. The series editor is Loretta Williams.”
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (2015). The #1 New York Times Bestseller is a powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. Note: The feature film version of Just Mercy will be available on all digital platforms free of cost through the month of June.
Recommended Websites
African American Literature Book Club (AALBC). “Dedicated to books by or about people of African descent.”
Center for Racial Justice in Education. “The Center for Racial Justice in Education’s mission is to train and empower educators to dismantle patterns of racism and injustice in our schools and communities. At the Center for Racial Justice in Education, we envision a world where all young people learn and thrive in racially equitable, liberating, and empowering educational spaces.”
Undoing Racism® | The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PSAB): “The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB), is a national and international collective of anti-racist, multicultural community organizers and educators dedicated to building an effective movement for social transformation.”
Glenn E. Singleton’s COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION™. “Award-winning protocol for effectively engaging, sustaining and deepening interracial dialogue. Through our Framework for Systemic Racial Equity Transformation, PEG is dedicated to helping educators address persistent racial disparities intentionally, explicitly, and comprehensively.”
SURJ NYC. “SURJ NYC is a local chapter of a national network organizing white people for racial justice.”
Publications, Podcasts and Films Recommended by HCCS Parents
“I Hid My ‘Scary-Big’ Shoulders for 29 Years. Here’s Why I Finally Embraced Them—And My Own Strength” by Julia Sullivan | Health (February 10, 2020): “Two Words: ‘Warrior Genes’”
“MEN” | Scene on the Radio Podcast: “What’s up with this male-dominated world? How did we get sexism, patriarchy, misogyny in the first place? How can we get better at seeing it, and what can we do about it? Co-hosts John Biewen and Celeste Headlee explore those questions and more. Scene on Radio is a podcast from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University distributed by PRX.”
Therapy for Black Girls | Podcast: “A weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a Licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible version of ourselves.”
“Dear White Women” | A Social Syllabus by Rachel Cargle: “A letter from the acclaimed activist and public speaker, “reminding modern white feminists of their relationship with black women throughout history.”
Recommended Websites
GirlsLeadership.org: “We equip girls with the skills to exercise the power of their voice.”
National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233, or 1-800-787-3224 for TTY): “Our highly-trained advocates are available 24/7/365 to talk confidentially with anyone experiencing domestic violence, seeking resources or information, or questioning unhealthy aspects of their relationship.”
PFLAG: “PFLAG is the first and largest organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people, their parents and families, and allies.”
Boston Children’s Hospital Gender Management Service (GeMS): “Founded in 2007, GeMS was the first major program in the U.S. to focus on treating gender-expansive and transgender adolescents. Since that time, we have expanded our program to welcome patients from ages 3 to 25.”
Camp Aranu’tiq: “Camp Aranu’tiq’s mission is to build confidence, resilience, and community for transgender & non-binary youth and their families through camp experiences.”