Curiosity Lab 1:
Who am I?
- Start building cultural awareness through exploration of individual and family identity
- Learn and practice the use of mirrors, windows, and doors language to relate to others’ experiences
Curiosity Lab 2:
Can you make a match?
- Learn how to mix paint to match skin tone
- Take the opportunity to think about shades of skin in a neutral or positive way
- Increase comfort level in noticing and talking about skin tones
- Appreciate and celebrate one’s own unique shade of skin
- Appreciate different tones within the family
Curiosity Lab 3:
Why are there different shades of skin? What does it mean?
- Understand there is no biological basis for race
- Understand that humans made up race and racism
- Understand that some humans benefited from the ideas of race and racism and some humans were harmed
Curiosity Lab 4:
What do you mean, my family has a culture?
- Question our penchant to define our own experiences as “normal” and everything else as “other”
- Understand that all members of a common group are not the same; membership in a group is only one aspect of a person’s life experience
- Understand that there are some parts of culture that are visible (surface culture), some that are partially visible (shallow culture), and some that are often invisible (deep culture)
- Understand that each family has their own unique surface, shallow, and deep cultures, as well as individual self-identify
Curiosity Lab 5:
Can you find the invisible stories your brain is making up?
- Understand that we don’t know a person’s story by looking at them
- Become aware of the patterns and stories that our brains automatically generate
- Introduce the language of assumptions and stereotypes
- Offer a tangible reminder to look at stories & people from multiple perspectives – the view changes as we move
Curiosity Lab 6:
How can I begin my anti-racist journey?
- Introduce the implicitly biased idea that “white is normal” and everything else is “other” – build awareness of our white-centered world
- Introduce and define the language of racist ideas and antiracist ideas
Curiosity Lab 7:
Why are we still talking about race & racism?
- Begin to understand how implicit bias, generational wealth gaps, racist laws and the history of chattel slavery led to racial inequities in the United States
- Learn that enslavement and suffering are not the only narratives of the Black experience, just as there is no single “Black experience”
- Begin to discover that Black people used joy and resistance to reclaim their humanity