Last year, the office of US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote a nearly 30 page health advisory about the mental health issue of parental stress. Anna, a White parent in Phoenix, who also serves on the leadership team at IS, shares her thoughts about the advisory and how it relates to integration.
In White-normed parenting culture, the pull to follow the “herd” of what others are doing can be very strong. A mom shares how the Integrated Schools Two Tour Pledge helped her reorganize her thinking and priorities around choosing a school.
White mom, Emily Moores, reflects on the parallels between tending to a garden and tending to the relationships necessary to participate in meaningful integration and living in true community.
There are places where “touring schools” is just “good parenting”, and yet that is not a universal experience. One mom shares her experience of living in a community where “touring” to determine a school’s quality is not the norm, and how she is navigating making equitable educational decisions with her family.
There is no Integrated Schools “formula” for choosing and enrolling our children in a new school, and what is important might take a different shape for families depending on their particular racial makeup. To illustrate that, Katherine, a mom in Los Angeles, shares her family’s kindergarten enrollment story.