Episode 3:
Meeting our character
The purpose of this episode is to introduce unfairness based on difference, and the concept of skin colour. We recommend watching this video by Beverly Daniel Tatum Is my skin brown because I drank chocolate milk? Before starting this episode with learners.
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Will be supported to reflect on positionality, privilege and power, and to unlearn bias, prejudice and divisiveness (Principle 7)
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what fairness means
belief that it is everyone’s responsibility to challenge prejudice and discrimination
Preparation
Have your chosen character ready.
IMPORTANT - the character you choose to use with the children should not be a human or an identifiable animal. Instead, it should be a non-specific creature (e.g. multicoloured worry monster, striped or spotty sock puppet) in order to facilitate the explicit exploration of difference. For an example of sock puppets have been used creatively at first level, please see the Education Scotland video “We’re aw fae somewhere” featuring staff from Oakgrove primary and their ‘Luna’ project.
Stimulus
Teacher using hot seat drama technique, taking on the role of character (e.g. a soft toy or sock puppet).
Suggested activities
Introduce character through hot seating. During this exercise it is important to convey:
You left your bag in the class by accident when you were looking around.
You are friendly and nice, but a bit shy.
If it comes up in the questioning, explain you come from a location your learners are likely to be unfamiliar with eg the countryside outside the town/city your school is based in.
You are really excited about starting a new school but are feeling nervous.
Explain that you have seen lots of children walking about in school uniform but have noticed that very few of them have been stripey/purple/spotty. Explain that this reminds your character of a time they were left out of a birthday party because the person whose birthday it was thought that spotty/stripey/purple characters didn’t celebrate birthdays like that. Your character is worried about being left out again if they start school.
Offer to answer any questions the children might have.
You would like to know about this class. What can they tell you about themselves?
Make sure children ask about the mysterious wrapped birthday present. Still in character, explain that it’s your birthday soon. The little present is from your aunt that arrived in the post ages ago - you’ve been carrying it around everywhere and can’t wait to open it.
After the hot seating, ask your children how they think their character must be feeling. What can they do to help their character? Go back to the hot seating and make sure your learners reassure their character that they won’t be made to feel different when they join the class and that we really respect each other's differences at our school.
Read the story (or watch the Youtube video) of “Something Else”. Children might draw pictures or write a few sentences about how they would welcome the character, or of what they would say to the creatures who are excluding the main character. There are a number of ideas on how to use this text in this guidance from the organisation Changing Faces.
Watch Sesame Street: Lupita Nyong'o Loves Her Skin. Discuss skin colour difference in your class. What colours of skin do we have in our class? Are they all the same or are there differences? If you are in a white majority class, you may want to take this opportunity to look at picture books to discuss the skin colours of different characters, or use high profile figures from eg music, sport or television to discuss different skin tones.
NOTE: If your class only has a small number of black or brown children, you may want to approach this section sensitively, to avoid learners feeling singled out. In this case, rather than discussing skin differences within your class, you may want to guide the discussion to examples of other famous figures with a range of skin tones. If it feels appropriate and learners are keen to discuss skin colour within the class, take care to do this in a way that doesn’t single out individual children, but that celebrates any differences in skin colour. This is a good opportunity to model using language such as black, brown, white to discuss different skin tones.
Extension activities
Watch this animation. What can we learn about skin colour and racism from this animation? See associated 2nd level activities
Watch and discuss this short Sesame Street video Explaining Race | #ComingTogether. What does the video make us think about skin colour?
Choose activities appropriate for your class from Show Racism the Red Card’s Amna and Amy storybook and their Similar but Unique activities.
