Activity 1.2 | Intersectionality and privilege

Rukia Monique Rogers is the founder of Highlander School in Atlanta, Georgia. In this video, she talks about how her school is founded on a framework of values that upholds children as citizens, taking their ideas seriously in co-creating more-just worlds. She sees child care as spaces for living into values that exceed the status-quo, that respond to the members of our beloved communities, and that offer us all lived experiences of compassion and kinship that are required for the sustained work of advocacy.

In this video, Rukia Monique Rogers shares stories of practice that include children’s voices, acknowledging their necessary presence in social justice movements in the early years. Rukia Monique Rogers recognizes that children are wired for connection and that we must reflect on how we are all interconnected.

As you watch the video, notice your emotions. What stories invite you to open? A sense of openness can be marked by curiosity, or by having moving emotions. A sense of openness feels like being receptive. What stories make you uncomfortable? A sense of discomfort can be marked by noticing defensiveness, or inability to take in new information. 

In watching the video, practice using some of the tools that you have learned in this course so far: breathe, practice curiosity, exercise compassion. As the British Columbia Early Learning Framework (2019) reminds us:

"Listening or attending to the other person is not always comfortable. The words “attend,” and “tension” share a common root, tendere, which means, “to stretch.” To really attend to another or to pay attention to another person, we must stretch ourselves; we must really strain to listen, to see, to feel, it is not a casual process." (p. 48)

References

Rogers, R. M. (2023, January 31). Our Beloved Community: Supporting Children’s Compassion, Kinship and Activism [Video]. Exchange Press. https://hub.exchangepress.com/video/9395/