{"id":35045,"date":"2022-07-26T05:00:27","date_gmt":"2022-07-26T10:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=35045"},"modified":"2022-07-22T14:34:28","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T19:34:28","slug":"oklahoma-educators-dont-shy-away-from-difficult-conversations-at-oklahoma-city-bombing-memorial-museum-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2022\/07\/26\/oklahoma-educators-dont-shy-away-from-difficult-conversations-at-oklahoma-city-bombing-memorial-museum-event\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma educators don\u2019t shy away from difficult conversations at Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial &#038; Museum event"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_35048\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-35048\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-672x396.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"396\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-672x396.jpg 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-1920x1131.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-768x453.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-1536x905.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-2048x1207.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-150x88.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-300x177.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-620x365.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/07\/406A9874-1833x1080.jpg 1833w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Courtesy Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kari Watkins, Executive Director, Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, welcomes teachers to a workshop around having crucial conversations in the classroom.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 20px; border-radius: 6px; overflow: hidden;\"><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.captivate.fm\/episode\/59551b01-da80-4689-84f7-18e3bf44953b\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The school year hasn\u2019t started yet, but a couple dozen Oklahoma teachers are still spending time learning.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a conference room at the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/memorialmuseum.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial & Museum<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, teachers spent a hot July morning talking about how to lead important, difficult conversations in their classrooms.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stacy Jackson is a teacher at Cheyenne Middle School in Edmond. She\u2019s led field trips at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing for years. She said it\u2019s important to remind students of the tragedy that took 168 lives.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey can handle a lot more than we often think they can handle,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cI think teachers are pros at this. We know what age they are and what is age appropriate for them. And so we don&#8217;t tell them more than they need to know, but we tell them enough.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the last few years, tough conversations in classrooms across Oklahoma have come under attack. In 2021, Oklahoma lawmakers passed House Bill 1775, a so-called ban of Critical Race Theory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That law has been heavily criticized. The ACLU is currently <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2021\/10\/21\/aclu-lawyer-discusses-challenge-to-oklahomas-critical-race-theory-ban\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">suing the state<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, saying it limits free speech for educators and students.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The law is aimed at limiting classroom conversations that make students feel \u201cuncomfortable,\u201d because of their race or sex. But still, teachers are finding ways to have uneasy conversations. Jackson said it\u2019s just too important not to do it.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think that it&#8217;s a great way to practice empathy, listening, understanding someone else&#8217;s point of view and learning how to disagree without throwing a tantrum,\u201d Jackson said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s the exact takeaway Lynne Porter wants teachers to have from this and many other events. Porter is the museum\u2019s Director of Educational Experience.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She said she wants students and educators to have a better understanding of the history here.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cKids today were not born in 1995 and some teachers weren&#8217;t even,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it&#8217;s important to give them the knowledge and the resources available, because we know teachers are busy. They have so many different things they have to teach.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It goes beyond just learning about the tick tock facts around the bombing. Porter said she hopes tough conversations here can lead to better conversations more broadly.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think it just comes down to just trying to find what our commonalities are and then what we can do to help make the world a better place,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd if there are problems, how can we share our perspectives in a civil manner?\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new perspectives are helpful for Epic Charter Schools teacher Mendy Esquivel.\u00a0 She had never been to the Memorial, despite spending most of her life in Oklahoma. So she had simply been looking forward to visiting.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI also wanted to learn more about it so that I could, you know, include some of my students this following school year and to try to maybe do a field trip down here and talk about the importance,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Esquivel said it\u2019s important not to whitewash what\u2019s happened in the past and have open and honest conversations to inform the future.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe can&#8217;t learn from history if we don&#8217;t remember,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I think that we have a tendency to want to make things not as bad as they were sometimes, because that does create an uncomfortable conversation.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But discomfort isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. It implies that people are experiencing something new and learning, she said. And when legislation like Oklahoma\u2019s so-called CRT ban is passed or book bans at libraries are discussed, it makes teachers\u2019 jobs harder.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Teachers are already dealing with low pay, large class sizes and new waves of criticism at school board meetings. And all that has fed into a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kosu.org\/education\/2022-07-13\/oklahoma-school-district-uses-a-10-000-housing-stipend-to-draw-in-potential-teachers\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">shortage of teachers<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt&#8217;s frustrating as an educator when someone who&#8217;s at the Capitol says, hey, you can&#8217;t talk about this when it&#8217;s important to have those conversations,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The school year hasn\u2019t started yet, but a couple dozen Oklahoma teachers are still spending time learning.In a conference room at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial &#038; Museum, teachers spent a hot July morning talking about how to lead important, difficult conversations in their classrooms.Stacy Jackson is a teacher at Cheyenne Middle School in Edmond. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":35047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35045"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35045"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35050,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35045\/revisions\/35050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}