{"id":6041,"date":"2022-02-02T23:48:28","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T04:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/?p=6041"},"modified":"2022-02-10T15:24:31","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T20:24:31","slug":"standing-up-against-privilege-walks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/standing-up-against-privilege-walks\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing up against Privilege Walks"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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So-called “Privilege Walks” are popular in many school districts. The activity inculcates the idea that certain immutable characteristics, such as skin color or sexuality, determine a person’s status, whether privileged or victim.<\/h5>
This article describes how one mom in Parker, Colorado, fought to protect her son from this race-essentialist instruction.<\/h5>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Privilege in Parker<\/h3>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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By Judith Sears<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0 \u00a0 On December 3, 2021, Krista Cooley of Parker, Colorado received the kind of call no parent wants to receive. Her twelve-year-old son was on the line. \u201cMom,\u201d he said, \u201cI can\u2019t breathe. I think I\u2019m having a panic attack. I need you to come and get me right now!\u201d Alarmed, Cooley hurried to Sagewood Middle School to pick up her son. On the ride home, he explained that special counselors had led the seventh grade\u2019s social studies class in an activity similar to a \u201cPrivilege Walk,\u201d which forces students to state the ways they\u2019re privileged in comparison to others.
\u00a0 \u00a0 Cooley\u2019s son recalled that students were asked several questions, starting with, \u201cStep over the line if you have had privileges because of your race.\u201d Another question was \u201cAre you close to someone of the LGBT community?\u201d What was the correct answer? If Cooley\u2019s son didn\u2019t have an LGBT friend, did that mean he was against the LGBT community? Some of the questions had a \u201cdamned if you do, damned if you don\u2019t\u201d flavor.
\u00a0 \u00a0 When the activity culminated with another 12-year-old sharing a story about the suicide of an LGBT friend, Cooley\u2019s son left the room and called her. \u201cIt was just too much for him to process,\u201d Cooley says. \u201cHe\u2019s an empathetic and sensitive boy and I love that about him.\u201d Neither the students nor parents had received any advance notice of this special activity. Cooley immediately reached out to the school principal, Ben D\u2019Ardenne and one of the counselors who\u2019d led the activity.
\u00a0 \u00a0 That afternoon, Cooley and D\u2019Ardenne had a long and ultimately fruitless telephone conversation. Cooley quickly realized how involved the conversation was going to be and, fearing that she would not recall the details accurately, recorded it with her cell phone.<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 Cooley recalls that D\u2019Ardenne, who refused to call the activity a \u201cprivilege walk,\u201d denied that any of the questions had been about race. He claimed that the questions had been along the lines of, \u201cHave you had privileges?\u201d Cooley\u2019s son, new to the school, specifically recalled that the term \u201crace\u201d had been used and the discomfort he had felt. During the conversation, the principal read some of the questions to Cooley, pausing frequently between questions. Cooley wondered if the pauses were due to questions being skipped or re-worded. She asked the principal to email a full list of questions to her.
\u00a0 \u00a0 Toward the end of the conversation, D\u2019Ardenne promised to provide the Cooley\u2019s with one of the school\u2019s \u201cpurple cards,\u201d which excuses students from activities.
\u00a0 \u00a0 Other parents of Sagewood Middle Schoolers learned of Cooley\u2019s experience through a parent advocacy group\u2019s social media page. They reported similar activities programmed for students at Sagewood Middle School and confirmed the questions and wording as Cooley\u2019s son had recalled them. The parents reported taking the issue up with the principal but receiving no response.
\u00a0 \u00a0 Cooley pursued the issue, emailing the Superintendent of Schools, Corey Wise, about her concerns. Wise forwarded her email to the principal and three school board members.
\u00a0 \u00a0 By December 14 \u2013 eleven days later \u2013 Cooley had not received the activity questions or the purple \u201cactivity excuse\u201d card from the principal. Unwilling to let the matter drop, she addressed a Douglas County School Board meeting about her son\u2019s experience. Cooley doesn\u2019t consider herself a practiced public speaker, but her remarks had an impact. \u201cDepicting children as either privileged or victims due to unchangeable characteristics is not how we raise successful adults,\u201d she said and added, \u201cThese programs are divisive, regressive and not the school\u2019s role to impose on our children.\u201d<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 After the meeting, Cooley learned that the principal had told one of the district board members that he had spoken with Cooley several times on the phone and had sent her the list of questions from the activity \u2013 neither of which had happened.
\u00a0 \u00a0 After once again emailing the principal, three school board members, and Superintendent Wise, Cooley finally received the list of questions from the principal. However, the list D\u2019Ardenne provided did not match what her son and other parents recalled and what Cooley had heard in her first conversation with him. Some questions were omitted. Other questions of a lighter nature had been added.
\u00a0 \u00a0 In subsequent email communications, Cooley emailed the principal an audio clip of their first conversation in which the principal read some of the questions he now claimed had not been on the list. She also copied other school district personnel, including Danny Winsor, Executive Director of Schools for the Parker Region, on the email. Winsor immediately contacted Cooley and promised to \u201cfollow up\u201d on her concerns. D\u2019Ardenne contacted Cooley and invited her to meet with him and counselors in early 2022. Having little trust in the school\u2019s administration, Cooley declined the meeting with D\u2019Ardenne.
\u00a0 \u00a0 In the meantime, word of Cooley\u2019s experience had reached Laureen Boll, the FAIR Colorado state coordinator. She contacted Cooley and urged her to file a report through FAIR\u2019s transparency page (fairtransparency.org) \u201cThis has been a great example of how powerful the FAIR transparency tool is,\u201d says Boll. \u201cWe\u2019ve been putting the word out that if anyone has felt uncomfortable or shamed to file a report.\u201d
\u00a0 \u00a0 Currently, the Sagewood Middle School incident seems stalled in a \u201che said, she said\u201d status. In early January, Cooley learned from a counselor that the social studies activity \u2013 the-don\u2019t-call-it-privilege-privilege-walk \u2013 would be going forward. Cooley\u2019s son received the purple card excusing him from participation, but Cooley hopes other parents will get involved. \u201cParents are afraid to stand up because of what people might think. We\u2019re afraid to look like a racist or like we\u2019re against the LGBT community. That\u2019s not the case. These were not age-appropriate activities, and they cross the line between parenting and education,\u201d she says.
\u00a0 \u00a0 FAIR\u2019s legal team is aware of the exercise and encourages parents of Sagewood Middle School students who have familiarity with this social studies exercise or similar activities to contact FAIR through fairtransparency.org. FAIR\u2019s legal team will continue its evaluation of the facts, circumstances, and potential legal implications surrounding the \u201cprivilege walk\u201d exercise.
\u00a0 \u00a0 Challenging race-essentialist curricula is slow-going, but parents and teachers are not alone. \u201cIt\u2019s okay to speak out,\u201d Cooley urges. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make you a bad person.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So-called “Privilege Walks” are popular in many school districts. The activity inculcates the idea that certain immutable characteristics, such as skin color or sexuality, determine a person’s status, whether privileged or victim. This article describes how one mom in Parker, Colorado, fought to protect her son from this race-essentialist instruction. Privilege in Parker By Judith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[18,11,17],"class_list":["post-6041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press","category-uncategorized","tag-fair","tag-news","tag-parental-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fairforall.org\/el-paso-teller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}