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The Durham District School Board has launched a program to teach kindergarten teachers about anti-Black racism.

One Whitby teacher says the program has led to changes in her classroom.

Sherrilyn Palin-McCready is one of 350 teachers who recently completed anti-Black racism training. She says the workshop gave her a new perspective.

“It was such an important conversation that we were having inside that room,” she said.

“I felt safe and I felt comfortable to ask those questions that I was nervous to ask, being a white teacher.”

Palin-McCready isn’t alone. With the majority of DDSB teachers being white, the school board says it was crucial to implement the training, which was a recommendation from the Compendium of Action for Black Student Success.

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“We sometimes see portrayals of ethnic groups and Black students that are not always positive, and while we may not necessarily believe in those, they may impact our thinking subconsciously,” said Jacqui Steer, an equity co-ordinator with the board.

Parents say this training has been long-awaited.

“It’s late. It’s delayed,” said Bee Quammie, who has a five-year-old daughter attending kindergarten at a Durham school.

“I can even think about myself being a student in elementary school and having educators that, now knowing what I know, would have benefited from some kind of training like this.”

Quammie also spoke about some of the systemic issues Black students face in the school system.

“We know that Black students are disproportionately affected in rates of suspensions, detentions, harsher punishments than other students, and I think anti-Black racism is a major factor to be considered in that,” she said.

Michele Liverpool, a kindergarten teacher and trainer for the anti-Black racism workshop, says it’s integral for teachers to undergo this training, especially for educating young children.

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“These are our earliest learners,” she said.

“What we do as kindergarten teachers helps to shape the social, emotional [and] mental health of children as they go through their years.”

Although the training is not mandatory, the DDSB hopes all kindergarten teachers will eventually participate.

As for Palin-McCready, she’s since made a number of changes in her classroom.

She says it’s important teachers are “making sure we’re representing Black children in the classroom by having resources, having Black dolls in the classroom and looking critically at the literature in the books we’re putting in our classroom.”