“One of the discussions that we had yesterday is about marches and protests. With everything going on in the world, we want them to be able to process what’s happening and the right way to do things and the not so right way to do things,” she said.
Howard said students talked about different types of marches, not just for civil rights, but also those such as health and breast cancer awareness.
“What we talked about is if you had the right to march about anything, what would it be? And they said we just want peace, we want to be safe, we want to feel safe in the world, we want to feel safe in our schools,” she said.
Howard explained that this march is a teachable moment for the students since they are the next generation.
“The teachable moment is that these are our future leaders, so if we don’t train them on how to organize, how to march, if they have a cause that they want to be active in, that this is teaching them. This is teaching them the right way to do it,” she said.
Students will be at home on MLK Day, but the school has reminded them what kind of day it is.
“Typically if something was going on in Springfield, if there was a march or some program, then I would advocate for us to participate in that program,” Howard said. “But for Monday, everybody will be at home doing their own thing. We have told them that this is a day of service so if they can find an opportunity to serve others to do that as well.”
Although some conversations may be hard to have with students, Howard said the staff has them.
“We have those really crucial conversations and critical conversations about peace and about Dr. King and how it’s relevant 40-50 years later, how some of things are still very relevant in our world today,” she said. “We have a diverse student population and I want our kids to learn how to live together, work together, learn together, advocate together, have differences but be able to solve them in a peaceful way.”
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