We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Marshall a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Sarah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
For the last five years I’ve worked at Lakewood Ave Children’s School as a lead teacher and more recently, as their anti-bias curriculum coordinator. When thinking about my most meaningful project my mind immediately goes to the protest we organized at our preschool. As an unapologetically black educator our children learn history ,and specially black history, all year round. We start each school year by coming up with our classroom expectations and agreements together; from there we begin learning intentional vocabulary words that help little people tackle big concepts. For example, students learn the words boundary, consent, advocate, organize, and community. By the time we prepare for winter break students have mastered these concepts and they are fully integrated in their language as well as their play. Coming back from a 2 week hiatus always puts a smile on my face because I get to hear about what our friends have taught their friends, siblings, and even parents! The biggest compliment is when a family stops me and says “thank you for starting this conversation with ______”. By the time March rolls around the friends have already had a February steeped in Black History! So much so that friends can tell you about Martin Luther King Jr advocating, how Rosa didn’t give up her seat, how Ruby was the first little black girl to go to a white school. The babies have agency and voices that deserve our attention. For years I’ve watched little people engage in “good guy / bad guy” play. Now? Now they don’t want to engage in dramatic play that harms or insinuates hurting someone else. The children image a world where WE keep us safe and we don’t have to engage in good trouble, “people can be free” as they so often verbalize. My most meaningful project was teaching the children how to organize a protest and then executing our plan! Last summer our preschoolers invited the entire school plus their families to engage in our first protest. Friends worked for weeks making signs, using resources like “Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights” and “Twas the Night Before Pride” to educate their friends on what we were doing and why. Signs read everything from “families deserve to stay together” to “keep our water clean!”. The pride we all felt walking up and down our streets of Durham, huge smiles as cars honked on in agreement. I am endlessly grateful to engage in this work and to help spark the fire in the bellies of little people. Our work and this fight for a better world has only just begun!
Sarah , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Sarah Marshall and I’m an Anti-Bias Curriculum Coordinator and Lead Preschool Teacher here in Durham, NC. I have been teaching for the last ten years and working in childcare my entire life. I am neurodivergent, queer, and unapogetically black which all influence how I show up as an educator. I now help other teachers, families and schools learn how to raise up anti-racist kids! Through Big Convos with Little People I provide one on one services in which I teach adults how to talk to their children about race and make big concepts digestible for little minds. I also partner with schools to offer paid professional development where I help teachers and leadership disrupt biased ways of thinking while fostering safety and a more mindful community. I am most proud of all the former students and families that reach out to let me know the impact I’ve had on their lives. Most recently I learned how a former student loved our class pet project so much that she went on to teach her class of first grades about light pollution and even started an “anti pollution” club at her new school! In our society it is so easy to lose hope with all that is going on in the world and yet, the little people keep me grounded and give me so much hope!
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My mission is resistance! I want to raise up anti-racist kids that think critically, are empathetic, and have a positive sense of self and love for all people. So often my kiddos will say “we keep us safe” and “everyone should be free”! For too long we’ve been told “children should be seen, not heard” and that’s just not true! Children are capable of so much more than they get credit for and I’d love to see a world where the babies are brave enough to be themselves, get into good trouble when needed and change our world for the better.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Support and invest in the kind of world you want to see! Too often we talk about DEI and wanting to value the labor of black and brown bodies until it’s time to actually invest monetarily. Too often we offload the humanity of our children onto the black and brown educators they have. The work that I’m doing is a huge form of resistance. It centers children and their happiness, something that hasn’t happened historically for a very long time. I love what I do and I thank the folx that invest in this work because it lets me know you aren’t just an ally, you’re a comrade. The difference? A comrade is right there beside you, arm in arm asking what is that WE can do together? Also, moving away from AI and leaning into kinship and community. Not only is AI squandering so much of our water but it’s killing creativity and critical thinking skills. Let’s lean into mutual aid, calling on one another, buying black and brown, investing in your local businesses. This work will take change and sacrifice but it is work we can and will do side by side!
Contact Info:
- Other: Email: bigconvoswithlittlepeople@gmail.com