The Energy of Tales as Bridges: From assumption to understanding 

I grew up in Seventies Las Vegas, in the course of the period of faculty desegregation and redlining, a discriminatory housing apply the place banks and the federal government actually drew crimson strains round minority neighborhoods, denying households entry to truthful residence loans and shaping inequities in faculties and academic alternatives. I didn’t know what redlining was again then. What I did know was that one 12 months, kids from North Las Vegas, Black Youngsters, began using buses to my principally white faculty. Nobody defined why. As a six-year-old, I solely knew that abruptly the classroom felt completely different. 

On the time, I didn’t perceive what was occurring. However wanting again now, I can see that was the second when implicit bias first started to take form in my pondering. I seen issues: the way in which their hair was styled in braids or twists, so completely different from my very own straight hair; the garments they wore; the video games they performed at recess. And since these issues have been unfamiliar, I considered them as unusual and even fallacious. I related distinction with discomfort. Not as a result of anybody had taught me to be unkind, however as a result of nobody had taught me easy methods to perceive. 

It wasn’t till years later, once I turned a instructor, that I started to acknowledge and unlearn these early assumptions. I needed to ask myself: The place did these concepts come from? How did they form the way in which I noticed others? That form of reflection will not be at all times straightforward, nevertheless it’s important. It’s what helped me develop– not simply as an individual, however as an educator. 

Now I imagine greater than ever that storytelling, together with our personal tales, is among the strongest methods we will train empathy and fight social injustice. Once I share this a part of my life with my college students, I’m not simply giving them vocabulary phrases like bias, fairness, and advocacy. I’m modeling what it appears prefer to confront your previous, mirror with humility, and select to do higher. 

I need my college students to know that all of us carry tales that form how we see the world, however we even have the facility to rewrite these tales with consciousness, compassion, and motion. That’s why sharing mine issues. 

A Mission in South Carolina

Once I was 21, I had one other highly effective expertise that deepened my understanding. I served a mission for my Church in South Carolina, and it was there that I actually started to take heed to tales I had by no means heard earlier than. 

I bear in mind moving into houses the place poverty was in every single place, typically into dust flooring that have been as soon as the very cabins the place ancestors had lived as enslaved folks. I’ll always remember that feeling, standing in these areas that carried a lot historical past, ache, and resilience. 

One girl invited me in and confirmed me her household’s quilts. They have been breathtaking, brilliant colours, rigorously stitched, patterns handed down by generations. At first, I simply noticed them as stunning items of artwork. However as she instructed me their tales, I started to grasp that these quilts have been far more. They have been survival, creativity, and testimony all stitched collectively. They carried historical past in each line of thread. 

Sitting in these rooms, listening to these tales, I started to understand how a lot of the American story had by no means been taught. These weren’t simply “classes” in tradition; they have been lived experiences that challenged me to face my very own assumptions about race, poverty, and resilience. 

These moments taught me one thing important: listening to tales with humility has the facility to interrupt down bias. Removes us from pondering we already know to realizing how a lot we nonetheless have to study. 

Educating within the Navajo Nation

A number of years later, once I was educating within the Navajo Nation, I realized this lesson once more; this time by my very own classroom. I had invited a distinguished elder to return and share conventional Coyote tales with my college students. Once I launched him, I mistakenly referred to as them chants. One in all my pricey college students raised her hand and gently corrected me: “Mrs. Johnson, we don’t name them chants. They’re songs.”

In that second, I felt humbled. I spotted that even with the very best intentions, I may nonetheless get it fallacious. My mistake didn’t come from malice; it got here from not totally understanding. However that correction was a present. It jogged my memory that respect begins with listening, and typically which means being keen to be corrected. 

That have additionally confirmed me how highly effective scholar voices could be. My scholar wasn’t disrespectful—she was educating me. And by listening, I used to be capable of develop. 

Similar to these quilts in South Carolina carried tales of survival and resilience, the tales and songs of the Navajo folks carried knowledge, historical past, and identification. By welcoming them into my classroom, and by humbly accepting correction, I realized that true cultural competence isn’t about at all times getting it proper—it’s about being open sufficient to hear, study, and alter.

Natalie Sparks Johnson is an educator with over 30 years of expertise educating artwork, engineering, and robotics throughout the U.S., Australia, and Europe. She presently teaches at SHAPE American Excessive Faculty in Belgium with the Division of Protection Schooling Exercise (DoDEA). Natalie is a 2025–26 NEA World Studying Fellow, U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) Peace Trainer, and Hope Avenue Group Trainer Fellow. Her work focuses on integrating artwork, engineering, and peace training by world citizenship and the UN Sustainable Growth Objectives.