Fourth Graders Discuss ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’
By Vinny Prell
In my 4th grade class at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School, students study cultures around the world and are currently working to define culture. We are a Jewish, mostly white, school in Washington, D.C.
To open the lesson, I showed a slideshow of hairstyles from around the world and asked them to find the pattern. They thought it was fancy hair, I explained it was just hair. I asked them to discuss whether or not hair was a part of culture. Students agreed it is! We discussed hair traditions from Jewish cultures.
I showed a YouTube clip about African hair traditions and how they changed to become African American hair traditions. I also introduced some basic hairstyle vocabulary (locs, cornrows, afro, bantu knots, and straightened hair). We discussed how hair is a part of African and African American culture, as well as a little about how hairstyles reflected the impact of and resistance to racism. Students shared why it was important to study African American hair: to know about other people.
We read Don't Touch My Hair and discussed how the main character, Aria, felt. A Black student in my class expressed that people had touched her hair without asking, and how uncomfortable that made her feel. I then moved the discussion to focus on the people who wanted to touch the book character Aria's hair. We discussed their motivations, especially their curiosity and appreciation for her hair.
When students did not get to this idea on their own, I closed the discussion by emphasizing that one part of learning about other people is to show respect. Now that our class had studied a bit about Black hair, we would know not to touch people's hair without asking (many students did think this was obvious), and how to talk respectfully about Black hair.