Roseville High School will present three lessons focused on cultural sensitivity during ROAR support periods during the first week of the spring term. The lessons are scheduled to take place during the first week of the semester.

Assistant principal Anna Marie Clark said staff assembled to develop a way to educate the campus on Roseville High School’s diversity.

“A team of teachers have come together to develop some lesson plans that celebrate the diversity on our campus and help students develop some tools to deal with sensitive situations that arise whether it’s cultural, whether it’s gender-based, whether it’s race-based,” Clark said. “When we have these issues arise, often times it happens in a peer group.”

ROAR lesson planner Keshila Jones and Black Student Union members spoke during a November faculty meeting. They presented their experiences with racism or hate speech on campus.

“Specific incidents that have happened and lack of student awareness brought about myself wanting to inform the student body and get other teachers involved,” Jones said.

Jones hopes the students will take the opportunity to re-evaluate their attitude toward a variety of cultures on campus.

“I want the [students] to be engaged and do some self-reflection about how they interact with students on campus or when they see certain things going on on campus,” Jones said.

BSU member Charles Henderson hopes to expand Roseville’s approach towards cultural differences on campus.

“I hope that it will bring more knowledge to the student body, because some people don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, and what people deem offensive and what some people don’t, because everyone has their own opinions and views,” Henderson said. “I would love [for] Roseville [to] become more diverse but the only way we can do that is if we respect each other for who we are.”

According to Jones, the ROAR lessons will provide a new perspective for students to use in day-to-day life.

“During ROAR in your classes, you’re going to go through some specific lessons just recognizing diversity and becoming aware and developing some tools to use in terms of interacting with other students who are different from you,” Jones said. “Hopefully these are tools that students can use on campus and off campus so they can appreciate other cultures and if they’re presented in certain situations so they know how to react in a positive way.”

ROAR lesson committee member and English teacher Deborah Sidler said cultural understanding and diversity have been a focus.

“The reason I wanted to come onboard and be a part of this is because this is something that has always been a part of my classroom and is an important aspect of not only what a student should learn in an English class… and in life in general,” Sidler said.

Sidler hopes the program will make a real difference on campus that will affect the students.

“Our hope would be that differences are seen as advantages, to see those differences, but understand how those differences shape us and make us a stronger community,” Sidler said. “To really understand a person you need to look at things from his point of view, to physically get in his shoes and walk around in them.”

Sidler believes cultivating a safe and stable environment on campus requires conscious, open effort.

“There’s this famous quote by Thoreau, ‘As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives,’” Sidler said. “So we have to talk about diversity if that’s something that’s important to us.”