The DoSeum, San Antonio’s interactive children’s museum on Broadway, is bringing back an exhibit exploring race, unity and empathy for young audiences next year that initially debuted in 2022.
The initiative, which was launched in the wake of national protests following the death of George Floyd, will also provide teaching materials with the support of a grant from the Smithsonian — key in a state where lawmakers have curtailed the teaching of race and racism in public schools.
The exhibit, titled “Uniquely Us,” combines play-based learning with essential conversations about race, equity and empathy, according to the organizers.
Created to appeal to children aged up to 7, the display encourages understanding and unity by breaking complicated social concepts into age-appropriate learning modules.
Organizers of the project told the San Antonio Report that they are aiming to create a space where children and families can learn together about race and racism through engaging, hands-on experiences.
“We felt that the Doseum has a unique approach to it,” said Meredith Doby, the Chief Creative Officer at the DoSeum. “We do joyful learning. So what does it look like to apply joyful learning to something like race and racism and understanding those terms?”
Answering hard questions
The genesis of the program came amid a national reckoning that occurred in the months and years after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
In the aftermath of mass protests that spread around the world in 2020, many companies, schools, governments and nonprofits took a step back and reassessed how they operated and whether they were contributing to what many saw as deep, systemic racism embedded within U.S. society.
Policies and statements around diversity, equity and inclusion were drafted, and schools looked at engaging students in lessons that explored the complicated role of racism and slavery in the foundation of the country, as well as the concept of “anti-racism.”
But others saw the trend as disingenuous and unpatriotic, fomenting a backlash that saw the DEI trend rescinded almost as quickly as it had come.
Especially in Texas where lawmakers quickly outlawed schools from teaching about systemic racism or concepts that could imply racial or gender discrimination as being inherent in societal structures.
They also required that slavery and racism be taught as deviations from America’s founding principles, taking aim at the 1619 Project, a New York Times initiative that reframed U.S. history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the center of the national narrative.
However, as the national conversation continued, students and young children still saw what was happening and sought answers.
So, the DoSeum began working on Uniquely Us.
Chris Navarro, director of school and community programs for the DoSeum, said that the tragic events surrounding Floyd’s death and the nationwide protests inspired internal conversations about how to address these subjects in a museum setting.
Selina Garza, the director of gallery programs and experience integration, said staff and visitors had the same question: “How do we talk to kids about this particular thing as we are watching it through the news?”
The exhibit answered the question by drawing on interactive elements such as STEM education, historical context and literacy-focused activities to create age-appropriate lessons for kids and families.
Now, with funding from a series of grants, the exhibit is coming back, with materials for teachers to explore difficult topics in the classroom while also complying with the minefield of legislation passed in 2021.
The exhibit will also go on the road next year, traveling across the country with the support of a $250,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Age-appropriate lessons?
With such a tense atmosphere in 2020 and 2021, the team at the DoSeum engaged with visitors and members, educators and the broader community, to ensure that the lessons they were piecing together would be both helpful and appropriate.
They also picked through their resource library, reconsidering what books to include as legislators pushed public schools to purge libraries of hundreds of titles, mainly regarding LGBTQ+ topics and those associated with race. But by the time the exhibit launched, it was a success, with more than 75,000 DoSeum guests experiencing the 2022 iteration.
Many of those lessons are returning in 2025.
One section introduces children to basic science concepts related to skin color and hair texture to explain physical differences. Another provides a digital game where children, depending on the resources they receive randomly, experience simulated life challenges to better understand systemic inequality.
While the subject matter is heavy, the project’s designers are implementing bright colorful, inviting and lighthearted elements to teach various lessons such as inclusion.
[We are] “really drawing from modern cartoon characters to kind of liven it up and bring that kind of kid’s voice,” Allie Dewey, the exhibition designer at the DoSeum, said. “Showing that, we’re all unique through fingerprints, as well as also really drawing from the motif of walking in someone’s steps and using footprints throughout the exhibition.”
Navigating a minefield
The museum has partnered with four local schools —The Gathering Place, Promesa Academy, Essence Prep Academy and The Circle School — for a professional development program to help navigate teaching complex topics while complying with the various state laws.
A $35,000 Smithsonian Institution Program Grant will support the development of teacher professional development resources, classroom extension activities and an educator guide to accompany the exhibition, according to the DoSeum.
Years after an initial chilling effect sparked by the state legislation, schools are looking to find ways to approach these topics responsibly.
Lace Garcia, the restorative justice coordinator for Promesa Academy, a Charter School on the west side of San Antonio, said that students will be learning context and terminology for experiences they are already living.
“They’re already learning about it from the world around them,” she said.
One interactive part of the program, she said, includes a wide range of San Antonians of different ages “talking about experiences in which they’ve been treated differently based on their outward appearance, based on their culture or things like that.”
“It’s important for [these ideas] to be represented in an academic way, in a thoughtful way, in a creative way,” she said.
Brian Sparks, superintendent of the Gathering Place, a charter school in northwest San Antonio, echoed that. “I think that I would rather have kids thinking about and reflecting on this content in a structured environment,” he said.
“Covering content like this is really challenging and intricate and part of our jobs as educators is to help students surface their own understandings and thinking and beliefs around these topics,” he said. “Not to impose our own thinking, but more to help them surface and better understand what their beliefs are and how they’re reconciling their lived experiences.”
The DoSeum initiative will help facilitate that work, he said, in a way that is “positioning our kids to be reflectors and and sort of like processors of information in a structured environment in a way that is supportive to the individual student.”
The Circle School, a small private school in San Antonio, is also part of the professional development aspect of the program. Unlike the other schools, they aren’t as limited in what they can teach since they aren’t publicly funded.
But “while we don’t have the confines of the state legislature telling us how and what we are doing, we are a microcosm of other schools,” Blanca Luna, the operations administrator of the school, said. “Even in a school that has more freedom, we still have parents that have different ideas on … parenting, [and] what they’re exposing their children to.”
In response, the school is working to teach parents and expose them to the exhibit and lesson materials, engaging them in a conversation so they can learn, and help prepare their children.
“I think it’s important for students to see their parents figuring stuff out,” Luna said. “It shouldn’t be that students just assume that parents have all the answers, or the teachers have all the answers.”
If the past is any indication, the students will bring a fresh perspective to the conversation, she added.
“We allow our students to have difficult conversations already, and I imagine that they’re going to come up with brighter ideas sometimes than the adults have,” she said. “I’m looking forward to our students coming up with challenging topics that force everybody to think and either affirm beliefs or have stronger beliefs.”
