Deb Marquardt. Photo courtesy of GCCSD

It’s Black History Month and one Greene County educator is taking personal responsibility to give students a better understanding of Black culture.

Deb Marquardt teacher college psychology and leadership and ethics classes. She believes more needs to be done in education to highlight Black people and the Black culture to help students gain more perspectives. Marquardt recalls a video about the events that led to the federal designation of Black History Month in one of her classes. Following the video was a discussion, which Marquardt points out was difficult for students, and she states that this reaffirmed for her that more conversations were needed to provide a comfortable environment.

“In college they get all of these opportunities to talk about all of the issues and we have to acclimate our kids, especially our upper-level kids to that kind of an environment. So they go off, to all the different places that they go, they’re not harboring just the very, non-diverse thinking, which is okay, when you’re raised that way that’s okay. But the opportunity to learn more is there when you go off somewhere else. But we’ve got to help them, we’ve got to acclimate them to that, I think.” 

Marquardt urges parents to watch a video or different clips about Black people and have a discussion to share their thoughts with each other. She understands that it might be difficult at first but it may get easier the more it happens.