Avy’s Story: Responding to Racial Bias from her Wise View

This reflection was submitted during our 2024 Foundations-2 training in the Framework approach and used with permission. The story illustrates the Tadd Technique, a Framework strategy for helping individuals shift out of emotional reaction and into their wise view:

I picked my 3rd-grade daughter Avyonna (Avy) up from school today, and she was upset. She told me that during school, another child in her class had told her that “Brown people shouldn’t be at this school.” My daughter is bi-racial. I had a flood of emotions. Why hadn’t the school called me? What had been done to address this and support my child?” I recognized I was in a big solar plexus reaction.
              I did not want to add to Avy's upset, so I stayed quiet. After a few moments, Avy shared, “I am too upset to know what to do right now. I just can’t get out of my big feelings yet, and up to my wise view.” Once we arrived home, Avy said, “I need to go and write in my room. That will help me get back in my wise view.”  I felt grateful that I had shared this Framework technique with my daughter and that we had been practicing it together. While she was writing, I worked on finding my wise view, too.
              When my daughter came out of her room, we were both calm, and she shared what she had written with me, a poem called “We Belong.” She wanted to share with her class, so we called her teacher and made a plan. The next day, Avy read the poem for her class:

Used with permission

              Afterward, her classmates responded to her poem, and Avyonna helped all the students write their own versions of “We Belong.”  Suffice it to say that what started as a significant hurt became a beautiful and empowering lesson for my daughter and her classroom community.
              I am so thankful this situation occurred while I was taking this class – because in the past, with my dominant solar plexus, I would never have been able to manage my feelings as I did or support my daughter to walk through this challenge as she did.

—Moriah Carney, early education director and parent