Junior Gedion starts Diversify Our Narrative chapter for MBUSD

By Emily von Buttlar

Features Editor

Junior Hannah Gideon expands Diversify Your Narrative, a nonprofit organization aiming to include antiracist texts in schools, to the Manhattan Beach Unified School District (MBUSD) to make each grade level’s curriculum include a book written by or about people of color. 

Gideon created the MBUSD chapter after she came across Diversify Our Narrative’s Instagram page in June. After Gideon noticed that MBUSD did not have a chapter she took it upon herself to include Costa and other schools in the district in the fight to expand curriculum with diverse, antiracist texts and new history textbooks.

“Diverse books help people gain a new perspective on social issues,” Gedion said. “School is a time where you develop a sense of identity and personality, so learning about other people’s experiences helps us become global citizens who understand that other cultures exist and that it is important to respect them.”

Over 50 members joined the MBUSD chapter alongside Gedion. Most of the team consists of Costa sophomores and juniors. Everyone has a specific job to help contribute to the overall goal of the organization, such as communications and media managers. 

“[Everyone’s] dedication and support is amazing and encouraging for me,” Gedion said. “For the longest time, I felt alone in my concerns about this town and the direction our curriculum was headed, so it’s great to know that I am not alone in this endeavor.”

Gedion is currently working with teachers at the elementary school level to implement readings by Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) into the Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum. This would be implemented during SEL class at the elementary school level.  The MBUSD chapter also found representatives from Panel of Equity who advocate on their behalf to the school board.  The Panel for Equity consists of a team of alumni from schools within the MBUSD and Hermosa Beach Unified School District (HBUSD) along with teachers and parents. They are working to reform many aspects of Manhattan Beach, including politics, the school district and the curriculum.

Gedion has also been working closely with the Panel for Equity’s Curriculum Reform Committee to combine and share their resources, spread their cause and expand their team. The English department teachers at Costa have aided Gedion in giving recommendations which led to teachers Maddie Hutchinson and Diana Seiker starting the Antiracist Book Club to explore more texts.

“The political climate of the time period has finally climate of the time period has finally given [English teachers] a sense of what they were trying to do [regarding creating a new curriculum,] so they were able to replace some of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh-grade [books with] book written by people of color,” Gedion said.

Gedion and the other volunteers want to honor the many police brutality victims, such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the form of education. Gedion hopes to incorporate the history of police brutality, systematic racism and the treatment of ethnic minorities in the United States into the district’s curriculum. The Panel ofEquity is sharing resources to help the MBUSD chapter include ethnic study classes throughout the school district. The head of Panel For Equity’s Curriculum Reform Committee, Jasmine Tintut, has been helping Gedion and the other members of Diversify Our Narrative achieve their goals by assisting them in finding ethnic studies topics, and more.

“Tintut has been the biggest component of our success, “Gideon said. “She has been helping [us get] news on their progress [with] the school board, get resources, get ethnic studies research [and] they help us get an audience. We are like the voices, and they are the adults of the panel.”