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Ahiyya told \"GMA\" the messages she shared with her students in the video are part of a constant conversation about race that she has in her classroom of nearly two dozen students from all different races and backgrounds.

\"I think that when we start saying, ‘Kids don’t see color,’ that’s not true, they just may not have the words to describe what they’re seeing or the differences they’re seeing,\" she said. \"When we start to build conversations with young children around specifically race, we have to give them the vocabulary so that way when they’re figuring things out and they’re building their misconceptions and trying things out on the playground, you want to be sure that you provide them with the right vocabulary to be able to say, like, ‘Yeah my skin color is brown, we’re called black,’ or, 'My skin color is light brown and my ethnicity is Puerto Rican.'\"

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A post shared by Vera Ahiyya | Kindergarten (@thetututeacher) on Jun 7, 2020 at 1:39pm PDT

\"You can empower children with words and knowledge in a very simple way, not abstract, because they’re not able to take on huge things like institutional racism, but they do know what it means to tell somebody, ‘You can’t do this,'\" Ahiyya added. \"If you add in, 'A lot of people weren’t able to do this because of their race or because of the way their skin looked,' kids can understand that and they can understand judgment and inequality.\"

Ahiyya said she shares her personal experiences of being a black woman in this country with her students, like being followed by a sales clerk at a store, and tells them about her grandfather, who had to watch movies outside instead of in a movie theater. She follows up those stories with questions like, \"Why do you think that is fair or unfair? What would you do if you were told you had to watch a movie outside?\"

\"PHOTO:
Vera Ahiyya
PHOTO: Vera Ahiyya, a kindergarten teacher in New York, created a YouTube video to help explain the issue of race to kids.
>

She said she hopes teachers learn through the national conversation already underway that race is something that can and should be talked about in classrooms beyond Black History Month or a history lesson on the Civil Rights movement.

\"For non-white people, we’re impacted by our race daily and to minimize it as a one-time conversation is unfair and it also breeds some of the things we’re seeing today,\" said Ahiyya.

Ahiyya said she chose to read a book about race to her students because books can transport students into other people's experiences. She wants teachers to remember though that books are not the only tool for teaching students about race.

\"PHOTO:
Vera Ahiyya
PHOTO: Vera Ahiyya, a kindergarten teacher in New York, created a YouTube video to help explain the issue of race to kids.
>

\"I like to think of books as the key and then you have to turn the lock, you have to engage in pushing the door. All the book does is turn the key,\" she said. \"You can use books as a medium to have a bigger conversation.\"

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