How Do You Raise a Responsible Human?
This is a question, as an educator, I have so often pondered.
How do we, as a collective village comprised of parents and teachers and coaches and mentors, raise students with an innate sense of responsibility—for self, for others, and for their surroundings? How do we walk the paths trodden by matriarchs like Alberta Williams King, or Alicia Chavez, or Celia Bader? How do we replicate the empathy, compassion, ingenuity, and strength cultivated in the hearts and minds of their children? Children who grew into pillars of tolerance and justice—the warriors of advocacy and peace.
How, in this virtual world we’ve erected where YouTube is our reality and emojis relay our feelings? We subsist in an ever-shifting culture that now so often indemnifies hate and the hijinks of hypocrites—where the self-worth of our kids is aligned with the number of followers they have and the amount of likes they receive.
How do we raise a responsible human?
A leader who is willing to use their voice as a rallying cry for the underserved.
A visionary who is willing to swim upstream in an effort to stand for justice.
A thought-partner to ingenuity and an erector of peace.
This week I wrote a piece for Thrive Global on how we, as a collective village, can help shape a sense of responsibility in our children.
