May 29, 2016

Dear present day senior,

Im not sure how far along you are in the process, but let me congratulate you anyways. If we are
anything alike, then I know that getting to where you are was not easy. Indeed, I faced many
challenges during my time at Blackstone and especially during my senior year. Id like to tell you
about them in the hopes you can learn from them.
Hopefully you remember the community showing of TRAPPED (a Sundance film about
reproductive justice and abortion rights) that I held at BACS. Well, that wasnt really my senior
project. My senior thesis was, in order to reduce the social, emotional, financial, and
educational inequality that children of color face in the classroom, it is imperative that teachers
address their racial, ethnic, and gender-based biases. Researching this, I learned so much, from
the concept of competing femininities to the disproportionate suspension rates that Black girls
face, from race as a social construct to the importance of a diverse teacher population. Yet,
unsurprisingly, there isnt much I can do to end white supremacy or alleviate a problem that is
institutional and pervasive in the system.
I first wanted to design professional development curriculum that I could carry out at
Blackstone and distribute to local schools. Unfortunately, the organization I thought would help
in this effort wasnt supportive and I eventually lost contact with them. By then, it was too late to
find another organization -- especially a local one dealing with the issues I wanted to address.
Dealing with the unreliability of outside organizations was one of my biggest challenges. In the
end, my project was to take on the role of an academic lecturer. I presented all of my research to
future teachers of color -- Brown University MAT students -- in a Social Justice class. After that
practice round, I presented my research to Blackstone faculty.
The most important outcome of my project was reassuring future teachers of color that
they are very much needed, as well as reminding current teachers that there is still work to be

done -- and students recognize that. In measuring my impact, my most important outcome was
finding that before my presentation, only 29.2% of teachers felt very comfortable talking about
race, and the other 70.8% only felt "somewhat comfortable." After my presentation, 30.4% of
faculty members felt "more comfortable talking about race."
All in all, my project was successful. However, if I had the chance to do it over again, I
would have spoken to my teachers beforehand to find out what they didnt know. Furthermore, I
would have spoken to students and asked them whether they would like to broach these topics in
the classroom. By doing this, I could have assured that my project had future impact.
Although there are things I would have done differently, I dealt with some problems
pretty well. For one, there is research that shows that finding actual research about my topic is
rare (ironic, huh?), so I had to overcome the preliminary problem of finding sources. I overcame
this challenge by looking at old studies, asking my senior coach for scholarly sources that were
not available through a simple Google search, or even a search in the URI library, and making
assumptions based on research done about boys of color or children of color in general. Even
after all this research, Im still left wondering how common cultural competency training is, and
what more can be done to narrow the education gap between white children and children of
color.
After a year of diligent work, I learned that I can get a little bored after looking at the
same paper for weeks at a time -- even if its about something Im extremely passionate about. In
order to remind myself of the importance of the work and why it matters to me, I just have to
stop reading my own words for a little while and instead find someone to talk to about it. I also
learned that theres still so much work left to be done, and I hope I can continue doing it.
Dear senior, I hope youve learned something from my letter. Either way, please feel free
to email me if you have any specific questions: valentina_gutierrez@college.harvard.edu.
Sincerely yours,
Valentina Gutirrez