By SEED Co-director Emmy Howe.

A public note to myself on being White and considering the slaughter of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Jr., and Eric Garner.

This post is by Allison Spire, a SEED leader and K-1 teacher at Our Community School in Chatsworth, California.

Since attending SEED New Leaders’ Week, I can no longer teach the traditional pilgrim stories (the single story) I have always known. I keep hearing the voice of Chimamanda Adichie saying in her video (in that beautiful voice), "Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story." At first, since I had not had an opportunity to develop new curriculum, I simply focused on a general theme of "being thankful." I believed that was, at least, better than teaching the single story—until I could get my act together.

The SEED Project pays tribute to a second-generation activist, Lillian Roybal Rose, whose father Edward Roybal is one of the (posthumous) recipients of this year’s Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

A White House ceremony today will honor Edward Roybal’s accomplishments as a groundbreaking Mexican-American public servant from East Los Angeles who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 30 years. When he retired in 1993, his daughter Lucille Roybal-Allard (Lillian’s sister) began her own work as a public servant in Congress where she is still serving, as U.S. Representative for California's 40th Congressional District.