Students in Karen Melvin’s kindergarten class cracked open brown and white eggs on Monday. Much to the surprise of some, the contents of the eggs were all the same color.
It was a messy lesson in racial equality, one that stressed everyone — regardless of race — is identical on the inside, and should be treated equally.
Melvin, a teacher at Littlewood Elementary School, wanted to teach her kindergarten class an important lesson. So she brought 18 eggs to class, one for each of her students.
Six kindergarten classes at the school conducted similar “eggsperiments” to determine if an egg would look different on the inside based on the color of its shell. The experiment was meant to celebrate Black History Month, Melvin said, and aimed to teach the students how, just like the eggs, people were all the same on the inside.
“We have been talking about remarkable African-Americans throughout the month, but this experiment ties together my teaching that we are all the same,” Melvin said.
It was Melvin’s first time bringing the experiment to Littlewood.
Some of the students thought the color on the inside would match the color on the outside of the egg.
Nasim Abouhamze, 5, got excited to see what was inside of his brown egg and smashed it before the rest of his classmates.
He said he knew the inside of his egg would look like all the others.
“I wanted them to see my egg was just like theirs,” he said.
Melvin said with all her students coming from different backgrounds, she wanted to build a sense of community with the experiment.
“I think these children all have so much potential,” Melvin said. “If we can teach them at a young age to make a positive impact — big or small — we can really make the world a better place.”
Karen Melvin, a kindergarten teacher at Littlewood Elementary School, reads “Whoever You Are” by Mem Fox to her kindergarten class.
