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By: Ashley Winterstein

The Queen Anne’s County Character Counts! Program recently offered a third session of the Color of My Skin Presentation at the Queen Anne’s County Free Library on Kent Island on June 22, 2010.

Jacki Carter, Character Counts! Coordinator, opened the presentation with a short introduction about the Six Pillars of Character – Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship.

She asked for a show of hands of children who had a Character Coach in school. Five of the seven attending children, all students of Queen Anne’s County Public Schools, had Character Coaches in the past. The two remaining students were home schooled and therefore had not had Character Coaches, but caught on very quickly to the core principles of Character Counts!

Carter then explained to the children how people often use labels to describe the color of a person’s skin even though no person is truly black or white. Everyone is actually a shade in between.

Using the globe to demonstrate, Carter explained to the children how the melanin in our bodies makes us the color that we are and this is actually determined by where our ancestors lived. Ancestors who lived close to the equator needed darker skin because the sun was very bright and present in the sky for many hours a day. Those ancestors who lived farther from the equator needed lighter skin to absorb all the nutrients it could from the sun for the few hours it would shine in a day. Everyone’s skin color is a reflection of their family history.

Character Counts! Advisory Council Member and retired teacher, Mary Ruth Meredith, shared the book “Sister Anne’s Hands” with the children. The heartwarming story is about a young girl who comes to accept and appreciate a teacher who at first seemed so different from herself. Chris Grupenhoff, also a member of the Character Counts! Advisory Council, offered each student the opportunity to trace and cut out their hands on different shades of paper that resembled their skin shade.

During the activities, Carter took each child aside to use flesh colored paints to determine which shade most matched the back of their hand. Some children were one paint color, while others a mixture of two or three. The children seemed intrigued by the names of the color options (beige, peach, tan, bronze, olive, mahogany, and terracotta) and excited to discover their shade.

Julie Ranelli, Children’s Librarian at the Kent Island Branch of the Queen Anne’s County Free Library, read the book “The Colors of Us” to the students to further reinforce the fact that although each person’s skin is a different shade, everyone has the same basic structure. She also showed the children how their hand cut outs could be joined together to form a heart. This was to remind them to care for one another regardless of the shade of their skin and most importantly respect others at all times, two core values of Character Counts!

For more information about the Character Counts! program, please contact Jacki Carter at 410-758-6677 or jcarter@qac.org.  Queen Anne’s County Character Counts! is a part of QAC Community Partnerships for Children and Families, our local management board.