skin colours....

My little boat of skin-coloured markers, pencil crayons and wax crayons,
all by Crayola.

Last spring, I overheard a conversation in my classroom in which a white child asked a black child to pass him the “skin-coloured” marker. The black child was baffled. The white child picked up a pinky-beige-toned marker and said (not unkindly): “This one.”

The black child replied (sincerely): “Oh, I didn’t know what you meant by ‘skin colour.’”

I wish we lived in a world there was no such description; but then again, why would I wish the rainbow away? Maybe we just need some new definitions. Maybe we need to include and honour the whole visible spectrum of humanity.

I now make a variety of markers and pencil crayons and crayons available to my students under the heading of “skin colour.”




You can purchase Crayola's skin-toned markers from Amazon.com. Pencil crayons and wax crayons are also available there.

Alternatively, people-coloured crayons and pencil crayons can be bought at Wintergreen.ca in Canada , or LakeshoreLearning.com in the United States. These pencil crayons are beautiful and come with lovely names like "toast" and "gingerbread" and "almond" and "wheat." But they are also "jumbo" sized, which means they may not fit into standard electric pencil sharpeners.