One teacher wants to spread diversity by purchasing crayons representing all skin tones for Lee County students

Vanessa Vance is a Special Education teacher at Ida Baker High School and she knows the impact visual learning can have on students.

“Being able to put the accurate coloring on those different projects is going to be fantastic,” Vance said.

Providing accurate colors for all the skin tones of her students is now within reach.

“Giving them the option of taking a look at it and saying OK well are we here, are we this color? Or are we closer to this color? And having them be able to represent themselves it’s going to be fantastic,” said Vance.

Connie Bennett-Martin is working on getting these representative crayons in the hands of every Lee County elementary school student and in special education classes.

“We’re not all brown or peach, or tan or peach, there’s a lot of colors in between,” said Bennett-Martin.

Intervention Specialist Jackie Johnson says that this small step could go a long way.

“I think that if they can see how beautiful all the different colors are at a younger age, that hopefully it will go into adulthood and they’ll be able to you know just see people for who they are,” Johnson said.

Bennett-Martin says now there’s a color to represent everyone, and the kids won’t have to struggle to find the right one anymore.

“The girls sometimes have, have had a hard time you know coloring and shading and trying to get colors to Represent them. And, so I’m hoping to make that easier for them to do in school, and one less struggle for teachers,” she said.

No matter your skin color, there’s now a crayon for you.

“It doesn’t matter what your color is, we’re all human,” Vance said.

Connie Bennett Martin has created a GoFundMe campaign called ‘Multicultural Crayons for Kids, Lee County, FL.’