Meet our Fellows

Managerrie Winston, The KIT Project

Houston, Texas

Offering Social Emotional Learning To Reach All Students

Teacher Managerrie Winston, founder of the KIT Project, noticed a lack of diversity and cultural relevance in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum offered to students. After adapting SEL techniques to meet the needs of struggling Black and brown students in her classroom, Winston created The KIT (Keep it Together) Project which offers SEL curriculum centered on Black and brown experiences. Her ‘BeYourSELf’ Program offers culturally relevant yoga, meditation, and mindfulness events for teens. 

The vision of the KIT Project is to ensure that underprivileged youth develop social emotional wellness while providing communities and schools with a diverse curriculum centered on Black and Brown experiences and resources. 

About Mangerrie Winston

Church and family were a big part of Winston’s life growing up. “I grew up with a close-knit family, knowing what love is, and big on family and connections and sharing space with people. I’ve kind of taken that into how I do things today, building meaningful connections and sharing space with people.” Winston was very involved in church as a teen, even teaching Sunday school. “Throughout life, I've always found myself of centered around God’s work in some way.”

Winston completed her bachelor’s degree at Texas Southern University and began working in the financial industry, working for Wells Fargo and then Chase. After two years with Chase, she returned to grad school and completed an MBA at Texas Women’s University in 2013.

The economic climate at that time was challenging and Winston struggled to find a job in the financial sector after completing her MBA. After a friend suggested teaching, Winston reconsidered her options. “I taught Sunday school and I loved working with kids, but I never saw myself as a teacher.” In 2015, she accepted her first teaching position as a journalism teacher and has continued to teach since that time, teaching journalism, yearbook, newspaper photojournalism, and some business courses. Currently a teacher at Blanson Career Technology Education High School in Houston, Winston also volunteers her time to coach soccer. 

Teaching offered Winston a window into the struggles of teen life. “I've been thankful for the impact that teaching has given me, but it's also opened my eyes to the daily social justice issues students are faced with.”

A direct experience with racism in Houston amplified Winston’s need to speak up. While driving in Houston, she was pulled over for making an illegal turn. Mistaken for a Katrina refugee from New Orleans, Winston was questioned and harassed. “He ended up just giving me a ticket. But that experience definitely changed me.”

“This was before Trayvon Martin, before George Floyd, before all those things. It was my first official run in with how other people see me as an African American. I know that I’m a good kid, I have these degrees, but people still see a certain image of me. That just changed the narrative for me. And from that day, I’ve just always worked to, not only help people out, but to do things for people in Black and brown spaces. How can we create space in a desert where we can flourish?”

Winston worked with a friend on a non-profit, learning the ins and outs of the non-profit world and began considered the work that she could do to make a difference. 

“I started doing therapy for myself and found myself getting into things that my parents didn’t do –like meditation and mindfulness. Those things were never introduced to me, especially within the Black culture. I definitely don't think that we tend to express ourselves in that way. That was never presented to us. It was always ‘Hold it in tight. Don't express these things. Just keep moving. Keep it together’, which is the name of my organization. Those are the things my mother literally told me. I saw that was not necessarily helpful and I needed other ends. Social Emotional learning was moving into the (school) districts and it was great. But I was working in a Title 1 school and those kids were not connecting to that at all. It was very whitewashed.”

Winston realized that the SEL content needed to be shaped differently for Black and brown students. “Our experiences are different. We were going through George Floyd. We were going through Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Breonna Taylor. You had all of these things that were happening.”  Winston’s Black and brown students were coping with drug-ridden environments, foster care, the loss of siblings and family to violence, and more.

When a student shared that he was thinking about suicide after his mother died from COVID and his father had been taken by ICE, Winston knew she had to do something. “He was 17, literally at home in an apartment by himself, trying to pay the bills.” Winston offered him tools to cope with the stress and a safe space in her classroom.  When she suggested meditation as a coping tool, the young man hesitated.  “I I would love to do meditation.” he said. “But for me, being a brown man, I would be looked at as weak to do that.” 

That’s when Winston knew that she had to change the narrative. “It could be meditation. It could be therapy. We needed to find some way to make this work. We had this narrative that we got to be strong – we’re always told that we’ve just got to keep going. But it’s okay to find help for yourself. These things happen to us in life. They happen to all of us. We need to find some ways to deal with it.”

Winston and the young man sat on the floor of her classroom and tried a meditation video. “We meditated. He started this meditation thing and from there, I saw how he literally changed. In his moments of being stressed, it was something he went to. I gave him a tool and taught him it was okay to do something different.” Winston ended up ordering a singing bowl for the student to use in his practice. Today, the student is succeeding, and continues to use the tools from the KIT project as positive coping strategies.

Winston began to rewrite the SEL curriculum, using Black and brown experiences. “We talk about the five concepts of SEL – self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness and relationship skills, but we add in things about dealing with racism and spirituality.” The KIT project also offers real life examples and images relevant to the lives of Black and Brown students coping with violence, discrimination, loss and other difficulties. 

Winston found, to her surprise, that Black males connected with the material and participated well in the groups.  “I expected the girls to be involved, but I was surprised how many young men really got into it.” In groups with students, Winston has found herself talking with young men about loss and grief. Some students have lost siblings to gun violence. Others have lost parents to COVID or incarceration. One morning, pressed for time, she was ready to skip the ‘sharing’ time, which she calls ‘the Weather Report’, and one young man spoke up, needing to share that his life was was stormy at the moment, due the death of his brother from gun violence. 

“It’s about creating space for people to feel comfortable to have these conversations. It’s okay to have moments of crying. Because otherwise, as humans, we just hold all of that stuff in. You’d be surprised how much kids are willing to share in a safe space.”

About the KIT Project

In November of 2021, Winston held her first event, a professional development event for youth leaders, teaching them the basics of SEL and tips to make it culturally relevant for Black and brown students. 

Winston is piloting The KIT Project in First Christian Houston, a Disciples of Christ church school, in Houston TX. She also participated in a social entrepreneur cohort through NBA Cares, the National Benevolent Association of the Disciples of Christ Church.

After learning about Winston’s project, The Board of Local Trustees for the National City Christian Church in Washington, DC, a Disciples of Christ church, offered to match the Invested Faith grant with an additional $5000 in funding for the KIT project. 

With the additional funds, Winston’s program is rapidly expanding. She has a new KIT group scheduled for early April and has been able to double her capacity from 15 students to 30 with the purchase of additional yoga mats and other much needed materials. 

 A local juvenile detention center for girls purchased 10 tickets to the event. The juvenile detention center plans to develop a partnership with Winston to lead the full KIT program at the center. Other programs are planned with local community centers and gyms.

A major focus of the KIT Project is updating and diversifying the images used in standard SEL curriculum. Winston plans to create posters and affirmation cards that represent Black and brown children.

The KIT project offers students the tools they need to deal with the myriad stressors in their lives. Winston still believes in keeping it together. “Keep it together – that’s what we’re taught as Black and brown people faced with racism. The KIT projects offers kids the tools they need to make sense of these experiences – the pain, the hurt, the loss – and to find the love and the hope to go on.” 

KIT Project curriculum is available for purchase at https://www.thekitproject.org/the-kit.

Profile by Anita Flowers