SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. — Many children will tell you "fitting in" is one of the most daunting tasks they endure when walking into school on any given day.
The situation is made even more difficult when a student doesn't look like most of their classmates. The Snohomish School District is looking this dilemma straight in the face and helping students feel more comfortable in their own skin.
On a recent day at the district's Seattle Hill Elementary School, the assignment was to draw a self-portrait.
It's a task that gave 5-year-old Marques Quinn pause.
Earlier this school year when he looked at the faces around his classroom the soft-spoken, brown-skinned boy told his teacher he felt "different."
"It made me feel sad," he said.
In an effort to make classrooms more inclusive, every kindergartener and first grader in Snohomish schools is now learning about the skin they're in.
A program called "Color Me Important" is bringing books, markers, crayons, construction paper and even Band-Aids with a wide array of skin tones to classrooms.
The goal is to better match the wide array of kids in the classroom.
Designed by Marnie Gray, a paraeducator in Lake Stevens schools, the new curriculum mirrors our changing times.
They are far different times than when Seattle Hill teacher Michelle Turner was growing up.
"When I was in school," she told her class, holding up three crayons, "you had to color your skin black or apricot or brown and that was it!"
Research from Drexel University found learning inclusion increases students' levels of empathy, open-mindedness, understanding and confidence.
"If kids don't feel like they fit in, that they're segregated from their peers in some way, that makes it very challenging for them to move forward in friendships, in relationships and in any of the work we do in the classroom," says Turner. "Once you get them so they have a feeling of belonging, it opens up worlds for them."
Turner's students painstakingly pored over the dozens of donated colored pencils on their desks, and looked for just the right hue to match their complexions.
The lesson seems to be sinking in, running beyond skin deep.
"It doesn't matter if you're different because that's what makes us special," says student Roy Peery, unsolicited.
There is further proof.
One of just three students of color in a class of 19, it turns out Marques wasn't so much worried about his skin color at the beginning of the year as he was something else.
"I was the only one wearing glasses," says the bespectacled boy.
The fact that he was concerned about his glasses, and not his skin color, is an encouraging sign, says Turner.
"That Marques doesn't feel that he's different in any way, in terms of a sense of belonging, is really important."
The program is funded through contributions from the local Lions Club and community donors.
The children are drawing portraits of inclusiveness for a subject matter that is anything but black and white -- but shades of grey, brown and even apricot.