If you asked me five years ago, I would be been as happy as a pig in the sunshine to participate. Fast-forward five years, to today, my answer is NO. Here’s why:
1. Too much unexamined racism – both personal and institutional
2. Too much token diversity programming versus making changes to teaching and learning. But, that would require doing Number One.
3. The psychosis of race is too deep to expect the leadership to have a Come to Jesus moment and wipe the slate clean.
I’ve struggled for years and years, without any support or recognition, to bring my school to a new phase in their diversity journey, and to what end?
Too many independent schools are stuck in a diversity time warp 20 years out-of-date. School leaders still think that affinity groups, multicultural assessments, and diversity committees will solve their diversity problems when in reality what is needed is:
1. An examination and eradication of White Privilege; and
2. Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, which focuses on good teaching and quality relationships between students and teachers.
So, there it is. Instead of becoming angry, frustrated, and emotionally drained, I will focus my time and energy on my family, friends, self and classroom.
well I salute this…..
Thank you, Sarah. Thought it was time to respond to the madness that exists in many independent schools.
I know this is slightly off topic but a friend of mine reported that she gets to be the “token” in her worksetting-a school- but also gets the prized role as being hinted at as less qualified depending on which end of the stick I guess gets pulled at that moment. We met long ago in South Central. She is now older and says that she’s tired of talking about her hair. Gosh I need to write to her. For some reason having read you a long time and admiring you greatly I just think that maybe I like the pearl story from the good book. Or the idea that you have some important things to do with you time….I told my friend awhile ago that I’d …well nevermind. I wasn’t too happy with how few people cared if she was happy. Ah…work.
Hi, Sarah,
I always appreciate your thoughtful and insightful comments to my posts, and appreciate you reading this most recent post.
A friend, former grad school prof, and diversity worker once told me, “You do the work because you want to.” I think that (White) leaders in independent schools think that people of color do the work by default out of obligation. That was once true in my case. But, now, I know better. There are so many barriers in order to do the work effectively, it becomes a misguided obligation for me as a person of color, and an act of commission. And you are correct: I do have better things to do with my time.
oops I meant “your time” my editing!
5, and I stopped at 5, white staff members I spoke to yesterday did not “know” what or why I was upset over the Voting Rights Act. Take that in for a second.
The breadth of how it is now.
I’ll continue my work with students but ….stuff like this scares me frankly.
No one, none, took on Black History Month except for a teacher that read -as she stated- “a book about Martin” – most claiming “no time”-next year I will have to (in January) make a box of resources available in a kind of here is $300 of stuff I bought and left for you way-I’ve decided that this is what I must do, put out something irresistible.
Sometimes I wonder deeply about this world.
Sarah, sometimes I think teachers/educators are amongst the stupidest and most ignorant people in the universe – you and me excluded.