@@ Why DEI in K-12 is good

[formerlyak]

It’s 4:45 am here so my title is far from creative. Post Covid closures and when all the anti-CRT crazies started being very loud, our district set up DEI committees at each school site. They are made up of parents who are nominated and voted in by the community. There is also a district-wide committee.

Last night, because of the work of this committee and some other very committed parents, our elementary school held its first multi-cultural night. Kids and their families could share about their culture through food, art, dance, music. Basically anything. 72 countries across all 7 continents were represented. Lots of food and art. About half the families were wearing traditional clothing from their culture. Kids got on stage and sang, danced, read poetry in their family’s native language. There were about 500-600 members of our school community there. Hands down the coolest event I’ve been to at our elementary school and I’ve had a kid at that school since 2012 when my oldest started there.

Even a few parents who are pretty vocally opposed to DEI initiatives were there and seemed to be having a good time. I am hoping they saw why this committee is needed.

Not that this board needs to understand why DEI is needed at schools, but I was so amazed at how impactful the work of our committee was last night.

[bee20]

Sounds like it was a success! My school used to run something similar in the 90s but I wonder if it's still going, I don't have children.

You mentioned parents nominated and voted in by the community, was that the PTA community? Or some other group? I know in the professional group outreach I do there is a lot of concern with catching all parents for these types of opportunities. What were some ways you were able to engage so many parents?

[erbear]

That's cool! 

Why DEI is good in k-12 schools -- recently, I watched my 11 year old daughter school my 39 year old BIL on Tamir Rice. A snippet of the conversation:

DD - He was a kid playing in a park.
BIL - with a fake gun. Maybe the police would have shot a white child with a realistic looking fake gun.
DD - except no one would have called the police in the first place if he was white.

So...yeah...pretty important work.

[estrellita]

I just cannot for the life of me understand why it's so terrible to teach kids about people different from them, or actually include those who are never or rarely represented. I'm constantly trying to teach my kids that everyone's family looks different, people's bodies look different, etc. I do struggle sometimes explaining inequities in a way they would understand, but I try. I honestly don't know what they do at our school (we're in a very conservative small town) so I try to do it at home as much as possible. Anyway, I wish we had something like this! I'll need to keep an eye out for any cultural events in our area that may be similar.

[redheadbaker]

Meanwhile, in PA ...

www.inquirer.com/education/lower-merion-school-district-parents-defending-education-affinity-groups-20230202.html

A national group that opposes equity initiatives in schools says it has filed a federal complaint against the Lower Merion School District, alleging its racial affinity groups for students and cultural competency lessons amount to racial discrimination.

Parents Defending Education, which bills itself as “fighting indoctrination in the classroom,” says it filed the complaint Tuesday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, with claims that the Montgomery County district violated provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 14th Amendment. A spokesperson for the department said Wednesday it does not typically acknowledge complaints until they have been evaluated and accepted for investigation.

[formerlyak]

bee20, for the school site DEI committees the entire parent body for each school received a form where they could nominate a parent at the school for the committee. Then all parents in the school received a second form to vote. Membership in PTA was not required for either.

For the district-wide committee, the nomination process was similar, but included all district parents. The committee is comprised of a representative from each school site, four students from the high school who were nominated and voted in by their peers, and community members like district leadership, local mental health professionals, a rep from our local police department (our schools have a very long and positive history of working with the PD) and other city leaders.

[formerlyak]

redheadbaker, that's insanity to me. At our schools, most of the clubs are student created and led. There are several racial affinity groups and things like gay-straight alliance. A few vocal crazy parents have asked why there isn't a "white people group", but others in the community have shut them down really fast. If a group of students wants to create a group to create awareness and community, and they can get a faculty member to sponsor them, it's a club. It's all student led.

We also have several DEI and social justice courses at the middle and high schools. DS is in multicultural literature this year and loves it. There is also a US History and Social Justice course that many juniors take if they don't take AP.

[wanderingback]

formerlyak
This is great!

And totally not the point but you said all 7 continents were represented so I have to ask who represented Antarctica and what did they share?!

[akayf]

People don’t understand that DEI isn’t the boogy man. A huge part of it is just learning empathy.

I teach preschool in a district that provides free public preschool to all 3 and 4 year olds. My school is a dedicated preschool building with around 450 students. We just sent home a project that falls under the DEI umbrella. We are creating a words matter school wide display. Each child was given a sentence strip. We asked the families to choose a powerful word that inspires them (like brave, strong, kind, special…yes we provided them with multiple examples), write it on the sentence strip and decorate it. This is not a mandatory project but each class typically gets a good number of families participating in our home school connection projects.

This is such an inspiring project and I can’t wait to see the end results. I know our families will enjoy this. But in other places, a project like this would be immediately vilified just because it’s considered DEI.

[erbear]

Feb 3, 2023 14:12:22 GMT -5 formerlyak said:

redheadbaker, that's insanity to me. At our schools, most of the clubs are student created and led. There are several racial affinity groups and things like gay-straight alliance. A few vocal crazy parents have asked why there isn't a "white people group", but others in the community have shut them down really fast. If a group of students wants to create a group to create awareness and community, and they can get a faculty member to sponsor them, it's a club. It's all student led.

We also have several DEI and social justice courses at the middle and high schools. DS is in multicultural literature this year and loves it. There is also a US History and Social Justice course that many juniors take if they don't take AP.

There are white affinity groups at my school (kids can’t opt out of affinity groups, and they meet once a week). However, we are so clear that the purpose of the white groups (and the male groups on the other affinity group day) is different than those of marginalized groups — we have a lot of work to do. It’s not about bonding over our whiteness. It’s an anti-racist group and it is critical work.

[formerlyak]

Feb 4, 2023 5:25:32 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

formerlyak
This is great!

And totally not the point but you said all 7 continents were represented so I have to ask who represented Antarctica and what did they share?!

The students were told they could choose a country that represented their own culture or choose a country to learn about and create a presentation. A kid really wanted to be sure Antarctica was represented so he chose that. It was about the research done there.

ETA: Almost all the kids chose their own culture. But there were a few countries with a lot of representation so a handful of kids chose to learn about a new country.

Also majority of the presentations were food or dance. The food part was cool because, for example, I’ve never been to an Afghani restaurant. But there was a family from Afghanistan who did a presentation and we got to taste these really good sesame cookies. Or my colleague has a daughter at our school. They are immigrants from Romania. I would have no idea what traditional Romanian food was. Apparently garlic is used a lot like with some of my family’s Italian recipes. I never knew that. It was fun to have some grandparents there sharing the history as well.

I was just at a different event for our school district that my org funded (e-bike safety event) and apparently all the elementary schools have a night like this planned this year.

[Michelle]

Feb 4, 2023 15:17:00 GMT -5 formerlyak said:

Feb 4, 2023 5:25:32 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

formerlyak
This is great!

And totally not the point but you said all 7 continents were represented so I have to ask who represented Antarctica and what did they share?!

The students were told they could choose a country that represented their own culture or choose a country to learn about and create a presentation. A kid really wanted to be sure Antarctica was represented so he chose that. It was about the research done there.

I giggled when wanderingback asked that.

All I could picture was a pic of my brother when he was there, standing outside some redneck-rigged contraption he built for staying warm. 

[eport]

The students were told they could choose a country that represented their own culture or choose a country to learn about and create a presentation. A kid really wanted to be sure Antarctica was represented so he chose that. It was about the research done there.

ETA: Almost all the kids chose their own culture. But there were a few countries with a lot of representation so a handful of kids chose to learn about a new country.

I remember in my middle school we had such a project and the teacher gave the option of country of origin or a country of choice. She told a story of her son, who was adopted, and when given an assignment like this, chose Italy as that is where she and her husband claim root to and the teacher looked at him and rejected it saying you don't look Italian, find out where you really come from. They didn't know as it was a closed adoption. She had to go raise hell and teacher claimed, oh didn't know (not her business).

We then got a short lecture on how nor everyone can know their family's countries of origin (slavery can point to Africa but not a specific teibe) or that they were hidden on purpose (ie children raised to believe they were Christian to hide Jewish roots). It really stuck with me and I appreciate it more now.