Those beautiful faces

It's a terrible tragedy with all the elements of homophobia, wreckless invasion of privacy, technological toys, and leftover high school prank. All Freshman, with their feet barely set down on the college campus, and now one is dead and two have been charged with a hate crime. Why is it that what caught my eye and haunts me are the three photos splashed across the front page?

They are the face of diversity. This could have been an example of successful efforts to have a diverse student body on campus. This could have been an article on the changing face of a generation. It could have been a hopeful moment. In my mind I can't help but think that I would not have reacted the same way to a tragedy like this involving young people, though still disturbing and regrettable, if it had been what we have become accustomed to: a white boy shooting at classmates in a high school cafeteria or white fraternity brothers rampaging through campus after a late-night party or white, blond, rich girls reporting date rape. 

I recently listened to a presentation by Dr. Elizabeth Englander on bullying. She was speaking to law enforcement officers in Massachusetts where public schools are now required to have a curriculum on bullying. She said that the difference between bullying in person and cyberbullying is that 25% of cyberbullies are also victims. If placing a camera to capture a private act and sharing it over the internet is cyberbullying, then could it be that these two bullies have also been victims? It's not an excuse to release them from responsibility. 

It is a compelling question in a world where the historic victim of racial microaggressions may now have a tool with which to retaliate. In our effort to protect the victim and stop the bully we may have overlooked the fact that with technology in hand and the invisibilty of cyber-acts we have now armed both the bully and the victim with  a lethal weapon. Is this what we intended?

Finally, this happened at Rutgers, the college I watched because they rose to women's basketball fame under the guidance of an amazing coach. It's also the college where the basketball team stood up to racial slurs uttered one morning on a radio show. It's a reminder that embracing diversity may be beautiful, but it isn't easy.

Invisible Disabilities

Recently, someone talked to me about invisible disabilities. He shared a video made by a friend of his who has no sense of smell. It was fascinating to hear her and her friends talk about how they help her to know the smell of her shampoo and her soap. How she navigates the complicated world of socially accepted pleasant or desirable smells and unpleasant smells.

I thought about people I know who have told me they have learning disabilities, dyslexia, or color blindness. Their conversation reflects a sense of confidence that the disability is not a problem to them and it is apparent they are leading happy and fulfilled lives. What they don't often reveal is how different their world view is from mine, a person without that specific disability. People with invisible disabilities seem less likely to talk about the accommodations they need and adjustments they make to live in a world that assumes certain abilities.

Oliver Sacks has an article in the August 30th edition of The New Yorker about a condition called prosopagnosia or face blindness. He talks about the challenges of recognizing people when he cannot use facial qualities to help with recognition. A recent segment on NPR told of a man who was diagnosed with phonagnosia or voice blindness. He couldn't recognize people's voices and relates the challenges of answering the phone.

In all these instances the invisibility of the disability is a reminder that many people have learned to live in a world normed to people able to do things that they cannot do or can only experience with accommodation or help. Being and having allies is one of the tools we teach in diversity work to support and connect potentially marginalized groups and individuals to mainstream life. Having allies reduces vulnerability and ensures dignity. People with invisible disabilities depend on allies to experience aspects of the world they cannot discern, cues they cannot read.

Invisible disabilities. It gets you  thinking. How would you describe the smell of rain or the smell of garbage to a person without a sense of smell? How would you help a person to recognize you without looking at your face? To recognize you without hearing your distinct voice?

The 47th anniversary

August 28, 2010, the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his remarkable, memorable and still relevant "I have a dream" speech. Bob Herbert, NY Times columnist, whose column, A Hero Named Bobby, appeared in last week's paper and contains the best example of a thoughtful and enduring response to a question that could have been about race, has this wonderful column, America is Better Than This, in today's paper.

On this anniversary, it is worth it to re-read the speech and think about the progress we've made in response to Dr. King's urgent call for action and unity. It is still urgent and the solutions continue to perplex and elude us as a country. On this anniversary, it is worth it to re-read the speech and be reassured that intelligence, thoughtfulness, sincerity and honest conviction can lead the way to effective solutions. The speech is still filled with hope, expectation and promise.

In education, this is the day for which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. should be celebrated and what better way to start a new school year?

Horray for Kindergarten Teachers

I'm sure there's a connection somewhere between this report on kindergarten teachers and diversity. The difference may be in the degree to which great kindergarten teachers recognize the sheer enthusiasm and curiosity embodied in kindergartners and embrace and nurture it. It could be that great kindergarten teachers recognize the dispositions kindergartners possess that affect, and perhaps determine, their behaviors as learners. Maybe it's just that kindergartners, when given the opportunity to play and build and explore and experiment, all things that great kindergarten teachers do, they thrive. Kindergartners are at once excited, brave, and bold experimenters, but also uncertain, cautious, and emotional social beings. They laugh, they cry, and they celebrate every small success. Great teachers laugh, cry and celebrate with them. Maybe that's the difference. $320,000 for a kindergarten teacher - a small price tag for a world of productive, educated adults.

Funerals

How many memorial services is too many? At some point they start to add up and then they are a part of your life pattern. Unlike celebrations where you usually wait to be invited, attending memorials is generally your decision. Yesterday, I attended a service for a professional colleague thinking that our professional connection was the primary reason to go. I had a personal feeling about it, too, knowing that she and I had, for many years been the only two Asian women in a large, predominantly white female professional group. I doubt it had meaning to anyone but me, probably not even to her, since we rarely met and hardly knew each other. It turned out that I only met one person I knew and suddenly felt more like a witness than a participant.

More than 300 people gathered to share stories about a woman I hardly knew. They described how she had dedicated her life's work to one nursery school. One person at a time, the depth of the community revealed itself: an African American mother who travelled from the Bronx in the '90's to bring her boys to a school that welcomed them and made them feel part of a community; teachers who had worked at the school more than 20 years ago, but remembered how this colleague reached out to them; a salesman who said that he made a cold call to this school twenty years ago and because of the director's warm response he entered into a business relationship that has, over time, turned into a friendship; a father who said that the director had always sent him on his way reassuring him that his son would be fine and now, he felt that the community had gathered to send the director on her way; a younger sister who told family stories about how she, her older sister and her younger brother were the three youngest of 10 children.

The moment that sticks in my mind, however, is when a boy walked up to the lectern and asked that all the alumni come forward to light candles in memory of their school's director. From every corner of the room young people walked toward the candles. Most of them were black or hispanic males, some were white and a few were Asian. I had recently heard at a meeting a comment that the independent schools are wondering where all the black boys in New York City are; they are the one group that is underrepresented in most schools. But here they were, the majority of this group.

Then a young black man stopped at the microphone on his way back to his seat and spoke. He said that he had attended the school in the '80's and had recently been asked by a friend how he had made it through life and avoided becoming a statistic. He commented that all the forces were in place for that to happen, but something had saved him from falling through the cracks. He set out on a detective's search for the answer and ended up at "the scene of the crime," his nursery school. So, recently he had gone there to be reminded of the love and care that had set him on a path to adulthood. With tears in his eyes he said, "The one thing I just forgot to do that day when I saw the director was to say thank you."

The Help

The Help is a first novel for Kathryn Stockett, a writer who was born and raised in the South and who now lives with her husband and daughter in Atlanta. In this novel, inspired by her childhood memories of the family maid, Demetrie, Stockett explores life in the early 1960's in Mississippi from the viewpoints of several young white women and several black maids. Altogether their voices tell a rich and troubling story of privilege, discrimination, segregation, and rigid cultural norms. One white woman dares to challenge those norms and discovers the disparities between her life and those of her peers and the strength and power of the written word to reveal, acknowledge and share truths.

The story explores how people gain and control power using communication, emotional connection, and vantage point as tools. There is sadness in the pressure to conform in the the white women's experience; there is despair in the code of silence of the black women that driven by fear. There is hope in the many acts motivated by humanity.

The context of this story has changed, but the human condition has not. The story gives us a chance to consider the human condition one more time in the safety of the past.

Summer Diversity Institute

I didn't know what to expect going in. Six days that started with breakfast at 7am and ended with home group at 8:15pm. It was all listening and talking, thinking and, thankfully, time for walking. A lovely 12,000 steps per day, on average. Oh yes, and meals with more talking and making friends. A real test of skills we hope to have learned in kindergarten.

Coming out of the institute it was difficult to know what I had learned, but the best test was spending a beautiful day with a good friend. Our first stop turned into more than 2 hours at a local Starbucks, sipping and talking. Our next stop was a 2 hour lunch at Pain Quotidian.  The evidence that I had actually processed some of my side of the diversity conversation was a story she told me, the best of the whole week. It went like this (I hope I do it justice in the retelling):

When our daughter, adopted in infancy from Korea, was young I would tell her how she came to our family. One summer, when she was about 8 years old, we were rushing around preparing to go on a family vacation. I made her my laundry helper to fold and sort all the clothes for her and her brother and sister to go on the trip. We folded one item at a time and stacked them in piles. In this moment of hurried activity and the pressure to get ready to leave, she asked me, "How did you get me when I was a baby?" 

I took a deep breath and gave her the full answer to this very important question about her adoption. "You see, when you were just a little baby in the orphanage they had two piles of folders. A big stack and a smaller stack. The smaller stack was folders for the babies. It was smaller because the folders were very thin since babies didn't have much to put in their folders because they were so little. The bigger stack was for the families that wanted babies. There was lots of information about the families in the folders so the folders were very think and made a bigger stack. 

One at a time they would take a folder from each stack and put them together. And finally, your folder was on top of the small stack and our family's folder was on the top of the big stack. Someone took your folder and our family's folder off the top of each stack, tied them together with a red ribbon and that's how you we became a family." She listened, paused and then said, "Yes, but what about those little plastic boxes that were all lined up in the hospital. How did they know which was the Jewish baby?" 

Is a gentle kiss of affection a micro-aggression?

Excited, happy, joyous high school graduates receiving their diplomas. They walk the few steps up to the stage and reach out with a left hand to receive the diploma. The diploma-giver, a male, shakes the right hand and then reaches that arm around them for an embrace as they both smile at the photographer who captures the moment for each graduate. The graduate walks down the row of school dignitaries waiting to congratulate them. The next male in line hugs some boys, shakes hands with others. He leans in to give each girl a kiss on the cheek. Is this a micro-aggression? A message that separates boys from girls at a moment when all is equal? They are all graduating.

Seeing, counting, being

I'm looking around the restaurant banquet tables imagining how this group came together, one year at a time. Seven teachers who connect us to the past, one person who connects us to the Riverdale campus and history, and the remainder, the teachers and staff who came on board during my administration. I realize that I don't actually know how they identify themselves, but here's my guess.

6 Latina
2 Latino
6 African American
4 Asian
18 Caucasian

This is what it takes to experience diversity. Fifty percent. There is rarely a time in our work groups that there is not someone of color sitting at the table. Can we imagine moving the entire faculty and staff, 300+,  toward this goal?

Micro-aggressions

Micro-aggressions. Sometimes you don't notice or feel them until you think about them. Sometimes they are disguised with a cheerful voice or smile. They hang in the air and the power is in the polluting effect as much as it is in the offense to the individual.

Most recently heard:

It's so nice that the students selected you; they didn't just choose the most popular student this year.

We want to talk to you about his aggressive behavior and clowning around (to an African American mom about her son). 

Meanderings

I keep thinking I will enter something new into this journal, but so many scraps of stuff come my way every day, every week that I am finding it hard to decipher what's really important about all these tidbits. Is it the teacher's attitude as s/he tells the story? Is it the reality of the conversation I'm hearing retold? Is it the horror I feel that there is real evidence surrounding me that we live in a hostile world and arming individuals to be strong in the face of adversity is the best we can do? Should all acts of niceness be suspect?

I continue to think about Geoffrey Canada as a role model for problem solving. In his search for the answer to why it is that some children surface out of poverty successfully and break the cycle of poverty within their families and some don't has led him to decisions that are likely to have long-lasting positive impact on the communities where his work takes place.

I keep listening for the key phrase, the single difference, the one story that will release a vision for positive change.

More on friends

I didn't mean to enter this story here under diversity, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it says something about the treatment of a group of employees who are a diverse mix of Caucasian, Caribbean, African American, and Hispanic. Or is it just how garage culture works? I saw Jesus today, so he and Charles are the only two remaining from the "old crew."

Entry from Zebra Shoes:

While Gregory's virtual friends are popping out of the TV screen and becoming real live pass-you-on-the-street friends, I have lost a whole group of neighborhood friends. For 13 years I have been greeted at the local garage by a group of nine men.

I know their names because they have them on their shirts, but more importantly every December I angst over whether to give tips to each individual named in the holiday card or whether to give one amount of money to go in a pool for all nine. I always feel that I can never give enough to tell them how much I appreciate their attention to my presence in the neighborhood. They bring out my car as they see me emerge from school at the end of the day; they tell me when my gas is low and when my registration and inspection are due. They wish me a good vacation and remark when I've worked too many late nights.

A few weeks ago all but one familiar face was gone, replaced by a crew of new faces. I thought the managers were on vacation. I figured the garage had brought in new people for training. Finally, I asked Charles where everyone was and he said, "Transferred." That's all he said as he went to get my car.

My friends are all gone and I don't even know their last names. They are my first-name friends and I miss them. I wonder if they miss each other or it they're all together somewhere. Why is it better business to break up a good work team and neighborhood relationships? The only friend I have left in the neighborhood is the UPS man, Brian. He calls me by name even when he sees me blocks away on the edge of his route.

The other day I told Charles I was leaving the neighborhood, too. He said, "Will they replace you?" "Yes, " I replied. "With someone as good?"  I looked around the garage and I know the comment wasn't about me.

Mixed race

Is a child of one race who is adopted by parents of another race a mixed race child? Does that child look out at the parents who embrace her and see herself in their apparent race? Is it different from the child who is perceived by others to be of mixed race?

I have always thought about these things, but now, I must think about them and these are questions that are making my brain tired every day.

Identity

Weeks ago I started talking to the head of our English department about an assembly he was helping a student to plan. She had come back from the Student Leadership Conference in December, the counter-part to the adult People of Color Conference, urgent to confront issues of inequity that became clear to her as a result of her participation in the conference. She had an urgent personal story to tell and had concluded that the inequities she observed in a community away from home, were actually very present in her home community as well. She wanted to take action.

Over several weeks I became more involved in the planning of the assembly. At the same time I was thinking about Beverly Tatum's idea that one of three crucial steps to take in a school that strives to be more inclusive is to focus some effort on affirming identity. I suggested that we center the assembly on identity formation. We decided to ask a group of students and adults to tell a personal story that they would consider a "defining moment" in their lives.

In thinking about diversity at Horace Mann, we decided that one place to start was to ask members of our community to reflect on their development of a sense of self. Specifically, we asked them:

• If identity is shaped by social context, what are the defining moments that have had a lasting impact on the formation of your identity?
•  Can you recall a moment in time, an experience or an interaction with another person that caused you to consider how others perceive you or how you perceive others?

(excerpt from opening remarks at assembly)

We had 12 stories in all - the experience of moving from a situation of being in the majority to being in the minority of a group (and vice versa), the experience of being made more aware of one's difference when someone else points it out to you, a raised awareness to your own personal lens that affects the way you see the world around you, observing the stark reality of inequities in your own culture and gaining as understanding of your "attachment" to both the perceived and real positive and negative aspects of your cultural identity. All compelling; all about 3 minutes long. 

We let the stories tell the cumulative story on stage, using a microphone and music stand to define the spot where each person stood to tell their story. The staging turned out to be one of the most important decisions we made - having everyone sitting on stage in an arc with the speaking spot about mid-point of the arc. The people we chose were also key - popular, well-known, well-liked teachers, easily recognized, but maybe not so well-known staff, students who had passionate messages and had given serious thought to the issues that confronted them.

I hadn't given much thought to anything that might surface about the stories that would distinguish adults from students. It was difficult to get the students to tell their own story rather than the societal one. They all had some element of the institutions and people surrounding their story as reason for the story's existence, but also the resolution of the issue. They were asked, as they revealed their ideas, to talk more about personal experience. What happened to you? The adult stories were fully formed, but had taken on the life of a story - the ability to continue to evolve with every telling. The student's stories were raw, still unfolding, and perhaps needing the structure of the external context to have legitimacy. They were becoming personal stories.

In one of my last conversations with the English teacher before the assembly we talked about listening as a skill and a tool. The first time I was made aware of a pedagogy of listening was during a lecture by an Italian professor who often speaks and writes about the schools in Reggio Emilia. Carlina Rinaldi said that the meaning of what a person has to say is only revealed in the listening. You, the listener, give my words, the speaker, meaning. Your response to my words informs how I communicate what I want to say.

The teacher commented that we are a school filled with great speakers. Maybe listening is the thing we need to work on.  This was the lead-in to our stories:

Today you will hear a series of personal stories. Each participant has chosen to share something of themselves to demonstrate how they have come to understand this process of identity formation. The act of sharing stories is the opportunity for self-reflection, but it is also the opportunity to reach out to make a connection with others. We hope you will listen actively and find a meaningful connection between what you hear today and your own experiences.

Yesterday, I attended the local diversity conference. The opening remarks included an exercise called, "Yes, and...." It was a tool for more constructive listening in building a meaningful dialogue. She described how young children know how to develop play. They become very skilled at adding to their play mates' ideas,  often working together to construct complex and exciting possibilities. "We can build a boat." "Yes, and then we are on the ocean." "Yes, and then a storm comes."

Adults, she said, are more inclined to use a "Yes, but...." response to challenge the speaker, perhaps only listening for the opening to tell what they think or to simply agree or disagree.  Listening. It may be the missing tool in our diversity initiative toolbox.

Furthering sterotypes

From Jere Longman, NY Times, February 26, 2010:
"What the audience of 11,771 at Pacific Coliseum had witnessed was an unprecedented combination of technical difficulty and willowy sophistication as Kim became the first South Korean skater to win an Olympic gold medal. She held up under enormous pressure to succeed as an athlete, a cultural icon and a vanquisher of competitors from Japan, which occupied the Korean peninsula for 35 years through the end of World War II." 


From Alan Abrahamson, www.nbcolympics.com, February 26, 2010:

"Her free-skate score, 150.06, obliterated the old world record -- hers -- by roughly 17 points. "It was almost a man's score," Kim said with a laugh.

Indeed, her final overall score, 228.56, was about 10 points better than what Jeremy Abbott, the two-time U.S. national champion, managed here -- and would have put her ninth in the men's Olympic competition.

The men are allowed to do one more jump in their free skates than the ladies -- which makes what Kim did all the more impressive." 


From Juliet Macur, NY Times, February 26, 2010:

"After months of playing it cool, saying the pressure to win the Olympic gold medal had not weighed on her, Kim Yu-na of South Korea finally let her emotion show on Thursday." 


"Vanquisher of competitors from Japan", "almost a man's score", "finally let her emotion show"? What's there to say?

Do They want diversity?

Note to self: some cultures and some households do not wear street shoes indoors. Make sure you wear clean and no-hole socks or stockings in case you have to take off your shoes. Luckily, I did.

Yesterday's dinner was in a home that did not wear shoes indoors. The last time I was at a school parent gathering where this was the case, it was a family choice, not a cultural practice. I remember how much conversation surrounded this request to remove ones shoes and also how disarming it seemed to the group. Women, usually raised up by heels, were suddenly eye to eye with other women; suddenly noticeably shorter than some men. Some people were uncomfortably undressed in their bare feet. Last night, in stocking feet, bare feet or slippers provided by the host, everyone seemed to take it in stride without a comment.

We settled in for the "presentation" part of the evening, a formal introduction of the school personnel in the room and expressions of appreciation to all who had helped with the evening. The respect for the process was palpable in the silence that embraced the speaker. Everyone sat with a view of the speakers and listened as each spoke in turn. It was such a familiar scene from my childhood when my parents would gather with friends brought together by a common group membership for an evening that often included some kind of formal discussion or presentation by members of the group.

During the question and answer portion, one parent asked the question, "Do They want the diversity we bring to the group? How do They feel about having us in the school?" It was a question raised by an Asian parent who described his Asian peers as a homogeneous group, but as a minority group that brings diversity to an institution that has purposely increased its racial and ethnic diversity in recent years. Now, with a student population identified as made up of 30% students of color (non-Caucasian), this parent raises a question that reveals his personal lens and reminds us that diversity may be a good thing if it gives you access, but not necessarily if it reduces Their access. There was a bit of uncertainty in his voice that may also have been asking, "Do we belong here?"

Homogeneity is an interesting thing. The face of a group may give it the appearance of homogeneity - same race, same color hair, same dress - but once you get inside the group the homogeneity loses a bit of its sheen and shows a texture that lives below the surface. Dig a little and small differences begin to distinguish individuals in the group. Dig deep enough and you discover the diversity within the group.

If we can get to that more permeable, more fluid texture below the surface, can we shift the conversation from Us and Them or Majority and Minority to something that better represents the complexity of the question at hand?

Affirming identity

I read Greg Mortenson 's children's version of Three Cups of Tea to a group of 4 year olds last week. It was their 100th read aloud book and the reading had evolved into a highly anticipated event. They were listening to every word.

The book first describes Mortenson as a mountain climber who goes to Pakistan to climb K2. He become ill and is nursed back to health by people in the village of Korphe who find him. They learn later that he is a nurse and refer to him as Dr. Greg. Grateful for their care, Dr. Greg makes a promise to help build schools for the children of Korphe. At one point, after hearing both references to the same man, a child asks, "Can you be two things at the same time, a mountain climber and a nurse?" I take a moment to think of the appropriate response, but another child says, "Yes. See my babysitter is a babysitter and an actress," and another child says, "I'm a kid and I'm an animal expert!" 

I had recently been told by a teacher in our high school that his concern is how students foster a sense that you belong or you don't based on the way they define themselves and their sense of group. This pressure to be more like the group or to risk exclusion pressures many students to feel they have to make hard choices about how they define themselves. The community can, in effect, shut down the possibility that a person can be identified by more than one "thing" by expecting a person to choose among the possibilities to better fit into the group or to work toward a more one-dimensional identity. Kenji Yoshino raises the same question in his book, Covering. As a student and a young man, he struggled with how to be a gay male and an Asian American male and a lawyer when each identifier was not always compatible in the daily life of the others. 

I just viewed Mai's America  on YouTube. It's the story of an exchange student's experience living in the American South (Mississippi and Louisiana) and searching for her identify as her environment pushes her to see herself from new perspectives. At every turn Mai is forced to think about her identity as she tries to build new relationships far from her home and family. It reveals the great human desire to fit in or belong and the hard work of identity development.

When a four year old says with confidence that someone she knows can be two things there is great hope. She, in her moment of human development, knows that one part of forming an identity is how you see yourself reflected back through other's eyes. She is doing that all the time as she listens, sees, and watches to understand what others are telling her about who she is. Her babysitter is lucky to have her as a babysittee.

Cross-professional thinking

Last week I watched Treeless Mountain , the story of two little girls in Korea. I started out thinking it was just a slow-moving movie about a mother and her children, but as practically every frame gave a glimpse into the hearts and minds of these two little girls I realized that it was a story about relationships, loss, attachment and nurturing care. It was a perfect example of Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory of "one adult who gives unconditional love" for every child.

In my search for movies about culture I seem to keep coming across movies about children. One of my favorites is Mongolian Ping Pong  about a gang of young boys who find a ping pong ball and spend the movie trying to figure out what it is and who it belongs to. Eve and the Firehorse is another wonderful movie starring two sisters.

I had imagined that I might have to give up my focus on early childhood to commit full-time to diversity iniitatives. This coming together of child development and understanding of culture is reassuring. I am reading Beverly Tatum's book, Can We Talk About Race?, and she describes "the ABC's of creating inclusive learning environments." A=affirming identity, B=building community, C=cultivating leadership. Sue Bredekamp & Carol Copple, in Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs, describe three areas of information teachers need to pursue developmentally appropriate practice. (1) knowledge of child development and learning, (2) knowing the strengths, interests and needs of each individual child in the group, (3) knowledge of the social and cultural contexts in which children live. I think I have come to a cross-road.

The language of diversity

Young children use language to formulate their understanding of the world around them. The schools of Reggio Emilia believe that children have many languages at their disposal and have used the concept of "100 Languages" to represent this much broader vision of self-expression. Oral language is, of course, a very powerful language and the degree to which we develop expressive and receptive language has implications for learning, depth of understanding and the formation of relationships with others.

In 2005 I met a family with two moms. They were the first couple to discuss with me the need for sharing the language of family within the community. They knew from experience, and perceived within this new community, a discomfort that adults expressed when they met them and their children. What do your children call each of you? How do you want other adults to refer to you when telling their children how to address you?

This conversation led to a group discussion and, five years later, we are continuing this conversation as we attempt to talk more openly about race, ethnicity and socioeconomic class. It is not unlike early language learners who need labels to represent things, people and places so that they can begin to formulate and express their understandings.

Last week a high school teacher told me that she needed help finding the language with which to respond to students' concerns about race and difference. She said that she had been in situations where students wanted to discuss difficult issues and she found herself limited in her ability to respond to foster and enrich the conversation. Sitting in an advanced geometry math class I had the same feeling. The vocabulary of the discussion had little meaning for me even though I could follow the thinking and guess at the definitions of the terms.

Jerome Bruner says that children use language to create culture. What is the language of diversity that will lead a community to develop a more inclusive, more sensitive and better informed culture to support authentic and caring relationships among its members?

Setting out

We set out on this journey on February 4, 2010.  That's the day Tom released his letter to the community and I released my letter to the parents telling them I had taken on a new responsibility for next year. It is so interesting how you can use your internal filtering systems to shift what you see, what you receive and what peaks your curiosity. I walk through the school in a new relationship and everywhere I go I am greeted with the most affirming and motivating responses to Tom's announcement.

This consistent affirmation has a richness that points to great potential, urgent need and infinite possibilities. It also indicates that whatever it is we have set out to accomplish is still elusive. There is no common name for this journey.

Where are we going? That's the big question. Even bigger, may be the question, "Where are we now?" Some first impressions are that wherever we are there is lots to see and do, but also many indications that we must step carefully as we continue the journey. It isn't yet clear if we are headed into the forest or out into a clearing; over a mountain or up a gentle hill.