FACILITATING CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS:

It is not a stretch to describe the state of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at Stoneleigh-Burnham – and independent schools in the United States, more broadly – as complex and in flux.

The summer of 2020, with the murder of George Floyd and the resulting wave of the Black Lives Matter movement added a new sense of energy to a host of DEI conversations, but the speed with which change is impacting our school, the United States, and the world, is still in dispute. If anything, the last change that has taken place has been the increase in the number of public conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion in nearly every aspect of life.

Stoneleigh-Burnham is no exception to this particular form, speed, and nature of change. In fact, if I were to describe the state of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Stoneleigh-Burnham it can be summarized in three words: Facilitating Critical Conversations.

BY AMANDA MOZEA, DIRECTOR OF DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION

My philosophy as a DEI practitioner is built on the understanding that teaching and organizing how to manage both the quantity and quality of critical conversations – honest, curious, vulnerable conversations – is the best way to model and then instill the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion in our communities.

The 2022-2023 school year represents my second full year leading the Department of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

As a result, the task of guiding the organization in learning how to manage critical conversations has presented new kinds of challenges and new kinds of successes. The novelty of the first year has led to an elevated baseline: the goals have expanded and gained nuance while the expectations have also increased. With the experiences of my first year in mind, the DEI Department began this year with the ins and outs of the school year better mapped out, my routine more established. I hit the ground running with a singular intention in mind: to utilize critical conversation to further embed the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion into our campus community by creating shared norms and better engaging community voices.

To measure the progress of the DEI Department and SBS as a school in the realm of DEI, it is important to highlight stories, rather than hard metrics like numbers. What follows are three activities that shed an important light on what critical conversations look like in our community.

Facilitating critical conversations means building foundations for something more:

As soon as faculty and students returned to SBS, they were actively engaging in conversations with the DEI Department. Between an all-employee orientation, professional development trainings for faculty, and discussions about what role the DEI Department serves with each grade of students, I met with every member of our on-campus community by the end of Opening Days. These discussions, professional development sessions, and orientations continued the process of establishing a shared language and norms that serve as the bedrock of our community. From this shared starting point, deeper conversations occur and connections are allowed to form.

Every Friday, each grade participates in Discovery Seminar, a time dedicated to curricula that are important, but fall outside of the subject matter of the academic day. Students might learn the difference between a checking and savings account or how to sew a button. With the DEI Department, students learn how to manage critical conversations. At the beginning of a grade’s three to five sessions with the DEI Department, I ask them to write down, anonymously, something they wish they could talk about with their class, but don’t feel comfortable doing. Students have written that they wish to talk about topics such as religion, race and ethnicity, and mental health. Week by week, we help students learn how to introduce difficult topics, particularly those topics where their peers might disagree, or exhibit a perspective that is not universally held. The goal is to instill in our students the ability to engage, share, and continue to learn from people from a variety of viewpoints, backgrounds, and beliefs.

The 10th grade had Discovery Seminar early last fall. In the first class, several students shared that they wished they could talk about religion more: about misconceptions they have, biases they have, and information that they wished to share about their own faiths. For four weeks, I built up skills with students about how to manage critical conversations: how to identify a fact versus an opinion, how to constructively reframe ideas, how to empathize across lived experience, and how to identify resistance. On week five of Discovery Seminar, the students had one of the most profound conversations that I have ever witnessed – honest, curious, vulnerable conversations – about religion.

Facilitating critical conversations means learning new (or, in this case, ancient) perspectives:

In mid-November, SBS hosted Keana Gorman, Diné (Navajo) researcher, historian, and scholar for her talk titled

Seeking Nádleeh Wisdom. As a student at Harvard College, Keana flew to Germany to access sacred and cultural knowledge about the nádleeh – individuals in Diné culture who performed the gender roles of men and women – nearly forgotten due to systematic, cultural erasure. In her talk, Keana shared her discoveries and how her findings empowered her to become the woman she is today.

Keana’s talk – an invitation to have more critical conversations about gender and gender roles – allowed our community members to reflect about ideas, biases, and assumptions they possess around gender. Facilitating critical conversations means laying the foundations for positive change:

In late November and early December, I had the pleasure of chaperoning four students to attend the National Association of Independent Schools’ (NAIS) Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) in San Antonio, TX. SDLC is a multiracial, multicultural gathering of upper school student leaders from independent schools around the United States and beyond. The theme for this year’s conference was We The People: Leveraging Our Community to Preserve Our Humanity. Attendees focused on reflection, allyship, and the skills required to lead and build community. More importantly, the students returned to the SBS campus energized about finding opportunities to lead the community in critical conversations, both formal and informal.

The students put their skills of facilitating critical conversations to the test on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The theme of MLK Day was empathy – empathy for self, empathy for others – and how empathy can empower us to change our world for the better. In that vein, the student-led workshops and the critical conversations they managed encouraged every member of our community to reflect on their identities and how those identities inform their individual and collective experiences. Self and community must first be understood before anyone can be the change that they wish to see in the world, much in the vein of Dr. King.

I mention these four examples to highlight that the DEI Department is working to create positive, honest, systemic change through critical conversations.

I leave us all with the following thought. During my first year as the Director of DEI, I was fortunate enough to attend a training about building community. The presenter offered a slide with a quote from Shrek:

The path to SBS becoming a community that fully embodies the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion begins with facilitating critical conversations: allowing people to access different perspectives, their own vulnerability, and communal norms to lay the foundation for positive change.