At Moravian Academy, we strive to cultivate a healthy community in all aspects, including diversity, equity, and inclusion.  These have become huge buzzwords over the past several years, and particularly in recent months.  From curating picture books that represent a wide range of identities in the Lower School to engaging Upper School students in conversations about their personal identity journeys, teachers at Moravian are finding ways to share a global perspective with our students.  

Last year, we spent a great deal of time on defining bias, becoming actively aware of blindspots, and anti-bias training with faculty and staff, in an effort to work towards creating a safe environment for all.  On each campus, we want to create an atmosphere where every person, no matter their identity, feels recognized as valuable, and welcomed.  Lower School students are learning about themselves and the vast world around them; they are just finding out who they are. Perhaps for the first time, they are meeting and learning about others who may not look like them.  Middle School students continue with that growth and push to be confident in who they are.  By the time they reach Upper School,  students are even more open to the diversity in people and in their perspectives.

In an effort to better get to know the Middle School students, I engaged them in a series of workshops focusing on identity.  Working with each grade level as a group, students discussed aspects of their identity and also shared personal accounts of struggle, based on identity.   For many, these personal vignettes served as a window into experiences perhaps never thought of. Students were able to take away from these sessions a greater appreciation of someone else’s journey. Importantly, we also
discussed how to respond to challenging situations in appropriate ways as a target, bystander, or ally.

Leading up to spring break, and following a number of racially charged incidents within the student body, Upper School students began to find the courage to speak up publicly, leading to a number of student meetings where everyone present was encouraged to speak out against what they saw as incidents that were clearly eroding any sense of strength in community that they desired to have.  We left school in March with students asking for more time to have such discussions. There existed an overwhelming desire to build a community where racial, homophobic, and religious slurs do not exist.  Fast forward to September 2020 and you will find a newly organized Student Diversity Committee, whose main objectives are to break down barriers of ignorance, share life stories, and find ways to combat hate speech.  

Faculty and staff opened this school year with an anti-racist workshop.  Finding time to examine our own biases, and share with one another is always a challenge, but most received this as time well spent, and have asked to continue the conversation.  That will be accomplished this year through small focus groups, where adults will meet periodically to discuss how these topics impact our lives, both personally and professionally.  We want to be the best that we can be in order to serve our students and support them in becoming  global citizens with a sincere appreciation for everyone  in the room.  Finding diversity is not difficult.  It is how we approach it that matters most.  We have to go beyond diversity, and assure that equity and justice prevail for all of us. 

To peruse some of the tools that I have shared with faculty and staff as we carry on this important conversation, including the list below, please visit: www.moravianacademy.org/inclusion.

Resources

• 103 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice
• Robin DiAngelo:  How White Fragility Reinforces Racism
• Eddie Moore 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge
• 26 Mini Films for Exploring Race, Bias & Identity With Students

This story originally appeared in the the fall 2020 curiosity issue of the Moravian Academy Journal, which you can read here.