Think about the spice section of the supermarket. It is a veritable cornucopia of colors and scents. Some of us go to our favorites and don’t steer away. Others of us want something new, so we’ll try a new color, or the spice we heard about on Food Network. The problem is, without REALLY knowing how to use the spices, they end up collecting dust on the spice rack. They look pretty, and if anyone takes a peak into our cabinets, it appears as if we are adventurous cooks. But, we know the true story. We know we bought the spices as a fad, and either had no intention of actually using them, or really didn’t know how to use them. This is the case in many organizations when it comes to understanding diversity and inclusion.
So, when we think about diversity, it’s basically just having a bunch of different looking/sounding/believing people in the room, but not necessarily contributing. When you implement an inclusion strategy in business, the difference that is present is empowered to provide their differing perspectives based on their lived social/religious/gender/racial experiences, so as to give the listener/school/business a view into a world about which they know little. That peak into that new world opens doors and allows space for innovation that was not necessarily there before. If we use the same logic for education, it is not enough to have different sounding/looking/believing children/staff/faculty in the school. When their world-view is represented in curriculum, not to erase other realities, but to be included in the narrative, students and faculty/staff have more information with which they can work in teaching and learning. Students do not know who isn’t included in a story, if it is never brought to their attention. Teachers do not know to look for alternate perspectives if there is no expectation of their existence.
For about 10 years, I taught in a network of schools. The goals were lofty, and on the outside, it looked like we knew what we were doing. Approximately 99% of our families were either Black or Latinx. A smattering of faculty and staff were as well. However, when it came to curriculum, pedagogy, policies, and procedures, it was as if the students and their families did not matter at all. Their interests and concerns were seldom, if ever, reflected in the day-to-day goings on of the school, and the curriculum seldom could be considered culturally sensitive or appealing. Why was this the case? Because leaders did not understand that rigorous teaching and learning meant actually implementing inclusion. You cannot have truly rigorous curriculum when teachers do not ask the questions of who are the inherent us/them in this narrative; who’s not included in this story; are there other possible realities not considered in this story; am I teaching you how you best learn? Rigor is married to inclusion, and I would dare say, students who are not asked to think outside the lines of the normative are being undereducated. It is a choice that many schools make now and have made in the past. Take a look at our world. It is a direct result of teachers and students never being required to describe what they see, voice what they’d like to see, and then interrogate the inequity in the structures that limit our aspirations.
When you know better, you do better. Do better.
