Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

Editor’s note: Upper School English teacher Dr. Kate Taylor—a champion of inclusion and equity work at Rowland Hall—gave these focusing remarks over Zoom during a week of virtual professional development covering hybrid learning and antiracism. Teachers read Bettina Love's “An Essay for Teachers Who Understand Racism Is Real” prior to Kate’s remarks. Afterwards, they met in small, cross-divisional groups to share thoughts from the reading and explore and identify intentions for the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Learning Choice Board.

Good morning! Thank you for joining us. If you don’t yet know me, my name is Kate Taylor and I teach tenth-grade English in the Upper School. I am here speaking on behalf of the group that helped organize this week’s antiracist learning. Those folks are Allison Spehar, Emma Wellman, Abby Bacon, Jij de Jesus, Ryan Hoglund, Wendell Thomas, and Jennifer Blake. As current and past leaders of the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee and members of the senior administration team, we wanted to bring everyone together this morning to collectively frame the work that our school community will be doing this week around anti-racism. 

The goal here is not just to read a few articles and collectively wring our hands. The goal is to commit to personal accountability, growth, and action toward building an antiracist culture at Rowland Hall. A culture where students and faculty will not hesitate to affirm that Black Lives Matter.

Many public figures have observed that because of COVID-19, our world will not be the same, that this epidemic has changed the way our world works. We can certainly see how it has changed our teaching. 

This group hopes that the same is true of the recent global response against racism after the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Too many times we have had such wake-up calls and, after a brief outcry, returned to the same operating procedures as before that lead to a culture where Black lives don’t matter. For our Black colleagues and students, we need to do better. For the entire community, we need to do better. 

As Bettina Love describes in the article we all read in preparation for today, we need to “leverage [our] power, privilege, and resources in solidarity with justice movements to dismantle White supremacy. Co-conspirators function as verbs, not as nouns.” 

We want to be clear. The goal here is not just to read a few articles and collectively wring our hands. The goal is to commit to personal accountability, growth, and action toward building an antiracist culture at Rowland Hall. A culture where students and faculty will not hesitate to affirm that Black Lives Matter. 

Our work as a community of antiracist educators is not to tell students what to think but to make sure we are giving space for them to think deeply and honestly about our history and to shift our school culture.

Our students expect this of us; they are participating in rallies and demonstrations, reading and making social media posts, seeing people across the country stand up and say, “enough.” They are going to be asking questions, wanting dialogue, and wondering if we are taking this seriously. Our work as a community of antiracist educators is not to tell students what to think but to make sure we are giving space for them to think deeply and honestly about our history and to shift our school culture. The training this week focuses on building our own knowledge and skills to create antiracist policies and curriculum, identify and speak out against anti-Black ideas, and acknowledge and move our school’s culture away from one that is centered on Whiteness. 

Arthur Ashe said, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” We recognize that all of us as teachers and educators are at different points in our journey and yet, like moving to distance learning, we need everyone to make substantial progress in their own racial identification and acknowledgment of privilege. As we do this work, please be okay with mistakes, your own and others'. Even when the work might feel uncomfortable, we invite you to sit with that discomfort, recognize it as a sign of how important this learning is, and then commit to action on behalf of our Black students and families knowing that these actions will also support all of our families of color, of different genders and sexualities, and of different socioeconomic backgrounds. 

And now I invite you all to join your learning cohort for today’s small group discussions. Thank you for joining us.

Read More: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

inclusion & equity

Rowland Hall celebrates and welcomes diversity. We believe that everyone benefits from exposure to a variety of lived experiences, and we have long been committed to the necessary work around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). 

Rowland Hall represents a diverse community that encompasses differences in the human experience including those of ethnicity, race, national origin, family composition, religion, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and learning styles, among others.

As part of our strategic plan and accreditation work during the 2002–2003 school year, Rowland Hall identified the need for a diversity plan and put into place a list of action items to give the administration direction on specific areas in which to work. By 2008, our Board of Trustees had confirmed our first formal diversity mission statement, which was combined with a formal diversity plan in 2010. Over time, we have put into place traditions, practices, and policies that support justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) including:

• Formalizing an Inclusion and Equity Committee (2008), now called the JEDI Committee
• Establishing the Dinner and Dialogue series (2010)
• Beginning our annual attendance at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Student Diversity Leadership Conference (2012)
• Hiring a director of ethical education (2015)
• Adding positive racial identity to curriculum (2015)
• Establishing a professional growth focus on inclusion and equity (2016)
• Initiating a JEDI component to new faculty/staff orientation (2016)
• Confirming support of and education on gender identities (2017)
• Creating the Board of Trustees’ Inclusion, Equity, and Outreach Committee (2019)

Beginning in 2017, we also began strategically shifting to a more explicit focus on action; we examined stereotype threats in teaching and learning, and provided professional development centered around cultural competency. These steps led to the identification of three priorities for Rowland Hall: furthering JEDI in curriculum and programs, exploring affinity groups, and increasing diversity by emphasizing faculty/staff racial diversity through hiring and retention practices and strategies. Support for these priorities continues today, with JEDI Committee members providing DEI leadership and the board’s Inclusion, Equity, and Outreach Committee dedicating its first year to identifying and supporting strategic alignment and priorities on the principles of inclusion, equity, and outreach, in partnership with the JEDI Committee.

In June 2020, Rowland Hall faculty devoted professional-development time to hybrid learning around antiracist education. All faculty members worked in cross-divisional cohorts to strengthen their ability to support positive identity development in students, lead conversations around racial discrimination and privilege, and begin to evaluate curriculum through an antiracist lens, improving the experience of all students. A remarkable 97% of teachers identified this work as critical to their daily practice. 

We acknowledge that all JEDI work identifies opportunities for further learning—this is a journey, not a destination—and at Rowland Hall, we are dedicated to this ongoing process of vulnerable learning and conversation.

An Invitation to Take Action

• Join a JEDI Committee. We offer groups for faculty and staff, students, and parents and caregivers.
• Attend Dinner and Dialogue meetings, offered two to three times a year.
• Educate yourself with antiracist books, articles, videos, and more: rowlandhall.org/inclusion-equity
• For community members of color: Students can apply to be part of Rowland Hall’s delegation at NAIS Student Diversity Leadership Conferences and/or NWAIS Student Diversity Leadership Retreat; students, caregivers, faculty, and staff are invited to join or attend affinity groups; and faculty and staff are invited to apply to attend the NAIS People of Color Conference.
• For white faculty and staff: Join Rowland Hall’s antiracist book club and/or apply to attend the White Privilege Conference.

We also encourage parents and caregivers to seek out and follow Black/Brown nonprofit social media accounts like @theconsciouskid to help educate yourself; you can also visit @nmaahc’s website for a comprehensive Talking about Race web portal. And if you want to hear familiar voices give tips on talking to kids about race, listen to episode 1.03 of our princiPALS podcast.

COMMITMENT TO DEI WORK