Begin With Ourselves

Diversity can be a touchy subject. It can make people uncomfortable. Diversity, however cannot be ignored. We need to talk about it.

Today, as part of our in-service days, we had a facilitator guide us on beginning that conversation. It was a great start because it wasn’t a session led by someone who had all the answers, but because it was someone who helped us talk, begin to refine, and help us agree on how we define various terms. She started us out with 7 terms:

• Diversity
• Cultural Competency
• Multicultural Curriculum
• Inclusivity
• Privilege
• Equity
• Multiple Perspectives

All of these can have multiple meanings, and all are important in beginning an honest, safe talk on diversity. An example that came up was a possible hiring practice in an independent school. If it says on the job description: Masters degree and 5 years of independent school experience recommended, is the school potentially ruling out diverse voices that come from a public or parochial school?

For some, diversity brings up the notion of “been there, done that,” but really, diversity is an ongoing endeavor. It promotes social justice, takes away assumptions and prejudices, and teaches us that there is value in what is different. Our school values states that we “actively cultivate and awareness and respect for diversity in all its forms.” Before we can do that with our students, our families, and our greater community, we need to begin with ourselves.

Our facilitator began with an excellent TED talk which I’ve included below. It really is worth the 18 minutes.

Kahn – Flipping the Classroom

Of the TED talks given last week, this is the one of the ones I was anticipating the most. Human interaction is crucial to learning, but that interaction is just part of it. Can a robot or youtube video do my job? Only if I stand in front of the class the whole time and lecture. Sure, listening is an action, but doing something more interactive like student-student or student-teacher is a much more valuable use of their time. I had a few colleagues come back from the NAIS conference recently and really liked Sal Kahn both as a speaker and what he had to say. It really shifts the paradigm of traditional schooling, but as an educator, it also makes sense in many ways. I still need to explore Kahn Academy’s website and materials more thoroughly, but after this talk, I’m convinced I really need to. Best of all, it’s all free!

Why More Is Less

I would have to be the first to admit that sometimes one can try to put too much into one’s day: some of it a choice, some of it mandated. Furthermore, separating the ‘have to do’, ‘want to do’, and ‘could do’ items from one’s day is something I find difficult. Like this article in the wellness blog at the nytimes on meditation. It’s quite funny article written by a man’s wife about the silliness behind someone adding two hours of meditation to his day, but who ends up taking those same hours away from his sleep. Really? Are the benefits of meditation that good that one cuts into their sleep time for it? So what is it, sleep or meditation that makes us healthy? Maybe it’s both, but who has time for that?

In the last 15 years I’ve been teaching I’ve come to the conclusion that teachers keep getting asked to do more and more. And like the article below, nothing gets taken out. It’s all additive. Even if you integrate many of the curricular items, at some point, teachers who are asked to do so much more end up doing less. Paradoxes and opposing viewpoints are great as I think they force us to think critically about what’s going on. For example, do choices make us happy? Will students perform better if they are given choices? I hope all school policy makers aren’t swayed by the first thing they read, hear, or view, and find multiple perspectives of the issues before making their decisions.

Take a look at the following TED talks below. The first is from Sheena Iyengar who will be the keynote at this year’s NAIS conference. I won’t be going, but it’s quite interesting to find many of the keynotes on youtube or TED these days, and I hope to follow a few of them. I’ll leave it up to those going to the conference this year to share what they’ve learned. The title of her Ms. Iyengar’s talk is called The Art of Choosing. An American herself, she says that most Americans believe that choice is theirs to have. Starbuck’s slogan, “Happiness is in your choices” or Burger King’s “Have it your way,” are two examples she uses. The perception of choice isn’t the same elsewhere in the world and those perceptions of choice are cultural.

The second TED talk is from Malcolm Gladwell who talks about a researcher who discovered that there is no best flavor for spaghetti sauce, but rather ‘best flavors‘ and that it’s choices that make us happy. Really?

Of course if you want to get into some of the nitty gritty of choice, you can read The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz. He’s got a TED talk too, but I’ll let you look it up. After all, I wouldn’t want to give you too many to choose from. I’ve been trying to do a lot more this year, and in the end the toll it’s taken on my health (lack of sleep, weight loss) and mental wellbeing has taught me that indeed, sometimes more is less.