Faculty Continue DEI Training
Exeter faculty participated in a diversity training session last Monday. Lee Mun Wah, a speaker and founder of StirFry Seminars and Counseling — a platform that uses a unique, communication-based approach to promoting multicultural dialogue — led the workshop. Lee facilitated faculty conversations and shared his story as a Chinese-American documentary filmmaker, educator and diversity trainer.
The Committee of Equity and Inclusion, co-chaired by Director of Equity and Inclusion Stephanie Bramlett and Dean of Faculty Ellen Wolff, planned this event as a continuation of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives of recent years. “[T]he Academy is committed to ongoing work on diversity, equity and inclusion, in keeping with the trustees’ DEI vision statement. For an education to be excellent, it must be equitable and inclusive,” Wolff said.
Bramlett noted that the event was scheduled near Martin Luther King (MLK) day in order to prepare for discussions about race and identity. “This allows the whole adult community to come together and begin thinking about the conversations that we will be having during MLK day,” she said.
The training was located in Grainger Hall and occurred in two sessions, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Although teaching faculty were required to participate in the morning, other faculty could choose between a morning or afternoon session. Faculty from different departments came to each session, an arrangement that English Instructor Rebecca Moore commended. “That was a very conscious decision that enhanced the whole premise of ‘getting to know you,’” she said.
Lee asked faculty to pair up without speaking and discuss the assumptions they made about the other person based on appearance. Faculty engaged in both listener and speaker roles, which Moore appreciated. “We’re all working on the same mission [but] we don’t have that much time to actually engage with that because a lot of the time we’re engaging with [students],” she said. “What I found useful was the time and space to practice these kinds of listening skills and phrases with another adult in the community whom up until that point, I had seen but never spoken to [extensively].”
English Instructor Courtney Marshall found that discussing the exercise afterwards as a significant part of the workshop. “After every discussion topic he gave us, we had to recount what the speaker told us and then the speaker told us how we were as a listener. There was a constant checking in about whether we were truly listening to the other person,” she said.
Wolff enjoyed the dialogue with other faculty. “I especially valued the time spent in substantial and meaningful conversation with a colleague. I have heard others say that this was one of their favorite components of the day as well,” she said.
Vice Principal Karen Lassey shard her positive sentiments for the workshop. “I found the workshop with Lee Mun Wah to be powerful,” she said. “Scaffolded conversations in pairs was an opportunity to practice empathy and listening as well as connect with a colleague in meaningful ways.”
One moment during the workshop that stood out to Moore was when Lee asked the question, “What’s familiar about what happened?” Moore said, “It shakes me out of my usual pattern but not in an uncomfortable way – in a way that says, maybe I should check this, is this a pattern and what does it connect to,” she said. “It helps me practice so now if I were going to talk to [a person and they] were struggling with some experience, emotion, concern, I would have these questions more at the tip of my tongue.”
Science Instructor Katherine Hernandez took away much from the training in relation to her identity as a member of the white community. “Given my racial identity, there are moments in which I permit my whiteness to blind me to what’s going on for others,” she said. “I appreciate knowing that I have colleagues who will call me in or invite me into conversations. It’s not the job of my students or my colleagues of color to point these things out to me as a white educator, but I do appreciate when I have those opportunities.”
Bramlett also lauded the values of the workshop and expressed interest in including other members of the community. “I’d love to see a similar daylong DEI training or workshop for students,” she said.
Faculty conversations about diversity and the training continued even after the event ended, including for Chinese instructor Ning Zhou. “I think this is a great step because I heard from other colleagues they hoped the school could continue this type of training. [I also think it is great] that faculty of various backgrounds can get together and get to know each other,” he said.
On the other hand, Hernandez wanted to apply what she learned to similar discussion spaces. “I think one of my areas of hope and enthusiasm right now centers on the white anti-racist affinity group, a group of adults in the community who identify as white and who want to take an active role in deconstructing systems of inequity, and reconstructing systems that support anti-racist work in the community. I think that the workshop we did on Monday is something that will inform our conversations.”
The same workshop is will not be repeated in following years, but this year’s training has been able to promote conversations among faculty. “The lessons learned at this workshop will advise our work in every capacity here at PEA,” Bramlett said.