Today was the first in a three-part series of Parent Forums supporting our diversity, equity, inclusion and justice work.
The session was led by a team of parents and teachers from our DEIJ task force and our Constance Collins, our DEIJ Coordinator and Director of Strategic Initiatives, who have been working on supporting our school’s journey towards these goals.
The session began with an Identity Awareness Exercise, where parents choose a prompt to discuss further about their experience and understanding of identity.
The session went on to explore how picture books and stories can be powerful vehicles for communicating. Leah shared a story and provided examples of how stories can both support understanding of identity and offer characters that celebrate all identities.
The theme of story telling continued with a few parents and teachers from the team sharing their experiences of teaching and navigating situations that questioned their own identity and their children’s. The team offered some examples of both the challenges of these situations and the opportunities that it presented to support their child’s affirmation of identity.
At table groups parents discussed their stories and experiences through prompts offered by the team and shared advice and challenges of the issues that schools and families face in supporting dialogue and understanding. The session concluded with some take-away suggestions for parents to consider as they support their children in this learning.
Access the DEIJ Parent Forum Resources
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