Our Wildwood, Summer 2021, Volume 46

FEATURE Wildwood’s DEIB Arch

Work within the community after the racial reckoning spurred by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others in the Black community as well as the Black Lives Matter movement was especially pertinent to the most recent DEIB initiatives.

Affinity space for adults also emerged, moving from off-campus potlucks thrown by parents of color to on- campus gatherings with carefully designed programming, offering support and connection for parents of students of color. These spaces led to an annual summer gathering for families of students of color, the Multicultural Community Dialogue event each fall, and the Multicultural Family Story Night every spring, which also have served as strong ways to build community for our new and current families each school year. An important characteristic of Wildwood’s DEIB programming is that it was always intended to include all constituencies of the school. The Parent Multicultural Collaborative (PMC) grew out of a parent diversity group that had existed for more than 24 years at Wildwood. The group began as a collection of committed parents concerned about equity and diversity and wanting to create space for discussions around difference at Wildwood. Currently, PMC is supported by MLT in its programming of speakers and the facilitation of the events mentioned earlier for the community to explore and learn together, keeping the work for students, faculty, and families in close alignment. This is the power of Wildwood’s DEIB programming— each piece is connected to the MLT as the core group in a systematic way. And the DEIB work extends beyond the walls of our building. As part of our internationally known Outreach Center, Wildwood’s Multicultural Leadership Institute (MLI) kicked off its first weeklong summer

faculty have been invited to revisit their multicultural theme, ask questions, and make revisions to the scope and sequence toward integrating the work into existing curriculum in interdisciplinary ways. The Multicultural Scope and Sequence has been a living document that is still and will always be in process of refinement and revision, as all best practice should be. One of the hallmarks of Wildwood’s DEIB programming, which MLT was also instrumental in developing, is community affinity spaces. The first affinity group began in 2007, when a racially charged incident in the upper school turned into an opportunity for institutional growth and led to students of color gathering for discussions. The birth of this space gave way to a middle school student of color group, followed by upper school spaces for both white anti-racist and LGBTQ+ affinity. Most recently, MLT has launched a white anti-racist space for middle school students, both student of color and white anti-racist affinity groups for 3rd-5th graders, and revived Cultural Connections, an opportunity for all K-5 students to meet and explore DEIB topics on a regular basis. All these spaces have developed and grown their own responsive and proactive curriculum based on the needs reflected by students and the current events of the time. This cutting-edge work invites the deepening of community and the early and necessary exploration of racial and gender identity, encouraging students to talk and think about identity in ways many adults in their lives never could at their age.

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OWW SUMMER 2019