Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Work

 

Recent DEI Work at WSA

  • In fall 2020, WSA hired Khadeeja Abdul-Jabbar as a part-time Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant. Ms. Abdul-Jabbar has 17 years of classroom teaching experience and earned her Waldorf teacher certification in 2020. Her action research project, What is in a Narrative: Reimagining Diversity in Waldorf Schools, informs the work she is doing with us at WSA: “While engaged in this research it became clear to me that DEI work in education is not about simply adding new content, or about race necessarily, but rather about making the invisible aspects of the human experience visible so that our institution reflect the richness and complex nature of what it mean to be human in the times that we live.” 

  • February is Black History Month, a time to reflect on our nation’s past and present as we continue to move in the direction of progress. This year the country’s theme is Black Resistance. To celebrate Black figures in history, the Educational Support Department hosted the 2nd annual Art/ Writing competition. 

     Winners for 2023

    Click the thumbnails in the gallery at the bottom of the page to view the art, poetry, and writing.

  • Visual Arts:

    1st Place – Diana Den Haring

    2nd Place – Sarita Duarte-Paez and Lula Roberts

    Honorable Mention – Ansley Johnson

     Poetry:

    1st Place- Grace De Leon-Dixon

    2nd Place – Bella Powell

    Honorable Mention- Steven Reisz

    Creative Writing:

    Amirah Knowles

    Creative Dance and Musical Performance:

    Jeremiah Hartman

  • For the 2022-23 school year, Ms. Abdul-Jabbar has been leading compassionate community conversations. In this continuing series of conversations, parents and teachers together, explore the shift in human consciousness that began to take shape during the pandemic. What do WE do with this evolving collective consciousness? How do WE use it to shape the future WE want to see for ourselves, our children, and our community?

  • In March 2021, the DEI Committee began a recurring book study of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem. 

  • Starting in summer 2020 and ending in winter 2021, the DEI Committee hosted eight months of discussion groups for the podcast Scene On Radio, Season 2: “Seeing White.” This fourteen-part documentary series examines the questions Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

  • Our Parents of Children of Color Committee was founded in 2020 by parents, and this committee hosted several webinars for the community, including: “Telling New Stories: How WSA’s Curriculum is Embracing Diversity” and “What I Learned from Waldorf: A Look Back as I Go Forward.”

  • During 2020 and 2021, our faculty, staff, and community participated in several workshops with iCHANGE Collaborative on topics including gender bias, unconscious bias, and building ally and affinity relationships. 

  • In fall 2020, three faculty and staff members attended an Undoing Racism workshop hosted by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, a national, multiracial, anti-racist collective of organizers and educators dedicated to building a movement for social transformation and undoing racism and other forms of oppression. WSA intends to send additional faculty and staff to this workshop in the future. 

  • In December 2020, the DEI Committee hosted a book fair with Brave + Kind Bookshop, a Black woman-owned bookstore in our Decatur community that specializes in beautiful and diverse books.