Andy Shin
Executive Director, Breakthrough San Francisco
Ten SFDS faculty, and one trustee, braved the sub-freezing temperatures in Denver last week to attend the 22nd annual People of Color Conference. The cold was deep enough to elicit numbness on the short walk from our hotel to the Convention Center, and to prompt self-examination (Why do I always lose my gloves? Why do all my years on the East Coast not make this feel better?) Once inside, though, we gradually part with our outerwear and with the reluctance to be honest (and therefore vulnerable) that makes talking about diversity so challenging. Over one thousand faculty/staff and one thousand students from independent schools nationwide joined the conversation at workshops and affinity groups and over meals. Connection and understanding ensued. Personally, I liked the thawing process.
A highlight for me was a workshop led by Edward Trusty, an administrator at the Calvert School in Baltimore. For his doctoral dissertation, Trusty examined factors associated with student performance – measured using GPA and SAT scores – at an unnamed American independent boys’ high school. Among the candidates: ethnicity; parents’ marital status; length of commute; grade and year of school enrollment; financial aid status; and number of varsity letters earned. Only the last two factors, as it turned out, bore a statistically significant relationship to student achievement. As a group, students receiving any amount of financial aid performed lower than those paying full tuition; achievement also declined as varsity letters increased.
While Trusty emphasized that his findings may or may not be generalizable, they sparked a conversation. To what extent do independent schools invest in and support kids of lower socio-economic status, and to what extent do they just replicate existing societal differences? Are families on financial aid (just 25% at the school he studied) poorly integrated into school communities? How important is sports in a kid’s education, and should sports be put on hold if academic achievement lags? We also talked about the challenges around how “success” is measured, and the importance of both short- and long-term metrics. Interestingly, Trusty found that students who did less well academically were much less likely to stay involved with their school years down the road – with implications for the diversity of the school’s alumni community.
Another interesting workshop was led by Wanda Holland Greene, Head of The Hamlin School. We viewed segments of a documentary film called Straightlaced – produced by a San Francisco non-profit called GroundSpark – that explores teenagers’ attitudes toward gender and sexuality. Some students in the film – the male ballet dancer, the transgendered girl who refused to check either box when filling out forms – defied convention. They were true to themselves but sometimes paid the price. Others based their decisions predominantly on what others would think – the boy who dropped out of chorus, or the girl who didn’t want to seem too smart. They walked a safer path, but shortchanged their potential and regretted it.
Seeing the film made me wonder how we can help students think critically about gender roles. Obviously, there is much associated with being male or female that is valuable, but also much that is confining. If students give serious thought to this issue, they can potentially grow a great deal, and at least commit to making it safer for those who blur or break the boundaries.
Above all at PoCC, I appreciated the conversations with colleagues about the Day School’s many strengths and areas for growth from a diversity standpoint. How can we create a school community that truly values and inculcates success among students, parents, faculty, and staff of all possible backgrounds? The conversation will no doubt continue.
