2019-20 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Highlights By Kanika Durland Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
It is our core purpose, our most fundamental promise, to provide SEM students with a uniquely rigorous and holistic education. To that end, SEM requires its skilled and experienced educators to have the humility and drive to continually hone their craft. This process is the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats, including Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Certain tenets of sound education – that students who feel they belong achieve more, for example – further SEM’s core mission and its commitment to DEI work, and illustrate the way these goals are one and the same.
to see and nourish their talents, and to nudge them towards goals they may not have set for themselves. To fulfill these purposes, a school needs educators trained to perform a delicate task. Heavy-handed, “we know best” directives amount to engineering, not educating. And cold detachment is simply an abdication of responsibility. The philosophy we follow at SEM – the philosophy that nudged Journey in the right direction and then got out of her way – calls for educators to know their students well enough to set ambitious but attainable goals; to develop warm, supportive relationships; and to provide clear, consistent, and timely feedback. SEM has placed special emphasis on developing these traits of effective teaching over the past year, and will continue to do so.
Students’ sense of belonging comes in part from seeing familiar faces in leadership positions. Some history: the first Black student at SEM was Joanne Seay, Class of 1967. Her yearbook entry notes, “she is constantly empathizing with us, sorting relevance from irrelevance with calm maturity.” She empathized with the majority. Not the other way around. The first Black Student Council president was Sharon Bailey, Class of 1985. This year, SEM elected its first Black School Government Association (SGA) president since Naima Pearce, Class of 2005.
SEM’s commitment to DEI work took programmatic form in its SEMinars. SEMinars are a break from the standard school day, where students fill their day with cross-disciplinary hands-on workshops on particular themes. Some of these focused on identity and culture. Our November SEMinar day’s theme was global learning and experience. We hired facilitators who offered up an array of cultural experiences for students, including African drummers from the African American Cultural Center, an Indian culture workshop from Akruti at Kulture Khazana, Appalachian clogging, and Chinese watercoloring lessons from the Confucius Institute. Our January SEMinar day theme was Lunar New Year, and our international students (and a few domestic students) led Calligraphy, Paper Cutting, Lantern Making and Tea Ceremony Centers. Other student leaders taught lessons on Korean Lunar New Year, Vietnamese Tet Festival, Chinese Spring Festival, and Games and Cultural Trivia. Our February SEMinar theme was Black History Month. Dana Venerable from the Just Buffalo
The dazzling Journey Hairston is a superlative member of the SEM community – authentic, composed, humorous – but from the teaching and DEI perspective, her election is an important lesson. Having never seen any Black student leaders, Journey did not initially consider running for SGA president. She needed encouragement, someone who understood her qualities to fix her sights on a new target. It’s a little painful, now, to imagine what we would have missed out on if Journey had not had the right push at the right time, or had not been ready to take up the challenge. This is why girls’ schools exist – to expect big things from young women,
Buffalo Seminary
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