Message from Craig Davis (he/him) Head of School, 2023-

My personal commitment to DEIJ has been shaped by my personal circumstances, educational journey, and professional career.

I am a beneficiary of socioeconomic equity initiatives, having received both scholarships and full financial aid for high school and university. As a first-generation university attendee in a family where both my parents could not complete high school for socio-economic reasons, my advocacy and commitment to this agenda are unwavering.

Learning my craft in London’s (UK) public high schools, with high refugee and marginalised student populations, highlighted the compounding intersectional issues facing young people. As students grappled with linguistic, racial, ethnic, and gender identity prejudice on top of acute socioeconomic realities, I reflected on my own privilege. This grounding experience has never left me and accounts for my interest in working in diverse, international school contexts through the International Baccalaureate curriculum that expects all of us to accept that “people and their differences can also be right”.

To uphold the mission-driven values of the IB, we must do explicit and intentional work. This means continually reflecting on our privileges and context and addressing implicit biases and structural inequities. It means actively listening to our young people and their families, not simply by asking questions but also by cultivating a culture and strategy that elicits responses from those who may not normally speak or respond. Diversifying our view of diversity means we consider and accommodate introversion and neurodiversity in our feedback mechanisms to fully capture our community’s views.

As we move forward at Mulgrave, we need to create not only safe but courageous spaces.

One important component, learnt from our Coast Salish Elders and Director of Indigenous Engagement at Pearson College (where I have worked the last few years), is ‘critical self location’. Everyone has more complex narratives beyond surface appearances and this process opens up spaces to find meaningful connections rather than make simplistic judgements. By building on the great work already in place at Mulgrave, we can provide the best possible ‘courageous’ space for all of our students and community members.

Following the murder of George Floyd, Craig wrote a piece that captured his thinking on education and DEIJ. Scan the QR code to read.