In a letter to the Herald, Marilyn Metz recently asked: “Will diversity resolution take precedence over academic achievement in 9-R district?”
The answer to this is quite apparent if one has spent any time at all engaging with the decades of scholarly work and research around inclusive teaching, because they would know that research has proved that students achieve more academically when they feel valued and have a sense of belonging within a community of learners.
If you haven’t read the work of those who have committed their careers and even lifetimes to understanding the value that diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives bring to the educational sphere and how they impact student success (bell hooks, Paolo Freire and Gloria Ladson-Billings, to name a few), then it may be premature or even presumptuous to be persuading the community and our educational leaders with pure opinions.
It seems that Metz is suggesting that the board and district leaders make broad-scale curricular decisions based on mere feelings rather than empirical research and evidence-based approaches to curricular design.
Metz argues that “the current guidelines are mandating that our students be ashamed of their inherited differences and abilities and instead to focus on the differences between races, religions and genders in negative ways.”
As an educator, a returned Peace Corps volunteer, and having earned a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from a program that focuses on social justice, I can attest that inclusion and equity do not encourage shaming in any way. This is a fabrication of ideas with no substance. I would encourage anyone who feels that DEI initiatives are truly detrimental to academic success to share the research that supports this notion. If there is such an argument that supports removal of inclusive and equitable teaching initiatives from education, I will commit to reading that body of evidence.
The Durango 9-R Board of Education Resolution on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion states that “the Board will work to address inequities and their negative effects within our district and schools through our budget, priorities, policies, inclusive language that values and respects differences, and by creating a culture that values, understands, and practices equity, diversity, and inclusion with intercultural competency.”
I believe that the board is committed to do this work so that all students have the opportunity to achieve their goals and to be successful, thriving citizens of our community. Does Metz really have so little faith in our educational leaders that she believes they would sacrifice academics for diversity as if they could prioritize only one of the two?
Everyone doesn’t “get a trophy,” as Metz states, when systemic educational inequities don’t even let some students participate in the game because the opportunity gaps are so great.
Metz began teaching 45 years ago and taught for 35 years, which is an honorable public service to the community and its children and represents a lifetime of experience in education. However, education is fluid and must evolve with the current issues that we face as a society and as a community. That does not mean that academics is any less important; it means that we can enhance academics in ways that we hadn’t considered 45 years ago, or that we simply overlooked, or maybe even ignored.
Our diverse children (those who are diverse not just racially, but socially, economically, and based on their sexual identities) are the ones who have suffered the most trauma, the most stress and the most academic loss during the pandemic.
We need this resolution now more than ever.
Jennifer Rider, Ph.D., is a mother of two and the director of Teaching and Learning Services at Fort Lewis College. She has been teaching for 18 years.
