Diversity Conferences

In early December, the Brimmer and May School sent members of the Diversity Council along with students to Houston, Texas, to attend The National Association of Independent School’s twenty-fifth annual People of Color Conference and the nineteenth annual Student Diversity Leadership Conference. The conferences included keynote speakers, workshops, film screenings, affinity groups, and student-adult dialogues. They covered issues of diversity, inclusion, cultural competency, and best practices to build more inclusive schools for students and faculty from diverse backgrounds to be successful in independent schools. The faculty attended numerous workshops including, Admitted but Left out? Making Sure Every Student Can Participate Fully in the Life of Your School, Going International: Supporting International Students at a Day School, Recruiting and Retaining a More Inclusive Faculty, and a film screening of Coexist, a documentary highlighting various perspectives on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Student representatives spent fourteen hour days with independent school students from all around the nation discussing diversity, difference, and inclusion. The conference was nothing short of a marathon run of various topics in nurturing a more inclusive school.

Brimmer and May has always dedicated time, moneys, and effort to increase the number of diverse students who attend the School. As of now, Brimmer and May has a school-wide diversity percentage of 38.9%. This means that roughly fourty percent of the students who attend Brimmer and May are either domestic students of color (African American, Asian American, Latino or Hispanic American, Middle Eastern American, Multiracial, Native American, or Pacific Islander American) or international students. As the largest single constituency in the School, the student population brings a lot of the culture, ethos, and experience to the School. The Diversity Council wants to ensure that in keeping with global education and 21^st century skills, the experiences, differences, perspectives, and diversity of the student body adds to the ethos, climate, and instruction of the school. One of the Council’s major goals is to take full advantage of the diverse population that the School currently boasts. We also hope to enroll and welcome students and families from varied racial, national, socio-economic, class, and household backgrounds. This adds a richness to the overall experience of the School that no humanities class or elective can replace.

The conferences served as a time for the members of the Diversity Council to spend significant time mapping out new directions and goals for the Council to take, refocusing and reenergizing. In fact, this was the theme of the entire conference—“Energizing Our Future”—and the Council has done just that. In the coming months, the Diversity Council will present their multiyear plan to the faculty and staff, as mandated by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges Self-Study that the School completed in June 2012. It will also present to the Administrative Team new models of how the Diversity Council understands the full duty of any school to ensure the inclusion of the student, faculty, and staff bodies. Brimmer and May is perfectly positioned to become an even richer community with a wealth of experience from its students, faculty, and staff; to grow and sustain that richness is the present goal of the Diversity Council.

-Runeko Lovell, Diversity Director