From the director:

As you can probably imagine, the topic of same sex marriage has been addressed in many classes during recent weeks. Our classroom conversations have come about in “teachable moments” when students have brought in newspaper articles, asked questions of their teachers, or shared in celebrating marriages that have taken place within our PHS community. Research, conversation and writing have taken place as part of our regular current events discussions. As with any current event topic that our students are thinking and talking about, it is important that we find age appropriate avenues of expression here at school. Our students have a range of opinions and thoughts on this topic as we would expect and encourage. These differences have to do with the developmental age of the student, family values, personal experience, interest and knowledge of civil rights.

It feels important to me that our school celebrate our families who are directly affected in this historic time. In being true to the school’s long standing history, I hope that we can all find ways to be active participants in this civil rights issue. Our own actions as adults will help teach our students what it means to be an ally. And at the same time, it is crucial that we maintain an environment where dissenting opinions and ideas are accepted and valued as part of the conversation.

I’d like to share a few examples of activities and conversations that have taken place in our classrooms recently. In the youngest grades students excitedly volunteered news about their own families and marriages. This sharing led to larger conversations spanning a wide range of developmental understandings; some students voicing concern about President Bush’s proposed constitutional amendment and other students expressing a more innocent view of love and fairness. Upstairs, one classroom compared newspaper coverage from different regions of the United States attempting to figure out how different cities were reacting to the marriages. Another class talked about how people form opinions, discussing the idea that many of us adopt the opinions that people we respect and trust hold. Middle school students wrote and talked in thoughtful ways as they attempted to figure out how to place themselves in the world.

One of the challenges we face as a school is creating an environment where we can work for civil rights while also acknowledging, respecting and supporting different perspectives. It is vital that in our interactions with one another and in the way our teachers teach, that all voices are heard and that children are encouraged to look at situations through a variety of perspectives. This is an opportunity for all of us to step outside of our own perspective in our own journey, and truly listen to the experience of another individual in their journey. We regularly ask our children to do this and I am so proud of the discussions I hear as I visit classrooms and overhear conversations in the hallways.

Ann Meissner
Acting Director

From The Deans

Hello All:

Some community members may have noticed me walking around the school wearing a t-shirt modeled after the Got Milk? campaign that reads—Got Privilege? The t-shirt is advertising an annual conference—The White Privilege Conference at Central College in Iowa. It is the largest and longest-running conference of it’s kind in the nation. It attracts top scholars from around the world who are deconstructing and reconstructing ideas of whiteness, patriarchy, privilege, class, and race.

I mention all of this only to shed light on my t-shirt. My students have asked me what the shirt means, I’ve even noticed a younger student, with a twisted face, trying to read the word privilege. “Got what?” the second grader asked. “Privilege,” I answered, rushing, with no real time to explain the concept, “it’s like a form of access.” His face pruned with more confusion. My t-shirt is simply a thought trigger. I want our community to be continually active around diversity, and sometimes, a little bit of suggestive advertisement gets the neurons moving.

All of us have some form of privilege; it’s not an exclusively white or rich or male phenomena. When you finish reading this letter, try this great diversity activity—it’s called a Privilege List. All you have to do is write down a few privileges, those “unearned assets” we take for granted, that you have. Leave the list out—on your dresser or the refrigerator, and continue adding new privileges as they arise. After a week, look at the privileges and identify the five you connect with the most. Consider the opposites to the items on your list. Give this some thought. How does it impact you? Share your thoughts and feelings with a friend. It’s a powerful, internal way to explore self and develop an understanding of others.

Here’s part of my Privilege List:

1. Male
2. Heterosexual
3. Athlete/Athletic
4. Access to food and drink, clothes
5. Hair
6. Supportive Family
7. Traveled
8. Educated
9. Home
10. No Mental or Physical Disabilities
11. US Citizen
12. Employed

Be Lucent,
Mohammed Soriano-Bilal
Dean of Multicultural Programs & Services

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack , by Peggy McIntosh

I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group…I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.