Week 33: Wrap Up and Thank You!
On behalf of the District Equity Committee, I’d like to thank you for reading, listening, and watching the stories about the amazing individuals and community that we have in Hartford. We uphold our District’s Anti-Racism and Gender Inclusivity Policies because they directly impact the people in our community.
As a wrap up to our story-themed year, I’d like to share the story of how I came to do equity work in the Hartford School District.
In the summer of 2020, at the height of Black Lives Matters and the murder of George Floyd, I was contemplating what or even if I should be telling my 8 year old about what was happening. I was speaking to a mom friend and asked her if she was sharing any of this news with her own daughter. She said something that I will never forget. “We don’t have a choice. We have to talk to our kids about this.”
Our friends are a mixed race family. The father is a Black man and they also have a son. It’s actually unsafe for them not to talk to their kids about racism and violence towards Black people, especially Black men. In that moment, I realized the privilege I had in being able to choose to talk or not talk about these issues. So, at that moment, I decided that I also did not have the choice not to talk about them. My husband and I made the conscious effort to speak to our child about what was happening and vowed to be allies, which, for me, meant that I also needed to do the same with my colleagues at work.
Although there was resistance about doing this work in my school where I was a math integrationist, what resulted was a year-long deep dive into equity and inclusion with the whole staff. We checked our own biases, learned about gender identity and pronouns, talked about racism, had courageous conversations, challenged each other, and shared stories. Years later, we are expanding this work so that it reaches a greater audience, including here in the Curiosity Corner.
I hope that these small blurbs of information and stories throughout the year have sparked some curiosity for you to learn more, allowed you to consider a different perspective, and/or offered you a chance to experience the joy that diversity, equity, and inclusion can offer! Thanks for being a part of this journey. We’ll be back next year with more opportunities to learn together. Stay curious!
With gratitude,
Julia Lau
HSD Equity Coordinator
“There is no power greater for change than a community discovering what it cares about.” - Margaret Wheatley
