My View
Why I’m Comfortable Talking About Equity
BY AMY ILLINGWORTH/School Administrator, August 2022

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION DISCUSSIONS are happening in schools across America as dedicated educators become aware of how our institutional systems help some students succeed more than others.

The school district where I work in southern California is engaged in the work now commonly known as DEI, driven by school board policy that pledges us to “eradicate institutional bias.” Our district’s equity work involves every staff member, with all participating in three professional learning sessions during the past school year. Because I co-facilitate these sessions, I often am asked, “How are you so comfortable talking about race and equity issues?”

Throughout the last decade, I have made a concerted effort to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion as it relates to K-12 education. I was prompted by a professor in my doctoral program who taught a course on cultural proficiency that opened my eyes to my own privileges as well as the systemic injustices within our education system.

One assignment was to interview someone we knew who had different identity markers than we did. This was my first “empathy interview” experience, and I chose a former colleague, a Filipino gay man. While we had been friends for years, we hadn’t talked about race often, and I hadn’t known his personal history of keeping his sexual orientation a secret. Listening to someone share their own lived experience, especially when it vastly differs from your own, is eye-opening. The empathy assignment gave me an opportunity to hear what life is like in different shoes (or a different skin).

Seeking Diversity

One of the reasons I moved to San Diego was for more diversity. As a Spanish speaker previously living in communities with few other Spanish speakers, I was drawn to a border city where I could use my language every day, surrounded by people of cultural backgrounds different from my own. I am grateful for the community I built around myself here, as my friend group is diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, able-bodiness, languages spoken and socioeconomic levels.

But not everyone has the ability to diversify their friend group. It’s important to know the bubble you live in so you can seek out new perspectives. In addition to listening to my friends’ stories, I look to educators in the field of diversity, equity and inclusion. As an avid reader, I sought out nonfiction books that taught me about historical perspectives that were lacking in my own education, such as The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith.

I became more intentional about the fiction books I read, purposefully finding authors of different races, genders and other identities who wrote about lived experiences unlike my own. Elena Aguilar’s Coaching for Equity is a guide that bridges my passion for instructional coaching and the urgency to eradicate bias in the educational system.

Expanding Identities

There are many ways to expand your personal bubble, to ensure you are hearing different voices. This can happen through friends and family, through books and media, and through travel. As educators, it is our job to recognize the bubble we live in so we can be intentional about bringing in other perspectives for our own knowledge and on behalf of our students.

In our equity work, we define representation as both the opportunity for our students to see themselves in our curriculum and schools and for our students to see all identities from around the global world within our schools and curriculum. To make this representation a reality, educators need the autonomy and flexibility to adapt their curriculums with supplemental resources.

More importantly, educators need professional learning about individual and institutional bias, about diversity, equity and inclusion, and our role in the lives of students.

AMY ILLINGWORTH is assistant superintendent of educational services in Encinitas, Calif. Twitter: @AmyLIllingworth. This column is adapted from her blog, Reflections on Leadership and Learning.