DEI In Action
In the summer of 2020, Sierra Canyon administrators established the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force in order to further our understanding of the national conversation on racism and strengthen our commitment to anti-bias curriculum, programming, and professional development for the benefit of our students, parents, faculty, and staff.
GOALS
Define areas in daily campus life where faculty, staff, students, and parents need more awareness, understanding, and engagement in order to advance the DEI mission and present proposals for change to the principal.
Foster a community grounded in equity and inclusion where people of all diverse backgrounds and identities are valued by creating supportive and inclusive spaces and opportunities for all faculty, staff, and students.
Review and revise our Pre-K through 12th Grade curriculum and student programming by assessing where DEI should be enhanced and ensuring that all individuals and identity groups at Sierra Canyon find themselves represented in the curriculum.
Promote and provide ongoing DEI educational and professional growth opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and parents by means of speakers, workshops, and training.
G1~G5
From the youngest years, students are exposed to and celebrate differences within Sierra Canyon’s diverse community.
Because of their training in Responsive Classroom, a platform for supporting affective education, our faculty creatively and effectively sustain this guidance with belief in the importance of DEI instruction.
The program and curriculum in 2019–2020 were emblematic of this DEI effort. Classrooms prepared for our recognition of the March on Washington by holding an assembly with each homeroom, which created picket signs and posters, symbols of activism, honoring the importance of the movement. In addition, as a part of its thematic units, each homeroom adopted a country in order to celebrate the forthcoming summer Olympics 2020. Students learned about their own countries and those of their fellow community members, culminating in a celebratory assembly where students, parents, and faculty were invited to attend and wearing clothing that represented their background.
Culture Week, a period dedicated to exploring different traditions around the world, is also an important fixture of the Lower Campus. As a part of the Lower Campus’s curricular review, several changes have been incorporated for the upcoming year. Because faculty rely so heavily on regular interactions with “mentor texts” in order to teach discrete skills, an influx of mentor texts that include greater representation of DEI is under review to implement for daily lessons. As further example of initiatives in DEI curriculum, the sixth grade adopted the 2020 Newbery Award Winner, New Kid, by Jerry Craft, which involves an African-American student new to a private middle campus and many DEI issues.
G6~G8
As our children mature and move to the Upper Campus, one of the goals of Middle Campus is to cultivate empathy and interpersonal responsibility in each child.
These capacities are fostered in both our curricular and co-curricular programs. During our advisory and assembly periods, speakers are scheduled to discuss issues of DEI with the entire campus.
Within their advisory groups, faculty lead students in discussions about these presentations and other issues, including sharing student thoughts and perspectives on current events and politics.
Students continue to develop skills that allow them to speak about complex issues and listen and speak with respect to one another.
Beginning with our 7th Grade curriculum, students take one semester of Global Studies followed by three semesters of United States History.
This first semester serves as an opportunity to develop many important skills, including how to constructively conduct discourse on race, social justice, and oppression, in both historical and current events.
These skills enhance our students’ abilities to engage in their study of United States History, providing for a means of analyzing and interpreting events and figures from multiple perspectives. In their English classes, students focus their study on themes of “otherness” and “appearance vs reality” as students engage with novels, poetry, and short stories through a lens of understanding human connectedness and opposition.
Historical context and authorial intent are explored as students find diverse ways to approach their texts.
More traditional works are enriched by such framing, but also by being paired with more contemporary and diverse perspectives found in the newly adopted work Brown Girl Dreaming, which is read in the same year as a companion and counterpoint text.
G9~G12
As students enter the Upper Campus, they are able to enjoy a more sophisticated understanding of DEI as they study the complexities of their coursework in greater depth.
While reading some works from the literary canon, students learn about the writers’ background, influences, and time period. For example, while students read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, they also study Chinua Achebe’s response to his work, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” in order to gain a broader understanding of authorship and reception, helping students become more critical readers and thinkers.
Students also continue to create bridges between academic and social contexts to contemporary issues.
Faculty are constantly responsive to new authors and ideas. Administration and departments encourage new perspectives on issues of DEI and have included 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry into the 2020 – 2021 curriculum as an example.
The 2020 book list includes over one-third authors of color, and nearly half of the works include significant themes and characters concerning the tenets of DEI. As its final elective, the English Department offers Honors Humanities Colloquium, whose subject may include multiple disciplines and shift focus, depending upon departmental consensus. In 2019–2020, the Department chose African American literature as its theme for the year.
Electives like Civil War and Defining Moments: Civil Rights allow students to explore racism in the United States extensively: how it has been combatted and how it informs contemporary lives. In addition, students may take advantage of our experiential learning program, Peak Week, to attend such offerings as From Little Rock to Birmingham: A Study-Tour of the Civil Rights Movement, which includes a trip through cities that fostered activism and change in the mid-20th Century.
Other experiential offerings include NAIS’s annual Student Diversity Leadership Conference. Sierra Canyon has sent the maximum number of students each year, and these students return to share what they learn in different community forums.
Public Programs & Events
In this watershed moment for our country, and even our world, Sierra Canyon strives to be a culture of belonging for everyone in our community – students, parents, faculty, and staff. Our commitment to the work we are doing is more important than eve for our student body, and the lessons we learn and values we share can develop a generation of leadership that will help this country grow and thrive.
A Community of Belonging
Founded in 1978, Sierra Canyon’s core mission is our commitment to an empowering environment in which students realize their greatest creative, ethical, intellectual, and physical promise. We are defined by an energized, attentive, and diverse student-teacher culture.
As a leading educational institution in the region, we believe that Sierra Canyon should reflect the diverse multicultural population of the greater Los Angeles community, which we proudly serve, within both the student body and the faculty and staff. We are committed to diversifying the Campus through student acceptances, curriculum, programming, and faculty/staff recruitment and hiring practices, in order to promote a culture that is inclusive, welcoming, and celebratory of all.
