Diversity Workshops

“We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion.”
— Max de Pree

As a first year college student, I was blessed with the opportunity to attend eight different diversity-based workshops that equipped me with tools to better understand the role a teacher plays in welcoming diversity and inclusion in his/her classroom. Five of the workshops I attended were provided by the Park Scholarships program at NCSU through a Leadership Academy designed to develop our leadership potential. The Park Scholarships Diversity Committee created these five sessions with the intent to help us describe our own identity, others’ identities, and ways in which identities may inform one’s interactions and perceptions.

All of the Leadership Academy sessions were two hours long, with the exception the third “half-day” session. The first session, on November 13th, 2019, was an introduction to common phrases and feelings that are commonly associated with discussions about identity-based diversity.
During the second session, on January 12th, 2020, my class got to hear from and ask questions to a panel of upperclassman Park Scholars that are a part of the Diversity Committee. Their courage and vulnerability when sharing both a time when they have been discriminated against and a time when they have accidentally discriminated against another group of individuals, encouraged our class to open up to each other as well.
The third session took place on January 24th, 2020, and lasted five hours. Mr. Bill Swallow. a Professor Emeritus of Statistics and former member of the Park Scholarships Advisory Committee, and Ms. Beverly Jones Williams, the Director of Training and Education in the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity, were the facilitators of the third session and helped our class look at diversity, equity, and inclusion at a much deeper level.
The fourth session, on March 4th, 2020, was about privilege. They lined our class up in a straight line down the center of the room and called out a list of statements related to privilege or obstacles. If we experienced a privilege they called out, then we took a step forward. If we experienced a certain obstacle they called out, we took a step back. At the end of the exercise, our class was dispersed all over the room, and we more clearly understood the privileges and obstacles we faced, as well as our peers. We learned that we shouldn’t feel guilty for having privilege because everyone inherently has some privilege from the second they’re born, but privilege is something we should be aware of that way we can try to make the world a more equitable place.
The fifth session, on April 1st, 2020, happened over Zoom because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this session was to split up into small groups based on a topic we were interested in discussing further. I went with the group discussing “socioeconomic privilege” because this is a topic that is very pertinent to equity in education.

Apart from the Park Scholarships diversity sessions, I also studied diversity in my ED100, Intro to Education, course. On October 2nd, 2019, my class attended a two hour lecture/discussion about Poverty in Education. We learned which identity groups are often affected by poverty and how that affects their performance in school. We also learned how poverty affects students across the U.S. regardless of their cultural, religious, and/or racial background. On November 19th, 2019, I attended a Social Justice Symposium hosted by the NCSU College of Education. At this symposium we learned which groups of students are most affected by social injustice and how we as teachers can help advocate for them.

Finally, the eighth diversity-based workshop I attended, was through NC State’s Teaching Fellows program. This workshop was a Poverty-based discussion led by Dr. Whitney White the Program Manager for Strategic Outreach and Special Initiatives. She shared her story about growing up in poverty and she equipped us with tools to help us handle socioeconomic diversity in a classroom.

I am grateful to have attended each of these sessions and glad to have learned about the role diversity plays in society and how that also affects a classroom. These workshops helped me lay out guidelines for how I can one day speak to my students about practicing inclusion and advocating for equity. Instead of ignoring diversity and choosing to overlook it or conform, we should teach students to celebrate diversity. Learning and growth can occur when students interact with others who see things from a different perspective or can introduce them to ideas and concepts they don’t already know about. I hope to continue practicing what I intend to teach by learning even more about what different identities have to face and advocating for diversity and inclusion.

I will be using these workshops as a signature experience in the cross-cultural skills category of the Passport to Success program.