Setting the Table for Equity: Part Two

Jamie Kirk Hahn Foundation Gathering for Good Series

by: George Nathaniel Pierson Barilich

A month into the fellowship, the most exhilarating aspect is witnessing the growth of our Gathering for Good concept. We have watched the series spread last December from the Triangle into the eastern shores of Hatteras and earlier this month we dined and convened under the rooftop of a local restaurant. Coming up in July, the concept will spread into the piedmont schools of Durham, and later this summer into William G. Enloe High School as my Student Council prepares to kick-off their annual Charity Ball to be held in December.

Space for Experiential Learning

Two weeks ago, I sat with Van Nolintha and listened as he reflected and shared his experiences on a Gathering for Good held Tuesday June 2 at his restaurant, Bida Manda, located in downtown Raleigh. The Jamie Kirk Hahn Foundation joined Van Nolintha, Jane Hunt (an ESL teacher of 25 years), and students from Washington Elementary celebrating “diversity day”, an opportunity for local students to experience the culturally diverse offerings of our own community. Having great potential to become a chaotic space during the urban lunch hustle and bustle of power brokers and high heeled warriors, Bida Manda instead transformed into an atmosphere of central stillness, where Van noticed a harvested tranquility that optimized the students’ learning experience.

Running on anxiety and prepping in the heat of the kitchen, Van describes to me a moment of stillness, a moment of inexorable nostalgia, a now enduring moment of eternity.

This stillness, in the face of anxiety, reminded Van of his 7th grade self. He took me back, through the descending dark stairway of his school in Guilford County, which once led into his ESL classroom. For Van, new to America, new to middle school:

“There was a stillness in a basement surrounded by chaos.”

This stillness was cultivated by his ESL teacher Roberta Hoyle. As he watched the Washington Elementary students find stillness in his restaurant on Tuesday afternoon, it came full circle to him as waves of nostalgia rippled through his body. In both his case and the case of these students, the ESL teacher was the reference point that created comfort and reduced anxiety in a new unfamiliar community. By reflecting and connecting with these students, Van shared with me that the core of experiential learning occurs in a space of shared experiences. The students years from now won’t remember the Laotian cuisine and Pad Thai, but both the students and Van shared a moment of connection that will endure through eternity. The central point of that stillness and moment are teachers.

Ripples of Hope: Coming Full Circle

As Van shared with me these personal memories and reflections, I sat back and smiled watching the joy fully evidenced in his illustrative body language. He held his fist out demonstrating the stillness that teachers provide, while circling around with his free hand to silently represent the space around that stillness. His mind, body, and soul revealed exactly what ripples of hope look like. It takes one person — one drop — to guide others out creating a momentum of ripples:

“Teachers plant the seeds through facilitating, connecting and growing fruits who in turn spread more seeds. In other words mentors empower mentors.” -Van Nolintha

By setting the table in an authentic way, we break down formalized mentoring relationships which celebrates the invisible leaders, creating the pre-mentioned cross-generational engagement. Formal superior/subordinate relationships, lacking authenticity, construct roadblocks to shared experiences, to true mentoring.

“Mindful authenticity is a true celebration of diversity, true celebrations of diversity ensure equity.”

This is the goal of a values based leadership model. This is the goal of Gathering for Good: Leadership Matters.

Like Van’s experience at Bida Manda, I experienced my own ripples coming full circle at the Wednesday June 10th Gathering for Good: Leadership Matters installment. I invited three of my high school students from William G. Enloe Magnet High School: my student body president, another heading to the Aspen Ideas Festival, and the third leading the Enloe HS Food Ark. These three entered timid and anxious in a new chaotic space and left empowered and confident. In a space created to allow for both courage and anxiety, I felt at times as their center of stillness, but pushed them out into the flood of local community and did as Omisade suggests — I stood out of their way. We shared in a cross-generational experience and came out with the most brilliant discovery, we feast on a central truth. A values based leadership model — built on trust and faith, compassion and kindness — fertilizes and strengthens relationships.

Experiential learning harvests people. It harvests leaders. Success for an ESL student or the student body president can simply be an immeasurable increase in confidence. Confidence to enter a new space and shapeshift into an improved human being. For the ESL student, this is by leaving the program and entering the mainstream classroom. For the student body president, this is realizing and cultivating their abstract characteristics to optimize their leadership capabilities. By creating opportunities guided by the value of equity, North Carolina needs to meet all sections of students where they are, acknowledge the existence of immeasurable needs, and cultivate our students to reach their individual outcome, their individual success.

“Along with traditional ways of learning, we should empower our students to dance, to paint, to move around, and also to be still. We should help our students validate their own ways of learning, mentoring them to be aware of their own authenticities.” -Van Nolintha

As the Jamie Kirk Hahn Foundation invests in me, the ripples of hope are ebbing out into leaders much younger than myself: my students, our students, North Carolina’s brilliant future.

-George Nathaniel Pierson Barilich