An Affluent School Works to Enlarge Student Perspectives

By DARCY ELLSWORTH YOW

As a veteran educator at an independent K-8 school in affluent Marin County, in the bubble of the San Francisco Bay Area, I am faced with unique responsibilities and opportunities as well as challenges. Our school has an embarrassment of riches and resources, not just material resources, but natural and human, too. We are quite literally on Paradise Drive. Every day we work and learn on thirty-five beautifully maintained acres of grass and trees, surrounded on one side by the Ring Mountain nature preserve, and a lovely creek running directly into the Bay on another. Our classrooms and library are LEED Platinum-certified and are the first zero energy use school buildings in North America. My colleagues are some of the brightest, most experienced, passionate, innovative professionals out there and I feel blessed to be able to work with them.

That said, my co-workers and I all recognize that we have the responsibility to expose our students to the wider world beyond this fairy tale campus AND to do so with the humility necessary to really learn from others. As the Director of Community Engagement, overseeing partnerships with fifty non-profit organizations and public and charter schools, it is my goal to nurture partnerships that are meaningful, reciprocal and sustainable. These create the perfect opportunity to teach students (and adults, too) about the many different ways communities can be rich, about how biases and preconceived notions about others go both ways and about the importance of practicing close observation skills while suspending judgment.

Coming from a school such as ours, there is always the danger of either thinking that we have it all together and want to “save” other communities or merely appearing that way. The result of either is equally as damaging in the end. So, as much as we can, we strive to operate from a “change, not charity” model and one that’s rooted more in “asset-based community development,” instead of focusing on what is wrong with another community.

What are ways that you can instill this in your classrooms, no matter your zip code?

Talk Explicitly about Biases
Before going to work in a neighboring school, have students brainstorm what some stereotypes there may be out there about that school. Always assume that there are students in the class who are connected in some way to the community that you are going to be working with. That said, assure the class that they can list these even if they themselves don’t believe these stereotypes. They all know that what they are and not talking about them is not going to make them go away. Address the dangers of both negative and positive stereotypes. Talk about where these stereotypes come from. The media? Direct experience? Indirect experience? Then name a community that the class is a part of. High school students? Students from X or Y neighborhood? Girls? Boys? Ask them to list stereotypes that there may be about them. Unpacking these with you, in a safe environment, helps students really feel the reciprocity of community engagement, that there are always more than just two sides of any relationship.

Train Your Students (and Yourself!) to Observe Objectively
Start with a place that they think that they know very well — their classroom, the field where they spend every recess, their own bedroom — and have them practice observing these spaces with a different lens. Have them get down on their knees or stand on a chair and see what this space would feel like to someone of a different height. Ask them to zero in on just one of their five senses while in this space. What sounds do they hear? Observing spaces and people without judgment is a skill that can be taught and must be practiced in a deliberate way in order to avoid going into a new space looking at what’s wrong with it and what one would change. (There’s a great resource in The Curious Terrain Explorer’s Deck: https://www.curiousterrain.com/deck/, a deck of cards that students can take with them to prompt focused observing)

After becoming comfortable with observing without judgment, students can similarly develop the skill of what, in Design Thinking, is called “Empathy Gaining” Using a process that has been articulated, tested and used successfully at places such as Stanford’s d.School and IDEO, students can begin to really understand how spaces and systems are used by those who use them every day. Using specific observation and interviewing techniques to hone in on what works and doesn’t work for “users,” students can then start to identify real challenges and opportunities.

Check out Stanford’s design resources for educators, and the Field Guide to Human Design for more information.

Or, better yet, attend the first annual Bay Area Place Based Service-Learning Symposium to learn more about and practice these skills with like-minded educators: May 17–18, 2019 at The Mulberry School in Los Gatos, California!

About the Author: Darcy Ellsworth Yow is the Director of Community Engagement at Marin Country Day School in northern California. She is a veteran educator and an alumna of Community Works Institute.

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