Diversity. Equity. Inclusion.
Parent volunteers came to campus to share with Burrow and Egret’s Perch students about their family tradition of celebrating Nowruz (Persian New Year).
Do you have a family tradition you would like to share with the school? Click here to tell us more!
Sequoyah’s DEI Pillars of Practice
I. Further our Diverse Community • II. Pursue Equity • III. Foster a Culture of Inclusion
Working Toward Shared Understanding:
Fluency in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Sequoyah
Developing a baseline, community-wide fluency related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is one of the principal recommendations of Sequoyah’s DEI audit, completed in 2022 under the guidance of Blink Consulting.
Levels of comfort with speaking and sharing about DEI will always vary from person to person. The goal at Sequoyah is to work toward common, foundational trust where people can develop the capacity to have vital conversations as a community. Here, rather than needing to know the “correct” terms, the goal of DEI fluency encompasses personal growth in the ability to think diversely, put concepts into practice, and progressively engage and enact the values of equity and inclusion.
At Sequoyah, thinking diversely comprises cultivating an informed basis; recognizing positionality; being curious; discerning how thought may inform speech and action; challenging the mind, nurturing the heart, and celebrating human dignity.
Our ongoing efforts toward fluency include teaching and practicing habits and skills that include discerning one’s positionality, considering multiple perspectives without requiring others to represent them, recognizing that all thoughts are not equally informed, navigating what’s uncomfortable to consider, and striving for mutual safety, dignity, and belonging in essential conversations that don’t always feel safe to have.
Here are some of the ways that we have been moving this work forward this school year.
January 25 Task Force Update
Sequoyah's newly-formed K-12 Anti-Bias Task Force met last week for the first time and will continue to meet through March to discuss these issues and more. Please keep an eye out for ways you can become involved in this important work.
K-12 Anti-Bias Task Force
The Board of Trustees, led by its DEI Committee, is proud to have created Sequoyah’s K-12 Anti-Bias Task Force, an advisory group to the Board and administration. This group is tasked with looking at how we understand, prevent, and respond to incidents of harm that happen between or among students.
Board of Trustees DEI Committee
Through its work, the Board’s DEI Committee strives to be a prominent, visible symbol to the community (and beyond) of the importance to Sequoyah School of the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
April ’24: A Student’s Perspective
Learning about myself and learning about my community through DEI work
Parent/Guardian Book Group
Each week in March, we gathered to consider what it means to act on what author Britt Hawthorne proposes – that we “agree to help children embrace human differences, accurately identify unfairness, receive accountability as a gift, interrupt the harmful discriminatory practices they witness, imagine a future when Black lives matter, and practice infinite hope.”
Community Partnerships
Our efforts to establish DEI fluency at Sequoyah must exist outside of the school sphere and function in the context of the broader community in order for diversity, equity, and inclusion to truly be a lived experience for our students and families, faculty and staff.
Share your family celebrations with Sequoyah!
Do you have special days that you observe at home that you would like to see celebrated at school? Please fill out this form to let us know!
Sequoyah’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Audit, undertaken with the guidance of Blink Consulting during the 2021-2022 school year, highlighted four principal recommendations that were shared with the community in spring 2022. Drawn from comprehensive feedback received across constituencies of the Sequoyah School community, the principle recommendations focus on building on the school’s existing commitment to DEI, while coordinating the school’s design and accountability from a central institutional vision framework, and strategic plan that will require collective ownership to implement and advance.
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High School Campus: 301 N. Orange Grove Boulevard • Pasadena, CA 91103 • (626) 441-2076
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