From My "Atta Girl" Files the DEI Edition

At the start of my working life, my good friend Beth Wallace encouraged me to keep an “Atta-Girl” folder with notes and praises for a job well done. Last weekend, I sifted through an early file from my days working in independent schools circa 1990 through 2005.

I started my career, following my father’s footsteps, by doing Admissions work and “minority recruitment” at the Northfield Mount Hermon School in western MA. I then moved to NYC where I had the life changing experience of working at DeLaSalle Academy, an amazing middle school for academically talented kids from low-income families. At DeLaSalle, I helped the 8th graders navigate the high school admissions process, and I learned fundraising and grant writing.

In 1988, on my second try, DeLaSalle was awarded a grant of $250,000 (worth $660,000 today) in Apple Computers to set up our first computer lab for students. It was my first big, successful grant.

In the spring of 1990, I was recruited by the Ethical Culture Fieldston School to become the Associate Director of Admissions with a primary focus on middle and upper school admissions. I was appointed to the Admissions Taskforce of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) and began presenting at national conferences typically on diversifying the admissions process and making financial aid procedures more user friendly for families.

A couple of years later, with a grant from The Dewitt Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund (now the The Wallace Foundation ), I became the Director of Multicultural Programs at ECFS.?

At this time when “DEI” is being flung around as a slur, it was quite interesting to wander through my “Atta Girl” folder to see what people were saying about my work back then.

From a White colleague after a faculty workshop that I led:

“I spent a great deal of time thinking why yesterday’s session was so special. We have approached this subject matter in others ways and with a lot of the same people, but yesterday was different. Members of the faculty spoke, who never have shared with the group before. I do not think it was just the powerful TV piece, although that was part of it; nor was it just your amazing story that moved folks, too. I think that what you made happen yesterday is something else: you gave us all a sense of inclusion rather than exclusion as we worked. Enough. My point is simple; we so rarely say good things around here, and yesterday was great.”

From a school that I was advising on how to set up their multicultural programs in April 1994:

“Your guidance from the beginning of the project was invaluable. We gained a great deal from your lunchtime visit a few weeks ago and from your notes. You having already thought and written a good deal about the administration of multicultural programs has added much to the discussion here.

Your exciting talk Friday propelled us from the theatre to the discussions with just the right mix of insight, energy, and enthusiasm. It could not have been better.”

And from a CO Head of School, who attended a conference session I organized in March 1998:

“Last night I was called by a person who will remain nameless, but whose net worth exceeds 4 billion dollars. You guessed it, he was promoting an admissions applicant. While it wasn’t a sibling/legacy situation, what I learned during our session was very helpful. The child will probably not get in!”

In 2004, I was profiled in Kaleidoscope Magazine in Cleveland for my new role leading the Inclusion Team at the Hawken School. In the article, I told the story of a “teachable moment” we had in a preschool class. The students were playing a Milton Bradley game called “Guess Who.” It is a game that teaches deductive reasoning. One student holds a card with a face on it, describes the characteristics (“this person is wearing a hat” “this person has curly hair”), and the other child tries to guess which character is being described through a process of elimination.

One day, one student asked the teacher innocently, “Where are the Black faces?” The teacher could have ignored the question and moved on, but instead she acknowledged it and decided to enlist the students and make the game more diverse. She took digital pictures of the children in the class and pasted their faces on the cards. The result: a diverse array of faces. “It’s all about noticing the question and then taking action.”

Although Milton Bradley never wrote back to the children requesting a more diverse game, modern versions seem to have followed their lead.

So what did I learn on this trip down memory lane? There is always a need for courageous conversations. And when we are at our best, we can do hard things in a way that makes people fully able to participate and feel safe. And now that we are in a moment when it seems so hard to have these important conversations, I am proud of the fearless woman I was--and that I hope I still am.

I hope 30 years from now, my "Atta Girl" file from this chapter in my life will still be full of notes about doing a hard thing well.

What will be in your file?