Letter from Community, Equity, and Inclusion Director Susan Woods

Welcome to October, a month that holds several heritage observances. Latine Heritage Month ends this Friday, October 15. On Monday, October 12, we will be closed for Indigenous Peoples' Day. And October is LGBTQ+ History Month, which began in 1994 with a high school teacher in Missouri rather than a government proclamation.

These recognitions are important. They exist because people pushed back on a version of history that left them out of the story. They also raise a fair question about where that learning belongs.

In a 2005 interview on 60 Minutes, Morgan Freeman told Mike Wallace he didn't want a Black History Month. "You're going to relegate my history to a month?" he asked. "Black history is American history." Carter G. Woodson, who created Negro History Week in 1926, hoped for something similar: that the week would one day be unnecessary because Black history would be part of the history everyone learns.

The Bush School shares that goal. Where we part ways with Freeman is what he said next. Asked how to end racism, he answered, "Stop talking about it." Our experience is the opposite. Not talking about race, identity, and difference doesn't make them go away. It leaves children to make sense of them on their own.

 

So we hold both. A month or a date on the calendar is not where most of the learning happens. It happens in classrooms throughout the year, when students study history, read literature, and hear perspectives that widen what they understand about the world and each other. You'll hear examples from classrooms in these letters as the year goes on.

When students choose to mark these months themselves, we are fully behind them. This month the Upper School Latine Student Union hosted the local dance group Caña Dulce Seattle, and students joined the dancers for the final song. Middle School students explored Latine artists, musicians, and food through a town hall and trivia, and Lower School students read Paletero Man and talked about who speaks more than one language at home.

Illuminate is one place where the idea of "more than a month" shows up for our whole community. Instead of marking one holiday at a time, we bring many traditions into the same room on the same night. Last year that included Diwali, Hanukkah, luminarias, and Lunar New Year, along with stations where families made Philippine parol star lanterns, Swedish Saint Lucia crowns, German Laternen, Indian clay diyas, and more. One station was about the simple joy of birthday candles and wishes.

It's a hands-on evening of learning for students, families, and faculty. As the days get shorter, we gather to explore how people around the world use light to mark hope, knowledge, and love, and we make something together. It doesn't replace the learning that happens in classrooms all year. It's a chance to see that learning together in one place.

Illuminate depends on what families bring. If your family has a light tradition, a story, or a craft you'd like to share, we'd love for you to host a station. In the coming weeks, you'll hear from your room representatives about how your family can take part. Please follow this link if you’d like to sign up to host a maker station. 

In September I wrote about resilience, our theme this year, and what it asks of students and of us as a school. Next week, on October 16, Megan M. Kennedy of the Resilience Lab at the University of Washington will speak with the Upper School about resilience as more than coping. It’s also about changing the conditions that create stress, and recognizing that those conditions aren’t the same for every student. Afterward, students from the Upper School Wellness Center and the Black Student Union (BSU) are planning to collaborate with me on a follow-up to keep the conversation going.

In the Lower School, on Friday, October 23, our first student affinity spaces, now in their fifth year, continue, and this year a second path joins them: a civic engagement space. Affinity spaces give children who share part of who they are a place to connect and be themselves without having to explain. The civic space offers a different route to the same goal. Children find belonging in what they build together, learning to notice who is left out, speak up for what's fair, and look after the people around them. Both paths are grounded in the Learning for Justice anchors of identity, diversity, justice, and action, and in Baratunde Thurston's idea that being a citizen is something you do, not only something you are.

We share this with the whole community because it reflects how we approach equity across The Bush School. There isn't one way in. Different paths can lead to the same place, where each student knows they belong here.

With appreciation,

Susan