Diversity and Inclusion Matters

Chapter 13Using DE&I Training to Make Organizational Change

Trees Just Don't Happen

I love trees. Several years ago, my spouse and I went through the process of buying a home. One of the things we both decided was that a must-have for our new home was trees. We wanted trees and never gave any thought to who planted them or how they got there. We just wanted a treed lot and were eventually able to buy the home with the trees we wanted.

While thinking about this recently I was reminded of something that happened a couple of years ago. I attended a viewing of the movie Waiting for Superman with the teachers from the Stanley Hupfeld Academy (SHA). The SHA is a charter school that serves a low-income population of students with all of the challenges you would expect from that environment. (I was at one point mentoring a child at SHA who confided in me that he was not eating on the weekends.)

Waiting for Superman is a documentary about the state of education in the United States. After the movie, there was a discussion about the current state of education in the United States. There were teachers in the theater from local charter schools from around the city in addition to the teachers from the Stanley Hupfeld Academy. The comments from the teachers covered a wide range of issues, but most of them felt a sincere concern about how to improve education in the United States.

About halfway into the discussion, a teacher from the Stanley Hupfeld Academy, said, “My students leave here ...