Happy Pride, Friends and Cousins of Open Horizon! I hope you and your families enjoyed connecting and barbecuing on Memorial Day, if that is a way you honor the holiday.
I post this letter with reflections about connections that I’ve made over the past few weeks and with musings that are informing Open Horizon’s emergent strategy.
Fostering connection and making explicit the implicit are through lines for our Parent Program, a signature offering for our Conversations about Race and Belonging programming. I had the opportunity to experience an informational intro session (a “Taste” per se) that was open to the Arlington and Alexandria communities in VA, where I was quickly brought back to past lives (experiences both as an underrepresented student and also as an administrative school leader) that inform my practice.
Last week, our Parents Program Facilitator, Michele Chang, and Community Liaison, Tara Casagrande, coordinated an introduction to the Parent’s Program for folx to learn about the upcoming fall cohorts; the event was facilitated similarly to how the weekly sessions are sequenced and we shared stories and personal experiences in break out pairs based on prompts from the facilitators.
While I was engaging, I tried to resist sharing too much because my role was simply to represent as the Executive Director of Open Horizon, the funding partner for the program. But, my friends, I was compelled! Not only because of my background as a Director of Diversity who used to love to manage these dialogues for my school community at the time, but also because of my background as a student who matriculated through predominantly white educational institutions from grades 1-12.
Stories can help foster connection and personal sharing can be a tool used to unearth similarities through which we can see each other’s humanity. I believe that, when facilitated appropriately, our sharing stories can cultivate space for learning and growth that can strengthen communities by ensuring more inclusive eco-systems. After the pair share, I was compelled to share a story about one of the most important things to some six-year-olds… sleepovers. I remember when I first learned about this thing called a sleepover, and it sounded awesome. It sounded like a trip to a sacred and secret country and place that could offer more information about these people who were so different from me. Not only racially different, but they were also part of this new religion that I learned about, Judaism. It also intrigued me that they lived in the community where my school was in Newton, MA, and their houses looked very different from my apartment building; I was very eager to get inside for further comparison.
Oh the intrigue! Years later, I am able to make many connections to this being one of the origin stories for my commitment to being a global citizen and lover of many cultures. I would be able to see my friend’s room. Set my eyes on my friend’s actual house with a backyard and maybe a pet. I could share my room and my toys; we didn’t have a backyard but I could show off the courtyard in our apartment building. I would be able to taste the food that my friends described that was clearly so different from mine. I brought fried chicken and boiled eggs to school sometimes! These were all visions of how it could have gone in my six-year-old mind. Dreams across differences with no value judgment assigned…yet.
As I’ve posted about before, mine was a blessing of a Mama to have, and her stance on sleepovers was one of reciprocity. If you were allowed to come to my apartment in Dorchester, in urban Boston, which many people from Newton believed was “dangerous”, then I would be allowed to go over your house in suburban Newton, for which we had different affluent stereotypes. Initially, it was difficult to find a friend who was allowed to come over to where we lived, and so I wasn’t allowed to go over to where a lot of friends lived; and sleepovers were out of the question. Not only was my mom’s justified system of equity a barrier for me but the logistics were also a complicating factor as Newton was an hour drive away and the school bus accommodated the school schedule only for the METCO bussing program between the city and the suburbs. I was a METCO student, a voluntary school integration program in Boston, which defined clear boundaries for me (and us all).
I remember the day that after much back and forth with my mom and peers in my first grade class, one student’s parents finally recognized the importance of cultural exchange, Dana. I was able to go over to her house after she was allowed to come over and sleep on our pull-out sofa bed. I was so proud!
The point of our Parent Program is to ensure that parents have the opportunity to practice language around race, identity, and things like nuances of sleepovers across race and historical redlines. It was only because some families were able to stretch beyond the stereotypes that they believed about Dorchester or Newton and share dynamic truths that we could deepen relationships across cultures. The Parents Program orients families toward courageous unlearning and intentional growth through deepening self awareness.
As I continue to learn about our signature programs and engage in site visits with multiple organizations with whom we partner, I continue to be remarkably impressed with the determination, commitment, curiosity, and interest that not only the organizations, but each leader of them guides toward ultimate liberation. I’m affirmed to believe that we are just trying to live in a better world, and I see our partners working toward that goal in innovative ways. If you are interested in signing up for our parents program, you can find the registration link for the upcoming taste here and the link to register for the program here.
Please continue to follow us and like our posts highlighting recent successes for partners and announcing upcoming events.
