Engaging in Meaningful Conversation About Socioeconomic Status and Class Identity

Posted by on August 8, 2016

Engaging in Meaningful Conversation About Socioeconomic Status and Class Identity (NAIS)

Rasheda Carroll and Jason David
Summer 2016
Where are you going for spring break? How many colleges did you apply to? Why aren’t you going on the international service-learning trip?

These are the sort of questions we hear students and colleagues ask each other in our advisories, classrooms, and hallways. No doubt they are born out of intentions to connect. They are not meant to embarrass or be unkind. But the truth is that they contain often overlooked class assumptions and, when raised, reinforce disparities based on class identity.

At Wildwood School (California), a K–12 school, we have been working hard to help students and faculty develop a deeper understanding of and sensitivity to the influence of socioeconomic status and class identity in their daily interactions. In particular, the school has been actively pursuing what we describe as “experiential equity.” In the context of socioeconomic status and class identity, experiential equity is a matter of ensuring that all students have access to the resources they need to fully participate in the essential school experience regardless of cost.

The proactive and strategic efforts to create a multicultural and inclusive community began a decade ago, though the intentional focus on socioeconomic status began in 2014. With other members of Wildwood School’s Multicultural Leadership Team (MLT), we initially sought to better understand how issues related to class were playing out in our community. To that end, the MLT, whose membership consists of faculty and administrators across grade levels and departments, partnered with VISIONS, Inc., an organization known for its change-oriented approach to diversity and inclusion work.

Terry Berman of VISIONS, Inc. facilitated an introspective and productive summer retreat and asked us probing questions, such as: What was your class identity growing up and what is it now? How are issues of socioeconomic class dynamics playing out at the personal, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural levels? What are some options to address the issues? What are the key issues that we want to focus on?

What emerged from our conversations were insights into student experiences. We learned about the level and steady presence of microaggressions — those cutting slights — between students. We learned how adults and students could judge each other based on class-status indicators (i.e., size of home, cars, vacations, family support staff). Student access to technology and hot lunch programs, perceptions about whose families participate in the school’s Flexible Tuition Program, value judgments about parental involvement and engagement — these and more were threaded into the daily life of the school.

What we learned, in short, is that our intentions and actions were not lining up as well as we had hoped.

http://www.nais.org/Magazines-Newsletters/ISMagazine/Pages/Engaging-Meaningful-Conversation-Socioeconomic-Status-Class-Identity.aspx