New Westminster Schools is deeply committed to supporting students and staff in our work to become more inclusive – as we celebrate and honour diversity, work to build anti-racism policies and learning into our schools, and aim to remove barriers that some students, families and staff face.
That work crosses many lines, as we look at the various ways people identify: by race, gender, class, sexual orientation and more. These are sometimes called the intersections of our identity … layers of factors that can and do affect how we experience the world around us.
When it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism (DEIA), we know these can sometimes be challenging topics to delve into. But we also heard from parents and community members that they wanted support in finding more resources and tools to learn from. That’s why we’re giving you a range of resources (videos, book suggestions, website links and more) to learn from. There will be options here for those just starting their journey, and options to push those who see themselves on the front lines of advocacy. It’s all about supporting each other to have challenging conversations with ourselves, so that we are each better prepared to have them at home or out in our community.
We’ll continue to add to, curate and adjust these resources as we move forward, as this is very much a work in progress.
We hope we can walk this journey together with open hearts – because while there is certainly understandable space for anger, tears and regret, there are also great opportunities for growth, joy and hope.
We welcome you to reach out if you have any questions about what you’re hearing, learning about or engaging with, as you explore the resources we’ve shared here.
In order to make these resources easier to navigate, we’ve organized them into a few broad categories. We’ll be adding more categories as we grow this out, and continuing to curate or adjust as is appropriate. We’ve done our best to try and cluster information to make it easier to find, but hope you’ll take time to consider where these resources and the content in them can and should be considered in other contexts. That said, within this section you’ll currently find:
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-racism: an introduction (this page)
The 4 levels of racism
Individual Learning – identities
Checking our Privilege
Intersectionality
Anti-Racism Resources, including how racism manifests against specific groups in our communities:
Anti-Indigenous racism
Anti-Black racism
Anti-Asian racism
Anti-South Asian racism
Having courageous conversations
SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Resources
A-Z of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: a cheat sheet for all the terms and concepts that support doing this important work
For questions or more information, please contact Kenneth Headley, District Vice-Principal for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-racism: kheadley@sd40.bc.ca
In winter of 2021 we engaged a small consulting firm to work with students, parents, staff and the community to better understand where we had opportunity to build on what was working, and where we have need to address Justice, Equity, Inclusion and Diversity (JEDI) work more fully. The process took almost a year to conduct and put the reports together. A summary of that analysis and the executive summary of that work can be found here: https://newwestschools.ca/understanding-and-opportunities-the-diversity-and-inclusion-review/
Interested in continuing your learning? Use the navigation at the top of the page (in the left bar for desktop platforms, or the “Section menu” under the banner for mobile) to explore a new topic, or use the below button to get to the next page in the DEIA Parent Toolkit
