About
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusivity at Headwaters
At Headwaters School, our Purpose is to cultivate identity formation, foster empathy, and embrace diversity to bring more peace to the world. In our PACT, we invite our community members to be Peacemakers, Advocates, Creators, and Thinkers.
We recognize that words are not enough, and we are engaged in ongoing work to bring this language to life in our students as well as our faculty, staff, trustees, parents and other community members.
Peacemaking is not passive, and we must work relentlessly together in pursuit of a more just and equitable society.
Our Commitment to Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist Education
Our school's foundation is grounded in the concept of personal agency and active peacemaking, and we will work to provide educational experiences for our students to help them grow as individuals in order to actively bring more peace to the world. This work includes recognizing the ways racism and privilege manifest in us as individuals and in our school community, and doing the work to dismantle systems that support them.
We are working to implement and support a schoolwide Anti‐Bias/Anti-Racist education that:
-
Encourages learning about each other’s differences
-
Invites all students to be proud of themselves and their families
-
Teaches students to respect and honor differences, recognize bias, and to speak up for what is right
-
Encompasses gender, language, religious diversity, sexual orientation, physical and mental abilities, and economic class
-
Takes an active, problem-solving approach that is integrated into our curriculum and environment
-
Promotes an understanding of social problems and invites students to invent strategies for improving social conditions
Credit to City Garden Montessori in St. Louis for some of this language and for being a leader in this work.
Enid Lee, Canadian educator and consultant
I use the term anti-racist education because a lot of multicultural education hasn't looked at discrimination. It has the view 'People are different and isn't that nice,' as opposed to looking at how some people's differences are looked upon as deficits and disadvantages. In anti-racist education, we attempt to look at--and change--those things in school and society that prevent some differences from being valued.
We are inspired by these Anti-Bias Education resources:
The Four Goals of Anti-Bias Education
From Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, Second Edition
From Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, Second Edition
-
Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.
-
Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections.
-
Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.
-
Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions.
Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards
The Social Justice Standards from Teaching Tolerance are a set of anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes divided into four domains—identity, diversity, justice and action (IDJA). The standards provide a common language and organizational structure for anti-bias education at every grade level.
The Social Justice Standards from Teaching Tolerance are a set of anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes divided into four domains—identity, diversity, justice and action (IDJA). The standards provide a common language and organizational structure for anti-bias education at every grade level.
Springs Campus
18 months to Pre-K