St. Patrick's EDI Mission Statement
St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School’s determination to promote equity and justice, diversity, and inclusion proceeds from two fundamental ideas. First, that every individual has infinite value as a child of God and, second, that we come to understand the world more fully through others.

Curriculum Highlights

We divide our E,D,I curriculum into four main areas of focus: identity, diversity, justice, and action.
Here are some examples of our program in action.

DIVERSITY
Grade 1 - Study of Ghana

After reading folktales from around the world, our Lower School students focus their attention on West African pourquoi and trickster tales, such as the Anansi stories, and learn about the rich culture and varied geography of Ghana.

Children make connections between themselves and others through an exploration of stories, traditions, and family experiences. Highlights include a visit by a kente cloth weaver and a collaborative drumming and dancing experience with Grade 7 students.

IDENTITY
Grade 3 - Who We Are Wednesdays

Students use Morning Meeting once a week to delve into areas of identity, which includes age, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, socioeconomic status, body image, education, family configuration, language, learning style, beliefs, and more.

Students learn how identity is influenced by physical characteristics, personal experiences, self-definition, and how others define us.

JUSTICE
Early Childhood Division - Conflict Resolution

Children receive support in developing independence, taking initiative, and gaining confidence. They are helped to develop the skills and provided opportunities to practice respectfully and meaningfully advocating for themselves.

Morning Meetings provide experience in turn-taking and sharing as well as expressing opinions and feelings. Children are guided to identify their emotions and respect those of their friends to help resolve conflicts.

ACTION
Grade 8 Capstone Projects

To encourage ownership over their learning, Grade 8 students embark on a Capstone project focused on a specific humanities theme involving policy reform. In addition to real-world skills—such as research, writing, presenting, time management, and organization—the project enables students to become experts in their chosen topics.

This project is the culminating academic achievement of their St. Patrick’s career.

Equity Guiding Principles

This set of principles guides us in nurturing our diverse learning community, as they reflect appropriate and comprehensive goals for equity.

Our goal is to make sure we all regularly refer to and apply these Equity Guiding Principles in our work.

I. Understanding

I. Understanding

As a community of valued individuals, we celebrate our differences and appreciate our commonalities as children of God.

Areas of measurement:

Our school environment – visually, aesthetically, programmatically, and in all other ways – represents, and is accessible to, all children.
Our curriculum emphasizes the educational value of seeing issues from multiple points of view and fosters crucial thinking about bias.
Our curricular materials are up-to-date. They value difference in culture (including geographical and historical setting), religion, socio-economic status, family configuration, gender, sexual orientation, age, and physical and cognitive abilities.

II. Inclusion

II. Inclusion

An inclusive community is one that represents a diverse population, embracing people of varying ages, abilities, ethnicities, family configurations genders, sexual orientations, races, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds. Each member of the St. Patrick’s community is responsible for promoting equal access and equal respect in the school setting and in the greater St. Patrick’s community.

Areas of measurement:

Our school has admission policies and processes that promote inclusion.
Our school actively seeks faculty and staff who come from diverse backgrounds.
Our school reaches out to all parents and includes them in the life of the school in meaningful ways.
Our school is a place that reflects and represents the diversity in our community and beyond.

III. Honesty

III. Honesty

It is our ongoing responsibility to represent St. Patrick’s accurately as we clarify who we are and who we want to be and to be aware of our own biases and prejudices.

Areas of measurement

Assessment is valued as a continuous process in the classroom and in the community and is recognized as a way to promote responsiveness to change.
Assessment is included as a formal part of the faculty evaluation process.
Ongoing education is a premise and a reality for faculty, administration, staff, parents, and Trustees.

Affinity & Ally Groups

What they are and the roles they play in our school

An affinity group is a designated “brave space,” where everyone in that group shares a particular identity. This identity can be based, for example, on race, gender, sexual orientation, language, nationality, physical/mental ability, family structure, or religion. Affinity groups can be a place for people in a community to come together to learn more about their identities and to feel more connected based on those identities. In affinity groups, participants might share and talk about their experiences or focus on working towards a particular mission or goal.

An ally group is an entity whose members come together with a common goal of understanding and support of a marginalized group.

All Black Community (ABC)

The Black Faculty and Staff Affinity group, All Black Community (ABC), provides collective advocacy and supports for employees who identify as African American and all who identify as members of the African Diaspora. Together we gather for camaraderie and to affirm our identity, discuss issues that are unique to our experience in Independent Schools, and offer support to our student focused affinity group for black students at St. Patrick's, C3.

Affinity Groups for Jewish Faculty, Staff, and Families

C3 (Culture, Creed, and Community)

Gender and Sexualities Alliance (GSA)

Hispanohablantes

Parents of Black Students (PBSA)

PASIA (Parents of Asian Students in Alliance) and ASIA (Asian Students in Alliance)

San Patricio

SPEAC (St. Patrick's Engages Anti-Racism Conversations)

SPEAC (St. Patrick's Engages Anti-Racism Conversations) for Parents

Committees Focused on the Work
of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Board of Trustees EDI Committee

This committee monitors and evaluates ongoing efforts by the Board and the Day School with respect to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to, review, revision, and approval of a formal equity and diversity statement, either within the Day School Mission Statement or separately; review and approval of policies and protocols related to equity, diversity, and inclusion; and monitoring relationships among various stakeholder groups in the Day School working to promote the work of equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Faculty and Staff EDI Committee

This committee is composed of faculty and staff from all divisions. Meeting monthly, it works to ensure that St Patrick’s culture, curriculum, and program are safe, welcoming, and affirming. Using St. Patrick’s Mission Statement as a guide, the committee is responsible for examining the school’s efforts in supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion across social identifiers that include but are not limited to age, ethnicity, gender identity, learning style, ability, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class within the community.

Resources

The Equity Committee suggests the following web resources for families interested in learning more about Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in schools.

Leadership

Strategic Plan

The Board of Trustees concluded an inclusive and wide-ranging strategic planning effort. From that process, St. Patrick's identified four initiatives to guide decision-making in the near-term. One of those initiatives is a commitment to expanding our work in equity, diversity, and inclusion.

To that end, St. Patrick's created a new position, Assistant Head of School for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and appointed Erica Thompson to that position. A longtime member of the St. Patrick's community, Erica has served as St. Patrick’s Equity Coordinator, chair of the Faculty and Staff Equity Committee, and a Lower School learning specialist and, from 2000 to 2003, as Assistant Head of School. A particular area where Erica contributes to this important work at St. Patrick's is in curriculum development.

The Board of Trustees has committed itself to investing resources and identifying additional strategies for addressing diversity and inclusion in the student body and in the faculty, staff, and administration, promoting the overall excellence of our program and the quality of the experience of each and every child and family. As we observe in the Day School Mission Statement for Equity and Diversity, “It is within a diverse community that we are best able to educate ourselves and one another to live in a global society, to actively and effectively promote justice, and to oppose prejudice and bias.”

We look forward to sharing our work towards this vital priority in preparing students to thrive and contribute in the 21st century.

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