Rutgers Prep’s Allies for Inclusion and Diversity (AID) committee seeks to help members of our community deepen their understanding of and commitment to issues of diversity and inclusion; as part of that work, AID invited educator and community trainer Dr. Liza Talusan to facilitate a workshop specifically designed for Rutgers Prep parents, some of whom included their children in the session. The hour-long Zoom event was also open to RPS faculty (especially since there are several members of our community who can claim both of those identities), and began with Dr. Talusan, a parent of teens herself, expressing her gratitude to be in community with a group of fellow parents. She also established a foundational answer to the “why are we doing this” question, stating that in the midst of the challenges we are all facing in relation to the global pandemic, we are also witnessing and called to respond to ongoing violence and injustice against the Black community. We have also experienced racialized violence and injustice against Asian-American communities, Latinx communities, and Indigenous communities as a result of COVID-19.

Dr. Talusan’s workshop was designed to support families who have not yet found ways to talk about issues of racism and justice within their families, as well as those families who are deep in this work and seeking tools in support of having more conversations with others. Participants were encouraged to answer a series of questions and then share some of their answers with others through Zoom’s breakout room function. Participants reflected on how often we talk about issues of diversity and inclusion with our friends, with our family, and with co-workers. Dr. Talusan affirmed the prevalence of raised voices and conflict avoidance as non-effective strategies for dealing with challenging conversations and shared with participants a framework that had been shared with RPS faculty at the beginning of the year. As Glenn Singleton has shared, a “courageous conversation” can be one that is characterized by the following four agreements:

stay engaged
expect to experience discomfort
speak your truth
expect and accept a lack of closure

Again in smaller breakout groups, participants talked about which of the agreements are easier and harder for them, which are ones that they feel their family or communities do well, and which are ones for which they might need some help. 

One additional tool offered by Dr. Talusan focused on what she called “identity-conscious practice.” “Who you are,” Dr. Talusan shared, “informs what you do, how you act and interact, and how you see the world around you.” She shared the conceptual framework - developed by Rudine Sims Bishop and Emily Styles - of “Mirrors and Windows” as a way to think about those experiences with which we are familiar and which resonate with us (“mirrors”) and those instances in which an unfamiliar experience can lead us to a new perspective and understanding (“windows’).

At the end of the hour, many attendees expressed gratitude for the opportunity to expand their capacity for difficult conversations, and most participants also expressed an interest in additional opportunities to engage on these topics that are of such vital importance to all of us.