Equity and Inclusion

The Education and Equity Committee of the Board is responsible for ensuring that the School is building an equitable and inclusive learning community. This includes reviewing Maret's educational programs to make sure that they are consistent with and meet the high standards of the mission of the School. The Committee also ensures that the Board has in place policies and procedures that promote the principles of equity and inclusion in general and within the academic and co-curricular programs at Maret. The Committee reports to the Board about the nature, direction, and needs of the School's educational programs and helps cultivate an appreciation for the broad diversity of the School. 

David Hall, Chair
Suzy George
Colin Stretch
Ted Stettinius
Victoria Wassmer
Beth Wilkinson

Courtney Cothran-Fenner, Director of Equity and Inclusion
Maria Lopez, Assistant Head of School: Curriculum Development

• To be a forum in which equity issues in the community (i.e., parents, faculty, and students) are processed
• To plan equity and inclusion programming in each division
• To ensure substantive professional development related to equity and inclusion for Maret faculty
• To provide programming for our parents on equity and inclusion
• To support forums for open and sustained dialogue on equity and inclusion in the Maret community
• To monitor the progress made on Strategic Directions 
• To work with the Anti-Racism Advisory Council in order to improve campus life
• With the Board Committee on Education and Equity, to monitor the progress made on recommendations of the Anti-Racism Task Force

• Courtney Cothran-Fenner, Director of Equity and Inclusion—Co-chair
• Marjo Talbott, Head of School—Co-chair
• Nina Candia, Assistant Director of Upper School
• Jaime Estrada, World Languages Department Chair
• Liz Kleinrock, Lower School Librarian
• Dana Krein, Humanities Teacher
• Jung Lee, Third Grade Homeroom Teacher
• Krystle Merchant, Director of Community Engagement &  Partnerships
• Dominic Redd, Director of Middle School
• Patrick Scott, Director of Middle School Admissions & Social Media
• Steven Tejada, Director of Upper School

Many programs are now integral to Maret school life:

• Committee on Equity & Inclusion (monthly) 
• Admission Outreach 
• Deepening Discussion About Race 
• Davies Scholars (US) 
• Davies Exposure and Enrichment Program (summer, advising throughout the year) 
• Faculty Meeting Focus on Equity and Inclusion (numerous times a year) 
• Meet, Eat, & Greet for Parents/Guardians with Students of Color (September)
• MPA Equity & Inclusion Speaker (spring)
• Coming Out Day, K-12 (October)
• Day of Silence, Middle and Upper Schools (April)
• Different Kinds of Families, Lower School
• Culture Club, Lower School 
• Faculty Affinity Groups 
  • AWARE (A White Anti-Racist Educator)
  • Black Faculty Affinity
  • Faculty of Color Affinity
  • LGBTQ Faculty Affinity
  • East Asian Affinity
• Student Affinity Groups 
  • Black Student Union
  • Asian Affinity
  • LGBTQ Affinity
• Parent Coffees across difference
• Queer-Straight Alliance
• Middle School Day of Dialogue (annually)
• Upper School Day of Dialogue (annually)
• Mixed Forum (annually)
• LGBTQ Family Gathering
• NAIS People of Color Conference and Student Diversity Leadership Conference (annually)
• Achievement Gap Review
• Student Exit Interviews (May)
• Heritage Month and Identity Celebrations (numerous)
• Quantitative and Qualitative Review

Events across the country, as well as stories within our own community, have called us to set a higher standard of inclusion and engagement. This is a time of meaningful and ongoing reflection for all of us—the school leadership, faculty, students, and whole community. We must listen and do more to fight institutional racism at Maret.

In addition to the standing Committee on Equity and Inclusion and the Board of Trustees' Committee on Education and Equity, the School convened a joint Board and faculty Anti-Racism Task Force in June 2020. The Task Force worked through February 2021, sharing a report with the Faculty and Board in February and with the wider community in March. 

Task Force Co-Chairs
Ian Cameron (President of the Board of Trustees)
Courtney Cothran-Fenner (Director of Equity and Inclusion)

Task Force Members
Nina Candia (Assistant Director of US)
Susan Epps (Assistant Head)
David Hall (Trustee)
Allie Levey (Director of College Counseling)
Krystle Merchant (Director of Community Engagement)
Clif Morgan (MPA Executive Committee)
Lex Sant (Trustee)
Sylvia White (Trustee)

Ex-Officio
Marjo Talbott (Head of School)

Task Force Consultants
Greg Peters and Camilla Greene, of the San Francisco Coalition of Essential Small Schools (SF-CESS), are well-known consultants who work with many schools to combat racism, prejudice, and hatred. Roughly a decade ago, they, along with Eliza Alexander and Holly Hinderlie, helped Maret create and facilitate Deepening the Discussion about Race, our week-long annual faculty training. 

Read the Full Report

Report Recommendation Summary

Through our listening groups, survey, and @blackatmaret, we heard the call for immediate and real action; in conjunction with SF-CESS, we have identified the areas where work needs to take place. Many of the plans we have going forward will take time to allow for proper training and protocols to ensure we do this work right and in a manner that is lasting. Actions on other recommendations will begin in the next few weeks while some changes are underway already. Making these plans optimal and bias-free will be an ongoing and continuous process, as we are constantly fighting the biases we all bring to the common space of Maret.

Read the Full Report

We are in the process of addressing the following recommendations from the ARTF report:

Student Voice
Overwhelmingly, student voice needs to be incorporated throughout a number of our systems and especially in the spaces that are measuring and evaluating equity at Maret. This will include representation on the Anti-Racism Advisory Council, meetings with the Committee on Equity & Inclusion, and a regular feedback cycle between the student body (beyond Student Council) and the school administration.

Committee for Equity & Inclusion
This leadership team (known as CEI) has actually been in place at Maret for several years. However, with the recommendations from the equity audit, this team of leaders will expand in size, increase its meeting frequency in order to keep urgent issues even more at the forefront, and review recommendations from the Anti-Racism Advisory Council in order to shape school policy on racial equity.

System for Reporting Racial Harm
This is how people in our community can report an instance of racial harm. This could lead to a restorative practice protocol.

Restorative Practices
This system (a series of small meeting protocols led by faculty facilitators trained in Restorative Practices) will be our way of doing deeper reparative emotional work with students and faculty who are involved in an incident of racial harm. Part of this work involves self-reflection, as well as “making it right.” This does not replace consequences but works in conjunction with consequences.

Systems Needing Anti-Racism Structures
This is a re-examination of our processes in order to make them racially equitable; these systems include the make-up of our leadership, our hiring practices, our evaluation of students, and our relationship-building between faculty and students. This also includes embedding even deeper anti-racist work into our Wellness curriculum, where our identity and equity education currently lives.

Ongoing Professional Development for Faculty
Faculty and, in particular, school leadership should deepen their anti-racist work. School leadership should also make their own work a transparent model for the rest of the faculty. We will regularly update our wider community about the anti-racist steps we are taking in terms of our professional development.

A Racial Reckoning
This would be a large-scale project to codify Maret’s racial narrative and to make it known. This project would: (1) encompass the history of the land upon which Maret sits; (2) acknowledge the Indigenous people and all those who have lived on the land, as well as the seminal leaders of Woodley home and the School; (3) research the legacy of their identities and the narratives over time from across the breadth of our community; (4) identify changes in school demographics, achievements, and evolution of policies; and (5) publicly acknowledge and take responsibility for racial harm. We have begun working with faculty and students of the Woodley Historical Society to begin to process how we would complete this.

Anti-Racism Advisory Council
This is a body of individuals in our community (students, faculty, families, and alumni) who will work to proactively prevent incidents of racial harm from happening through shared observations about racial equity in the community.

These are additional recommendations from the ARTF report:

Anti-Racist Expectations for Faculty
We must create a set of baseline expectations for faculty as anti-racist representatives of Maret. This would include such elements as hiring, advising, teaching, collaboration, and evaluation. This would be part of a comprehensive program to prevent racial harm.

Anti-Racist Curriculum for Families
The school should develop a framework for teaching anti-racist practices to the parent, guardian, and caregiver community so that they will be aligned. This would be another component of the program to prevent racial harm.

Across-Difference Affinity
In conjunction with individual racial identity work and racial identity work within affinity groups, there should be increased opportunities for across- difference work between affinity groups. This would also be a component of the program to prevent racial harm.

Black Student Leadership
A direct quotation from the consulting firm is that “Maret should disproportionately elevate Black student voices and leadership in areas that matter most, as this equity audit is in response to the reality of @blackatmaret.” This would be a part of our ongoing anti-racist leadership development, which includes student leadership.

In the fall, Maret honors National Coming Out Day by celebrating the LGBTQIA members of our community (students, faculty, parents, alumni). The day often includes chalking the sidewalks around campus with names of famous LGBTQIA people, an assembly in which we invite members of our own community to share their stories, and a photo exhibit for members of our community to share their personal connections to the LGBTQ community.

Through literature, social studies, music, and guided classroom discussions, Lower School students explore their thoughts about diversity, respectfully hear other perspectives, and work through differences to achieve a firm sense of community. 

Culture Club is an after school activity in the Lower School. Each session is led by a member of the Maret community who shares their cultural traditions through food, games, music, dance, crafts, and/ or other activities. The club’s members acknowledge and celebrate the differences among various cultures while also recognizing the aspects that connect us as a people.

Initiated by students, middle schoolers volunteer to join affinity groups based on personal racial identity. The groups meet during lunch to discuss issues and concerns that are specific to that group--both issues from the larger community, and issues students feel are important to their experiences at Maret. Students benefit from these affinity groups by having a safe place to share, connect, and collaborate with peers of a shared racial identity. Groups include:

Asian Affinity
Black Affinity
Latinx Affinity
Middle Eastern Affinity
Q Affinity

The Middle School also has a White Anti-Racist Allies (WARA) group. It isn't an affinity group, rather a working group focused on education and action.

Upper School affinity groups provide a space for reflection, dialogue, and support for students who share a racial or ethnic identity. Participation in affinity groups is voluntary. Affinity groups help facilitate positive identity exploration and provide a space for affirmation,and development towards a larger goal of creating an inclusive and thriving school culture. Upper School Affinity Groups include:

Asian Affinity
Black Girl Magic
Black Student Union
Handsome Black Men Affinity
Latinx Affinity
Middle Eastern Affinity
Multiracial Affinity
Q Affinity
South Asian Affinity
Unique Family Structure Affinity

Upper School DAM promotes diversity awareness, focusing on the identifiers of race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, gender, socioeconomic status, and age. DAM provides an arena for open discussion and includes the School community in numerous activities to ensure that every voice is heard and every difference celebrated.

The Queer-Straight Alliance (QSA) is a student-run club whose purpose is to build alliances between students who fall along a variety of positions on the sexual- and gender- spectrums. Our mission is to help create a well-informed, welcoming, and empowered student body. We raise awareness of current social issues, encourage cross-difference dialogue, and provide leadership for shool-sponsored events, such as National Coming Out Day and Day of Silence.

Each year, a group of Maret Upper School students spend a Saturday attending Georgetown Day School's Sexual Assault Summit. Students attend workshops to learn how to dismantle the systems of gender oppression that often lead to sexual assault; additionally, they hear stories from sexual assault survivors. They take what they've learned and share with the Upper School community, as well as take actionable steps toward making Maret a more equitable and safe place for all genders.

At the beginning of each school year, new faculty participate in the Deepening the Discussion About Race workshop designed to develop a greater awareness of how race shapes their leadership at Maret. They examine the history and context of race and racism in our country, our city, and on our campus. Together, they develop a common language, a shared framework, and a set of tools to benefit their students.

During the week participants develop a greater awareness of how race shapes their leadership at Maret as well as an understanding of the history and context around race and racism in our country, in Washington, and at Maret. Participants examine definitions of racism, oppression, and white privilege and explore how this is ingrained at Maret. Together, faculty develops common language, a shared framework, and set of tools that will positively impact their students.

The institute began in 2012, and to date, 100% of our faculty have completed the workshop.

Faculty Reflections

"We asked ourselves how can we rethink the School, its assumptions, and the important experiences lived by the most important part of our jobs: the students."

"It was the first time that I've been to a conference where everyone in the room, except for two of the facilitators, were colleagues; that had a very intense effect on the week, but a promising one. I realized this work about race is part head and part heart, and without both you're not completing the picture."

"I always assumed and feared [that] white people would dismiss my concerns as me being too “sensitive”. I was surprised, elated, and moved to know that my white colleague and I could have this conversation and it wouldn’t end with me in tears."

"It’s one thing to pay lip service to the idea of being an inclusive and equitable community. It's another to be in a room with people for eight hours daily for five days with people from different backgrounds working towards that end. It's empowering.

"It’s scary. It’s emotionally exhausting. It’s a great way to start having thought-provoking, tough conversations about race, difference, what we want for ourselves professionally, personally, and for our students."

Our Equity Learning Groups are the community-wide follow-up work to Deepening the Discussion About Race. ELGs directly address teacher pedagogy by: 1) having teachers work to build authentically trusting relationships with each student; 2) reducing the predictability of failure and success among students; 3) disrupting repetitive practices that tend to negatively impact students from marginalized groups; and 4) cultivate the unique gifts and talents of every student (adapted from Zaretta Hammond). Teaching faculty are also engaging in work around equitable assessments in order to make evaluation of student progress as accurate, as motivational, and as bias-free as possible (adapted from Joe Feldman).

Faculty affinity groups encourage building community and provide a safe space for all participants to identify salient issues and common concerns through dialogue; bring about affirmation, connection, and empowerment; and come together to promote and prepare for cross-cultural dialogue with other affinity groups. (Source: NAIS).

Black Faculty Affinity
East Asian Faculty Affinity
Faculty Parents
Faculty with Parents Suffering from Dementia
Middle Eastern Faculty Affinity
LQBTQIA+ Faculty Affinity

While not an affinity group, the A White Anti-Racist Educator (AWARE) working group meets in affinity to pursue further education and take meaningful action toward a more inclusive and equitable school community.