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MMFS was well represented at the annual NAIS People of Color Conference (PoCC) in St. Louis last week. PoCC is the flagship of NAIS’s commitment to equity and justice in teaching, learning, and sustainability for independent schools. Head of School André Del Valle led a delegation that included Horace Knight (CFO); Tatesha Clark (Assistant Head of School – DEI); Tiffany Huggins (Director of Admissions); Linda Jean-Mary (US Language Therapist); Sharina Gordon (Assistant Director of Diversity and Equity); and Cordelia Larsen (US Head Art Teacher). More than 8,000 adults and students from across the country gathered to learn, collaborate, and support one another, and to explore this year’s theme, Gateways to Freedom: A Confluence of Truth, Knowledge, Joy, and Power.
For three days, the attendees attended workshops, seminars, and events, including a presentation from our own Tatesha Clark, Assistant Head of School (DEI). She co-led a workshop with Dr. AnaMaria Correa from Brooklyn Friends School called “Find Your People – Sisterhood as Survival: Integrating a Radical Relationship Practice Among BIPOC Women to Conjure Survivance, Power, Thriving, Connection and Joy.” The workshop discussed strategies for creating sisterhood among BIPOC women in independent school spaces as antidote, resistance, and resilience practice to combat isolation, racelighting, white supremacy and patriarchy. Attendees also learned from leading voices in education: Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, Dr. Christopher Emdin, Simon Tam, Sonny Singh, Lacey Schwartz Delgado, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, and Dr. Liza Talusan. And, as Tatesha recounts, “We supported each other, we cried, laughed, shared meals, danced, and reflected.”
In a note to MMFS colleagues, Tatesha shared:
Every session, conversation, keynote, and master class we attended was focused on how to enhance our teaching, leading, learning, coaching, presence, and advising. We are returning with powerful action items and vision for how we see our community needs to grow. That said, PoCC is joy filled. It is everything that a community reflects as transformational, inspirational, and transcendent, and a refuge from the day-to-day experience of being who we are and who we are required to be, within systems, histories, and cultures that impact our lives, belonging, purpose, and resilience.
You can get a glimpse of this transformational and inspirational conference in this Highlights video. If you have sharp eyes, you can catch Tatesha at the 2:36 mark, and André at 2:43.
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