KWS DEI Vision Statement
Our school, like our world, and every person in it, is constantly changing. As we change and grow, we integrate our past, and the presence of the past always has an impact on our growth, as we move into the future. If we fail to integrate and learn from our past, we perpetuate the problems of yesterday.
Our society is currently engaged in a long and difficult struggle to come to terms with the ways in which racism and inequality have shaped our world, and continue to impact all of us. This collective reckoning is both necessary and challenging, on many levels, and will continue to be experienced in different ways by different people. Diversity of experience and perspective is an indelible and fundamental characteristic of our shared humanity; it is precisely because of our multifaceted diversity that we must attend to this process of healing, growth, and integration with an emphasis on care, empathy, and open-mindedness, and with a shared intention for finding ways to achieve mutual understanding across our differences.
We at Kimberton Waldorf School are committed to furthering and deepening this process of growth, integration, and healing as consciously as possible. We believe that problems as complex as racism and inequality cannot be healed or improved if they are not well understood. Words and actions that arise from anger, fear, shame, defensiveness, or reactivity of any kind will often serve to perpetuate, rather than heal, the underlying causes of individual and collective trauma that continue to shape our social world. We are committed to healing, wholeness, diversity, and inclusion – not blame, division, groupthink, or exclusion.
Nothing is untouched by this work; everyone is included, and everything we do is informed by these deep and abiding intentions. Being a member of Kimberton Waldorf School – whether staff, student, parent, or alumni – means that you share this intention and are committed to working on your own path of healing and wholeness, in relationship with others who are also doing their own work. Working together, we are striving to co-create an educational environment where:
- Every student, family, and staff member feels safe, seen, heard, valued, and respected.
- Our curriculum, programming, and communications include questions, insights, and wisdom from multiple perspectives and traditions.
- We do not perpetuate or reinforce the biases, stereotypes, generalizations, and prejudices that inform and justify social injustice or inequality.
At Kimberton Waldorf School, DEI work is not marginal, or limited to particular roles or groups; it is not about trying to say the right thing, do what others are doing, or impress prospective families. It is a fundamental and essential aspect of what it means to be engaged in the process of education, as a community of individuals who share a common humanity, care deeply about the world, and are committed to making this world a better place, for all people.
