In each feature of The Explorer this year, the Editors-in-Chief has a column highlighting the efforts of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in and around Hudson, as well as issues around DEI that affect HHS students. We hope that this column highlights the students and staff of Hudson that are trying to make a difference and build a better, more welcoming community for all.
The fourth and final article of the year highlights Mrs. Wilkerson, who has been the DEI Coordinator for the Hudson City School District since 2019. She has led efforts in creating a more equitable and diverse environment so that all students feel comfortable and not threatened because of their identity.
Before becoming the DEI Coordinator, Mrs. Wilkerson was a teacher at Hudson Middle School and taught English. She says that she does “miss teaching, but not grading. I appreciate being able to connect with students.” Mrs. Wilkerson’s joy for teaching has transferred into making all students at Hudson City Schools feel like they belong beyond her own classroom through “hearing the ideas students have and putting wings into their ideas.” About two years ago in 2021, Mrs. Wilkerson established a program here at HHS called Kaleidoscope. This program, which was funded and founded by the GAR Foundation, enables students to be able to work with other schools which differ from our own. The first year that the Kaleidoscope program was established, HHS was paired with North High School, and this year HHS is partnering with Twinsburg and Nordonia. Mrs. Wilkerson says that near the end of the school year, “students will have an identity celebration where they will be able to answer the question they’ve been asking all year- What makes me who I am?”
In addition to this creative and beneficial program, Mrs. Wilkerson hopes to bring a Kaleidoscope-related leadership conference at Hiram where students will be invited from diverse backgrounds who serve as school leaders. Wilkerson explains that she would “love to see students with different religions, and all types of different cultures having fun and having advantageous conversations where then they can hopefully have students come back to the high school with a better understanding of each other.” This result will help influence other students at the high school who did not attend the event, to understand new perspectives and ideas through connections with the student leaders who attended. Mrs. Wilkerson finalizes her idea with “In my mind, it will be awesome.”
Mrs. Wilkerson drives her passion for the DEI initiative to her commitment to being a good teacher. She explains, “students put on a very brave face when they are hurting a lot, so I am driven into trying to help our community have a shared vision.” People in our community have openly disagreed with the DEI initiative, and Mrs. Wilkerson explains that they “disagree with the how more than the what,” and that in most cases, “people want to see students be their best self and not feel upset and walk through the halls feeling like they don’t belong.”
Mrs. Wilkerson hopes to help facilitate a way to have a shared vision of what it is our community wants for all students and see how we can get there.
While she is proud of the progress she’s made with the DEI message and commitment, she shares that she’d like to “go back and start all over again and address the things that are not true.” When the initiative came out, parents were concerned that DEI advocates were challenging and redefining the diverse values in our community. Wilkerson wishes she could have started her advocacy “a little less passionately.” She continues, “people would better understand that I am not trying to favor one side more than the other. Moving forward, that is something I am looking to do.”
While the DEI initiative in the Hudson City School District has been fairly new, starting in late 2020, Wilkerson shares that the efforts made towards diversity, equity, and inclusion at Hudson have had tremendous progress. The progress has been “consistent, and that is most important in fulfilling our message to the community.”
Part of the message Mrs. Wilkerson reiterates is that by bringing more people in, “I don’t mean to push people out. The circle is simply expanding.”
In relation to Hudson’s administrative team and school board stepping up to provide the initiative in the schools, Mrs. Wilkerson said she “couldn’t ask for more. Inclusion and belonging is really at the forefront about a lot of the decisions that are made.”
Mrs Wilkerson appreciates being in a position that allows her to move the district forward and she wants all students and staff members, anyone from Hudson City Schools, to feel like they belong.
The DEI Mission Statement: The fundamental principle of our district mission is providing each child with the educational environment that enables them to develop into their best self – academically, physically and social-emotionally. But in order for a student to become their best self, they must feel comfortable being their current self. If students do not feel safe and comfortable being who they are, how can they ever take the risks necessary to grow into their full potential?
In Hudson, we are on a deliberate journey toward cultural proficiency–knowing how to learn from and about one another, and how to appreciate and interact with those who are dissimilar to ourselves.
As we consider the hopes, aspirations, and dreams we have for our students, and the skills and habits of mind necessary to achieve them, it is undeniable that building cultural proficiency through diversity, equity, and inclusion is critical to this development and essential in preparing students to compete, contribute, and thrive in a rapidly-changing, complex, interconnected, and globally diverse world.
