By Madison Hoang ‘22
This year, one of the new faces heading Community & Equity Day at St. Mark’s was Dr. John Daves, who mainly led a far-reaching effort to promote ‘social identity awareness and studies' within the St. Mark’s community. Dr. Daves explains, “the vision of C&E Day this year was to help students, faculty, and staff, learn how to learn about their social identities, as it pertains to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity. . . and to promote social justice, by becoming informed of power dynamics in society.” As a result, students, faculty, and staff can have a better understanding of how they are defined by the world in which they live, forge their own identities, and learn to celebrate their affiliations and individualities.
In one of the highlight events of the day, Dr. Daves delivered an inspirational speech to the entire St. Mark's body, where he emphasized the importance of not only recognizing our own social identities, but also the social identities of others in our community. Dr. Daves revealed his own teenage experiences - specifically as an educated, African-American male in an elite boarding institution - and the impact of racial stereotypes upon others’ and his own interpretations of himself. For him, it was very much about the frustrating struggles of being confined to racist stereotypes, despite the belief that the color of his skin should not have reflected his character nor his abilities. This was just one form of racism expressed against African-Americans during the 20th century, and yet, even after decades of ‘progress’, racist notions remain inherently rooted in societies and public perceptions - a fact that we have profoundly grasped with the rise of the recent Black Lives Movement and unveilings on the @blackatsm Instagram account.
Dr. Daves’ speech speech struck at the very core of the BIPOC St. Marker experience: how can one, as a person of color, form their own social identity amidst racial boundaries? This further raises the question: how do all students, staff, and faculty, with our unique sets of social identifications, become more aware of ourselves and of others within our community? And what can St. Mark's do to better accommodate the needs of all its students, in discovering ourselves and navigating the social dynamics of our world?
As a current English teacher at St. Mark’s, Dr. Daves recognizes that the development of social awareness in the school community must begin in the classroom. Therefore, he is pushing, not only for greater awareness among educators, but also for long-lasting reforms to the current educational curriculums at St. Mark's. The afternoon of C&E Day was occupied by workshops that aimed to translate this message to the St. Mark's faculty and staff: “The goal of the first workshop was to help faculty and staff learn about their own social identities, so that they can coordinate, communicate, and collaborate with other adults and students and serve more effectively as caregivers, mentors, and educators for students . . . The second workshop was really about, ‘what is this going to look like in the classroom?’ and ‘what are the consortium of classes where we can intentionally provide for students to learn how to learn about their social identities, eventually leading lives of consequence within and beyond the St. Mark's community?’”. Dr. Daves explains that teaching social awareness may look different across areas of study: in English, students may be asked to read from a variety of texts to recognize how authors use literary genres to express themselves; in science, this may translate into an in-depth analysis of COVID-19 and how its impacts are felt differently across racial, social, and ethnic lines; in mathematics, it may be an investigation of the statistics surrounding prison populations in the United States. Regardless of the ways in which social awareness studies are applied to separate subject areas, Dr. Daves asserts, “the main goal is that students make use of these learning experiences to creatively reflect on themselves. . . and make these experiences relevant by using them to grow as human beings, and beyond St. Mark's.”
In his fourth-form Survey of Literary Genres English class, Dr. Daves has already gained a head-start by implementing these studies into his own curriculum. Several of his current students were invited to facilitate and speak at the faculty workshops, and the students’ remarks attested to the transformative impacts of implementing social awareness studies to the school's existing curricula. Furthermore, Dr. Daves also presented two essays, written by students from the same class, which articulated their major takeaways about their social identities through the lens of assigned, in-class readings.
At these workshops, the faculty and staff at St. Mark's were highly-engaged and active in sharing their own ideas and opinions, and expressed great enthusiasm for the proposed changes. Though these changes have yet to be set in stone, Dr. Daves and his efforts this C&E Day have truly brought to light the issues that continue plaguing the St. Mark's community, and laid the foundation for the beginning of a sweeping reform initiative at St. Mark's - one that will certainly transform the school's learning environment and shift the community's social dynamics for many years to come.