Racial Equity Movement Involves the Entire Beacon Community

By Bruna Cronfli

Beacon recognizes the diversity of backgrounds, cultural experiences, and personal choices as the richness that illuminates our project of a welcoming and pluralistic school. We believe that differences expand the opportunities for the development of the individual and of society, and that understanding and respect for other cultures help to create a better and more peaceful world. We educate open-minded students who understand and appreciate their personal history and identity and are flexible to the traditions of other communities. 

The Beacon Movement for Racial Equity aims to promote awareness, reflection, and education in our community and to establish anti-racism practices, based on the purpose of forming conscious and responsible students to be agents of change in society. The Beacon Day for Diversity is inspired by the school’s mission, which has diversity, welcoming, and solidarity as keywords that reflect our values. 

Racial Equity was the central theme of Retreat 2021, an event dedicated to training our educators and employees that marked an important step in the journey toward diversity. 

We formed committees with educators and staff to discuss initiatives on the fronts of Literacy (learning about the topic), Curriculum Review, Student Admission, Recruitment, and Communication. Now, we invite families to support and expand the Beacon Movement for Racial Equity by forming a new group of people who are experts, engaged in the issue, or interested in learning more. 

The beginning of the journey with the families was marked by a meeting with the school management and the Professional Development Coordinator for the alignment of ideas, reflection, beginning of literacy, and description of goals about where we want to go.

The next step is to bring interested families together again for a Conference Cycle with Alexandra Loras, a consultant, speaker, and ambassador for several programs that spread awareness about gender and racial diversity.