Wayne Magazine Back to School 2020 | Page 18

education TEACHING THE TEACHERS Dr. Khyati Joshi trains educators to promote social justice WRITTEN BY CINDY SCHWEICHHANDLER Dr. Khyati Joshi became interested in the systemic nature of bias the hard way: She was avictim of it herself. Anaturalized citizen who emigrated with her family to the U.S. from Gujarat, India, when she was 18 months old, she says that, as a“brown girl,” she didn’t fit into her Atlanta community. “Folks didn’t know what to do with me,” she says. In middle school, she was bullied so relentlessly that her academic work suffered. “A good day was when nobody talked to me because then nobody harassed me,” she says. “I’d leave school and think that the only communication Ihad was with teachers, but atleast Iwasn’t made fun of. Nowonder Imade all C’s.” Though she grew upalongside many Hindu community members, it was reading Night by holocausts survivor Elie Wiesel that changed her life. “I was obsessed,” she says. “It drove my history and English teachers crazy.” Joshi majored in religious studies at Emory University, studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for ayear and returned to America to pursue her doctorate in Social Justice Education atthe University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Joshi was then a visiting assistant professor at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, where she taught Asian American Studies and Comparative Ethnic Studies; she also taught in the American Studies program at Princeton University. Currently, she is a social science researcher and professor of education at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She lives in Wayne. With more than 20 years’ experience teaching students about race, religion, immigration and social justice, Joshi is well-suited to share her insights with other educators, which she has been doing for most of those years. “My students are current teachers and soon-to-be teachers,” she says, at public, charter and private schools. Many of the educators are aware of Joshi’s expertise because they have attended the Institute for Diversity and Social Justice, a summer program she runs that began as a collaboration between Fairleigh Dickinson and the American Conference on Diversity (this year’s session was canceled due to COVID- 19). Joshi has trained teachers in the Hackensack, Teaneck and Florham Park school districts, and has given JOSHI: COURTESY OF CHARMI PEÑA; BOOKS: COURTESY OF NYU PRESS 16 BACK TOSCHOOL 2020 WAYNE MAGAZINE