education
LEARNING NEVER ENDS Joshi speaks at an event for the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities in Richmond, Virginia.
presentations at private schools
including Montclair Kimberly
Academy and the Pingry School.
Word of mouth, she says, brought
her to the Millburn public schools,
where she has been working with
educators in recent years.
MUCH MORE THAN
‘SENSITIVITY’
The training that Joshi provides to
teachers and administrators takes
four to five days, though the sessions
can be spaced out through the
academic year. “You can’t do
implicit bias training in a three-hour
session,” she says. Group size is
limited to 40 participants to foster
“real conversations.”
“We need a place where we can
say ‘My relatives came here and just
assimilated. Why can’t these people
do that?’” she says. “Someone has to
be able to say it and hash it out
if there’s going to be learning.” Joshi
points out that only ESL teachers
are required to learn about multicultural
education to be certified.
“We can only teach what we know,”
she says.
Just don’t call what she does “cultural
sensitivity training.” “I hate
that phrase,” she says. “This is about
inequity and injustice, how to more
effectively reach students who are
different from you racially, religiously,
in terms of sex orientation and
gender and socioeconomic class. We
want students to be authentically
who they can be to learn the most
and be happy. Then all of society
benefits.”
Children understand the concept
of inequality, she says. “You can talk
about racism with a first grader.
The sense of unfairness is there at
the time.” She recalls being at an
assembly a few years back and
sharing how kids made fun of her
because she ate unfamiliar food that
smelled different. “The Indian and
Jamaican boys came up to me and
said that this happens to them now,”
she says, “and the teacher doesn’t
say anything.”
She concedes that when there are
30 students in a classroom, it’s
impossible to hear everything, but
adds that some teachers hear the
comments and don’t know how to
respond to them.
While leaders in some school
districts say they follow the guidelines
of the Amistad Commission
(requiring them to identify texts that
share the Black experience), “You
want to do more than be politically
correct,” she says.
Nancy Dries, communication
director for the Millburn Township
Public Schools, says that feedback
on Joshi’s work has been very
positive. “I’ve heard teachers thank
the superintendent for bringing her
in,” she says. “They say they’ve
learned so much about how to
approach the world.” Joshi has also
conducted several parent training
sessions, Dries says.
In July, Joshi added to the national
dialogue about racial inequities with
her book, White Christian Privilege:
The Illusion of Religious Equality in
America. “It’s about how whiteness
and Christianity is embedded in our
laws, which is evident when we look
at what was done to the indigenous
population, slavery, westward
expansion, even in citizenship laws,”
she says. “My goal is to build amore
perfect union. It’s about making the
invisible visible to readers.” ■
COURTESY OF DR. KHYATI JOSHI
18 BACK TOSCHOOL 2020 WAYNE MAGAZINE