About Us
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging
Valuing diversity is essential to Millbrook School’s mission: to prepare our students for a life both individually satisfying and valuable to the greater society. We strive to preserve and renew this vision as we deliberately construct a community that embodies and celebrates the diversity that characterizes the modern world.
Our cultivation of a truly enriching learning environment can only be complete when we attract and retain a diverse population of students, faculty and staff who reflect, welcome, and respect differences including those in ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation.
We expect the members of this community to respect all that makes us unique and explore perspectives that challenge our own. We must therefore equip our community with the language and skills necessary for honest inquiry and discussion, as we empower ourselves to be ethical citizens at Millbrook School and beyond.
Our cultivation of a truly enriching learning environment can only be complete when we attract and retain a diverse population of students, faculty and staff who reflect, welcome, and respect differences including those in ability, age, class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation.
We expect the members of this community to respect all that makes us unique and explore perspectives that challenge our own. We must therefore equip our community with the language and skills necessary for honest inquiry and discussion, as we empower ourselves to be ethical citizens at Millbrook School and beyond.
Millbrook stands against racism, police brutality, and any harmful actions taken against any person due to race, color, religion, gender, gender expression, age, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation. The diversity, equity, and inclusivity work we do on campus, and the anti-racism framework that many of our teachers teach from, has been established for many years and is a starting point. We have more work to do, and faculty, students, and alumni are working together on the following initiatives:
- Re-doubling our efforts to better recruit and retain more faculty of color.
- Incorporating DEI work widely and coherently from the beginning of all Millbrook students’ time on campus in both the classroom and student life spaces.
- Improving anti-racist training for students and faculty. Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Patrice King is dedicated to DEI initiatives, has a heightened role on campus, and is leading this charge.
- Expanding the Human Development curriculum to all forms and developing more opportunities for reflection and challenging conversations. Our schedule has specific time set aside on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings for programs, discussion, and activities related to DEI.
- Continuing to work to increase the endowment, thus increasing financial aid, to make a Millbrook education available to more students from all economic backgrounds.
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Professional Development & Student Education
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SEED
SEEKING EDUCATIONAL EQUITY AND DIVERSITY (SEED)The National SEED Project is a peer-led professional development program that creates conversational communities to drive personal, organizational, and societal change toward greater equity and diversity. Through the organization's methodology, SEED equips participants to connect their lives to one another and to society at large by acknowledging systems of oppression, power, and privilege.
Millbrook's diversity leaders have been SEED-trained and have, in turn, lead a monthly professional learning group with a cohort of faculty and staff every year. In these groups, they do personal reflective work on Identity and reflect on how that impacts our work with students. -
POCC and SLDC
Millbrook has made a commitment to send every faculty member of color who wants to attend to the National Association of Independent School's People of Color Conference (POCC) every year, and non-POC faculty are also invited to attend. Faculty members have also attended the White Privilege Conference, which offers a more explicit curriculum for white teaching faculty.
Since 1998, when the POCC was held in Puerto Rico, we’ve also tried to send students to the Student Leadership Diversity Conference (SLDC) every year. This year we sent a full contingent of six students – and the result has generated crucially important conversation and action steps, beginning with rewriting our Diversity Statement. -
Diversity Days & Fishbowls
A full day devoted to discussion on diversity and recommendations on action steps began at Millbrook in 1999 shortly after Millbrook's first group of students attended the Student Leadership Diversity Conference (SLDC).
Faculty members ran Diversity Days initially, but more recently, students have begun leading fishbowl discussions, allowing them to share their experiences, feelings, and insights in a safe space. Friday evening activities also allow two-hour blocks to continue these discussions in student-run clubs and affinity spaces. See below for the complete description of our affinity spaces.
Curriculum & Student Life
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Across the Curriculum
Across every academic department, issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are brought into lessons. Following are some examples of how we are thoughtfully bringing important discussions into academic spaces.
Beginning in the arts, gallery shows and visiting artists in recent years have been informed by thinking about gender equity, equity for gay and trans people, and racial justice. Exhibits are intended to educate and engage the community in both debate and introspection about identity and intent in art. QuestionBridge: Black Males, Queer Icons, and Guerrilla Girls are a few examples of exhibits that addressed diversity, equity, and inclusion and were multi-disciplinary in their reach. The John Berkey Class of 1991 Visiting Artist Program has been an important vehicle for bringing diverse artists and voices to campus and bridging the studio and the classroom. Millbrook's Art Department also strives to be cognizant of the failings of Western art history and often collaborates with the History Department to provide context for the chronic suppression and degradation of non-white voices.
Over the past five years, the English Department has revised the canon of literature. In every grade students read selections that offer both "windows and mirrors." This approach to selecting books and the framework with which to teach them emphasizes empathetic, critical, and ethical learning. Students are exposed to life experiences that reflect their own experiences, on one hand, and then alternately open windows into other cultures, challenges, and world views. Teachers and students talk explicitly about systemic racism and its history in our country when reading Fences, the play that begins the English IV World Literature course, while watching Ava Duvernay's Thirteenth, and while discussing "The House We Live In," a segment from Race: the Power of an Illusion.
A humanities elective, Social Justice & Community Engagement, focuses solely on philosophical and systemic questions on poverty, human rights, and justice.Human Development is the space in which explicit DEI training for students happens. While traditionally a IVth form course, the Human Development program has been expanded to all forms, and a new schedule now allows for specific DEI programming on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings for all students. -
Affinity Spaces
What is an affinity space? The term "affinity space" is used to denote a space set aside for people who have something important in common, e.g. minority status, race, gender, profession, or special interests.Read More
Why is Millbrook School in support of affinity spaces? Millbrook believes affinity gatherings for minority groups are worthwhile for many reasons. Some of them are:- finding a safe space
- realizing you are not alone in your experiences
- identifying issues, whether emerging or longstanding
- sharing successes (and low-points)
- promoting ideas for action
- providing guidance and support for difficult and courageous conversations, both inside and outside the space
- preparing for deep and honest cross-cultural dialogue with people who might seem different
- providing opportunities for affirmation and celebration
Millbrook's affinity groups meet on designated Friday evenings and include:- Allies/Anti-Bigotry
- Asian/Pacific Islander
- Black and African-American
- Jewish
- Latino/a/x
- LGBTQ+
- Multi- and Bi-racial
- South Asian
Community Service
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Break the Bubble
The goal of this community service is twofold: to "break the Millbrook bubble" and to raise awareness of the many unique stories on campus. Students work closely with faculty members to organize cultural events on campus, inform the community on current events throughout the world, and gain an understanding of the varying backgrounds of the members of the Millbrook community. This community service is open to any student interested in recognizing and promoting cultural diversity on campus.
Break the Bubble service members share information regularly on topics of cultural interest, including Indigenous People's Day, National Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, and more. -
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council
These student leaders engage with their peers in constructive ways in all aspects of life at Millbrook, including being a presence in every dorm and in every dorm meeting. Students also work with faculty to support events such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, affinity group meetings, heritage month activities, the annual World Culture Festival, and more.
