Next year, a wide array of new courses will be offered to students to take as electives. One of these classes, Confronting Bias, Working Toward Equity, will be taught by Mr. Gomes, a teacher dedicated to making Agnes Iwrin a better place for all students. I sat down with him recently to learn more about this upcoming class.
Sometimes, we do not completely understand the systems that we live under, or how our identity and the identities of others impacts the world and how people move through it. Mr. Gomes hopes to change that by encouraging students to think about themselves and how they go through and are shaped by the world. This will enable students to see the world from others’s perspectives and then be able to “look at the systems in place that perpetuate [these inequities], and see what can be done to disrupt those systems.” Students will leave the class inspired to make positive change in the world, and do their part to dismantle the oppressive systems currently in place.
The goals of the class are simple but worthwhile. Students will learn how to practice civil discourse and become comfortable conversing with people who hold different opinions. According to Mr. Gomes, “We learn more about ourselves and about others when we talk to them.” Understanding other perspectives is important for students to understand their own place in the world and the privileges or disadvantages that come with that position.
Recently, it feels as if there are more things dividing us than there are uniting us. Mr. Gomes, however, argues that we have more in common than you might think, and “by having the conversations, realizing that we actually do overlap in a lot of ways and maybe we’re just living out the same core values in slightly different ways, it allows us to then have these conversations to see ourselves as more together.”
Mr. Gomes also plans to incorporate the theme of windows and mirrors into the new class, as he believes it is especially important in education for students to have examples of both. He explained: “When I see mirrors, I learn more about myself. When I am faced with windows, I am learning more about somebody else’s experience, which is itself illuminating, and usually these windows can show you similarities you might not have realized existed.” Other times, there might not be similarities, but it is still very important to learn about those experiences, as it can help when trying to understand other people.
Although we have made progress improving our society, inequity is still commonplace and needs to be addressed. After meeting with Mr. Gomes and learning about Confronting Bias, Working Toward Equity, it is clear that the class will be enlightening for students and I am excited to see its impact on our community.
