By Violet Wexler
“How was your spring break?” The five words spoken most on the first Monday back to school. And as a response to these questions, casual comments can be heard across the school about trips across the world, once-in-a-lifetime vacations. As a member of the community, I am guilty of this too. But how often do we think about the impact that our words make? How often do we think about the level of carelessness and familiarity that these phrases are said with?
It is easy enough to solve this problem by writing off all conversations about vacations, but that then creates a divide among students. We force them to discuss their spring break plans, whatever they may be, with peers who had similar plans and, therefore, a similar economic status. This raises the question: how do we talk about class in the classroom?
While we often talk about race, gender, and sexuality in relation to our education, one category we don’t always discuss is social class. Because we don’t host these conversations, many students are under the impression that the discussion of expensive experiences becomes casual because everyone at our school can afford it. This is far from the truth. Around 30% of students at LREI (in all divisions) receive financial aid, and LREI has been ranked #2 in the state in NYC Independent Schools in per capita financial aid.
Michele Blackwell, LREI’s Director of Financial Aid, states, “In my advisory, instead of asking about vacations over spring break, we ask: What’s something you’re looking forward to? Do you have any family traditions? There are lots of different ways to engage that conversation where a person from every background is included and I think it’s important to have sensitivity to that when maybe your family is more affluent, and you always go on vacation. There’s also an assumption that those with lesser needs don’t do things like family holidays and that’s not true either – and one is not better than the other.”
The first step of the journey towards open and non-discriminatory conversations is acknowledgment. One of the only places in our school that openly discussed social class as it correlates to education was the It Happens Here day workshop “Social Class at LREI.”
The workshop described itself as a place where they answer questions around socioeconomic status, why it is so hard to discuss, and “have conversations around how to improve ourselves so we can be the most respectful versions of ourselves towards members of our school community.”
The leaders of the workshop, Milo Kramnick and Tsering Sherpa, commented, “[In our workshop] we went through scenarios and common instances that we have experienced, and then we opened the floor to people to share their own experiences. Then, we brainstormed ways that we as a community could protect each other. One thing we discussed was just watching what we say. We start with ourselves, we don’t want to be hurtful with our words. We went over some things that people say that you might think are not and but to someone who maybe is on financial aid, might be more negative and hurtful. So just identifying that.”
That being said, no choices are bad. This is not to say that some students get amazing opportunities and some students simply don’t. This article is also not to say that you should feel bad or guilty for enjoying your vacation when you have the opportunity. We don’t often think about what we say, and it’s critical for us to engage in more self-reflection. We don’t think about the implications of our words, our choices, and our conversations. We pass things off as casual and normal when they are not. I’m guilty of this, as are so many students in our school. Although many things are out of your control, the words you use are your choice to make.