Walk and Talk About Diversity

This past fall, Usable Knowledge launched a new Facebook Live series called Walking the Talk designed to explore challenging questions around diversity, inclusion, and identity. While walking around campus, host Domonic Rollins, the Ed School’s senior diversity and inclusion officer, has an unscripted, live conversation with a guest. The conversation is meant to be informal and honest — a way for guests to share what really needs to be thought of and done to make education spaces more inclusive.

“The dialogue is two-way, building off of each other’s comments and questions, and it’s meant to offer educators at all levels a model of how to have these kinds of conversations in their own spaces,” says Bari Walsh, who oversees Usable Knowledge and who conceived the new series.

In the first episode, Rollins spoke with Madeline Lessing, a social work student at Wheelock College, about how college students should talk about race and the importance of surrounding yourself with a diverse range of voices.

In February, civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson talked about what’s currently happening with the Black Lives Matter movement, what it means to be organized, and why learning about power at school is important for young people.

“I’m always mindful that the first place that kids learn what power is outside of the home is the classroom,” Mckesson said.

Follow-up walking talks with Rollins have included Jonathan Crossley, a former Arkansas teacher of the year and current principal at Baseline Elementary in Little Rock, Arkansas; former Morehouse College president John Silvanus Wilson, Ed.M.’82, Ed.D.’85, who was named senior adviser and strategist to the Harvard president in April; and C.J. Anderson, a running back for the Denver Broncos and founder of Dreams Never Die, a nonprofit that helps under-resourced young people.