Listening to the community: diversity and inclusion strategies for lasting impact

Top takeaways

• Start by listening. Before diving into big initiatives, take time to understand your school community’s needs. Speak to staff, students, and parents to gather insights and meet them where they are.
• Make DEI part of the culture. Whether it’s curriculum audits, book clubs, or community spotlights, integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into school life, not just one-off events.
• Use data to drive change. Surveys and evaluations help track progress and inform strategy. Combine hard data with personal conversations to ensure meaningful, lasting impact.
• Celebrate diversity with joy. Teaching Black history isn’t just about slavery, and Jewish history isn’t just about the Holocaust. Balance difficult topics with stories of joy, success, and cultural richness.
• Be adaptable and persistent. Different schools and communities require different approaches. You might meet resistance, but find ways to connect the work to what matters most to each person.

Listen to the recording (37 minutes) or read an edited version below.

Aldaine Wynter is Director of International-Mindedness, Diversity and Inclusion at Washington International School

Liz: I'm delighted to be joined today by Aldaine Wynter, teacher, school leader and champion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Aldaine has trained, taught and been a school leader in the UK and is currently director of International Mindedness, Diversity and Inclusion at Washington International School in the US.

So today we want to dig into how we can create change in schools through DEI strategies. But first Aldaine, it would be great to hear about how you came to be in your role. What's the journey that's taken you to where you are now? 

From PGCE to leadership 

Aldaine: I started off, as many of us do in the UK, having done a PGCE in maths and physics at UCL. I have always been passionate about education and went straight from my engineering degree to PGCE. 

Then I had the fortune of being in an international school for my first teaching placement, which is very unusual, but I was lucky and grateful because that's really what started the thought around not only considering teaching, but leadership as well. 

I was at the Dwight School in London, which I recommend and praise for the way in which they give a foundation for their teachers and both internal and external professional development (PD).

Through that, within a few years, I became assistant head of pastoral, and head of pastoral just three months later. Then we had 2020, and I also became the DEI lead for Dwight London, and really started working on something quite innovative for us at the time, which was looking at an anti-racist curriculum and anti-racist PD.

We started with an audit of the curriculum, just trying to figure out, what is where? And that was really possible because we had amazing teachers, such as the heads of history, English, drama, and the grade coordinators in the primary school, who were so willing to do the work. 

Then for PD, we had a book club. A theme was assigned, and I hand-delivered books to teachers and support staff – ground staff, catering, everyone. 

For example, one year we had a theme around race. So we had eight choices of books for people to read. One year the theme was feminism and gender equality, another year LGBTQ, and another year it was disabilities. 

We would get these books in May or June, ready for the summer break. We'd come back in September and break out into individual groups, based on which book you had read. And then we just had a discussion, and that became part and parcel of what we did at the beginning of the year. A super easy way of reconnecting. 

In winter we’d have a film club, where you would pick a film that you were going to watch just before the winter break.

And then we'd come back in January and do something very similar, depending on what film or series you had watched. For the Easter break we took a multimedia approach, using a range of articles, podcasts, short films and opinion pieces. 

That initiative is ultimately what got us the award from the Independent Schools Association (ISA) for our work on DEI.

From there as I was able to say, this is something that I'm passionate about, that I really enjoy. And I was fortunate enough to go from that position, and essentially just skyrocket into the position that I'm in now, just doing amazing things. 

A role under the spotlight

Liz: When we talked about doing this podcast, just a few months ago, DEI didn’t feel like a controversial topic. However, you are in the US, working in Washington DC. How does it feel to be in a role as a diversity and inclusion lead at this point in time?

Aldaine: I would say that I'm really lucky. I seem to be able to time all of my jobs perfectly! You know, I was head of pastoral and then two months later we went into the pandemic, and now I've chosen to do a diversity and inclusion role in the US. And then subsequently, there's been a lot of turmoil when it comes to the topic.

But what I would say is I'm lucky enough to be in an incredibly supportive school, and my heads of school and associate head believe in the work. We’ve not had to change course. If anything, we've just been able to really showcase it, and be proud of our initiatives.

And our parents are at our school because they believe in our mission and our core values, and that's what we always have to fall back on when we think about how certain elements of my work are being, shall we say, highlighted, to use a positive word!

Right now my concern is more about ensuring that our families and our students know that our school is a safe place for them today. It was a safe place for them yesterday, and it will continue to be a safe place for them in the future. 

Data-informed practice

Liz: So tell us then a bit about the areas that you are focusing on in your role at the moment, and how you’ve come to decide that they’re the areas to focus on? 

Aldaine: So one of the big things that we've been working on for the past year and a half, is looking at how we can use data to inform the practices and the initiatives that we're trying to spearhead.

So I've been really fortunate to have gotten all faculty and staff to complete an intercultural development inventory survey, last academic year. We’re really just trying to get a foundation for how we can use data to show our community where we’re at. 

So the development survey gives an organisation a continuum, and it places score averages from the people in your organisation on this continuum, which has five orientations, and from there you are able to figure out an action plan. 

What we’ve also able to do is give individual debriefs, so people can see where they are on this five-step continuum, and it gives them an opportunity to have a personal plan, as well as the organisational plan. And that's been really powerful.

Community spotlight and international-mindedness

What’s also different about us is our emphasis on international-mindedness, which very much informs our work. A lot of the initiatives have this sense of, ok, are we thinking about it from an international-mindedness point of view? Because our students, our parents, and a lot of our faculty and staff are from abroad. Understanding their cultural norms, as well as having a respect for the norms of an international school in America, is really significant. 

There’s also the way in which we engage our community. One of my favourite things to do every month is the international-mindedness, diversity and inclusion (IDI) profile, both the video and the written format, where we have the opportunity to take a member of the community, sit down and speak to them for five minutes about how a particular month, whether it be Black History Month, Women's History Month, how that impacts them, what it means to them, and what they would like the community to know with respect to that. (Check out an example: April 2025 spotlight.) 

Bringing experiences to life

Aldaine: One of the things we do is bring to the community performances that link into the curriculum or educate in other ways. For example, we brought in a Mexican folk dancing company for Hispanic Heritage Month. And it wasn't just a performance, it was a trip through Latin America.

We got a sense of the significance of the dancers, the music, the instruments and the costumes; they were explaining that in between the different performances. And so the audience could leave with a sense of understanding the significance of the white and the red trim, its use in a traditional environment and for weddings. 

Another example: we were able to bring in Eva Clark, who is a Holocaust survivor, actually born in the concentration camps. That story was incredibly impactful for the upper school students who got to experience it. But we had an opportunity to have a Q&A with faculty and staff as well. 

How do we ensure this has a lasting impact? Are we just doing something for doing something's sake or are we continuing this relationship? So with Eva Clark, we hope to bring her back when we start exploring a book club that we are looking to do next year. 

It’s recognising that an amazing speaker isn't just going to be a one time thing, and figuring out how can we connect it to the curriculum? For example, exploring Jewish voices in English. We look at how it can become PD, how Eva’s voice relates to the book and the theme we’re trying to explore next year. What’s already in the curriculum that could be complemented by having such a speaker, and bring books and texts to life? 

Curriculum design and planning

Liz: So how much input do you have into curriculum design? Have you influenced it in the time that you’ve been in the school? 

Aldaine: I had the pleasure of being able to work quite closely with the directors of teaching and learning for the primary and the high school. And so I am involved quite a lot with the auditing.

So I just did a big audit of the curriculum to see where we have black and Jewish voices and histories represented. And that was again, preschool through to grade 12 (Year 13). It's a heck of a document, probably 50 pages, which I’m currently synthesising.  

With the primary school, I’m in the planning meetings and have the opportunity to sit with people whilst they're planning their units. And what's interesting, being in an all-through school, is your approach within the primary school is so different to when you approach it in the high school.

For the older students, there is a specific section in their unit plans that asks, ‘What are your international-mindedness, diversity and inclusion pieces in this particular unit?’ Last year I went and I met with every department just to kind of go through, ok, what do you currently have? How can we elevate this? 

We really had this sense of wanting to emphasise, particularly within English and the humanities, a sense of joy. When we are doing black history, we don't want to emphasize and only be talking about slavery. When we are talking about Jewish voices in history, we don't want the emphasis to only be on the Holocaust. We want to understand that that is significant and the students need to know it, but they also need to have a sense of joy when it pertains to these particular communities as well. So it's been fun. It's only been a year and a half, but fun.

Book club

Liz: And you talked earlier about the book and film club initiative that you worked on at Dwight. So have you been able to bring some of that into the staff development programme? 

Aldaine: Yes, that's a good question. So I started off the initiative in the UK with everyone getting a book, and everyone's going to go into their groups based on what they picked.

For this year we’ve changed it up a little bit, and I’ve made it an optional book club, which is open to faculty and parents. And the international piece is, we've actually got a book in English, in French and in Spanish. Because we are a full immersion school for early years, and then we are bilingual from grade one. So our students speak either French or Spanish amongst other languages. And so we've got three book options that cover the theme of race. 

We had two virtual sessions, and then we’ll have an in-person session, where I’m sure there will be wine and small bites, and we’ll have this discussion between faculty and parents. We’ve had a really good number involved and will continue it next year, with a different theme. 

The parents have really enjoyed interacting with the faculty, and the faculty have enjoyed being able to talk about text, but in a way that doesn't necessarily link directly into what they're doing, but does link in with current affairs, for example. 

The English text is Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which is such a relevant text at this moment. It's been great to get the insights and experiences from both the faculty and from the parents, because again, they come from different places. The book focuses on the US caste system as it pertains to slavery, the Nazis, and the caste system in India, so 

touches on different themes from an international perspective.

Impact and evaluation

Liz: What are your approaches to impact, evaluation and monitoring? How do you decide what’s working, and where to go next? 

Aldaine: I think the first thing that I did was to focus on relationships within the community and make sure I was visible. We are three divisions, across two sites, and it was really important for me to be visible on both sides. So I’d spend half my time at the primary school and half my time at the high school. 

There are some evaluations that are purely word of mouth. People who will come and say to you, ‘Hey, you are doing this; have you considered… ? And those conversations are really important and they only happen if you are visible.

On the other side, we do a lot of evaluations, particularly when it comes to professional development. I will send an evaluation form to anyone that goes, for example, to a two day or more IDI themed conference, just so that we can figure out, what did you think about it? What's the impact? Would you suggest sending someone else there? 

I also will do evaluations on my own personal PD. I’m currently building a programme called the Wisdom Power Program, where we take faculty of colour from all three divisions and we meet once a month. We get an expert in front of them to speak on some form of skill development, potentially a head of school as well.

At the end of all of those sessions, we also send an evaluation. Did you like the theme? How was the speaker? Are you able to take what you've learned today and apply it in what you've been doing? So it's about  a combination of being visible so that you can get the informal, ‘I heard this’, but also having the data to say, we are hearing this from you and we've got data pieces from students, from faculty, from parents, so I have little pieces of that as well. 

And it can be qualitative. I have drop-in sessions for parents, 25 so far this year. It'll be parents of black students, parents of LGBT students, parents of girls, parents of boys, parents of international students, and so on.

It can be quite time consuming, but for me, there's nothing more important than hearing from members of your community, because ultimately that's who you are meant to be serving. So if you're not listening, then you know, what are you doing? 

Meeting people where they are

Liz: Thank you. Start by listening sounds like a great piece of advice! Based on your experiences so far, what advice would you have for other inclusion and diversity leads? Maybe someone who's starting out, or perhaps someone in a school situation when there isn't much funding to draw on. 

Aldaine: I think you need to gather information from people you know, both formally and informally, because you need the information in order to meet the community where they are. In each school I’ve worked in, the DEI needs have varied based on just the community.

You know, some are more progressive, some are more attuned to the terminology. Some have the enthusiasm, but don't necessarily have the framework or the foundation. And that's something that you can't necessarily figure out just by observing, you do need to speak to people and you need to spend some time doing that before you put in the big initiatives.

I spent a year really just speaking to people, figuring out, what do I think they need? What am I hearing? What does that translate to? Before I started doing any of the quite big work – a lot of my major initiatives only kicked in this year. 

I met with each department in my first year. So from an academic point of view, I wasn't telling them what units they needed to change straight away. I was just listening to their thoughts on how things are going. How do you find this section of the unit plan? What would you like to see?

Whilst I'm the inaugural director for IDI, prior to me there were coordinators and liaisons in place, so I spoke to them before I even started the role, to figure out how they've found things. Then speaking to affinity group leaders; again, what do you do? How do you feel? What would you like to see? 

You can't underestimate the significance of speaking to people. And don't get me wrong, you'll speak to them, and you'll do an initiative and it still won't go down, but you will have spoken to them and therefore you can access them a lot easier when you're trying to get feedback.

So that would be my advice. Speak to people so that you can meet the community where they are. 

Liz: That makes sense. And that feeds into what was going to be my next question, about getting people on board. 

It sounds like you've worked with some great leaders who've really been wanting to embrace what you're doing and look at ways of making change. But I imagine some people might not be quite there yet. Any suggestions for ways of bringing people on the journey with you? 

A diverse approach

Aldaine: I think being diverse in your approach, ironically, is really important.

What I put in place when I was in London, is different to what they needed in the US. When I was global lead for Dwight and I was looking at London, New York, Shanghai, Korea, again, they all need a certain approach.

And in some instances where you're finding resistance, you need to figure out, where is the resistance coming from? Is there something historical that you're not aware of, that might be hampering your efforts? Is it purely, I do not want to do this, in which case, that's fine. You need to know that there's a certain amount of effort that you can put in and it's still not gonna make a difference.

What in those circumstances will help is cultural expectations and norms. For us, I believe that I can confidently say IDI is what the school is. It's one of the key values. We carry ourselves with integrity as well as being inquisitive with our approach.

And it's important just to understand people. If you've got one person who just doesn't get it, go and figure out what part of the work they will get. Because inclusion, diversity, and international-mindedness is for everyone. We just need to figure out where we need to put you in order for that light bulb to go off. Because there'll be a place. 

Shining a light

Liz: Are there any particular highlights or successes that you would want to mention? 

Aldaine: I've mentioned them already, but the IDI profiles are things I take huge pride in. For me, it’s an opportunity to connect with community members. I ask people: who do you think should be on it? It’s really interesting to hear people's insights beyond their subject specialism. 

And what I've really liked hearing is a lot of them will get emails and responses to their video or post being like, oh, it was really nice. It was good to get another side of you. And that to me is amazing. Those moments where the people who are putting in effort and time to speak to me, and then getting positive critiques, that makes me feel good. (For more examples of the IDI profiles, scroll down the page at www.wis.edu/diversity)

This year we started the WIS Power Program, where we bring in the faculty of color for all three divisions to meet monthly and bring in experts. That's been a huge sense of pride. In international independent institutions, you don't necessarily get that many people of colour, and what we've done is to say we recognise that whilst the numbers may be small in your division, when you bring them together, they are larger than you think. 

In my mind, it's about building community, raising opportunities, and it's like a spotlight. It's showing that we see you, we acknowledge that you are there, whether you are few in numbers or not.

Recommendations

Liz: Lastly, I wanted to ask you for any reading or listening recommendations. What’s been inspiring you lately? 

Aldaine: This is an easy answer, but I think if you’re based in the US and you’re not from the US, the book Caste that I mentioned earlier is such an important read. I recommend anyone who is attempting to do the work reads and understands that book. It gives you a really clear understanding about the significance of race in America.

And it's not to say that race is the only aspect of DEI that is significant, but it is a huge part of US history, and you as an individual need to understand it. 

I listen to a lot of podcasts. I normally start my day with either PoliticsJOE, and then I'll switch from UK politics to LBC, and then I'll go to BBC World News. For me, the podcast and politics side of things is really important. And The News Agents, going back to the UK.

So a lot of politics, because I think inadvertently the work is always political. There's always a foundation where you can go back to and say, why am I doing this? What do I stand for? 

Liz: Amazing. Thank you Aldaine. We wish you all the best with the next stages of your programs and it'd be great to catch up again and hear how it's all going.