- Kimberley Guillemet
- Adapted from a quote by Brené Brown
My generation has been calibrated to look at ourselves through one lens, at least as it pertains to our professional lives. As children, we were encouraged to go to good schools, become professionals, excel in our careers and ride off into the sunset. Indeed, I feel very blessed to have procured the academic training, professional achievements and life experience that I have.
However, when we achieve goals that we have set for ourselves, we must be careful not to allow ourselves to be lulled into complacency. After achieving set goals, we should never feel as if our contributions to the world must cease or are limited to a certain form or genre moving forward.
I felt moved to write a book a few years ago that would equip young people with the tools they needed to succeed in elite academic and competitive social spaces, and would help their parents and educators effectively support them. Despite my abilities and accomplishments, I kept talking myself out of it. The excuse parade pummeled me relentlessly. It wasn’t the right time. I didn’t know enough about the book writing and publishing process to execute the project. No one would be interested in the subject matter. And perhaps the mental impediment that resonated the most with me: what gave me the audacity to believe that I could make a meaningful contribution to a field outside of my professional expertise? The list of deterrents kept me paralyzed and stuck in inaction. For a while, I allowed my fear of failure and public vulnerability to convince me to abandon the idea.
Then 2020 happened. Specifically, the summer of 2020 happened and young people across the country started vocalizing their experiences with oppression, trauma and dejection during their tenure at elite independent schools throughout the U.S. Their long-suppressed emotions were bubbling up. I knew that I had to take action.
I started writing. I wrote furiously and purposefully calling back into the forefront of my consciousness stories that I had long since buried. I wrote and wrote and wrote until my book Black Prep: Life Lessons of A Perpetual Outsider, was fully formed. The book officially launches on December 7.
My hope is that the book will help young people, parents and educators alike. My prayer is that it will help people, who like me, had to navigate the unfamiliar terrain of elite educational spaces with no roadmap. People, who like me, felt as if they were constantly being told they were inferior, not good enough, and not worthy of having a seat at the table. People, who like me, needed the support of my village and reiteration of my worth in order to remain resilient and whole in the face of adversity.
It is important that I deliver one key message loud and clear: you are good enough. You are more than enough. You are the asset. You do not have to change who you are in order to be successful in elite spaces. If anything, you may simply need to change the way you see yourself. See yourself as the asset.
I hope that the book will not only support and encourage young people, but that the book will inspire others to step outside of their comfort zones. I took a step outside of a well-trodden professional path to do something in new and uncharted territory.
We all must remember that no matter where we come from, our background, our educational level, and even our achievements, we write our own story. We decide how we will move forward in our journey. While we might not always select the terrain over which we must traverse on the road to achieving our goals, we can be intentional about deciding where we are headed.
Be brave and courageous. Seize each moment and do not take one day of your life for granted. It is imperative that we share who we are with the world. In this season of giving, please be brave enough to share your gifts.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Elizabeth Scott
I’ve had a lot of experience with apologies, both giving them and receiving them. I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of an authentic apology and I also know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a disingenuous apology. Because I understand the impact of insincerity in the context of an apology, I strive to make sure that my apologies are sincere.
When we initially make a mistake or cause harm to another person, we might not be fully cognizant of the depth of the harm we’ve caused. I can acknowledge that I’ve certainly had situations where I inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings or did something carelessly where I wasn’t aware how the other person felt. I can remember times when someone whose feelings I had hurt shared their experience with me, and where I initially felt as though they were overreacting or that what I had done was not that big of a deal.
I am grateful that I have come to learn and appreciate over time that when I have harmed someone, the apology is not about me. It doesn’t matter if I agreed that the person had the right to have hurt feelings. Nor does it matter whether I intended to hurt their feelings. What matters is acknowledging the harm that I caused and validating the aggrieved party’s experience. Moving forward, I can demonstrate my sincerity by taking action to not engage in the harmful conduct again.
This month’s World Changer of the Month is Willa Bruce. In 1912, Mrs. Bruce along with her husband established Bruce’s Beach, a safe haven for Black beachgoers in Manhattan Beach, California. Racial discrimination ultimately drove the city’s seizure of the land through the use of eminent domain in 1924.
Publicly, the local government stated that the land was needed to build a park, however, the city had just recently built a park near the location of Bruce’s Beach. Moreover, the park was not built until approximately 1960, over 30 years after the eminent domain proceedings had concluded.
It was not until this year, nearly 100 years after the Bruce family was divested of their property, that local and state officials took action to rectify the past injustice done to the Bruce family and returned the land to the Bruce family descendants. This action reflects contrition and a sincere desire to do better moving forward.
It takes integrity and courage to acknowledge the truth and take steps to rectify the past, especially when it is embarrassing, bureaucratically difficult and inconvenient to do so. Not only does acknowledgement of past harm create a path forward for healing, reconciliation and progress, but in outwardly recognizing the errors of the past, we guard against repeating them in the future.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Michael Simmons
This month's World Changer of the Month, Academy Award-winning actor Octavia Spencer, did not know what dyslexia was when she was a child. All she knew was that it was hard for her to read aloud because the words would get mixed up, and that she often felt paralyzed with fear whenever it was time to read in front of her class. However, she also knew that she was really good at solving puzzles and mazes, and that she loved reading about and deciphering mysteries.
Ms. Spencer’s teachers noticed that she was an exceptional auditory learner and could understand and perceive certain concepts much faster than her classmates. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with dyslexia, but she also tested into the gifted program. To some, these two designations might seem to be mutually exclusive. They are not. And Ms. Spencer’s designation as a gifted person with dyslexia confirms what many similarly-situated people have known for years: one can be twice exceptional. A person can be at once exceptionally intelligent and exceptionally different in the way that they learn, behave, perceive or generally experience the world.
Our education system, our society and indeed our world have taken care to set a very regimented list of attributes that we are to consider strengths and those that are relegated to the category of weaknesses. Much of the way our education system tests and evaluates students is geared toward students who learn in a very traditional way. Based upon what we know today about brain science and how students learn, we know that our testing and assessment mechanisms are in many ways very antiquated.
As a person who is a more traditional learner and thrives in conventional academic settings, I can attest to the privilege that I enjoyed throughout my academic career. The teaching mechanisms, curriculum and pedagogy are all generally geared toward traditional learners, especially in academically competitive settings. For students who have learning differences, this can create a challenge and lead to them being sidelined in these environments.
I have not personally had to navigate learning disabilities, but I have witnessed family members and dear friends with learning differences, which often went undiagnosed for years, struggle in school and fight to keep their self-esteem intact when teachers and peers made erroneous, ill-informed judgments about their intellect. All of the people in my life who have learning differences are among the most creative, empathetic, perceptive and innovative people that I know. They are the people at the top of my list to call upon when I need to generate creativity, innovation or unique ideas. I cannot imagine my world without these dear ones in it. Indeed, I think we can all agree that the human experience would be quite bland if we all saw and experienced it in a homogeneous way.
I am grateful that we are living in a time and space where our education system values diversity. While we are making strides when it comes to cultural and ethnic diversity, we still have a long way to go. We specifically have much more ground to cover when it comes to embracing diversity in learning orientation. Our education system is not set up for achievement of success by individuals with learning differences. We are making progress, but collectively, we still need to do better with inclusivity as it pertains to diverse learners. As a society, we must stop excluding and limiting learners based upon our narrow understanding of who they are and their abilities.
I am so glad that a young Octavia Spencer saw herself as the puzzle solver and auditory prodigy that she was, and rejected the lie of inferiority that our social constructs and societal norms would lead her to believe. Indeed, she has credited her dyslexia for her creativity and strong deductive reasoning skills. Had she internalized the prevalent messaging around intellect, she could have easily been sidelined and the world would have missed out on experiencing her genius.
We all need to be better about embracing uniqueness. The next time we encounter a friend, classmate or colleague who learns a bit differently, speaks a bit differently, dresses a bit differently or presents in a way that is otherwise unconventional, we should be mindful to include them and make every effort to support them. What we may perceive as a weakness, idiosyncrasy or oddity could actually be a strength depending on the context. It should never be an option to exclude, dismiss or sideline anyone for their innate traits or characteristics. We should remember this with respect to our interactions with others, as well as vis-à-vis our view of ourselves. You never know, you might be in the midst of a world-changing hidden figure.