What diversity and inclusion mean at Springwell

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Statement by Springwell Founder Gloria S. Chan

This is Gloria Chan, Founder of Springwell School, a new progressive schooling option based in Silver Spring. 

At Springwell, two of our five pillars are related to diversity and inclusion. The first being Inclusion: Finding belonging together, and the second: Global & Community Mindset.

The month of May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and it is an opportune time to share some background about what these pillars actually mean for us here at Springwell.

I am happy to be celebrating APA Heritage month with all of you. Almost 7% of the US population, nearly 20 million people are of Asian descent in the United States. We are the fastest growing racial group in this country. 

As with other racial minorities, we must  reconcile feelings about being here. There’s immense gratitude and pride regarding economic opportunity, freedom, and entrepreneurship. It also comes with a lot of grief to lament, to process. As a small minority, we aren’t on the radar. We aren’t on minds of the powers that be, until we make our voices heard.

As a young kid, I was inspired by the multicultural leaders, facilitators, and student activists before me. They taught me about the history of struggle in our communities at the margin like the use of Chinese cheap labor in the gold mines and building the transcontinental railroad. Our labor transformed America’s idea of itself. When the work was done, Congress passed harsh racist exclusionary immigration laws. My teachers also taught me about the horrific decision by our government to intern Japanese Americans in camps during WWII. And I learned about anti-Asian sentiment and violence. 

My teachers wanted to instill in me hunger and drive to fight for our community. 

Of course, my mom was an activist herself. She was a community journalist covering news in the New York City Chinatown community. When my parents first immigrated to New York, my father and mother both were factory workers, they started with very little, put themselves through higher education, and made successful careers for themselves. My mother always reminded me that they clawed their way out from hell.

With this training and all these family stories of struggle, in my teens and my twenties, Asian American was my #1 identity. In college and law school, my heart raced every time I had an argument to make to stand up for an invisible minority. As a young staffer on Capitol Hill, my role was to fight for the Asian American community. I had to demand an equitable share of the pie that someone else baked.

In order to fully inhabit my role as Asian American advocate, I had to believe that I was powerless, and convince others of the same. I went on a 15-year binge, a deep study and exploration of being and inhabiting powerlessness. 

You see when we play oppression olympics, we play with fire. I had subconsciously been brainwashing myself and affirming to myself on a daily basis that I have no power. 

For the last 10 years, I’ve been rewiring my brain. I’ve been unlearning, realizing how much power I do really have.

I realized that as Carl Jung said: I'd rather be whole than good. I'd rather be whole than just. I’d rather be whole than powerless and righteous. 

I went inside and found 100% of this innate personal power that I had access to all along. Some may call this spiritual power. This freedom and liberation was always already accessible to me: I just never looked for it. 

So, I spent this past decade coaching women of color, leaders of color and allies to give themselves permission to be whole, permission to inhabit their personal power.

I showed them how to activate their personal potential, listen to the voices of intuition inside of them, and practice being powerful actors, acting on these whispers and intuitions.

Being an Asian American during COVID-19 has been challenging. Because of racism and xenophobia, we have seen a dramatic spike in hate crimes against Asian Americans, because many have associated COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations. Among all ethnicities, Asian Americans have seen the sharpest increase in unemployment throughout the country. And again, I feel powerless.

So how do we navigate these ebbs and flows?

I invite you to consider liminality. Liminality is an in-between moment: the historical moment between oppression and freedom. But how do we exist in liminality? When do we crossover, and how often do we cross back? 

This in-between moment may be a period of discomfort, of waiting, and of powerful transformation. Our old habits, beliefs, and roles must disintegrate. 

Perhaps when we can inhabit this liminal threshold with grace, we can feel gratitude to all the sensations and lessons it offers. Perhaps we can expand our imagination and our will to inhabit both power and powerlessness -- with high approval.

Today, my role is about the children. As I think about my 5 year old son, and 2 year old daughter, and my work building a new school, The Springwell School,  in our community. 

What do I want to teach the children about race?  About social inequity? About diversity?

I want to teach them that being human means a wide variety of experiences; that peoples around the world have made sense of being human in diverse glorious ways; that we all will play many roles in our lifetimes; and whether our roles are powerless or powerful, all roles are equally interesting, equally valid, equally human. These experiences were created for us, and are worthy of us.

I want to teach them not to take their identities too seriously because their inner personal spiritual power is always 100% theirs to wield. Only then can we do the job of vanquishing racism for good.

Thank you! 

Happy Asian Pacific American Month.