If you want to know about diversity in Monongalia County Schools, you may want to look back to a sunny March afternoon more than 10 years ago.
That’s when young Viraat Das became a breakout star of the county spelling bee.
Viraat leveled whole lexicons of words that were multisyllabic, and even obscure, on his way to the final rounds.
He didn’t take the big trophy, but he won a lot of hearts.
The elementary school student held the audience spellbound because at the time, he and his family had only been in the U.S. and Morgantown for six months.
Before that, Viraat had exclusively spoken Hindi — which he still did at home.
On this afternoon, he was spelling in a second language.
Michael Ryan can appreciate diversity in the local school district. It’s his job to celebrate it and foster it, in fact.
Ryan heads the district’s department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, an effort he founded five years ago.
He updated Board of Education members on the department’s progress Tuesday night.
Some of the issues then weren’t as raw as they are now.
The idea then was to celebrate the diversity in Morgantown and Mon County: a melting pot unique to the Mountain State, given the draw of WVU.
That was before George Floyd and open displays of anti-Semitism on college campuses.
That was before the sociological definition of implicit bias — a kind of built-in bigotry most of are walking around with, even if we don’t want to admit it — became common usage in everyday conversation.
Ryan and his colleagues are working on a program known as “Student Mental Health First Aid,” which is geared to helping teachers and others in classrooms pinpoint the stressors that students are now bringing to the building from home.
There’s another benefit, Ryan said. It’s a way for those teachers and staffers to work on themselves as well.
Around 200 teachers have completed the training — with another 60 set to go in February, Ryan said.
The district is partnering with WVU and other entities for the training, the director said, with the idea to eventually make the program an in-house feature.
“That way, we aren’t at the mercy of other people’s schedules,” he said.
Another program, hearkening back to Viraat and his family, is equally effective, Ryan said.
Students and their families with an international lineage will come in a talk to classes, in a kind of informal speaker’s bureau.
“We have so many students with so many backgrounds,” Ryan said.
“That’s how you build cultural awareness and empathy.”
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