All week, the University of Hartford hosted events marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. The programs were designed to encourage reflection on what was accomplished back then, as a way to ask ourselves, “What can we do now?”
On Wednesday, the panel discussion called “Leveling the Playing Field,” moderated by WNPR's Diane Orson, focused on disparities in access to education and health care. There was also conversation about how Connecticut’s teachers, administrators and health care professionals can better respond to the needs of the diverse communities they serve.
Listen here to the discussion, aired Friday on WNPR's Where We Live.
Panelist Dr. GislaineNgounou, Chief of Staff for the Hartford Public Schools, said cultural competency extends beyond interaction between communities of color and white educators or health care providers. "I think an added element to what’s required for cultural competency to happen is for people to be provided the tools so they can examine their own sense of identity," she said. "Because when we talk about cultural competency, they are issues of race, class, identity, gender, and whatever else may exist." Until we spend time reflecting on our own sense of identity, she said, and understand the biases we bring to the workplace, we can't understand others.
"Too often, health care providers look at the patient or the client as one that’s different from us," said panelist Professor Karen D'angelo, lead trainer for the Hispanic Health Council’s Cross-Cultural and Diversity Inclusiveness Training program. "I’m normal. The patient is one that’s different from me. The patient is the elderly person, or the patient is the Latino, or whatever it may be, as opposed to, I have my own knapsack of identity that I bring to the table, and I’m interacting with someone that has their own sense of identity."
"Cultural competence is like human competence," said panelist State Senator Beth Bye, chair of the state legislature's Appropriations Committee, and Vice Chair of both the Education and Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committees.
"It's about empathy," Bye said. "The more work I do, understanding the social and emotional development of young children and even adults, I’m really starting to believe that we are so focused on academic skills, and getting kids to a certain level on a certain test, versus kids’ social/emotional competence." Bye said that social and emotional skills are "just as teachable" as reading, writing, and math. "The better someone’s social/emotional skills," she said, "the more empathic they are, the less defensive they are."
Other panelists were: Dr. Marie Spivey, vice president for Health Equity at the Connecticut Hospital Association; Dr. H. Kenny Nienhusser, assistant professor in the Doctoral program in Educational Leadership in the College of Education, Nursing, and Health Professions at the University of Hartford; and Dr. John Tapper, a research scientist for the Kaput Center for Research and Innovation in STEM education.
Events at the University of Hartford end on Monday, September 22, at 7:00 pm, with a panel discussion called, "Civil Rights: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," moderated by journalist and commentator Bill Moyers Jerry Franklin, president and CEO of Connecticut Public Broadcasting. (Moyers had a last-minute health issue.)
