Learning Commons Blog

It's the second week of Asian Heritage Month, a time to appreciate the history, present, and future of Asian culture. Of course, this appreciation shouldn't be limited to May exclusively. Everyday is an opportunity to celebrate Asian creators and art. In recent years, the importance of diverse representation and equitable publishing is becoming an increasingly widespread priority. The positive psychological, social , cultural, and political impacts of diverse representation are profound. Unfortunately, Asian characters in popular media are often tokenized, stereotyped, underdeveloped, and tertiary to white characters.  In an interview with Room Magazine , author Mariko Tamaki noted, "There is not necessarily a lot of young Asian people in books. When I was a kid, there was Obasan , that’s like the only book you can read about a young Asian girl. I think it is really important that the people you see and whose stories you see unfolding are not just the same character every ...

In the Harry Potter universe, a current of unnatural cold and overwhelming dread announces the approach of Dementors, soul-sucking creatures who deal in despair. “Get too near a Dementor,” Professor Lupin warns Harry in The Prisoner of Azkaban, “and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you.” Fortunately, we at St. George's School have a leg up on Hogwarts: we operate sans-Dementors. Unfortunately, there is another monster from which we are not immune. It doesn't fly around donned in black, it has no tangible form. You guessed it, Dementors are here a metaphor for depression. As students, staff, and faculty at a school for not witchcraft and wizardry, we don't have the same nifty tools to ward away these dreadful feelings. We have no wands, we can't yell “expecto patronum!” and chase mental illness away with a cool Patronus (though, I will tangentially take a moment to brag about the fact that mine is a fox). But there are some steps we can take...