An Interview with Dr. Wagner Marseille, Part 1: New Superintendent Discusses Race and Equity at WSSD
Dr. Wagner Marseille is the newly appointed superintendent of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. He was interviewed by Strath Haven High School senior (and Swarthmorean summer intern), Morgan McErlean, on Wednesday, September 1. This week’s edition carries Part 1 of our interview with Dr. Marseille.
Q: Could you introduce yourself?
A: My name is Wagner Marseille. I am the proud superintendent of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. I started on July 1, so I guess today would be my 60th day in the district so far. Previously, I was the superintendent of Cheltenham School District in Montgomery County. Prior to that position, I was at Lower Merion for eight years in a number of positions: as an assistant principal, director, and assistant superintendent, and then acting superintendent before I took the position at Cheltenham.
Q: I read that you are from Haiti. Are your parents Haitian? Are you a first-generation immigrant?
A: Yes. My parents came to this country. Actually, my father showed up before us. He came to the country and landed in Princeton, New Jersey. Not sure how he picked Princeton, but I think there was a small Haitian population there that he was able to connect with. That gave him an opportunity to stay with them while he found a job, and throughout that process of saving money, my dad would periodically apply for visas. And then we would come one or two at a time (I have seven sisters and two brothers). It took a long time to get all of the family here in terms of that process. So [my siblings and I are the] first-generation and we were fortunate in terms of being the first to go to college, and obviously graduate as well.
Q: Being in the public school system as a first generation-immigrant, what was that experience like? Has any of it influenced your educational philosophy?
A: It absolutely has. I came from the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and I landed in Princeton, New Jersey, which is one of the most prestigious zip codes in the country. Our house was a couple of blocks away from Princeton University. It was very evident, in Princeton, the haves and the have-nots. First and foremost, it was an issue of socio-economic. You knew you were poor because there was so much affluence and all your friends had homes that were elaborate. Our little tiny house was like the size of their garage in some instances. So socio-economics played a big factor in terms of that process, and then race. Princeton is as diverse as Princeton says they are in terms of racial diversity; the percentage was in the single digits in terms of students of color.
You physically knew there were very few people who looked like you. Plus, the language barrier was also challenging. As for the cultural barrier, coming from an island where the average temperatures were 90 or 85 degrees, our clothing was very different. My parents didn’t have a lot of money and they didn’t speak English. My father was a janitor, as well as my mom. Then, my dad got a job working for New Jersey transit as a mechanic. So they were blue-collar, very hard-working double jobs. It was very difficult for me to fit into that community. And, there were a lot of things that that community said, and didn’t say, that made me feel marginalized. So that has significantly shifted the way I address questions such as how do we create much more welcoming communities, and what happens when students don’t see themselves reflected in the way in which schooling happens?
By the way, I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything else, because I’m very fortunate to have been raised—since I was in kindergarten in the Princeton community—with the educational programming opportunities that it afforded me, compared to other communities that may have not had the same access to educational opportunities that I had there.
Q: Did you have a similar experience with other predominantly white institutions that you attended?
A: Well, I think Princeton was that driver, since I spent my entire school experience there. I learned to navigate in terms of what does it mean to be black? What does it mean to be male in a predominantly white institution? What were things that were said, or not said, that made me kind of think about race? It was difficult because, for example, I remember as a young man— a young kid—I had my first experience. I was 10 years old. I was walking from the Princeton library, and we got pulled over by the police as we were walking right by the Princeton cemetery. That was my first experience with law enforcement, and not a very pleasant one. I grew up with the sense that people were watching me wherever I went. So when we walked through Nassau Street and went into a store, you instantly knew people were watching you. People sort of follow you around in terms of that process. So, a beautiful community, a wonderful community, but when you don’t create the opportunity for others to see themselves within the culture of your community, it becomes extremely, extremely challenging -- but that helped me navigate my own racial identity. Then the way in which I see the world moving forward. After those experiences, I was ready to address any other challenges as I got to college and other experiences as well.
Q: How did you feel about some of our schools’ instances of racial insensitivity coming into the district?
A: Unfortunate, but doesn’t surprise me. In terms of what are schools doing or not doing to create that particular dialogue in that space? Unfortunately, in a lot of institutions, you have a school within a school and then you have particular factions and groups of students. And if you’re not collectively talking about what brings us together, then that divides us. What happens is young adolescents, young adults, will do what young adults do. They make a lot of mistakes, which is the whole point of schooling—to help you navigate through those mistakes. And when the school is not intentional about having conversations about what our core values are, and what we believe them to be—listen, we don’t all have to like each other, but we do know that this is the wrong thing to do. To be honest, I was not aware of that until I arrived at the district. Even though I had heard that it had sparked a lot of community outcry and a lot of negative publicity. I was told that a number of our first students made some very poor decisions, which kind of escalated into a much wider conversation in the community about inclusion, about race, about diversity, and about how we really feel about each other as neighbors.
Q: What ways do you think it should be addressed?
A: I’m a big proponent of student voice, for a number of reasons, but particularly for the way in which I experienced high school and middle school, where I felt like I didn’t have a voice. I felt there wasn’t a platform for me to have a voice. I felt that my voice didn’t matter, and that other voices took precedence over mine. I felt that people were better situated to have their voices heard. I felt people were much more articulate than I was to share their voices. And I would have wished that the school had created affinity groups that would allow me to have those particular conversations.
I’m really interested in finding out how students are communicating with each other. I do challenge districts, when I arrive to say, well, your mission statement speaks to diversity. It speaks to core values. How is that exposed every single day? So when I walk into the hallway, when I walk through a building, it wasn’t like I wanted to see a Haitian flag, right? Or, a picture of Haiti. I was more thinking about how the school recognizes my unique identity in multiple ways that makes me feel valued, versus me having to think about it. I needed to disregard my cultural identity and try to fit in—into the dominant culture. And I think sometimes school districts tend to just go through the practice of doing schooling, and don’t think about the way in which it’s a social experience. Yes, there’s a lot of education that obviously happens, but it’s more of a social experience, and our kids interacting with each other. What spaces are we giving for them to do that?
Q: How do you think that through the curriculum, some of these issues can be addressed?
A: Well, the reality is that much of the curriculum is a Eurocentric curriculum from the lens of a perspective, right? I do think that there is an opportunity to make sure that our students’ cultural identities are reflected in the process. I want to be able to share stories about multiple perspectives, and I think some of the proponents who argue this notion that we’re indoctrinating children into particular ideologies, or those people who tell me, ‘we are teaching our kids about race, when we [should be] really teaching about the human race. I don’t see color.’ Which is probably, arguably for me, the worst thing you can say, right?
As an example in terms of that process, I’m like, okay, so you don’t see that that’s a woman? You just see her as a person, dismissing all the uniqueness that comes from being a woman, right? In terms of that particular perspective, the curriculum plays a large role in allowing students to see their own history. But more importantly, it allows students to see another perspective.
I think that when you’re as diverse as this country is—as diverse as this world is—when students graduate from Wallingford-Swarthmore, there’s no mistake that they are entering into an extremely diverse community. And it’s not that they have to espouse the same core beliefs as those individuals, but they do need to be able to have experience understanding other peoples’ perspectives. I don’t think there’s enough space in the curriculum that allows that to happen.
I’ll give you an example. Today, before our meeting, I was sitting down with Dr. [Denise Citarelli] Jones, director of education, and Dr. [Ashwina Gayan] Mosakowski, assistant director of education. We were talking about Hispanic Month, and we looked at the other monthly celebrations coming up. There’s Autism Awareness month and everything else, and we’re trying to figure out what are the most effective ways, besides window dressing or putting a nice little sticker on the wall that says “Hispanic Month.” How do we think differently about how we support their own culture, not just through the seasonal monthly perspectives, but the way in which we honor all cultures—their music, art and science, sports and literature—throughout the year? Are our students being exposed to phenomenal authors of Hispanic descent? Are our science teachers thinking differently about what’s the contribution of Hispanic Americans to the field of science? What is the contribution to mathematics of those who have Hispanic descent? It’s just recognizing the fact that you have multiple students in this district with multiple identities and it doesn’t even have to get to the point around. [Race is] a big factor, but students come in with multiple identities. So, when you’re celebrating Women’s [History] Month, to what extent do you continue to celebrate that throughout the year, and acknowledge how it is an important factor in our way of thinking, besides just [that] particular month? It’s the same thing with Black History Month. It’s the same thing with Indigenous Month. It’s the same thing with Cancer Awareness Month. We appreciate the 30 days to celebrate it, but the thing is, it becomes a fleeting afterthought afterward. If we are really interested in eradicating the conditions that create this terrible disease of cancer, how do we weave that into other disciplines, so that people are conscious about healthcare, people are conscious about terminal diseases. How do we navigate through that? How do we support individuals who are going through that process? How do we legislate for additional funding, or things of that nature. These are all things that really need to be incorporated into that process.
Also, it’s not, “Hey, let’s talk about diversity,” and then we order something like 60 books and scatter them throughout our libraries. Or say, “Hey this is an interesting topic.” I think it needs to be more deliberate and intentional, in terms of the racialized experiences and or experiences of people from multiple identities that go beyond race. And that’s a challenge. And I think this is why we’re going to engage in an equity audit. We are going to have a company, an organization come in here, and they are going to review our practices to see what it means to be an equitable school district. Whether it is equity between and amongst our students, or equity between our staff.
I’ll give you an example. I was in a school district where we were looking at course selection, as well as looking at who was teaching the courses. What we found—and this was not intentional—was that all of the higher-level math courses, every single one of them, were being taught by men. And we were like, wait a minute. I don’t believe a group of them, the male math teachers, sat around and created this schedule intently with malice. It was just, we didn’t think about it.
What’s the [impact] of years, and years, and years, and years, and years of all of the higher-level math courses being taught by men? What does that mean for the young women who are interested in mathematics, in terms of how they see themselves? What does that mean about our female teachers? Who, by the way, were four times more likely to be teaching a remedial math class than they were an advanced level math class?
So when you take a look at inequity, it’s more than just about race. It also impacts staffing as well in terms of who’s teaching what, and why are they teaching [it]? I do believe that there are—and people might disagree with this—that there are particular genres of literature that I think students should read. I think that [doing so] gives them a broader perspective. I think that we do need to commit to saying, “Listen, these are authors of our time who happened to be of Hispanic descent, African descent, Italian descent, European descent, whatever. They may be of Afro Caribbean descent.” And they are at the top of their game in terms of their genre. Our students should experience that literature.
Part 2 of Dr. Marseille’s interview will appear in next week’s issue, Friday, September 17.
