Professional Development is a key component to creating an environment and space that our students feel included and represented in. Over the last couple of years, we have been working to continuously provide valuable diversity workshops for faculty and staff to attend, grow, and learn.

For this year’s November Professional Development, our keynote speaker was Tiffany Besse. During the keynote session, those in attendance learned about the connection of equity to standards aligned instruction as a means of creating the conditions necessary for success for all students, but particularly those students in marginalized groups and/or underrepresented populations.

Tiffany is a graduate of Fort Zumwalt North High School, who went on to Lindenwood University where she earned an Educational Specials degree in Educational Leadership and Master of Arts in Administration and Teaching. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from St. Louis University and is currently pursuing her doctorate in educational leadership at Maryville University in St. Louis, Missouri. Tiffany began her teaching career as an AP Chemistry and Biology teacher in 2000. Now, she is beginning her third year serving the Ferguson-Florissant as the Deputy Superintendent of Instructional Services, where she leads curriculum, instruction and professional development for teachers, leaders, and coaches while serving approximately 11,000 students in 22 schools. Previously, she served the Pattonville School District as the Director of Secondary Education and Associate Principal at Pattonville High School and as an assistant principal in the Rockwood School District. Fort Zumwalt North High School’s diversity club, FZNiAm, is in its second year. For their first meeting this year, they participated in a full day workshop that allowed the group to work on defining and recognizing bias, stereotypes, and also learned how to confront bias within themselves and others.

After the keynote, there were two workshops that participants could choose to attend. The first was with our Coordinator of Diversity & Awareness, Juan Wilson, where the group learned about topics such as unconscious bias, stereotype, and microaggressions. The group also discussed ways to stand up to and confronting incidents of racism, bias, and stereotyping. The second workshop was with Gary Hirshberg, and is the first of a two part series. During Gary’s workshop, the group learned definitions and received an overview of LGBT mental health. The also learned and discussed trans, bi/pansexual, lesbian, and gay male issues.

Gary received a Master’s in Social Work from the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in 1984. He spent the first five years of his professional career at Family & Children’s Services of Greater St. Louis. While at F&CS he was exposed to a wide range of clinical problems from a diverse client population. During that time he received extensive training in couples counseling to augment his graduate school specialization in that area.

Gary was one of the founders of the first mental health agency in the country created in response to the AIDS epidemic. Delta Mental Health Institute was a private not for profit that during its five years in operation provided psychotherapy in St. Louis and Diversity Training in St. Louis and served the needs of the HIV/AIDS community, the LGBT community, and male survivors. During that time, he became a founding member of the National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization, and offered workshops throughout the United States for male survivor therapists. He designed the first course taught in St. Louis to address the mental health needs of those living with HIV at both Washington University and St. Louis University.

Gary has received intensive training in working with survivors of sexual abuse. He attended a five-day residential Dismantling Racism Institute in St Louis and went on to co-design a seven-day residential institute in diversity awareness for high school students. For five years, he co-directed one of the summer Institutes. He is a graduate of the two-year advanced psychodynamic psychotherapy program at the St Louis Psychoanalytic Institute. Gary completed a four-year training program also at the St Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, and is a practicing psychoanalyst. He has taught graduate and adult learning course in areas of Sexuality, Diversity, Metapsychology & Social Justice at Washington University, St. Louis University, University of Missouri - St. Louis, and the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.

It’s a pleasure to provide quality diversity professional development sessions to our faculty and staff and we’re not only appreciative to the presenters, but also to those who register for the workshops as we learn how to better serve and build relationships with one another.