An Abundant August
BY CHELSEA BURNS in Dialogue with GAYLE NADLER
In 2001, FWX Alumna Gayle Nadler and her mother, Toby Bornstein started an innovative school to provide a more inclusive, diverse and cultured option for education in Southern California. Fast forward 20+ years and the Multicultural Learning Center (MLC) serves over 500 students annually, providing bi-literacy, social emotional wellness, family and community engagement, global competency and social justice as well as core curriculum to students in grades TK-8.
But their MLC journey started much earlier. Toby, an educator in the 1970s, and Gayle, then a child, faced a challenging educational experience. At 9-years-old Gayle was part of Los Angeles' efforts to integrate schools. Many of her classmates lived in a different part of the city, over 25 miles away, and where most spoke different languages. The school did little to foster relationships between the students coming from diverse backgrounds across the city, and Gayle and her peers were left to their own devices to bridge relationships and struggled to navigate their place and a sense of belonging.
What Gayle and her mother realized is that opening up educational possibilities wasn’t just about rote learning and putting students of diverse backgrounds in the same building, rather it was about seeing, mirroring and unleashing the “abundance within” each student and building upon the differences in culture and language as an asset to the educational experience.
This was the foundation for their charter school: to educate much more abundantly – to include and engage students in learning and bias, diversity, equity, and to provide opportunities for students to connect and feel loved, respected and included.
BEING FULL: HEART, MIND AND SOUL
When giving her own definition of abundance today, Gayle added that it doesn’t mean “too much.” It’s a state of having enough - perhaps overflowing, but never becoming a burden.
Today in a time in the world where the scarcity narrative prevails, Gayle and MLC focus on ensuring that students leave MLC with an understanding that there is enough for all. There is an abundance of time, space and resources for every person. It is this perspective of abundance that enables students’ deep understanding of self and their interdependence on others. It is this perspective of abundance that can catalyze the ripple effect.
Gayle shared how the very first class of students is now in their late 20s and pursuing a breadth of careers – but with a commonality: a passion for social justice.
I was struck by the potential impact of this for individuals and our communities. As a mother to two young children, I found myself seeing the profound ways an abundance mindset in parenting could really change the world. To raise children who see the world through abundancy would mean contributing to the societal shift away from scarcity. Each lesson, each reinforcement builds toward a generation of people who feel confident in their own self and empowered to advocate for others.
Gayle’s abundance of positivity, her mother’s abundance of perseverance and the MLC students’ abundance of hope inspire a world where people acknowledge their connectedness and create a place where there is more than enough for all.
As we enter a new school year, Gayle’s perspective is a powerful reminder of all we can give the next generation.
Creating a world full of abundance for what’s yet to come.
Reflecting on Abundance:
Where do you see abundance in your life?
In what ways do you feel a lacking?
How can you reframe to see abundance?