Upper School Students Plan and Run Great Teach-In Day

On Thursday, March 6, fourteen Upper School students ran a 'teach-in' day for the Upper School based largely on their work earlier this year with Toni Graves Williamson, a nationally known diversity practitioner and consultant now serving as Director of Equity and Inclusion at Friends Select School in Philadelphia. Students worked with Williamson in person in October and remotely with her later in the winter to plan and execute this teach-in day. They first did some identity work to think about safe spaces and how people see them, then had some hard conversations about race, identity, and social economics. The students then came up with a teach-in day theme, planned what workshops they wanted to have, and planned how the day would flow. Their full day began with breaking the Upper School into smaller 'family groups' for some morning ice breakers and self identity work. They then watched the film Life in a Day (2010), created on July 25, 2020, when 'the world came together to tell the story of a single day on Earth.' The filmmakers received over 300,000 videos from 192 countries, resulting in a film "about love, death, heartbreak, and hope that looks beyond geography and circumstance to explore what connects us as humans." Family groups met again after the film to debrief. The afternoon was spent in workshops, conceived and run by the student planners with one faculty mentor. Students got to sign up for two of the following workshops (teach-in students in charge of each workshop are listed below as well):

• American Dream + Privilege: How do your different identities give you an advantage or disadvantage compared to people with different ones? - Mary R, Chloe B
• Representation in Media: How are different identities represented in the media? - Henry A, Alanah R
• Primarily White Institutions + Identity: How do we embrace everyone’s different identities in a predominately white space/school/community? - Sin F, Jack M
• History of Tandem: How does the history of the property affect our community? - Marley B, Tessa D
• Feminism: What does it mean to be a feminist? - Elisabeth S, Nina I
• Differing Perspectives: How do you keep your own beliefs/identity/perspective when surrounded by people who have different beliefs/identities/perspectives? - Kavi M, Sofia S
• Socioeconomics: How do money and social class complicate or support the ways we function in community? - Beatrice G, Esme W

After the workshops, the day ended with a Meeting for Sharing that allowed students to share a takeaway. It was a great day of learning, thinking about identity and belonging, sharing and connecting. Well done, student teachers!