We always want to practice what we preach and so this past week, we were “Trying On” lots of new things. Here’s one of the things that we’ve never done before that worked really well: a lunchtime community conversation where students opted in to engage in dialogue with each other around racism. We used the four agreements and the compass (believing/thinking/feeling/acting) from the equity curriculum the students have been learning. These tools really benefited the conversation and the participants. At the close, we tried on connecting to our emotions and the feelings in our body–how it felt to talk about painful things and how it felt to do so with a new community. Here are some of the words shared by our 60 attendees in the chat box as they exited: enlightened, safe, comfortable, respect. We learned a lot about how much students want to engage with each other and how badly they want all students at AHS to feel welcome and included. There’s an amount of fear that always accompanies trying new things but when you push through that fear, there can be wonderful things on the other side.
Allen Choi, Wellness Coordinator
Casey Sasner, Intake Specialist
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