Engaging Student Voices Against Hate
On October 26th, school faculty members from across the state gathered at The University of Vermont for an annual conference held by The Rowland Foundation.
The keynote speaker for the 2017 conference was Ruha Benjamin, the professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University. The main theme of her speech focused on racism in schools, student voice, and how to empower students.
Benjamin talked about and shared stories from schools around the U.S. as well as personal stories related to the topic. One story that really resonated with the audience was one she told about her old school, where the principal showed her something a student had written on the bathroom wall. It read “Welcome to America, where abortions are considered murder but a police officer killing a black kid isn’t.”
After the keynote speech, the conference attendees split up and went to different workshops around campus. Dr. Benjamin had one in the main conference room which she dubbed “Playing the Game or Hacking the System.”
The workshop began with a short continuation of her earlier speech that built upon the themes she had talked about, the main one being student voice. In this speech, she spoke about how students either wait for the system to change to suit their needs (Playing the game) or help make change to suit their needs (Hacking the system). Attendees then joined in the discussion.
When the workshops were over, everyone had lunch before gathering back in the main room for some student presentations. Blue Mountain Union Academy students presented a video about the Diversity Club at the school. Burlington High School students presented a video about the All Are Welcome Symbol (they allowed Woodstock and others to use this on t-shirts as well) that their school created. Thirdly, an Iranian Immigrant, who currently attends Vergennes Union High School, told the story of how he came to America.
For Woodstock’s presentation, WUHS sent six students who were part of the Yoh Theater Program. The students performed a speakchorus using excerpts from “The Laramie Project” by Moises Kaufman and The Tectonic Theater Project, which the Yoh theater players produced earlier this year, and The Courage Zone by Harriet Worrell, a speakchorus performed as part of the play “Push: The Edge” from the 2016/2017 Yoh season. The speakchorus was very powerful and many of the teachers were crying afterwards.
The conference concluded with more workshops talking about how to engage student voice, recognize bias and inequity in our schools and empower students.