Oftentimes, minoritized voices have been overlooked, but now with the creation of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Student Advisory Committee (DEI), things are changing for the better.
Last year, the DEI was founded by seniors Jennie Wang and Eva McKone, with faculty advisors Joanna Ganci and HannahTola. The DEI is working to promote and celebrate diversity, as well as to improve aspects of the curriculum in regards to diversity, equity, and inclusion. McKone elaborated that their mission is to instill the values that the DEI stands for throughout the APS community.
Wang said that she and McKone wanted to establish the DEI so that students could have a voice in the school curriculum, what is taught, and the overall school environment. The committee is based around the voices of students, especially those of marginalized students. “This is in order for them to have a voice in a culture where they haven’t always been heard,” Wang noted.
Members of this committee can choose to work to make changes in the curriculum—the Teacher Bridge Committee—or the “culture climate” aspect of the school. Those working to help improve the curriculum will work with the curriculum developers to give their input. For example, if a teacher needs help with explaining a topic, they could ask members from the DEI for advice. An example of this work is in English classes, where these members would be able to advise teachers of their perspectives and what books they think would have good representation of minoritized groups. Ganci said that she wanted to make sure that the stories that are told are not simply tokenist, “just checking off boxes, like ‘we have that kind of character,’” but ones that offer “joyful stories” with proper and authentic representation.
Students working to improve the curriculum could also assist teachers who are unsure about how to approach or teach a topic in an appropriate manner. “It’s good to get insight from people who are actually experiencing those things,” explained Wang, “A lot of teachers have expressed that they do want to know what their students are thinking about, so this is an attempt to kind of bridge that gap.”
Ganci added that she wants the school to be a more inclusive place, where “everyone truly feels welcome” and that “they belong and can thrive.”
As for the students working on the culture climate portion of the DEI, Ganci said that they will be based around working with other clubs to “do better as a school at celebrating identity… We want to celebrate, but coordinating those things can be really challenging.” With the DEI, setting up these celebrations would become much easier, as they would help clubs organize them, or even organize events on their own.
Since the DEI Student Advisory Committee was founded last year, the founders said that students from several other schools had contacted them about it, hoping to start committees of their own. The DEI is planning to eventually try to create this type of structure in many schools in the district. “It’s a relatively big project,” Wang said, “but hopefully in the future, we’ll split off across the district a bit more.” This would allow for a stronger voice for students throughout the district, and possibly even at the state level.
The DEI Student Advisory Committee is open to anybody who is truly passionate about promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the school. “We want to have a really diverse group of students to be part of the committee to represent people’s voices,” added Wang. The committee is also planning on meeting during H-Blocks rather than after school so that more students will be able to participate.
“What I love about this is that it is students that will motivate us,” said Ganci. “No matter what adults are in the building and whatever their good intentions are, we have blind spots, and there are things we don’t think about or realize. It’s going to take students constantly reminding us and partnering with us to make it better. That’s what we’re trying to commit to: being better.”
“I think this is something we really need to be tackling head on, at all levels, and outside of the schools to make strides in having students of color feeling seen and valued, I don’t know if we always do a good job of that here, and that’s something that we should be bothered by.”
The quote above comes directly from AHS English teacher Ms. Caitlin Mitchell, who not only educates her students on the importance of literature, but is also the club advisor to the Gender-Sexuality-Alliance (GSA), and is an active member of the school’s C3 (cultural climate) committee. You may be wondering, what is the something that Mitchell is referring to above? What is its significance in correlation with the palpable sense that this is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately?
The something that Mitchell is referring to is racism, an issue in our nation and across the world since our country was created. We need to be able to find the ability to celebrate diversity in our world, in our country, in our community, and at Andover High School.
Google’s definition of diversity is the “practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.”
So let’s all take a step backwards and widen our perspective on Google’s definition. Diversity involves all members of a community, and how that specific community is able to celebrate, and most importantly, acknowledge all of its members. This is done in a way to make all members feel comfortable, safe, and able to express themselves in any way that they want to.
In this case, the “community” is our school, AHS, and the members are all of the students, teachers, and staff who are consistently in the school environment. It is not only the role of the administration and faculty to make AHS a comfortable place for students to feel safe and acknowledged, but it is also a responsibility of a student, as the term diversity applies to the entire community.
As a nation, we have suffered, and are still suffering, with discrimination against specific races, people who choose to express themselves through a different gender, and more.
On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, was jogging in his neighborhood in Georgia, when he was followed by three white residents who then proceeded to confront and fatally shoot Arbery.
On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was shot in her own Kentucky home after police forced entry into her home as part of a drug-investigation search, firing 32 shots, six which proved to be fatal for Taylor.
On May 25, 2020 in Minnesota, George Floyd was brutally murdered by a police officer, after the officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for approximately 8 minutes and 26 seconds after arresting him, even despite attempts from Floyd to tell the officer that he could not breathe.
There are so many other innocent lives that were taken from their families due to racist ideologies that stem from Christopher Colombus and the discovery of America. Each year, the United States makes progress in addressing such a crucial issue of basic morality and equality, an issue that was part of the foundation of the creation of the USA itself.
Quotes such as “We can’t move forward without recognizing the past” and “Acknowledge your past to establish a starting point” can be leading mottos to keep in mind as we, our community at AHS, continue to make sure that we are creating a safe and accepting environment at our school, for all members of our community.
Dr. Jorge Allen is the advisor to the diversity club, “an issue driven club, not based on any group, ethnicity, or race.” He said, “It is a group of students that are equally interested in advocating and doing the work for diversity and inclusion at the high school.” At AHS, there are various affinity clubs, such as Amigos Unidos and the Asian American club, where students of similar ethnic backgrounds can come together after school and get to connect with those who might be experiencing similar situations.
While Allen is proud of the progress that Andover, as a town, has made with cultural diversity and overall inclusion/acknowledgement, he knows there is still a lot of headway that must be made.
“As a community, we have to find ways to have students that are not the majority to feel safe to express themselves as who they are,” Allen said. “We [also] need the students of the majority to make sure that they don’t send messages intentionally or unintentionally that make other groups feel excluded.” He added that he also believes students who feel they are underrepresented need to be able to look and seek out ways they are represented at AHS.
Andover junior Abby Buckley echoed this statement, adding that
“Every student is responsible to make everyone feel heard and welcome because if everyone were the same, we would live in an extremely boring world, so instead, we must embrace our differences.”
Abby Buckley, junior
She continued with stressing the importance of not excluding someone because of their differences but rather accept them for that and celebrate them for that.
“How can we ensure that we are representing in a fair way the different views and experiences of our members of the community and that we are not only showcasing just a majority perspective?” Allen asked, and used himself as an example: “If I see myself honored or acknowledged, [then] I feel like I belong in the school, [yet] if I see that my school doesn’t even mention my identity, then I become invisible in performance, celebrations, then I feel like I don’t belong.”
“The question of how a high school approaches diversity and wrapping their arms around it is a question I’ve been asking myself as assistant principal and principal,” stated new Principal Caitlin Brown. “What are areas in which we can support and recognize, help students get involved? It’s not just what I think it should look like, it’s more reflective of our student body and our community.”
Brown is proud of the progress that Andover has made, and she wants to be able to find ways to celebrate diversity and our student body, even in the times of COVID. “One of the things I love about Andover is its diversity,” Brown told ANDOVERVIEW. “I think I love that there are a lot of students with different backgrounds and different cultures working together for some common good, and you can see that a lot in clubs, sports–everyone is working together.”
STAFF PHOTO/ Erin Li
In the 2018-2019 school year, Andover High partnered with a local group called VISIONS, who helped facilitate a round-table survey of how students of different backgrounds, sexual orientations, and gender identities felt about how they were represented, acknowledged, and treated at AHS.
Based on the results of this survey, the administrators saw that there was a true problem, one that needed to be addressed immediately. The results of the survey were put into professional development for teachers, in hopes that being able to further educate teachers, the teachers could extend this education to their students and be more aware of how to ensure a safe environment for all.
An additional step was taken by the administration following the results of the survey. This step was the creation of the C3 committee. The C3 was first created at an administrative level, with Dr. Allen and several faculty members from the high school, including Ms. Mitchell, Dr. Bach, Ms. Caitlin Brown, and Ms. Aixa de Kelley. Allen and Bach were placed in the social emotional group, and decided to continue the discussion of that initiative and create a committee to speak on issues of race and cultural differences in the community. It began in the Central Office, and has now developed into programs at each individual school.
The committee size and work varies school to school, but they all share the commonality of working for their respective principal, helping to guide administration on racial inclusion by giving recommendations based on research, holding cultural events, hosting speakers, and more.
Ms. Andrea Famiglietti, an ESL teacher at Bancroft Elementary School, learned about the committee through an email sent out from the district, asking for teacher volunteers to help get the initiative started at the individual schools.
“The main goal is to address issues around the C3 areas such as looking at increased hiring of people with different backgrounds, looking at curriculum assessment, and more,” Famiglietti said. “[The committee] just wants to be supportive when issues due come up around diversity and inclusion in general.”
“For elementary school, we plan a lot of activities and events to build awareness around different cultures and people of different backgrounds,” she said. The principal at Bancroft recently put together a holiday celebration for which students used Flipgrid, an online interactive video service. Rather than focusing specifically on Christmas, the students were able to record a video, with or without other family members, to share their December holiday traditions. Anyone who wanted to share and participate could share.
“We’ve done things around Chinese New Year, with students making red envelopes as a class activity and then sharing with a buddy-classroom,” Famiglietti told ANDOVERVIEW. “Our C3, in January, we will be doing a day of service, where our students do some sort of volunteer project on Martin Luther King day. They can write letters to the Atria Marland Place [assisted living home], do some sort of donation somewhere, artwork–we are really trying to get the kids more involved in building community with each other.”
Bancroft also holds a Heritage Night, where kids have an opportunity to share where they are from, have a presentation board, and showcase some of their cultural foods, games, traditions, clothing, and anything else they want to add.
Having these various events to allow students to express themselves and get to talk openly about their heritage or even just important people in their lives who have influenced them is important. Again, it all revolves around acknowledgment.
This acknowledgement is an important piece in solving this puzzle. In order to even start finding materials to educate others and starting discussions in classrooms, everyone has to be able to acknowledge that there is a problem. If you cannot acknowledge that your room is messy and filled with junk, it will just continue to pile up and become even harder to pull back together. Whereas if you are able to notice and acknowledge the mess, you are able to organize and clean your room in a much more efficient fashion. If people across the world aren’t able to acknowledge diversity and recognize their peers and total strangers as all equal human beings, the issue will continue to pile up and become even harder to detangle.
When asked for an overall impression of diversity at AHS, members of the community had differing opinions along with various interpretations of the term diversity.
“Andover as a whole is not that diverse of a place, if you’re talking racially,” said junior Courtney Duffy. “At the high school, though, you can see that our student body is definitely really diverse in terms of socially, there are so many different kinds of people, people with different interests…our amount of clubs and extracurricular programs, there is definitely social diversity, but in the traditional sense, Andover is a predominately white town, and that is noticed at the high school level.”
Ms. Mitchell spoke to the advancement in acknowledgment of the LBGTQ+ community, with her perspective as the faculty advisor of the GSA.
“My first year I think we had three kids in the club, and they were all allies, who were there to support a friend, who wasn’t even coming consistently. Now nine years later, on an average week, pre-pandemic, when we were physically gathering still, we had between 25 and 30 kids per week”
Caitlin Mitchell, Co-advisor of GSA
recalled Mitchell. She believes that great strides have been taken in terms of gender and sexual orientation, but there is still a lot of work to be done with making sure students of color feel there are valued members of our community.
Holly Ross, a current senior at Greater Lawrence Technical High School, has had a tough experience with Andover Public Schools; a biracial student, she experienced discrimination as early as elementary school. “After middle school, I went to Greater Lawrence so that I could be around people [from whom] I didn’t feel like I had to hide my true self,” reflected Ross. Shebelieves that there needs to be change within not just the students, but the adults and members of the community. She acknowledged that this discrimination was definitely not from all of the students and staff, but it was prominent enough to consistently feel uncomfortable when going to school.
“When I was little, I used to wear braids for protective hair style,” recalled Ross. “My dad would braid my hair, and classmates were always constantly coming up, touching my hair, touching the beads in my hair, and it was just annoying, and I eventually stopped wearing them because it was too much attention for something that was part of who I was.” Ross said this was confusing to her younger self, as another girl would wear fishtail braids, but no one would be going up and grabbing at her braids.
Ross said she believes that before the killing of George Floyd, people in this area really were not educated on what privilege is. Now, she asserted, people know what privilege is, and are able to recognize and acknowledge it.
STAFF PHOTO/ Erin Li
Student Abby Buckley reaffirmed this statement, adding, “I think people really need to do a better job of addressing that a lot of people in our town have privilege and people need to acknowledge that in order to make a change.”
“I think talking about [racism] a lot more, instead of ignoring the whole fact, talking about it needs to be done,” stated Ross. “White washing history, in general, does not help. People say, well, that was 400 years ago, just because it was 400 years ago doesn’t mean that it’s any better.”
Ross’s experience in elementary and middle school was filled with positive memories, but unfortunately, the negative memories overpowered. When the topic of slavery was first introduced in history class, everyone’s head would swivel and looked directly at Ross and the one other girl of color in the classroom. Every time slavery was brought up, the teacher would look directly at these two girls, expectantly, as just because of the color of their skin, they would have the answer to his questions on slavery. “It was normalized,” said Ross. “I knew it was wrong, but me and the other girl we talked about it a lot…. It’s definitely normalized and it shouldn’t be.”
In seventh grade, Ross was in science class at West Middle, going through a textbook, when a classmate pointed at an image of cotton in the book and said, “Holly, go pick that cotton.”
“I wasn’t even fazed by it,” reflected Ross. “It happened so often, that I just ignored him, which led to him to bully other people of color in my class, as he was so intent on getting a reaction out of one of us.”
Ross hopes that her younger sister, who is currently in middle school in Andover, will have a different experience. In the first grade, her younger sister was repeatedly teased and bullied for the color of her skin, leading the sister to kick the boy who taunted her. In the end, the sister was the one deemed “in trouble” by the teacher and principal, with no repercussions for the boy.
“Voices are being dulled and nobody can get their voice out,” concluded Ross. “We need to educate ourselves and make a change now.”
Junior Courtney Duffy contributed a solid point that you never truly know what’s going on with someone at home, or what they face in everyday life. “I think that all students should work on educating themselves, and just becoming aware that for minorities in this country, little things add up over time,” Duffy said.
Buckley believes that “we shouldn’t exclude someone because of their differences but rather accept them for that and celebrate them for that.”
“I think talking about [racism] a lot more, instead of ignoring the whole fact, talking about it needs to be done,” stated Ross. “White washing history, in general, does not help. People say,
“I think talking about [racism] a lot more, instead of ignoring the whole fact, talking about it needs to be done,” stated Ross. “White washing history, in general, does not help. People say, well, that was 400 years ago, just because it was 400 years ago doesn’t mean that it’s any better.”
Ross’s experience in elementary and middle school was filled with positive memories, but unfortunately, the negative memories overpowered. When the topic of slavery was first introduced in history class, everyone’s head would swivel and looked directly at Ross and the one other girl of color in the classroom. Everytime slavery was brought up, the teacher would look directly at these two girls, expectantly, as just because of the color of their skin, they would have the answer to his questions on slavery. “It was normalized,” said Ross. “I knew it was wrong, but me and the other girl we talked about it a lot…. It’s definitely normalized and it shouldn’t be.”
In seventh grade, Ross was in science class at West Middle, going through a textbook, when a classmate pointed at an image of cotton in the book and said, “Holly, go pick that cotton.”
“I wasn’t even fazed by it,” reflected Ross. “It happened so often, that I just ignored him, which led to him to bully other people of color in my class, as he was so intent on getting a reaction out of one of us.”
Ross hopes that her younger sister, who is currently in middle school in Andover, will have a different experience. In the first grade, her younger sister was repeatedly teased and bullied for the color of her skin, leading the sister to kick the boy who taunted her. In the end, the sister was the one deemed “in trouble” by the teacher and principal, with no repercussions for the boy.
“Voices are being dulled and nobody can get their voice out,” concluded Ross. “We need to educate ourselves and make a change now.”
Junior Courtney Duffy contributed a solid point that you never truly know what’s going on with someone at home, or what they face in everyday life. “I think that all students should work on educating themselves, and just becoming aware that for minorities in this country, little things add up over time,” Duffy said. b
Buckley believes that “we shouldn’t exclude someone because of their differences but rather accept them for that and celebrate them for that.”
