St. George’s students and faculty attended two conferences offered by the National Association of Independent Schools, both of which focused on people of color and student diversity within an independent school environment on Dec. 4 through Dec. 6.

Fifth-grade associate Mr. Andre Lott, Upper School Spanish teacher Ms. Freya Kridle, Dean of Students and school counselor of the Lower School Mrs. Tiffany Travis, and Senior Kindergarten Associate Mrs. ChaToya Hayden all attended the People of Color Conference.

“It is mainly a diversity conference, focusing on the issues of trying to understand or learn the ways we can educate families, students, and faculty on diversity,” Mr. Lott. “We all know that’s something we can educate ourselves on.”

The goal of the conference is to provide a suitable environment of leadership and development for teachers, the Head of School, and faculty so they can gain the necessary knowledge and skills to improve the interracial, interethnic, and intercultural situation in independent schools.

“Faculty and administrators basically had workshops trying to figure out ways to work together and help out students,” Mr. Lott said.

The conference includes sessions with particular themes, practitioner-led workshops, affinity groups, and dialogue sessions. The majority of attendees at the conference are people of color. According to the NAIS, “the wisdom and perspective of people of color tends to be a ‘minority’ in independent schools.”

“Because predominately independent schools are white, it brings a different level of diversity into focus,” Ms. Kridle said.

Along with the People of Color Conference, the Student Diversity Leadership Conference took place at the same time. Juniors Paige Madison and Autumn Jones, and sophomore JR Upton, attended the conference.

The SDLC is a gathering of upper school students from grades nine through twelve from all different racial and cultural backgrounds all across the country. The conference focuses on reflection, “allyship”, and friendship building. Participants develop an appreciation of their own identities before better understanding the nature of social justice on our society.

“We broke off into groups and pretty much talked about life and what your identity is and what you can give to the world and what’s your legacy,” Jones said.

The conference entailed listening to speakers such as Michael Eric Dyson, Maysoon Zayid, Derald Wing Sue, Cheryl Brown Henderson, Jose Antonio Vargas and Sonia Nazario. Jones said that they even had a moment of silence for Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin.

Jones also felt that attending the conference changed many of her feelings towards diversity.

“I learned that we are never alone,” Jones said. “I listened to seemingly hundreds of perspectives, created infinite bonds with people I wouldn’t encounter in an environment like SGIS, stood for my race, and bawled my eyes out for my new family telling me all the hardships they, and some of us, have gone through.”