Middle School 2017 Equity and Inclusion Symposium

Students Write Reflections About Featured Speaker's Talk
 
Middle School Is A Great Place For Interaction

In December, Dr. Karen Bradberry, the director of Equity and Inclusion at Greenhill School in Dallas, visited the Middle School to discuss personal identifiers, stereotyping, and microaggressions. Dr. Bradberry first met with the Middle School's Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance (IDEA).

As one of the co-chairs of IDEA, I appreciated the time Dr. Bradberry spent with our group because it gave us a chance to teach her what we have learned this year in IDEA. As a Cooper student, I love being able to share my feelings and opinions about subjects that matter to me. Dr. Bradberry taught us the differences between inclusion, segregation, exclusion, and integration. After meeting with IDEA,

Dr. Bradberry met with all Middle School students and shared that middle school is a great place for interaction because we are all changing and growing as people, so we can understand what each other is going through. Middle school is a safe place where we, as students, can embrace who we are.

Dr. Bradberry then talked about puzzles as a way of showing differences. Each puzzle piece has a certain shape that cannot change to fit just anywhere in the puzzle. Instead, you must find the specific place where it belongs. Altogether, the pieces connect to make an image. This was important to me because I believe we should not change who we are to fit in, instead we should find friends who accept us as we are. Lastly, she explained what microaggressions are and how they can be hurtful. She defined the different types of microaggressions - micro insults, micro assaults, micro invalidations - and reminded us that all of them sting.

Sometimes, microaggressions are not said to be hurtful, but are still derogatory. Microaggressions do not feel good, and the only way to stop them from occurring again is to speak up and address them. If the person encountering the insult does not stand up for himself or herself, nothing will change.

Overall, Dr. Bradberry impressed us with her inspiring words, and helped us understand the impact of stereotyping and how microaggressions can affect personal identifiers.
--Bailey Leavitt, 2022 (IDEA Co-chair)

Proud Of Cultural Diversity
 
As one of the co-chairs of the Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance (IDEA), and as a young African American woman, I was inspired by Dr. Karen Bradberry’s presentation to students during our Middle School Equity and Inclusion Symposium in December. As an African American woman herself, Dr. Bradberry shared how her upbringing and identity shaped her life. For instance, she spoke freely about black girls and the different ways we choose to wear our hair and how people sometimes perceive or misperceive us because of this.

Her discussion about the beauty and challenges of the wonderful kinks, coils, and curls of African American hair was heartwarming because as one of the few African Americans in the Middle School, I appreciated her sharing these experiences of my own identity with all of my peers. Dr. Bradberry also shared photos from different points in her life, from her small Texas hometown to her current life in Dallas. Her photographs and the unexpected stories connected to them helped emphasize the importance of not judging a book by its cover. Instead, we should take the time to delve deeper into that book to understand and appreciate the different layers of the book.

These stories linked to her lesson on cultural and personal identifiers, or the various ways people identify themselves and others. To better understand identifiers, Dr. Bradberry had students do an activity consisting of people standing up if they related to a particular identifier. Then students would applaud the different ways people identified. It was a celebration of everyone!

Although the numbers of people who connected with my own identities, African American and Native American, were less than some other identifiers, this activity made me proud of my own cultural diversity. It reminded us all that our differences should be celebrated daily. In the end, the symposium taught me not only about the diversity of my school and how to continue working to create an accepting environment, but I also reclaimed the importance of being proud of the many different aspects of myself and of my classmates.  
 
–Karson Smith, 2022 (IDEA Co-chair)
 
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The John Cooper School is an independent, non-sectarian, co-educational, college preparatory day school. Our mission is to provide a challenging education in a caring environment to a diverse group of select students, enabling them to become critical and creative thinkers, effective communicators, responsible citizens and leaders, and lifelong learners.

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