Celebrating Dr. King’s Initiatives of Resistance
Just a few weeks after winter break’s concluding moments, students gathered to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King was well acclaimed for his pursuit of resistance and social equality. In the spirit of Dr. King, Grace held a day exploring the subordination of minority groups in and out of the school setting. The mission of this year’s workshops took the form of speaking out and resisting, much like Dr. King. Numerous students volunteered to propose and lead workshops. In speaking to the coordinators of the day, Ms. Wood and Dr. Nathan shared their thoughts on what they intend for students to get out of workshops is general.
Dr. Nathan claimed, “I think we hope that students will get a number of things out of it frankly; we hope that for students that lead workshops, we hope that they build some form of expertise in what they are intending to discuss and teach and to learn about it in a more deliberate and self conducted way. We’re confronting our history, but also our current connection to it as well. We want them to become scholars, learners, and activists in this area. We also feel that a community is at the core of any social justice work; listening to people with experience and expertise to kind of develop the motivation and capacity to move on from that too is essential.”
In addition, Ms. Wood spoke about her intent of creating an alternate and new learning environment, “We want to take time out of our day to really focus on issues of social justice, race, and racism. Even though that is content that we are addressing in our classes in different ways, and at times it may be clear or very obvious. But, it is still important to stop everything and say ‘these are things that are so big and within all of us, so let’s stop and address them’”. As coordinators of the MLK Symposium, the intended takeaway from these workshops is to create an opportunity for student leadership to explore something of their interest as well as take the time out of our lives and address these ideas of race, social injustice, and racism.
According to high school students, Keynote speaker Joshua Bennett was the highlight of the day. Unfortunately, numerous freshman students were unable to hear Bennett speak due to technical issues involving the mic. Numerous students shared their positive feelings toward the workshops, and many enjoyed the freedom of choosing workshops by filtering their own interests.
From an alternate perspective, workshop leaders shared their experience on teaching and sharing about a specific topic; Evelyn Ward ’21 claimed, “I thought that this year’s MLK day was definitely an improvement from last year’s, seeing as though it was the whole day so you could really get invested in it. However, I think even still then some of the symposiums felt kind of short, and for the people prepping symposiums it’s either you go in teaching it like a class and not having that much discussion or like you only have discussion, and in a real eighty minute class, you have a lesson and time to reflect. But in this case, we were definitely short on time and I felt like I bombarded students with information. We wanted to teach kids, but we also wanted to open up the discussion, which was difficult in the small amount of time.”
It seemed as if the workshops were one of the most popular aspects of the day, and potentially can be extended in time next year to deepen conversations and investment. Workshop leader Jasmeilly Alamonte ’22 shared similar feelings to Evelyn, “In general, I thought the day went way better than last year. I feel like this time it was more students connecting to other students, rather than a lecture.” According to workshop leaders, because of the extension of time from last year, students were capable of getting more invested within material. Although, it seems as if extending the length even further might benefit workshop leaders and students to host more fluid discussions.
A few concerns came up from students, specifically regarding the broad ideas of the day. Sophomores Rose Azzu and Esmeralda McNamara explained their opinion on how MLK Day should be celebrated, “I think we shouldn’t be talking about issues that have no affiliation with the day. We’re celebrating MLK so we should be talking about black history, police brutality, mass incarceration, and topics related to Dr. Martin Luther King’s area of focus. I think we should leave topics regarding women to international women’s day, pride, antisemitism, to their own day. I think MLK day is a day to reflect over purely race. I don’t think we should just lump everything together just because MLK is a big celebration. We should dedicate the time and thought to having a celebration for all subordinated groups.”
It is an interesting idea that MLK Day be solely dedicated to what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for himself: racial inequality and justice. There are numerous other holidays such as International Holocaust day, LGBTQ+ awareness day, International womens day and more that may be commemorated in the same way that MLK day is. Is it wrong for Grace to fit all of these huge, grappling ideas to be fit into one day? Why should we limit our discussion of social inequality to one day a year, when examples of minority oppression occur every day?