For the last several years, our Residential Educator, Stan Eddy, has brought students to the New England Youth Identity Conference in Portland, Maine. This event gathers students from public and private high schools across New England to make connections, learn from each other, and gain new perspectives. On April 4th, our group of four students set out to for this year’s summit.
The one-day event featured performances, student-led workshops, and keynote speakers, all interrogating the big idea of identity for adolescents. What matters to us? What beliefs do we have and where do they come from? What do we want for the future? And most critically, who are we?
Our students each participated in different workshops, such as “From Bottles to Blooms: A Native Plant Workshop,” which included a hands-on activity creating planters from plastic bottles. Jackson (grade 9) enjoyed participating in the “Understanding and Reimagining Gender: Where Do We Go From Here,” and gained a new perspective on the gender binary from connecting with others. “I hadn’t really considered that even biologically gender isn’t binary. It was cool to think about it in a new way,” he said after the workshop.
Trevina (grade 10) attended the "Women in Art" workshop, where the group made a collective art piece, as well as "Unity Roots: A Mental Health Support Group for People of Color." “It was good to connect with other students of color who understand what it’s like to be in white spaces. I really liked meeting new people and hearing other people’s stories. It was a very welcoming community,” said Trevina.
Because each student attended different workshops, they came away with many new ideas to share. Stan Eddy, our staff on the trip, said, “It was amazing to see how much this experience brought this group together. They came away with a new appreciation for each other.”
This Summit is an excellent opportunity for our students to join a significant movement of young people envisioning a future together. We look forward to our student attendees sharing more of what they learned with our school community when we return from break!