Day of Understanding invited 60 students for a full day of workshops, speaker events and a catered international buffet at the upper school on Nov. 8. The Student Diversity Coalition, along with a dozen teachers, structured the events to center around media literacy and civil discourse.
“Harker has done a really good job of creating spaces where people feel safe to communicate,” learning specialist Kadar Arbuckle said. “I acknowledge that while students and adults alike still lack a lot of tools to achieve understanding, there are still a lot of things that are already happening that are facilitating these conversations.”
Keynote speaker Atia Abawi opened by presenting her experience covering the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts as a foreign correspondent for CNN, emphasizing the importance of recognizing all perspectives when approaching war stories. News broadcasts sometimes deliberately omitted Abawi’s coverage to conceal violent realities from viewers.
As Abawi switched to publishing works of realistic fiction, she found that authorship allowed her to impact larger audiences.
“Empathy gets lost in the divisions that we see throughout the world and in our own country,” Abawi said. “Because we all have empathy in us but sometimes we forget to use and fall back on it, it’s so important to remind ourselves to humanize one another, especially at a time where a lot of people dehumanize the other.”
Abawi’s speech resonated with frosh Anastasia Broumas, who intends to apply her newfound insights in daily interactions.
“It’s challenging to listen to the struggles and conflicts that people have to go to by being displaced not only by their home,” Anastasia said. “I learned that even if no one else will make a positive change, I’ll try to make a positive change in the world.”
Students then split off into plenary sessions in the multi-purpose room and the Nichols Auditorium. Librarian Meredith Cranston led an escape room media literacy game where students discerned the validity of deepfake digital pictures and followed clues to debunk fraud.
“AI is getting better and better, and people can spread blatant misinformation on the internet that looks so realistic,” senior Aarush Vailaya said. “We discussed looking at multiple news sources, keeping an open mind, not following information that can be just straight up fake.”
History teacher Carol Green and Director of Global Education Jennifer Walrod led an activity where groups chose three to five items to bring with them to a deserted island. Groups debated between objects that shared similar purposes, like an ax or a saw, to encourage participants to compromise in healthy conversation and isolate viewpoints from the person holding them.
For lunch, students enjoyed a buffet consisting of primarily vegetarian dishes like injera, tofu banh mi and jalebi from local restaurants that represented ethnic cuisines like Jamaican, Ethiopian, Vietnamese and Persian. Students also reflected on the day’s activities by journaling positive moments, challenges and shifts in their mindset.
To close off the day, attendees returned to the Nichols Auditorium for an open discussion.
“A student shared about their social media and who they follow and who they don’t follow, and [that made me] consider the bubbles that you’re creating,” Green said. “I wondered, ‘Have I shut voices out that maybe I could gain more understanding from?’ It’s given me a chance to pause in my own life.”