The second annual Day of Understanding welcomed nearly 40 students to explore the theme “Heads Up, Minds Open,” promoting art and storytelling as ways to approach disagreements with empathy at the upper school on Nov. 20.

This year’s event shifted to a more student-led format, with Student Diversity Coalition (SDC) members playing a larger role in planning and students having more responsibility over what they took away from the experience.

Keynote speaker Dr. Ace Lehner, an artist and academic at the University of Vermont, led a collaborative self-portrait workshop where students worked in groups to photograph themselves with objects meaningful to their identities, adding their self-portraits to a slideshow that was later displayed. 

Dr. Lehner discussed how self-portraiture and selfies serve as powerful tools for trans and queer individuals to control their representation and resist stereotypes. Dr. Lehner’s work focused on trans non-binary black British performance artist Travis Alabanza, especially the way they present their identity. 

“Their ongoing self-imaging disrupts the way that stereotypes and reductive representations work,” Dr. Lehner said. “Here we’re able to see a person as continually shifting, evolving, growing, trying out different looks, different genders, different aesthetics. You get to see a variety of different versions of Travis. We can’t easily distill or reduce them.”

TK-12 LID Director Lisa Diffenderfer and Upper School LID Director Diane Main led an improv activity where students practiced productive conversation skills by improvising scenarios while identifying key terms like “constraints” and “clarifying questions”.

Following a multicultural, vegetarian-forward lunch featuring Ethiopian and Chinese cuisines, attendees listened to and discussed Amanda Gorman’s poem “New Day’s Lyric.” Participants wrote a poem of their own in response to Gorman’s themes of hope and facing change, which the teachers later combined into a collective piece of art. Sophomore Terry Li found this activity particularly meaningful. 

“I’ll take that poem with me and I’ll think about the values that it carries with it. I’ll definitely think about different perspectives now,” Terry said. “I decided to attend Day of Understanding this year because I really was interested in understanding and not judging people based on what they look or what they do.”

The day also concentrated on small-group conversations, where students could talk about any issues on their minds in a safe space. Members of the faculty planning committee — Patricia Burrows, Carol Green, Whitney Huang, Kadar Arbuckle, Meredith Cranston, Connie Hollin, Main and Diffenderfer — facilitated these “Courageous Conversations.” 

“We really got to talk a lot about issues that we cared about, and my group really connected on a single issue and they were able to talk about that for the whole time,” Terry said. “I’m really thankful that we have this because I don’t think a lot of schools would have the opportunity for students to just talk and be vulnerable and share your real opinions.”

Along with the faculty committee, Student Diversity Coalition (SDC) officers also helped prepare the agenda of the event, beginning the day with a brief introduction and icebreaker activities. 

The day concluded with an open mic session where students reflected on what they had learned and would take away from the event. SDC Frosh Representative Mitali Anandikar noted that this year’s event particularly emphasized student involvement through a focus on perspective and understanding. 

“This year we wanted [Day of Understanding] to be more student-led, so we wanted the students to drive the activities with us,” Mitali said. “As a new student, I didn’t know how important this day was, but now I realize that by learning different people’s perspectives, you know that you’re not the only one going through something. You’re not alone.” 

Learning specialist Kadar Arbuckle, who helped plan both years, reflected on the positive reactions that students provided about this event.

“The highlight for me honestly was just the closing and being like, ‘Ok cool, we did it,’” Arbuckle said. “As the adult, you just don’t know how it’s gonna land ever. It really requires students to engage their full self, and I just was really proud of the students.”