Remarks made by Head of School Tom Gibian to the participants of the 2015 EastEd Middle School Diversity Conference, which has been hosted by Sandy Spring Friends School for the past four years. See photos from the event online...
I would like to welcome everyone to Sandy Spring Friends School. I would also like to welcome everybody to this middle school diversity conference which has attracted increasing interest each year and has developed into this incredible event.
Why is it incredible? Perhaps the most obvious answer is because of all of you. You have taken a school day to focus on a Big Question. I know that most school days you take at least five classes. And in each class you study a different subject. The idea is that by studying different parts, you will gain a better understanding of the whole. Today is not like other days. Today, we will study one subject, Diversity. But you will recognize that when we study diversity, those subjects that you study in school become part of it. Over the course of the day, you will recognize the work that you do in school is woven into the work that you're doing today at this diversity conference. In school, you learn to think critically, to question, to discover your passion, to share your great natural talent as well as to admire and respect the gifts that others have been bestowed. Today is a day when school will make a little more sense.
The way this diversity conference is different than an ordinary day is that we are going to ask ourselves a Big Question. So big that there are no exact right answers and no such thing as a wrong answer. Big Questions are questions like: Why are we here? Why are we different? Why do we all love music? How is it that someone who lived 500 years ago in medieval England could write poems that explain exactly how we feel today? What makes us love? Today’s Big Question is: “What does it mean for us to cross the borders that stereotypes create?"
When we ask ourselves a Big Question, we become better informed because we open ourselves to new ideas; we open ourselves by sharing our own experiences and we open ourselves through learning from others. To tackle a Big Question we need to stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, to gain altitude, to see further. We need to understand the science, the psychology, the history, the latest research. We need to read poems and novels. In other words, we need to experience the impact of culture and language. These are the tools that we go to school to learn and that move us toward a clear and important understanding. It will confirm something that we intuitively have always known. And that is, the person next to you is very special, as special as you. No more and no less.
Our capacity to contribute something beautiful to the world, something that will make the world slightly better, slightly cleaner, slightly more fair, slightly more as we would wish it to be, occurs not because there is one of us who will stumble upon a scientific formula or mathematical equation (although that may happen) but it is because all of us together will spend a day collaborating, mixing, stretching, pushing ourselves and each other to see something in a way we had not seen it before. Like being able to see a constellation after it has been pointed out and now that you see it it's hard to believe that there was a time when it was obscure and hidden. The constellation in our sky is the beauty of our amazing differences; how these differences, our diversity, ignites creativity, is the cause of delight, and can lead us to better appreciate that which we all share, what the Quakers call the Light within.
Have a great day.