This year, the high school will deviate from its longstanding tradition of “Days of.” Instead, administrators said, the school will host “Community Learning Experiences” (CLEs), organized learning experiences led by teachers and students. The switch brings changes to the old format.

“Days of” sought to bring attention to various topics by featuring lessons, classroom activities and student speakers. Last year, there were four “Days of”: the Day of Dialogue (devoted to LGBTQ+ issues), Day of Change (devoted to combatting rape culture), Day of Disability Education (devoted to raising awareness on people with disabilities) and the Day of Racial Reform and Solidarity (DoRRS) (devoted to discussing race and racism in the community).

This year, the opportunity to prepare a CLE was open via application sent to faculty on Aug. 27 with a due date of Sept. 29. The number and topics of this year’s CLEs have not yet been announced, however, according to multiple sources, there will not be a CLE on racial reform.

Last spring, an administration council meeting composed of school leadership, deans and curriculum coordinators discussed how “Days of” programming could be improved. The administration ultimately created two committees: one to plan for short-term programming, and one to plan what “Days of” will look like in the long-term. The council decided to change the name from “Days of” to “Community Learning Experiences.”

Dean of Students Astrid Allen said the title “Days of” does not make sense to an outsider. In the rebranding process, she said, the administration wanted to more accurately name the events, while simultaneously expanding the meaning of the days.

“It’s a community learning experience. It’s not just those three or four topic days. We have a lot of community learning experiences,” Allen said. “We have the Lunar New Year [annual showcase]; we have Hispanic Heritage Month [featuring a Latinx fiesta]. We have a lot of experiences that we offer at our school.”

Why the revamp?

Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator Jen Martin is on the long-term planning committee. She said one of the reasons for rebranding “Days of” was to combat the repetitiveness in the topics discussed and format of the days.

“Should we be having the same ‘Day of’ every year? Different kids, slightly different lessons, same exact topic. I don’t know,” Martin said. “Would you be interested in hearing something different?”

Allen said one goal of CLEs is to allow teachers more time to prepare for the days and to ensure all students can get something out of the experience and that the lesson is individually catered to different grades.

“We’re really looking at the applications and working with the teams to make sure that what you see in your classroom space, whether it’s an activity or an assembly, is something that everyone can access, not based on who your teacher is, who your group is or who your classmates are,” Allen said.

The short-term planning committee is made up of teachers and two elected Student Council representatives, senior Shay-Li Zilbershot and sophomore Jake Fine. Zilbershot said she is working to counter underrepresentation, as the “Days of” in the past couple of years have been about the same four topics.

“The days were really supposed to be about inclusion and about learning experiences for the rest of us who don’t know what certain groups face. I think that’s just not how people have been feeling the past year,” Zilbershot said. “So they’re really trying to strengthen the core of it.”

Martin said she had students come up to her and talk to her about having another “Day of” around antisemitism, but she said it was an issue because there was no protocol for adding another “Day of.”

“I was trying to help them plan a little bit, but we didn’t have a protocol for [planning it],” Martin said. “Who do you ask? And how do you ask? And how do you prove you need a ‘Day of’?”

Allen said planning “Days of” revolves around student interest and volunteer work. She said student interest in leading “Days of” programming has declined over the last few years, which has increased the workload for individual staff and student organizers. On the CLE application, teachers had to list clubs and student leaders that would sponsor the event.

“There are just not enough people to support putting these events on. So we’re just thinking about, what’s next for this new generation? I mean, we’ve been running [Days of] for 10 or 15 years; it’s a whole new generation of people receiving programming,” Allen said.

Allen said it is important to reflect on programming and lessons and to make sure they are still reaching the administration’s goals, especially because “Days of” have largely kept the same structure in recent years.

“I think that change is hard for people, and people assume change happens because someone doesn’t like something or something went wrong,” Allen said. “I want to make sure that our students and staff understand that schools have to constantly evolve, teaching has to evolve and perhaps a 15-year-old format needs its own revamp.”

Impact of Community Learning Experiences

Keira Flynn-Carson, School Within a School teacher and faculty adviser for Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP), has helped lead the Day of Change in years prior. She said that this year, clubs like hers had to fill out a form to be able to host a CLE.

“We have had an existing day. So, we already have goals written. We already have lesson plans written,” Flynn-Carson said. “So for us, it was an easy application, because we were like, ‘You know what we do.’”

Final decisions for proposed CLEs from the Sept. 29 deadline have not yet been released. Flynn-Carson said she hopes the change from “Days of” to CLEs will not impact SHARP.

“I hope nothing [changes] because I hope we get one of [the CLEs], and if we do, I think it’s still going to be two periods and possibly an advisory,” Flynn-Carson said. “Hopefully nothing changes, because I think it’s really important. But I also know that every group that is proposing also thinks their topic is super important to talk about.”

Junior and member of the Black Student Union (BSU) Adaora Egbueze said her club did not receive communication about applications for CLEs until the deadline had passed. If they had known about the application process in time, Egbueze said, BSU would have liked to organize a CLE about race.

“I feel like we were given this right to speak up about our experiences and what we’ve gone through and how we feel [at DoRRs], and then you’re kind of taking it away from us,” Egbueze said.

Senior Gabe Knowles said that through leaving applications to students, and thus putting more power in students’ hands, he hopes more varied perspectives will be shown. Knowles said he often felt “Days of” presentations, for example DoRRS, heavily promoted one side of the given topic.

“When only one side of the argument is being presented, it becomes a little bit hard for people to actually engage with an argument rather than just being told,” Knowles said. “The student-led groups is a great idea. You should have a wide variety of student groups that can collaborate, maybe two different student groups, maybe that have slightly different opinions, could bring in two different guest speakers and maybe you could have a moderated discussion.”

Spanish teacher and 2024-25 DoRRS coordinator Lindsay Davis said she is concerned with the pressure that will come with placing the responsibility of developing large-scale programming on students.

“It definitely worries me that we’re asking a lot more of students, and if it’s the students who identify with the day that’s being promoted, it’s students who already are experiencing a burden of being in the minority or underrepresented [who] are now having to do so much work,” Davis said.

Opting in and opting out

According to Martin, a change from last year’s ”Days of” is that the days are “opt-in,” meaning teachers are not required to have their classes engage with all of the material. There are two aspects to this: whether teachers will opt in to participate at all and whether teachers will have their class participate on a given day.

“Over the years, we’ve had students opting out, staying home, coming in, not doing it, parents asking questions about it, etc. So we thought, for this year, as we’re thinking about future planning, we’ll go back to [opt-in],” Martin said. “Opt-in was the model we’ve used for the vast majority of the time[s] ‘Days of’ have happened, so we’re just returning to what we always did. It still had very high participation.”

While Knowles said he hopes most will choose to engage in these conversations, he thinks it is important that the choice is left to people with the opt-in structure. He said people should not be forced to engage in conversations they’re uncomfortable with.

“At the end of the day, schools should be a place of discussion, but if you’re more interested in focusing on other things, I don’t think you should be forced to participate in these things,” Knowles said. “I think people can choose to have their ideologies and political beliefs at home and maybe not have that intersect with school, and that’s totally their personal preference.”

Martin said this model is not necessarily intended for those who don’t believe in the content the lesson is about, but also for academic reasons. For example, a class preparing for an upcoming AP exam may use class time to learn material and then do the “Day of” lesson at a later date.

Allen also mentioned that the “opt-in” format would help teachers if they decided a lesson was inappropriate for their classroom demographic.

“We’re thinking about opening it up to the possibility that a teacher can decide with their group, that this is a ninth-grade group, that is an inappropriate assembly for that group,” Allen said. “So we’ll do a different activity. So we’re leaving it open to make connections with the teachers and students in the room.”

However, Davis said she worries that the ability to opt out will enable teachers to avoid challenging and uncomfortable conversations, especially on topics such as race.

“What I have noticed is, like, when white folks get the opportunity to not talk about race and racism, they do not talk about it. So I really worry about that,” Davis said.

Egbueze also said she was concerned with the dangers of people taking the opportunity to opt out of CLEs.

“I feel like just hearing other people’s experiences is being human and just learning about other people should be something that we practice every day and if we don’t want to practice it, I think that’s kind of ignorant on the [part of the] school and the teachers who would opt out of doing it,” Egbueze said.

Day of Racial Reform and Solidarity

For the past two years, Davis said, DoRRS has been a source of controversy. In 2023, a student went off script during a live speech, prompting the administration to move to a pre-recorded video format the following year. In November 2024, a coalition of community members organized against an individual student speaker, leading to the postponement of DoRRS until January due to student safety concerns.

Davis said she thinks it would take a lot of willpower for students and teachers to step up to organize race-focused programming this year.

“The past two years have been super hard, right? We’ve crashed and burned now, back-to-back years. Adults need to do better, because it’s an adult problem: we as faculty aren’t able to talk about race and racism,” Davis said.

She said that because of the past two years, she and other teachers have tried to do work to revamp conversations about race. Many teachers have asked for a professional development (PD) day to learn how to better navigate challenging discussions on race, Davis said, but have not gotten one.

Davis said she is very concerned that there won’t be a CLE about race.

“It feels really, really hard that the singular [day] that’s not going to happen is [on] race and racism,” Davis said.

Egbueze said that “Days of,” especially DoRRS, always felt meaningful to her and her friends, even with the difficulties that arose last year.

“When I was a freshman, there was one speaker that talked about her name and how it was ethnic and how she had some insecurities with it before really opening up to it. I know I have an ethnic name that I don’t really go by here. And I feel like that kind of was like, ‘Wow, another person just like me,’” Egbueze said.

Egbueze said that though she understands DoRRS has created controversies in the past, she said it is important to keep for the windows (that look into a new perspective) and mirrors (that reflect perspectives similar to one’s own) it provides students and teachers.

“I felt like it kind of forces the kids and grownups at this point who don’t want to speak about things to speak up about it,” Egbueze said. “The only way to move on from [racism] and to improve the community is to speak on it. So if you just don’t want to speak on it, then that just tells me as a student, especially a student of color, that you just don’t care.”

Davis said that although the administration has good intentions in developing CLEs, their impact will not be positive for all, specifically in discussions of race.

“The impact of CLEs is that it’s red tape for conversations about race and racism,” Davis said.

Davis said she thinks this fits into a broader trend of institutional racism that the district is perpetuating.

“I see a pattern in Brookline: less and less funding, time and PD going towards anti-racist practices and education,” Davis said.

A transition year

Martin said the long-term committee has been discussing what a CLE is and drafting a vision statement. She said this year is a “holding pattern until we have our bigger overhaul.”

“What do you need to do to be able to say, ‘this is as important as the classes that students are in right now’? We’re doing that long-term planning,” Martin said.

Thinking about what makes a CLE meaningful enough to cancel class, Martin said the committee has been considering how to connect with a diverse group of students. She said they are working on guidelines for a CLE that merits the amount of time it consumes in a day.

“We’re using our mantras as well as the Public Schools of Brookline’s goals for education to say: ‘‘Days of’ can’t just be a good idea that you have.’ You have to also be multi-faceted, [and have] lots of different ways people can be involved,” Martin said.

Allen said she expects this year’s CLEs to consist mainly of modified versions of previous “Days of” and that in the future there will be more new programming.

“I would say this is a transition year of coming up with ideas. We had that conversation in June to really redesign everything. And so this is September now, so that would mean that adults haven’t had time to talk with students about new ideas,” Allen said.

Flynn-Carson said that although she specifically hopes SHARP keeps its “Day of,” she thinks all “Day of” proposals have merit.

“In a perfect world, instead of having proposals and limiting our [Days of], we would be, as a school, doing way more education about all of these topics in general,” Flynn-Carson said. “So that it’s not just condensed into one or two period learning experiences for the year.”