This year, the high school will implement Community Learning Experiences (CLEs) as a replacement for previous “Days of.” Along with the new name, this change will bring variations to the old format.
The Cypress conducted a Q&A with Interim Associate Dean Astrid Allen to learn more about what students should expect this year. The interview includes answers to questions regarding the groups leading CLEs this year, the optional format and the lack of a CLE on race and racism.
In one sentence, what would you say a CLE is?
An experience for more than one block of the day where students and faculty are invited for some sort of event programming.
Which groups have you confirmed will conduct CLEs?
Five applications were submitted. One group actually submitted for just one block, so that didn’t qualify under the CLE process for feedback. The other four that applied for support (and will host a day of programming) are: the group that organizes Lunar New Year (February); the group that organizes disability education programming (March); the group that organizes education and issues of consent and sexual harassment (March or April); and the group that organizes the LGBTQIA+ Day of Dialogue (April).
Are there going to be future opportunities for groups to apply this year?
It’s really hard because you can’t just have a day of programming that’s two or three hours in the whole building and not disrupt learning. It’s really hard to find the dates. Student groups with an adult who’s embedded with them should absolutely be thinking about what one block experiences they might want to offer throughout the year, because that’s not in this window at all. That’s not part of this at all, because programming can always happen, has always been happening, and will always continue to happen, through different avenues. [CLEs are] a very specific kind of avenue.
Did the planning committee notice that there was not going to be a CLE on race and racism? Did you think about addressing it?
The head of school [and] the deans of each grade don’t put on these events. I don’t think teachers and students would want us to be in charge of these events. This is just straight volunteer work, and I’m not going to force a volunteer to put on programming that they don’t feel comfortable putting on anymore. Over the years, outside reaction and some internal reactions to the Day of Racial Reform have been so challenging for teacher leaders who have been in charge of it, including me, when I was in charge of it. I welcome students to come and ask me questions, but no students have. I know that the adults working with them know that I’m writing these emails and asking them questions. So I’m just surprised that there’s a disconnect there.
What would you say to students who are interested in organizing a CLE focused on race who feel excluded from the process?
It depends on what they want. I would love to hear ideas. Everyone gets very locked into the definition of something that they think should happen, and I just want to be clear that there’s lots of opportunity here. I think if students are wondering about how we talk about race, and they’re curious about having Telling our Stories, I want to hear more about ideas like that. [Just because] we’ve already hit a deadline [and] there’s no adults that wanted to [apply] at this time, doesn’t mean that I can’t work with students on something else.
What would you say to people who think the opt-in format is avoidant?
Everyone hears opt-in, and they think that everyone’s going to opt out. I can’t imagine that we won’t have a completely full auditorium for all of these events. I think that we are doing each other a disservice with a narrative that isn’t really based in reality. Our whole school is probably going to try to run to that auditorium, and they’re going to get locked out. It’s going to be too many people. I hope that everyone knows in the building how much care all the faculty has for all of these topics.
I can’t imagine forcing a survivor of sexual assault to teach a lesson on the Day of Change to her students last year. I think we should allow people to opt out if a topic is uncomfortable for them. I think that people are really worried that if something is hard to talk about, we are going to shy away from it. We’ve never had a history of shying away from hard things at Brookline High School ever, including last year. We’ve never shied away from anything. So I don’t know why everyone’s concerned now that we suddenly will.
What’s the process groups that will present are undergoing now? Who is a part of the CLE committee working with the groups?
Right now, they submitted the application, [we] asked what support they needed. What we did yesterday was we reviewed final feedback for their applications. So, for example, if a group in the past has done Telling Our Stories, [this year], we are only doing live speeches because we don’t have access to Zoom anymore. So if we’re only doing live events, how do we make it accessible so that many students can participate in hearing Telling Our Stories? If you only offer it during one block, that means half the school won’t be able to fit into the auditorium. So our feedback is, we suggest you offer multiple versions of the Telling Our Stories block so that more students can access that event.
What was the process of reimagining these days like?
In the spring, we came together because there was so much tension from the outside community and some from the inside of our own school community about the programming that was offered and the attendance, and just all of these different pieces. So we all came together, all 40 of us who have previously either supported, helped with logistics or actually put on these days, to talk about, well, ‘where can we go from here?’ We decided that we wanted to have a committee, and then we talked about what is even the thing that we do?
There were all these different pieces that, over the years, we’ve heard feedback through surveys to teachers and students about things that didn’t quite match the student population that we were trying to serve, including that there used to be a lot more student involvement through the form of clubs. A lot of this work [was] initiated between teachers who were really hungry to put on programming and student clubs. Over the years, there was less and less student involvement in some of the days, not all [of the days]. Some days were really student-driven, and some days were totally teacher-driven, and there was no consistency. So we were like, we want adults to be in charge of the logistical, serious stuff, the vetting, the topics, the bringing the speakers, the money, the spaces, the learning expectations, the target audience and figuring out what’s appropriate for who. We’re teachers, that’s our job.
Have students been given a voice in the planning, and how have they been informed?
This is year 15 of putting on event programming like this, [and] the adults are the ones who hear the information and then take that information to their clubs or the student groups that they’re working with. It’s always been the teachers who run those events that reach out to the kids, to involve kids in their event; it’s always like a Canvas message from the leader of whatever event, saying, ‘are you interested in getting involved? Please come to this info session. Please come to this event.’ So when we thought about putting an application together, it didn’t even really occur to us [to inform students], we just went to the people who’ve always done it and opened it up to the whole school and said, if you’re interested, here are the parameters; having it due at the end of September gave clubs a chance to meet.
We had made an assumption that teachers who often put on these events would be talking to their clubs, organizations and new clubs would come forward and ask for more information. Because it’s never been driven by administration. It’s always been driven by teacher volunteers. So we just never even considered making an announcement [to students], because we didn’t even know what adults were volunteering to put on an event. I had heard through the Cypress interview that there were student groups that felt like they weren’t reached out to apply, and I didn’t know they would even be interested. I assumed the teacher leaders of their clubs or organizations are just letting them know, and that those kids would reach out if they had questions, or work on an application with their teacher, who would have told them.
What would you say to the people who are worried about how CLEs will impact important discussions that the school has?
I don’t feel like calling something a Community Learning Experience changes the power of the programming that we offer in any way. I want it to be accessible to everyone, and changing the name to something that is the basic thing that it is, a community learning experience, doesn’t change the topics that we’re covering, but it helps everyone understand what we’re doing.
Is there anything else you want to add?
I really want to make everyone aware that when thinking about the programming that we offer that we need to constantly be reflecting and evolving. We have a 15-year-old model, and we’ve never really asked ourselves if this is the model that this generation of students needs. And so I welcome students to give us that feedback.
I think the change left people confused and alarmed that we were changing who we were as a school, when we’re still us, we’re just trying to make it better. Sometimes better is different, and different is not always bad. So I would say to anyone who is carrying any level of anxiety to just remember how much good the school has done for these events in the past; why would that change?
