SOLD OUT!

This 2020 Educating Girls Symposium, Building Inclusive, Anti-Racist School Communities, will take place virtually on Monday, October 26, and Wednesday, October 28.

Girls’ schools around the world were founded to address a clear inequity: girls were not afforded the same educational opportunities as boys. For generations, girls’ schools have led the way as epicenters for dismantling a wide range of systemic injustices, from equal access to education to voting rights to closing the gender gap. While creating inclusive communities where diverse voices and experiences are heard and valued is a cornerstone of girls’ schools, there’s no denying we’re at a turning point in our history—not just as girls’ schools, but as nations and as a world.

Compassion is no longer enough. In the face of centuries-old racism, we must first listen and learn, then we must act—with courage, solidarity, and a deep commitment to anti-racist values and ideals. We must build communities in which every member feels an equal sense of belonging. Educators will play an especially critical role in this hard work.

Convene with heads of school, administrators, faculty, counselors, educational professionals, and invite your governing board and alumnae council members to join us as we delve deeply into how to:

• address historic and present-day injustice in our school communities at the individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural levels,
• understand better the intersection of gender and race and how this uniquely impacts Black and Brown girls,
• recognize our own implicit biases and use restorative practices to unpack the distinction between intent and impact,
• develop both immediate action steps and long-term strategic anti-racist plans, policies, and protocols,
• create procedures to hold our communities accountable.

In the words of Maya Angelou, “history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”