Those were the first lines of an Instagram post inviting students at Los Angeles and Orange County, California, independent schools to join the newly created Students Stay Woke Conference, which met three times in 2018 at different area schools. The project was part of the Community Engagement Initiative (CEI) from the 2017 NAIS People of Color Conference (PoCC).
Students Stay Woke participants attended March for Our Lives in Los Angeles this past spring. Chloe x Halle, a singing and acting duo, posted this image on their Instagram account. Courtesy of Chloe x Halle Instagram account
The first Students Stay Woke meeting, at Campbell Hall (CA) in February 2018, took place at the end of the Southern California People of Color in Independent Schools (SoCal POCIS) Student Voices event. PoCC CEI subcommittee members led the 80-plus students through icebreakers that allowed them to self-identify discussion/caucus groups. More than 10 area independent schools were represented at the meeting.
About 40 students came to the second and third Students Stay Woke meetings, at The Buckley School (CA) in March and Wildwood School (CA) in April. Students ran affinity group discussions, and at the last meeting, they wrote a song, “Together,” and shot a video for it.
“In our final hour together, we wrote, sang, and created the following message for our independent school teachers and administrators: Stay woke with us. Please. We are depending on you,” explains a student participant.
The meetings were co-sponsored by the hosting schools, SoCal POCIS, and the Independent School Alliance; the groups plan to continue Students Stay Woke in 2019.
“One thing that we have tried to stay true to is that this is student-generated and student-led, where we provide the time and space for that to happen,” says Drew Ishii, PoCC 2017 co-chair and mathematics teacher at Sage Hill School (CA). “The students have really loved it.”
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