Every fall, Germantown Friends Upper School students take a one-day pause from regular classes and activities to participate in Diversity Dialogue Day. Organized by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Upper School administration, this is a time for students to explore the complexities of identity, across both the school and the wider community, through intentional dialogue.

The theme of the 2024 Diversity Dialogue Day was “Standing Up, Standing With, Standing Together.” As it took place on October 17, just weeks before the presidential election, the activities and workshops were largely focused on issues of democracy, elections, staying informed, and remaining engaged even when there is "pluralistic contention."

“The ability to be in dialogue with others, especially when we disagree, offers students the necessary foundational skills to be the engaged citizens that we want them to be in the world,” said Charla Okewole, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at GFS. “With a spirit of curiosity, we urged our students to investigate how their identities fit inside the larger narrative and how they can use them to create a more inclusive future for their generation.”

In addition to an opening assembly, workshops, readings, and discussions, students participated in story-sharing sessions facilitated by Narrative 4, a new part of Diversity Dialogue Day this year. Narrative 4 is a nonprofit that believes storytelling is a creative force that can help young people drive change in their communities and co-create a more just and equitable future. Narrative 4’s partnership with GFS began last year, and over the summer, representatives from the organization led a story-exchange workshop at a faculty meeting. 

Caroline Fosnot, an Upper School science teacher, came away from the experience with a heightened sense of closeness to faculty members she doesn’t often get a chance to interact with.

“I found the story exchange was very meaningful, and unexpectedly bonding,” she said. “It was an extraordinary tool to share space and time with another person you normally wouldn’t.” 

Fosnot was so moved by the experience that she signed up for a session in September, when Narrative 4 returned to GFS to train faculty to become story-share facilitators for students. 

Of the many skills and techniques that Fosnot gleaned from the training, one that has continued to resonate with her is the practice of true active listening.

“They explained how, when we listen, most of us are trying to think about a creative response, something funny, or something compassionate, and we’re not actually listening as deeply as we think we are,” she said. “That really spoke to me—as a teacher, a friend, and a wife—and I thought about how I need to work on that.”

Students in a Narrative 4 story-sharing workshop

During the story-share that Fosnot facilitated on Diversity Dialogue Day, she opened the session by laying out the norms and expectations, like keeping the stories confidential. Then, she warmed up the advisory group with a few icebreaker questions about relatable topics like the name of your first pet, or your favorite meal. Next, she paired the students off; each participant was given a prompt, and would tell their story to the other. The listener would then tell that story to the group, as if that story was their own. If students didn’t want to tell a story, they weren’t mandated, but everyone had to take a turn as a listener.

Watching the students engage in this process drove home the power of active listening for Fosnot.

“Listening to a story, and not reacting, then having to retell that person’s story—it engaged the listeners in a very different way and it transformed the room,” she said. “It was just delightful to see how respectful, compassionate, and thoughtful they were with each other. I see that at school on a daily basis, but this was a different level.”

Chimere Nze, an eleventh grader at GFS, had never done a story-exchange exercise like this before, and liked how Narrative 4 introduced the values of their organization and compared them to the Quaker SPICES. She was paired off with someone in her advisory who she was casually acquainted with.

“[The experience] let me be vulnerable and connect with a person in my homeroom,” Nze said. “We shared similar stories, very personal, but also different.” 

Nze also noted that, in addition to giving her the chance to open up and connect with a classmate, the workshop also provided opportunities to learn and grow.

“It helped me realize some things I need to work on with my listening, and some lessons that I can apply in my life now, outside of that space. I liked that the day was a break from academic stuff, but I was still learning new things.”

Students participated in seminal readings and workshops during Diversity Dialogue Day

Students also gathered in advisory groups to discuss seminal readings, a curated set of quotes and statements from 12 artists and activists, philosophers and visionaries, authors and politicians, including Hannah Arendt, Stephen Cary, Susan Sontag, and Ai Weiwei. Guided by the queries, What does it mean to take a stand? When can we? When must we? For whom? For what? Where do our identities and multiple affiliations show up in the act of standing up?, the groups shared reflections and spent time journaling. 

Another essential part of Diversity Dialogue Day were the student- and faculty-led workshops held throughout the day. To help strengthen connections between the Upper School grades, ninth and eleventh grades were grouped in workshops together, as were tenth and twelfth. A number of workshops tackled timely subjects, like “Voting, Polling, and the Electoral College,” “Youth and Politics,” and “Hard Conversations Over Shared Art.”

Upper School Science teacher María Alvarez led "Hard Conversations Over Shared Art," a workshop where students experimented with indigo dye while discussing tough questions

“Being Queer in an Election Year” was a student-organized workshop, facilitated by Campbell McCormack ’25 and Amelia Swedloff ’26, the co-leaders of the GFS’ Sexuality and Gender Alliance (SAGA).

“Fair warning—some of this is going to be really heavy,” said McCormack at the start of the workshop, before offering everyone the option to step out or take a break from the session if it felt overwhelming.

The slideshow that Swedloff and McCormack presented to the group covered a number of pending anti-LGBTQIA+ bills in both state and federal legislatures, like PA House Bill 216, also known as the Fairness in Women's Sports Act, and PA House Bill, also known as the Parental Rights in Education Act. They also shared slides summarizing and contrasting the stances of both major-party presidential candidates on LGBTQIA+ issues.

GFS SAGA co-leaders Campbell McCormack ’25 and Amelia Swedloff ’26 led a workshop titled, "Being Queer in an Election Year"

This was the third Diversity Dialogue Day workshop McCormack has led; they said they and Swedloff landed on this topic because of how pressing these issues feel on the cusp of the presidential election. 

“We’ve talked a lot about our frustrations as we witness the election and are unable to vote. We figured that sentiment existed amongst our peers, as well.”

The workshop yielded lots of nuanced conversation around what falls under the umbrella of “gender-affirming care” and how that applies to both trans and cisgender people, as well as how certain laws are framed to appear to protect groups of people while painting trans people as aggressors.
  
“I was impressed with the quality and caliber with which my peers contributed to the dialogues, “ said McCormack, who is looking to adults to help students build their knowledge of legislation in both the state and the country that may affect them. One of their main takeaways from the day centered around the responses of their schoolmates in the workshop. 

“People had a lot of passion about taking action and doing something concrete to make change,” they noted, “which made me incredibly proud of our student community.”