PNAIS Student Diversity Leadership Retreat

Two 8th graders (Colin Acton and Sarah Walker), two 7th graders (Noah Funk and Mukisa Lumala) and Ms. Simeon attended the second PNAIS Student Diversity Leadership Retreat held this year at Northwest School on February 10-11. The goal of the retreat was to encourage middle schoolers to take on leadership roles in diversity at their current schools and prepare them to continue to engage in diversity work at the high school level. Our Vista representatives were joined by dozens of others from Washington, Oregon, Utah and British Columbia to learn about and discuss the theme "Is there a 'me' in media?" Students viewed an educators' version of the powerful documentary "Miss Representation" and attended sessions led by PNAIS upper school students on a variety of topics including perceptions of self and others in social networking sites, stereotyping and humor in TV, gender roles in music videos, reality TV and concepts of privacy, and advocacy through social media. The overnight retreat culminated in each team's creation of a short PSA, all of which were shared at the end of the retreat. Our Vista attendees will be presenting their work and talking about what they learned to the OWS Diversity Council and to fellow students.