On the morning of Wednesday, September 30, the freshman class was split into groups and sent to six different rooms throughout the school for an 80 minute workshop focused on identity, community, and equity. This workshop was the first of four sessions in a year-long program called SLICE, which stands for Student Leadership program on Identity, Community, and Equity, created by Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Dina Levi.

In their respective groups, freshmen participated in trust exercises and dialogues about how they identified in ways that cannot be seen by others.

All activities and discussions were led by trained sophomore, junior, and senior students.  Faculty members were stationed in each classroom but, according to Dina Levi, their job was only to observe the student leaders and give them feedback after the workshop.

“It is important for the 9th graders to have students facilitating these conversations as opposed to adults because they are able to engage on a different level,” Levi said. “Students will often be more open when other students are leading them, especially on these topics, because it shows that it is a valuable and relevant conversation for students.”

According to Levi, engaging students as diversity practitioners themselves does a great deal for building Parker’s community.  

Levi said, “Having this many students who have a strong understanding of these topics does a lot for furthering conversations between students throughout the high school.”

In order to become SLICE leaders, rising upcoming sophomores, juniors, and seniors were asked to complete an online application and be interviewed in-person last spring.  Levi also checked on teacher references.

“It was a fairly easy application,” junior Eliza Fischer said. “It was a Google survey where you filled out what grade you were in, why SLICE interested you, and what you hope it can do. In the in-person interview, we talked about what needs to be changed in the school and how we could go about doing so.”

According to Fischer, Levi told SLICE leaders that all of the 30 applicants were accepted. “These people are leaders and role models, and care about the issues we want to focus on in this program,” Levi said. “They realize that they are leaders while leading workshops, but also recognize the importance of modelling these ideals outside of the classroom as well.”

To prepare for facilitating successful discussions, student leaders met with Levi twice over the summer and twice during the beginning of the school year.  In meetings students simulated SLICE workshops, discussed topics that would be brought up, and worked in the groups of five that will be leading discussions for the entire year.

“The training sessions have not only been really helpful for preparing for leading SLICE workshops, but have also expanded my horizons on difficult issues in society,” junior Leigh Logan said.

According to Levi, a large aim of program as a whole is to engage students with social and societal issues that can be connected to students’ lives at Parker.  Part of this process includes integrating SLICE curriculum into the freshmen’s history classes and weekly graderooms.

“I want to avoid having these programs be one-off programs where students participate in a workshop and just go back to normal daily routine,” Levi said.  “I want to make sure whatever students are doing in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade speaks to what they are doing in their classrooms as well as outside in other programming, as well.”

As of now, there is no similar  program in place for the rest of the high school. According to Levi, the plan is for that this year’s 9th grade program to lay the foundation for future programming in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.