The Rams LEAD Summit for seventh and eighth graders is a community adventure. This year’s theme, Celebrating Our Identities in Community, delivered a series of activities designed to foster inquiry, introspection, empathy, and agency while serving as a bridge for students to understand their classmates more deeply through their similarities and differences.
The Middle School motto LEAD stands for Learning with curiosity and joy, Embracing challenge, Advocating for self and others, and Demonstrating collaboration and teamwork. The summit encourages faculty and students to show up with integrity, empathy, and an inclusive attitude to generate more self-awareness and a community of kindness and connection.
The day began with an opening ceremony in Eliot Chapel with special guest Michelle Li P’37. Li is an award-winning co-anchor of KSDK’s Today in Saint Louis and an advocate for international adoption. After facing online criticism about her race, she founded The Very Asian Foundation to champion Asian representation in media. Li discussed a few titles that identify her, whether by her own accord or titles others have given her: Korean-born, Asian American, woman, mom, wife, Missouri-raised, Korean adoptee, immigrant, and a naturalized citizen. She then asked students what titles they were proud of, and the answers included dog owner, ally, and brother. Li noted how middle school can be a place where others can make you feel less proud of the titles you think are important. She shared her story of the online criticism of her race and how it fueled the #VeryAsian social media movement and led to the founding of The Very Asian Foundation, whose mission is to shine a light on Asian experiences through advocacy and celebration. Before releasing the students, Li challenged them to continually ask themselves, “What is your VERY?” as they go through the activities of the LEAD Summit.
After Middle School Counselor Erin Sutherlin provided a quick refresher on community norms, the students proceeded to a full day of connection activities.
Roadmap
The Roadmap station kicked off with a self-inquiry exercise to process how impactful moments, both good and bad, in our lives lead to our shaped identity. Through writing prompts, students created a timeline of their lives so far, providing insight into the personal narratives that define them and how seemingly disparate events contribute to their evolving sense of self.
Microaggressions
Most middle schoolers experience microaggressions at some point, but many may not realize there is a word for them. Microaggressions are small acts of cruelty, such as words, jokes, or actions directed toward a person or group. They can be unintentional but still painful. Students learned the difference between intent and impact and how to interpret and respond to microaggressions toward themselves and others.
Legacy – Voices in Harmony
The Legacy activity fostered connection and shared understanding by reflecting on individual and collective hopes and dreams during a student’s time at MICDS. Starting with personal reflections, students then shared with the group to find commonalities and then created a banner for a collective visual representing the hopes and dreams.
Playback Theater
Middle School Drama Teacher Charlotte Dougherty led a Playback Theater activity. In this activity, students write and perform scenes based on their own experiences, many of which are familiar to a middle school setting. Unlike traditional theater, Playback is interactive and unscripted, using improvisational techniques to enact audience members’ stories. Playback fosters community and healing, allowing students to share experiences from everyday moments to significant events.
Snowball Activity
During this activity, students set out to process, rate using the Likert scale, and reflect upon a series of statements related to influence, empowerment, belonging, growth, and inclusion related to their individual and collective experiences at MICDS. Once complete, they lightly balled up their paper into a “snowball” and tossed it to the other side of the room. Students then grabbed random snowballs, read them, and shared their contents with the group.
Connection Games in the MAC
Students got their bodies moving with a rousing round of games in the MAC. These included Ships & Sailors, a twist on Simon Says; Caterpillar Races, a relay involving a string of students collectively moving a balloon across the room; and Re-Fashionable Relay Race, a relay involving putting on a second layer of clothes, racing back, and removing the extra layer for the next person in the relay to do the same. Through peals of laughter, students were focused on the community of competition.
Students participated in advisory for a closing circle and reflections before heading to Eliot Chapel for a closing assembly and vocal performance by the Seventh- and Eighth-Grade Choir, which sang You Will be Found from the musical Dear Evan Hansen. Middle School Choir Director Jason Roberts shared, “Where we are all different together, please be the upstander. Be the ally that we all need.”
Middle School Science Teacher & Community Coordinator Callie Bambenek said, “Being able to give space to our older middle schoolers, aside from their almost daily Community Time together, is so important. Having our LEAD Summit kick off our second semester allows our students to hold space for intentional connection. They can show up with integrity, empathy, and inclusivity, and in return, they can feel more self-aware of where they are in their learning journey. This year’s LEAD Summit came shortly after our Middle School Winter Classic Pep Rally, and I think it shows our students all the ways our School wants to support their different identities or parts of them in championing their whole self.”
Great work, Rams, for all the ways you endeavor to stay connected and in community with each other!