Like many of you, members of the Hopewell Valley School Community are deeply saddened by the current civil unrest in our country. Our hearts are heavy from the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. The reactions we have seen over the last week reflect the pain, frustration and anger that many of us feel. Racism and the violation of any basic human right is a stain on the fabric of our society and directly impacts all of us. We share the responsibility to speak out against injustice and allow a safe space to learn, to be heard, and to grow. Most importantly, our young people need guidance and support as they deal with this current crisis in the shadow of a pandemic. Creating opportunities for healthy discourse around these issues can help.
Toward that end, we are providing two opportunities for our schools and community at large to participate in continued discussion:
For our students: If you would like to participate in the staff-facilitated discussions about race, racism, and the events taking place in our country, please sign up here by Monday, June 8 @ 9:00AM. Each virtual session will consist of 6-8 students in similar grade levels and 1-2 staff members. Invitations with dates and times will be shared on Tuesday, June 9. These conversations will be an opportunity to process feelings, sharing thinking/experience, and listen empathetically to each other in a safe environment. Staff and Administration will facilitate these conversations using protocols from teachingtolerance.org to foster productive conversations.
For our community: We invite teachers, students, community and school leaders, and members of the community at large to engage in a conversation regarding the past week’s events and to seek solutions to help us move forward together towards healing and social justice as a community. To give you a safe space to do this, we invite you to join us in a safe, inclusive environment:
Title: Hopewell Community Dialogue II
Facilitator: Lauren Kelly, Ph.D. , Rutgers University
Date: Saturday, June 13
Time: 10:00 am to 12:00pm
Meeting Platform: Zoom Meeting: Link to meeting
Meeting ID: 976 0065 2344
Password: 145906
Dial In: +1 646 876 9923 US
Forum Details: If you are interested in attending this forum, kindly fill out this required form to select an area of interest for your break out room: https://docs.google.com/forms/... This forum will not be recorded nor will it be live-streamed in order to ensure this is truly a safe space for the participants. We encourage community members and students to attend and hope to see you there.
This forum will be limited to 300 participants. There will be break out rooms where you will be able to engage in conversations around the following four topics:
Electing experts and leaders in racial justice and equity to speak in the community.
Curating relevant texts and materials about race and equity to share with the community.
Sharing information and raising awareness about how to create change through local politics.
Creating spaces to foster art and creativity as a source of healing in the community.
We remain committed to addressing issues of bias in our schools. We ask for your commitment to help the broader community understand that the schools cannot solve these issues alone; these are challenges that face our entire community.