After the cultural dance assembly earlier this year, the Students For Belonging group has taken its message of kindness and inclusion to the middle school and is making plans for welcoming freshmen next year.
The group got its start when some students were invited by history teacher Christopher Reilsono and Assistant Principal Denise Wells to a conference in September about stopping all forms of hate worldwide. The conference gave the students the idea to form a club based on the topics they discussed.
“We went to this conference called the Eradicate Hate Conference, and it’s just about eradicating hate around your school and teaching ways to do that,” sophomore Layla Spearman said. “So then we established our group who went to the conference, and it started as an Eradicate Hate group.”
The name of the group was changed in December to Students for Belonging when the club presented a cultural dance assembly. Students performed dances that correlated with their culture at that event.
“Our biggest event that we’ve done is the cultural dance, which was called Unity and Diversity, and that’s when we really established our name. We had four different groups dance for the students during Highlander Time,” Spearman said.
The group’s leaders took initiative to expand their club so they could reach a larger audience.
“They came to me with many ideas and were in need of an adult to help them figure out how to make the ideas come to life,” club sponsor Caitlin Dee said.
The president is sophomore Naima Juma, the vice president is junior Bethel Emmanuel, and Spearman is the secretary. The two representatives are junior Kierra Pierre and sophomore Christian Jones.
The group recently visited Harrison Middle School to introduce the club to a younger audience.
“We recently went to the middle school to talk to their leadership group and did games and activities to help them get to know each other,” Emmanuel said.
The group’s leaders also discussed the main goal of the club, to get the future high schoolers interested from early on.
“We taught them about respect, and that everyone is different and we should respect people’s pasts and lives,” Emmanuel said.
This lesson was one of the main topics the group touched on when visiting Harrison.
“The goal is to initiate hard conversations that deal with respecting other people’s backgrounds and being open to them – overall, just being kind to one another no matter what your background is,” Emmanuel said
The group looks forward to representing their club at upcoming events.
“Some future events that we are looking forward to are Freshman Orientation, continuing our work with the Harrison Heroes group, and sending some student leaders from the club, as well as other members of Diversity Council, back to the Eradicate Hate Student Summit this coming September,” Dee said.
Moving forward, the group feels confident that the students from Harrison will carry on the ideals of the club and eradicate hate.
“There are a lot of middle schoolers interested in this topic based on what we’ve already done,” Emmanuel said. “We want to expand it more into the freshman class, because we believe it starts when you’re younger,”
