Wellesley High School on Tuesday extended its morning advisory period with students to discuss a racial incident that took place last Wednesday in town. Two female students had a racial epithet shouted at them from across the street by a homeless, non-Wellesley resident while heading to breakfast, and reported the incident to a teacher upon returning to school.
“Today at school we held an extended advisory block to have a conversation about what happened,” according to Wellesley High Principal Jamie Chisum, who commended the students who were yelled at for exhibiting “tremendous grace and maturity” during and after the situation. “Our team put together a lesson for advisory to generate a discussion about empowering our kids to not be bystanders about the isms in our community. In most cases we held these conversations in combined advisories because of the great benefit of having slightly larger groups together and of having multiple adults in the room. At the end of these advisories our students crafted ‘ally statements’ to exclaim what they were willing to do to support each other in the face of all kinds of injustice. These statements will be posted in every room in the building that has an advisory so that anyone entering these spaces will be reminded of how much we value cooperative and caring relationships, the commitment we all have for our community, and our respect for human differences.”
