Last Saturday, October 24th, over 40 students from across nine southwestern Pennsylvania counties came together over Zoom for a teen-led event entitled the Southwestern Pennsylvania Diversity Education Symposium. The purpose of the seminar was to learn how to change education systems to become more inclusive. The event was the brainchild of Fox Chapel senior Abby Rickin-Marks. 

“Growing up as a Jewish, gay female in a primarily white, Christian, heteronormative society, I recognized the hegemony promoted in schools through curriculum and expectations,” Rickin-Marks said. “While these are bigger issues that I cannot deal with individually, active students can create better environments for all students who may feel marginalized and underrepresented.”

The day began with a keynote speech from the Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, Dr. Valerie Kinloch. Her main points were about abolitionist teaching styles and the importance of education and youth activists in this generation. Kinloch believes that the only way to eliminate the current system and replace it with a more inclusive one is to get others on board who are willing to advocate for the change these activists are trying to make and to break whatever barriers necessary to do it.

“Everything should be grounded in creativity,” Kinloch said. Her keynote address discussed the importance of teaching creatively and switching up routines and environments so students’ creativity can take root.

The six-hour seminar included a variety of breakout sessions of the participants’ choosing. Due to slight technical issues, everyone got to attend the same first session, led by Dr. Melissa Marks on the topic of implicit gender bias. 

The main idea Dr. Marks drove home was to teach kids at a young age not to act on unconscious biases that are found throughout society and instead call them out when they see them. Unconscious biases are stereotypes or generalizations that are outside of one’s control, coming from centuries of gender discrepancies throughout history. 

In addition to gender biases, Dr. Marks also discussed ways to create a more inclusive and less heteronormative environment in schools and include more history involving women and Black/Indigenous/people of color so that every student feels represented in some way in their learning environment.

Two other examples of breakout sessions from this seminar were “Hate Crimes and Prejudices in Schools,” led by University of Pittsburgh student Kathryn Fleischer, and “How to Have Conversations with those who Disagree,” led by Emiola Oriola, the program manager for the Office of Interfaith Dialogue and Engagement at Pitt.

Both speakers emphasized the idea that learning never stops; therefore, it is never too late to change the way one learns. 

The final workshop was led by Sabyne Pierre from the organization GirlGov. She introduced a method of picking out issues, determining the historical roots of the issue, and creating ways to fix it from the inside. 

Participants then broke off into smaller groups based on pre-chosen topics to practice this “stem-and-root” technique to discuss issues they see in their schools that need to be addressed. One participant commented, “We’re all from the same area but from multiple different schools. But we were still able to pinpoint the exact issues that occur in every school.”

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The event proved to be a a learning experience for Rickin-Marks in a completely separate way. The initial planning stages as well as the seminar relied heavily on technology.

“The event didn’t quite go as planned,” she said. “Our first breakout session messed up due to technical difficulties. However, students still got to listen to an amazing speaker. I had to learn how to create breakout rooms on the fly and essentially change how the program was supposed to be run.”

“However,” she added, “I think the event still went really well. Students were engaged. I heard from many after the event how much they learned and how excited they were to take action. The event didn’t have to go perfectly to [achieve] the outcomes we hoped for and I think that’s such an important message, especially for someone like me who has to plan things out months in advance.” 

The SWPA Diversity Education committee has big plans for the future beyond last Saturday’s seminar. 

“The hope is that this event is just a kickoff,” Rickin-Marks said. “A day of education, skill building, and campaign creation is amazing, but students get a lot more out of it if this is a continuing process. [We hope] to have bimonthly meetings with guest speakers, networking, and organizing campaigns.” 

“In addition,” she continued, “the hope is to be able to expand this to a whole state level. There are many resources for students in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but less so for the central part of the state. It is incredibly important that everyone is represented.”

To find out more about the Southwestern Pennsylvania Education, Not Discrimination program, view their website here and check out their Instagram page @pa.end and Twitter page @educ_inequality