Student-Run Workshops Take a Broad View of Citizenship

“The goal of the workshops,” said Katie Henderson, director of DEI programming, “was to give students a variety of ways to engage in the current civic and political landscape. Workshops were organized into four categories: getting informed, engaging with others, taking action, and self-care/self-expression. The goal was to make sure that students could choose a space that felt most necessary or useful for them post-election.”

Topics ranged from immigration to the environment to foreign policy to the ballot questions recently decided in Massachusetts. There were also yoga and art sessions, all designed to help students understand and process the current moment. The workshops took place in the time slot normally allotted to Upper School assembly. 

In The Revers Center for Visual Arts and Sciences, Andrew Ho ’25 launched a session called “Juggling the Juggernaut”—a primer on foreign policy and the U.S.’s place in the world—by asking attendees to identify four countries on a world map projected on a whiteboard: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. The students found the countries with ease. “Although they are far away,” Ho observed, “those countries are deeply intermingled with ours.” A natural teacher, Ho described four styles of foreign policy and identified four presidents who associated with those styles, then had the students break into four groups to research each and share back.

Down the hall, the topic was ethical volunteering, led by Joyce Do ’25 and Layla Lindsey ’26. They emphasized the distinction between helping and serving, handing out a brief article that described the difference between these two approaches to volunteering. Do spoke about the type of help that comes across as a “Band-Aid solution,” when support or aid to a community is more motivated by self-interest and “saving” others than by true service. Better, said the presenters, to serve as a partner, in a way that authentically supports the community or organization. 

Over in the Campus Center, Marcos Ramos ’25 led a session on decoding the ballot. Attendees considered the recent ballot questions facing Massachusetts voters and had the chance to weigh in on how they would have voted, comparing their responses to the actual election results. A few doors down, in CC 127, Henry Goldstein ’26 and Kyra Coggin ’26 led an interactive session on how to be a good ally to the LGBTQ+ community. Taking an honest look at themselves, the students discussed whether there were times they had missed an opportunity to stand up and speak up, and talked about how it can be easy to say nothing when confronted with homophobic slurs.

Students have been working on the sessions since close to the beginning of the school year. “We relied on our equity and engagement leaders, which include the global education interns, community engagement interns, and BRIDGE leaders,” said Henderson. “We met with them early in September, and they were excited by the idea of offering a variety of workshops. We then extended the invite to other clubs like Model UN, Debate, GSA, and Eco Club. Every club we asked agreed to run a workshop, which is a testament to our student leaders. There was definitely a sense of collective responsibility and a desire to engage with their peers.”

The student-led-workshop model has been in place at Rivers since the 2020–21 school year, when the school shifted its DEI efforts to a year-long program rather than a single “Day of Consideration” approach. Empowering students to create workshops has led to deep engagement and a sense that there are many ways to approach the topics that fall under the equity and engagement umbrella. 

Said Henderson, “I think it’s valuable for students to see their peers step up and lead. Our hope is that it’s empowering for student facilitators and inspiring for participants to engage in a workshop that is truly student-run.”