WHS Hosts SPEAK Week with Watertown Youth Coalition

The following release was sent out by the Watertown Youth Coalition:

The Watertown High School (WHS) and Watertown Youth Coalition (WYC) are pairing up for one of their annual events, with a twist: SPEAK Week. Formerly known as Diversity Week, SPEAK Week promotes Sharing Personal Experiences and Knowledge and will run at the high school from March 26-March 30.

The week is designed to give the Watertown High community the opportunity to SPEAK (Share Personal Experiences and Knowledge), with the overall goal to enhance a welcoming school climate. Multiple activities and speakers are scheduled to come to the school, organized by the Watertown Youth Coalition Peer Leaders (a program run through the Wayside Multi-Service Center), in collaboration with Watertown High School’s Gay-Straight Alliance, International Club, and Armenian Club.

SPEAK week will be comprised of three components: activities, speakers, and a collaborative art project. The activities will run daily, before, after, and during school hours. Each contributing group will have their respective days to share their diversity through interactive and inclusive activities. In years past, students were welcomed to school with international treats, encouraged to place a star on their country of origin, and had their names instructively written in many different languages. The school has a rich diverse climate, and SPEAK week successfully allows for both students and faculty to see that, all while having fun.

The second piece of SPEAK week comprises a speaker series. For the past two years, the WYC hosted Dr. Michael Fowlin, an actor, poet, and psychologist, who spoke to issues such as race, discrimination, violence prevention and personal identity to students and faculty.

This year, two speakers will be coming: Kevin Johnson and Mr. Barb Greve. Kevin Johnson is the Director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at Berklee College of Music. His talk, “Making the Unconscious Conscious: Minimizing Unconscious Biases and Assumption” will run on Monday, March 26, the kick off date of SPEAK Week. Fittingly, he will speak to the conscious and unconscious stereotypes and prejudices that we all hold and how these biases influence our evaluations of people, their abilities, work, and values. Kevin will spend some time unpacking bias and encourage participants to think about ways in which they as a community can work to address their own conscious and unconscious biases.

Mr. Barb Greve will visit on Tuesday March 27 to speak about, “Courage out of Necessity: A Discussion of Gender and Identity.” Previously serving as Program Associate in the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Concerns from 1995 to 2005, Barb led workshops on issues of sexual orientation, gender identification, race, and ability. For WHS, Barb will be speaking about understanding gender identity as a means of increasing acceptance towards differences.The third component of SPEAK week is the collaborative art project. Students will have the opportunity to work with Guest Artist Tova Speter to design a piece of a mobile that will be displayed at WHS. Each design will represent individual identities and will be assembled together to represent WHS as a whole.

All events throughout the week will lead up to the SPEAK Week Fair on Friday, Marchto be held throughout all lunches. In perhaps the most characteristic piece of “Diversity Week” students will be able to see all pieces of the week come together in an enjoyable and educational spread of activities, facts, and food.
30th SPEAK Week is made possible by the Mass. Department of Public Health, Youth at Risk Grant an Underage Drinking Prevention Grant, and the US Department Of Education, Grant to Reduce Alcohol Abuse. Watertown is one of eight communities nationwide to be awarded a “Grant to Reduce Alcohol Abuse” (GRAA) grant.

This $1 million, 3 year grant funds the project, Watertown Healthy Youth (WHY) which seeks to change the community norm that supports underage alcohol use, and aims to promote a more welcoming school and community culture through a range of programs and policies. The WHY project is a collaborative effort between the Watertown Public Schools, Wayside Multi-Service Center, and the Watertown Youth Coalition.

Watertown is privileged to have the grand diversity that it does. With over 30 different languages spoken, and many countries represented, SPEAK week is the perfect forum in which we can all appreciate the experiences and knowledge every member in our community has to offer.