Social Justice Day

While multicultural education and antibias/antiracist best practices underpin all of our teaching at Shady Hill, Social Justice Day is an annual event for our middle school community in which all middle school students and faculty stretch their thinking and build their practice around social justice work. During this special on-campus conference-style experience, students hear from a keynote speaker (prior speakers have included Clint Smith and Liz Kleinrock, among others), multi-age workshops organized around various topics of social justice (see this list of workshop titles and descriptions for sample workshop programming), participate in a fifth through eighth grade arts expressive project (sometimes a visual art project, sometimes a performing arts project), and more. 

Our mission for Social Justice Day guides us to: examine justice and incite action, elevate counternarratives and highlight marginalized voices, explore local issues and foster global awareness, empower student voice to agitate for change, encourage autonomy within and to the benefit of the collective, and expands students’ sense of belonging within the broader SHS community. We cherish the opportunity each year to achieve these goals in innovative, relevant, and responsive ways. 

Our next steps for Social Justice day include exploring more opportunities for student leadership within the context of the day.