SLIDE this way
SLIDE leadership holds annual training for leaders of 22 affinity groups
Student Leaders for Inclusion Diversity and Equity (SLIDE) leadership held its annual training for affinity group leaders of a combined 22 affinity groups from both the middle and upper school Sept. 10.
“It was great to bring affinity group members together from both campuses to discuss ways to make club meetings run more effectively,” Middle Eastern and North African Student Alliance (MENASA) adviser Joseph Makhluf said.
Students and faculty learned useful strategies for creating an identity-conscious affinity group space from guest speaker Liza Talusan, PhD, an educator and author of “The Identity Conscious Educator: Building habits and skills for a more inclusive school.”
Talusan’s aim is to give leaders the tools to create safer spaces and facilitate conversations about uncomfortable topics surrounding identity and race.
Talusan recognized the importance of understanding that everyone learns and communicates differently, and that in an affinity space it’s important to facilitate for everyone. While the actual training only lasted three hours, student leaders were also given an additional hour to rework their plans and curriculum for the rest of the school year, in conjunction with their upper school counterparts.
“I learned about new strategies to facilitate discussions in my affinity group and I feel that after implementing these tools, discussions run far more smoothly and are more productive,” Asian American Culture Club leader Maggie Koo ’26.
This would mean reworking meetings in order to add in critical check ins as a warm up to meetings, and facilitating difficult conversations rather than attempting to teach every piece of information available about a specific minority group.
Learn more about each of the affinity groups below.
