Our Student Exec organized a current events seminar over the lunch hour on Tuesday, January 27th. Staff and students met to discuss important events and issues affecting the world today. Head Girl Ally fills us in:
The idea for a current events seminar stemmed from an announcement school administrators made at assembly at the beginning of this year. They talked about how we as a community can self-reflect during times of global turmoil. A couple members of the student exec thought that as important as self-reflection is, the best thing we can do when faced with issues we don’t completely understand is talk them out.
The issues we ended up talking about included Boko Haram and Nigeria, specifically, the world’s underwhelming reaction to the terrorism. We also talked about how we often treat Africa like a country, not a continent.
We also touched on the beheadings in Saudi Arabia. This one hit close to home for us as an all-girls school, as we ended up discussing women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
To finish, we broke up into three smaller groups and discussed Charlie Hebdo. We also chatted about how in light of the dangers in Paris, the Grade 8 France trip was cancelled this year.
All in all, everything went pretty well. The seminar was completely organized and lead by students, and we were all really proud of what we did. That said, this was also a test run. Now we have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t, and we hope to use this knowledge to hold better conversations in the future. Ultimately, we want this to be a monthly, or even weekly occurrence. We also hope that other students or staff members will want to lead a seminar on an issue they are passionate about.
Ally
Head Girl