They Will Lead!

Excerpt from Fall Newsletter: Past, Present, & Future

Looking back on a summer like no other, we hope you are well, extending grace and mercy to yourself, your family, networks, and this new and unusual school year.

In this newsletter, we will look back and ahead with events and experiences to remind us why we continue to consider, apply, and enroll in independent schools.

A look back...
This summer, we recognized that our independent school students take their mental and physical health seriously, incorporating self-care and social distancing in profoundly transformative ways.

Under the unfathomable conditions of racism and COVID, they have given testimony, delivered demands, and organized in ways that have shifted many of our schools' culture for good. Our students have created a path for us to operate as our better selves in developing safer institutions to learn and grow. 

A diversity practitioner recently quoted James Baldwin in an article that says it all, "We are in a revolutionary situation," adding, "Children, not yet aware that it is dangerous to look too deeply at anything, look at everything, look at each other, and draw their own conclusions." Here is the link to this useful article.

Ironically, during this summer's intense social distancing, we created new and closer connections between students, parents, and administrators. Our communities grew across the country with the speed of the internet and the strength of resistance.

Here, we laid our vulnerabilities bare with a shared vision and desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for one another, our children, and our children's children -moving many of us from thought to action leadership.

In addressing what we have in common, Black & Brown children in independent school spaces, we are more precise in moving ahead.  

We will partner with urgency and agency to collaborate and call out what impedes our children's ability to develop and thrive in the very schools where we invest their potential. 

We will continue to offer our children the support and tools they need to manage in-person and social distance learning, self-care, and social justice-seeking. 

The next several months will be a test of our will and humanity to exist and thrive together. RIISE is here for all of it with you.

In solidarity,

Gina

Gina Parker Collins, Founder
RIISE - Resources In Independent School Education