On Saturday, February 1st, 2025, SCH Student Facilitators and the DEI Council hosted their tenth annual SCHout conference. In addition to SCH students, 200 people from twenty different schools attended. Student facilitators gave speeches from 9:30 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon with the mission of fostering growth and awareness for diversity.
This year marked the tenth anniversary of the first-ever SCHout in 2016, a milestone that class 2016 alumni Essence Walden and Singley Risico, the two students who came up with the SCHout conference, were “blown away by.”
This year’s theme was metamorphosis. Walden and Risico agreed that transformation is something natural, but also hard for many people to accept. In Singley’s words, “Change is the biggest constant, the world’s biggest motif.”
In her keynote speech, Walden said, “A caterpillar doesn’t lose itself when it becomes a butterfly. It doesn’t forget the struggle of crawling just because it can now fly. Every stage of its journey still matters. The challenge is knowing when to stretch and grow—and when to stand firm in what you believe. The work we do in DEI depends on both. So, as you move through your own transformations, remember you don’t have to abandon yourself to evolve. Some parts of you will change. Some parts should. But the essence of who you are? That stays with you.”
For SCHout to thrive for ten years now, something had to keep students coming back and spreading the word. What was it? Many students highlighted the sense of belonging and community they felt at the conference.
Angel Martinez, a student from New Jersey, shared, “My school offered the program to socialize and talk to other people about our diversity.” Martinez continued, “It’s an incredible experience honestly. I love talking to people and seeing how others’ perspectives are like mine and being there with other people that are similar to you is very nice.” He was surprised by, “how quickly I began to get along with people and started to learn about who they are as a person.”
“I came here last year and I was kind of scared based on the nature of the conference. I thought it might seem like an Oppression Olympics, but then I came here and realized that it’s not like that. Everyone’s here to understand each other and I ended up becoming friends with a lot of different people,” said Germantown Academy student Anastasia Miller.
Avery Luk, an eighth grader recently accepted to SCH shared, “When I got in, they were talking about this very fun event on the weekend, so I signed up for it not knowing what it was.” He continued, “The second I walked in, I was bombarded with good vibes by the SCH kids here. Right away I started making friends and sharing experiences.” He added by stating, “I can tell that at SCH, the people like to have fun, especially as an entire community.”
It’s evident that all of these students shared one common idea: that the SCHout conference is a place to come together as a community, have some fun, and learn together.
Many student facilitators agreed that events like this were important to recognize and embrace differences and create a more woke community.
SCH sophomore Richard Li shared his role at the conference. “I’m a student facilitator and I’m promoting the Asian affinity space.” He went on to explain why he joined facilitators. “I think it is very important to help us recognize our identities and help us bond with people of similar and different backgrounds. And I think we all just want to uplift all members in our community.”
Taylor-Rae Hall-Callaway, also a sophomore at SCH, explained how the facilitators put together and managed an event of this scale. “I came in and helped welcome students at the front door and told them where to go, and then I was a home group leader. Once the SCHout is over we’ll all be hereafter, putting stuff back the way it was so everything is ready on Monday.” She then explained why she wanted to do something like this: “This is a chance for a lot of people to come together and acknowledge that people are and should feel accepted in their own spaces. And this space is an opportunity for people to talk about things they normally wouldn’t in their everyday lives.”
Jarrett Whaley, a SCH senior, explained the significance of the tenth anniversary. “The fact that the school has kept this tradition ten years after the two people who came up with the idea graduated means a lot to this whole community. A lot of people come here and feel like they have a good space to share their stories, so I think it is important to acknowledge how long this conference has been going on because it just shows how much people enjoy sharing their experiences as a community.”
Administrators such as Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Maxime Sinal, Upper School Diversity Coordinator Polly Kimberly, and Head of School Delvin Dinkins kicked the event off with speeches, but quickly turned it over to student leaders to share their own experiences.
Each speaker’s story emphasized the importance of raising awareness and how they’ve grown as individuals. The facilitators ran group activities for people to see the large community they are a part of and small group activities that encouraged people to be themselves and share their stories. The day’s goal was to bring together a community of students who were open to growth as not only a group but as an individual as well.
