Welcome

Last month, our SBS community celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a day dedicated to educating ourselves and serving our local community. This month, we celebrate Black History Month. 

We dedicated MLK Jr. Day 2023 to asking the question, “What can you do to create the change you want to see?”. The day’s activities were facilitated by students who attended the Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) in San Antonio, Texas earlier this year as well as by members of Community Alliance and the student leaders of SBS's affinity groups.

The theme for MLK Jr. Day 2023 was empathy – empathy for self, empathy for others – and how empathy can empower us to change our world for the better. In response to the day’s guiding question, “What can you do to create the change you want to see?”, empathy is the answer. To be empathetic, we must first understand ourselves, then we must understand the broader world, and then we must seek change. 

In the morning, the student-led workshops encouraged members of our community to think about the different identities they hold and the intersection of these different identities— within us as individuals and within the broader community. Workshops included breaking down institutional norms and discrimination as well as learning about identity molecules. 

During the afternoon of MLK Jr. Day 2023, students participated in a service project benefiting a local organization, the Franklin County Dog Shelter. By advisory groups, students made fleece toys out of recycled materials that were donated to the dogs at the shelter. Martin Luther King Jr. was an advocate for service, and our community endeavored to follow in his footsteps with a service project of our own. 

In honor of Black History Month, SBS is participating in the National Black Lives Matter at Schools Week of Action (February 6 - 10, 2023) featuring a “Write Night”, a panel celebrating globalim and collective value, an HBCU fair, an ‘Imagination Lab’, and a Black Joy Party.The observance of Black History Month exists to bring awareness to the unique struggles that African American and Black folks have experienced in their pursuit for freedom and equal opportunity throughout the history of the United States. 

At SBS, we endeavor to be an anti-bias, anti-racist, and culturally responsive educational environment. Our collective goal is to help every member of our community feel seen, heard, supported, and empowered to thrive. As a community, we make a commitment to each other to speak and act with humanity, integrity, justice, and compassion toward a shared goal of diversity, equity, and inclusion. These principles serve as expressions that honor diverse perspectives and experiences not simply as enrichment, but as an essential aspect of a quality education, and as our duty to each other. We commit to the practices that Martin Luther King Jr. upheld throughout the academic year and we celebrate Black history year-round. We invite you to learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity & inclusion and revisit past DEI events to learn more.