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|  | Middle School Hilltop Diversity Conference a Success
11/20/2008
On Tuesday, November 11, 20 students from each of Riverdale’s two other hill schools gathered with Riverdale’s entire Middle School in honor of the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination during a Middle School Hilltop Diversity Conference. Titled “Middle School Matters: Keeping the Dream Alive,” the conference featured keynote speaker Dr. Bryant-Davis, a psychologist and motivational speaker. It also included faculty-led workshops, discussions, and meetings of affinity groups; visiting faculty from neighboring Fieldston and Horace Mann schools joined Riverdale faculty for the day.
The conference was conceived by Anoinette Quarshie, Dean of Students for Grade 6, and Liz Fernandez, an educational consultant who co-hosted a Student Diversity Leadership Conference that Antoinette attended in Seattle. The idea behind the conference was to expose students to issues of diversity through a focus on the arts. “Two poet facilitators from Hip Hop, History of the Word, worked with students to bring out their experiences and thoughts around diversity in poetry,” explains Antoinette. Besides this, keynote speaker Dr. Bryant brought her own artistic touch to the conference, as she is also an accomplished spoken word artist, poet, and dancer.
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