From Frustration to Action: Student
Agency in Culture Change
By John Sharon Carolina Friends School • Durham, NC
Several years ago, at my previous school, the DEI director came to see me because the kids on the middle school diversity committee were mad and frustrated. They had been reading Sharon Draper’ s Out of My Mind in their English classes, a book about a girl with cerebral palsy who is non-verbal and a wheelchair user. The diversity committee began talking about physical accessibility at their school, and the students quickly came to realize that a wheelchair user would find parts of the campus thoroughly off-limits to them, to say nothing of carelessly strewn backpacks that blocked entrances to classroom doorways, building exits, and the few elevators we did have at the school.
The DEI director came to me because I have been disabled my entire life. While I don’ t use a wheelchair, I walk with leg braces and find stairs to be problematic at best. He also came to see me that day because I do occasional consulting with other independent schools around the topic of accessibility( both literal and figurative in terms of attitudes of acceptance and belonging), and he wondered if I could help. Though he didn’ t know it, it just so happened that I had been in the middle of designing a campus-wide accessibility audit for any school to do, and then it hit me: What if the audit activity were created so that students of any age could conduct it? Would schools be more willing to change if the impetus came from their students?
So I got to work, and then met with the middle school diversity committee a week later. I presented them with the audit, walked them through the steps, and responded to their questions. And then I asked a question of my own: Would they be willing to present their findings to the administration, even if they were making recommendations that would be
Page 28 Summer 2025 CSEE Connections