Friends Forward

How do we create spaces where students can engage meaningfully across difference while staying grounded in shared values? This workshop explores a classroom model that integrates Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion principles with Quaker testimonies such as community, equality, and peace to foster thoughtful, respectful dialogue.

Participants will examine a lesson structure that empowers students to choose relevant, real-world topics, from immigration and global conflicts to AI and stress and engage them through inquiry, reflection, and discussion. The approach explicitly teaches and practices core civil discourse skills, including empathetic communication, critical thinking, openness to inquiry, and constructive disagreement.

In Quaker education, how we respond matters just as much as what we teach. This interactive workshop invites educators to explore reflective practice through real classroom scenarios, thoughtful discussion, and practical pause strategies rooted in Quaker values. Together, we will examine moments of tension, conflict, equity, and belonging while considering how intentional reflection can lead to more grounded, compassionate, and values-centered responses. Participants will leave with adaptable tools and reflective practices that can strengthen classroom culture, deepen community, and support meaningful relationships in schools.

This interactive workshop explores how Quaker values and DEI practices can work together to deepen and strengthen organizations, schools, faith communities, and civic spaces. Drawing on core Quaker testimonies, participants will examine how these principles offer both a moral foundation and practical strategies for DEI Departments to cultivate more inclusive and equitable spaces.

Through reflection, dialogue, scenarios, and shared inquiry, participants will consider how Quaker approaches to listening, discernment, consensus-building, and recognizing “that of God in everyone” can partner with DEI practices to challenge systems of exclusion and support authentic belonging.

Social media invites a curated persona and relies on external validation while the digital noise of constant stimulation deprives our brains of the silence necessary for deep listening and centering down before worship. Furthermore, a systemic dilution of Quaker education into social media-ready "values" or "SPICES" leaves students and teachers without the practices needed to navigate academic stress, anxiety and a general crisis of well-being. Most Upper School students at my Quaker school are so overwhelmed by the extrinsic demands of the college process that they do not participate in soulful engagement during meetings for worship. In fact, they sometimes resent being forced to take a break from the studying that could lead to their definition of success. There are colleagues too who wish they could have that extra time correcting assessments and preparing for class. The tyranny of perfectionism and its accompanying fear of vulnerability make true self-knowledge and compassion for oneself and others feel more like a risk than a prerequisite for a life of meaning and purpose. To what extent is our performance-based culture and our over-scheduled screen-filled lives causing a profound atrophy of our Spirit-filled soulscapes? And what can we do to elevate the soul's importance in our competitive winner-take-all world? There is no single answer, of course. But finding ways to slow down, to enter into silence, embrace nature, inculcate deep listening, discuss love and friendship, lift up our own weaknesses, applaud student kindness and caring, and engage in Spirit-led inquiry and worshipful sharing can at least help to nurture our ever receptive and redemptive Inner Light.

** This session will be repeated on Thursday, July 9 during Workshop 2. **