They don’t have light sabers, but a group of Jamesville-DeWitt High School students have been invited to be members of the high school’s new JEDI Council.
During the first full week of school in September, Principal Gregory Lawson gathered student leaders from the school’s existing clubs that focus on social justice, culture and equity for the council’s inaugural meeting. JEDI stands for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. The focus of the council will be to give students a voice on issues that matter to them and an avenue to evoke change.
“I want to give them a seat at the table in terms of staff professional development and district policies,” Lawson said. “I want them to guide the work we do so we’re doing it through their lens. Their lived experience is unique. I don’t know it. You don’t know it. Their exposure to trauma motivates them to address social change differently.”
Students’ connectedness to the world is different than any generation before them, Lawson said. Students have easy access to the internet, which opens the door to social networks and local, national and global news, sometimes in real-time, where they see and hear about traumatic events that they then must process, often on their own.
“There needs to be a space for them to talk and listen and have a voice,” Lawson said.
The group plans to meet monthly unless an event of hurt happens, in school or outside of school that could affect students in school. Then the council will come together with the school’s counseling team to come up with a plan of action.
The group will also create training videos for staff. The West Genesee High School JEDI Council, which Lawson established when he was there during the 2021-22 school year, created videos that focused on such topics as racism and discrimination and gender, including pronoun usage. Lawson said the types of videos that J-D’s council will create will depend upon the issues that J-D students feel strongly about.
“It’s very empowering for the staff to see their students talking about these things,” Lawson said. “There’s an emotional response.”
Through their involvement with the JEDI Council, students will develop their leadership skills and learn to be more engaged and active in their communities. Lawson wants to show them that they can work within the system to make change.
“It’s going to be good work,” he said. “To address systemic change, you have to make systemic change.”