11 minute read
in 10th grade, and
Sharing His Story at the White House
A teen mentor uses his voice to support transgender visibility and rights
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In June, Ashton Mota ’23 had the honor of introducing President Joe Biden at a Pride Month ceremony at the White House. He shared something powerful: his own story. “I’m a 16-year-old, Black, Afro Latino high school student from Lowell, Massachusetts,” he said, introducing himself. “I also happen to be transgender.”
From the podium, Ashton recalled how his family, especially his mother, affimed his identity when he came out to them on his 12th birthday. “She told me that she loved me, that I was her child, and that she would support me so I could be the person I was meant to be,” he said. Many transgender youth aren’t as fortunate, Ashton acknowledged, noting the difference that love and affimation have made for two of his siblings, young transgender women of color who are part of the foster care system and, now, part of his family. “It’s simple,” he said. “When children are loved, we thrive.”
Ashton used the platform to advocate for the Equality Act, a bill that would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. He said the legislation would “give LGBTQ+ people like me the opportunity to walk into the world as our true, authentic selves without having to worry about discrimination just because of who we are or who we love.”
As his poise on the national stage might suggest, Ashton is not new to advocacy. He has been promoting transgender rights since he came out in 2016, as a Human Rights Campaign Foundation youth ambassador and in other ways. In 2018, at 14, he became politically active in the “Yes on 3” campaign, which resulted in Massachusetts becoming the first U.S. state to uphold legal transgender potections. “The thought of that bill not being upheld was very scary for me,” Ashton says. “It’s what makes me so passionate about the Equality Act. Knowing that there are young people who have to worry every single day because they’re in a state that doesn’t provide those protections—that’s what motivates me.”
A little over two years ago, Ashton joined the GenderCool Project, a storytelling campaign led by transgender and nonbinary youth. “We share our stories to help replace negative opinions with positive experiences,” he says. “A lot of people may think, mistakenly, that they don’t know a transgender or nonbinary person. You might not understand until you meet us that we’re just like everyone else.”
In 2021, Ashton co-authored a children’s book called A Kids Book About Being Inclusive, part of a series intended to bring clarity and positivity to the national conversation about difference and belonging. When Ashton’s work with the GenderCool Project resulted in the opportunity to speak at the White House, he presented the president and first lady with a set of the books
“When I was navigating my gender identity, I didn’t have these resources to know what it meant to be transgender or nonbinary,” Ashton says he told them. “I didn’t have someone to look up to. When I started my activism, I wanted to be a role model for younger kids—people like me. Being able to share that with them, and see that they were interested and cared, meant a lot to me.”
And knowing that his book is in the White House? Ashton says, “It’s mind-blowing.”
Above: Ashton Mota ’23 speaks at the White House. Left: Standing alongside Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Ashton presents his book to the president and firs lady.
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LEARN MORE Read more, watch Ashton Mota’s White House speech, and learn about his book at www.concordacademy.org/ white-house. SPOKEN WORD
Convocation
AMY KUMPEL Science teacher, 2020–21 Convocation speaker
Read the remarks at www.concordacademy.org/ convocation-2021.
C&E Assembly
“When you hear that
Columbus discovered
America, what does that say about the millions of
Indigenous people who were already here?”
LARRY SPOTTED CROW MANN Native American cultural educator, writer, and traditional storyteller
Read more at www.concordacademy.org/mann.
Environmental Symposium “I don’t think we should feel individually guilty about climate change.
I think we should feel collectively responsible for building a better world.”
TATIANA SCHLOSSBERG Journalist, author, and science writer
Read more about Schlossberg’s work at www.concordacademy.org/schlossberg.
Help for Hunger
A CA student and his family work to mitigate food insecurity
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LEARN MORE: Learn more about Beyond the Crisis at beyondthecrisis.org.
“Having food is not a privilege; it’s a right,” says Camden Francis ’22. This conviction solidifie for the Concord Academy senior last year, when he learned how many parents in the Boston area were struggling to feed their children during the pandemic. News footage of hours-long lines at food banks hit home. Camden says he feels fortunate to live in Sudbury, Mass., and attend CA, free from worry about access to healthy meals: “I couldn’t feel too happy just living my life without giving back.”
The problem he saw was not a global food crisis, as in 2008, but rather systemic pressures exacerbated by increased need. “There’s enough food available now, but there haven’t been enough effective ways to distribute it,” Camden says. He and his brother Colton, 13, saw an opportunity to organize. With help developing a business model from their entrepreneurial father, the brothers made the plan operational.
Now Camden is the founder and executive director of Beyond the Crisis, a proudly minority-owned nonprofit that povides food to children and families in need through pantries, shelters, and housing communities. Working with the Catholic Charities of Boston, the organization primarily distributes food to the St. Ambrose shelter in Dorchester, but its partnerships extend to affordable housing networks and local colleges and universities. Camden has sought out mentors and is learning to write grants to support bulk food buying in addition to directing donations from food drives, grocery stores, farms, and other retailers.
Camden meets the demands of running Beyond the Crisis between his academic and varsity soccer commitments. “There’s a cost, for sure,” he says, “but helping others is something we as humans don’t make enough time for. I balance it all because what we’re doing helps to balance other families’ lives.”
As the organization’s name suggests, the Francis brothers intend for Beyond the Crisis to remain active after pandemic-driven urgency subsides. Camden hopes to bring the model with him to another community when he starts college next year. But he’s proud of what he and Colton have already accomplished. “I wanted to do this to show other teenagers that you don’t have to be older to make a difference,” he says. “You can do it now.”
CAMDEN FRANCIS ’22
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LEARN MORE Read more about the 9th grade essential questions at www. concordacademy. org/9th-grade.
English teacher Laurence Vanleynseele P’22 engages 9th grade students in one of her courses early in the fall.
9TH GRADE
Essential Questions
How do you learn? What are you learning about yourself? What are you learning in community? Introduced during CA’s orientation for new students, these essential questions are part of a framework that is helping 9th graders learn the skills they need to flouris at Concord Academy. Intentionally broad, they encourage exploration of learning strategies and reflectio on personal values and ways of relating to others.
Science teacher Kim Kopelman and history teacher Emma Storbeck—both 9th grade class advisors—were charged last year with coordinating this work. A generous alumna, Gale Hurd ’61, who was concerned about the pandemic’s effect on academic readiness, is funding the approach. CA had already identifie this as a critical focus; the pandemic, and this gift, made it a top priority.
Through organic conversation with their colleagues, Kopelman and Storbeck are establishing norms around explaining to students how learning is expected to take place. “We can’t assume all of our students have these skills,” Kopelman says. “We have to give them the strategies they need to be successful in this diverse environment.”
During dedicated meetings, 9th grade teachers and advisors are sharing with each other how they support fundamental approaches to learning and identifying areas of synergy across CA’s wide-ranging curriculum. Throughout the year, students are creating portfolios that chart personal and academic growth.
“We know that CA teachers are already teaching how to learn,” Storbeck says. “What we’re trying to do is make the implicit explicit, to be more intentional about how we’re teaching so that students can be more intentional about their learning.”
Sabrina Sadique, George Larivee, and Deborah Gray prepare to depart from CA.
A CA ROAD TRIP
When mathematics teacher and scheduler Deborah Gray retired in June after more than 30 years at CA, English teacher Sabrina Sadique didn’t hesitate to help her relocate to Ohio. There was just one thing she had to do first learn how to drive.
Early one morning in July, with her learner’s permit in hand, Sadique set out from CA with Gray and math teacher George Larivee. The three campus neighbors had become good friends, bonding over shared meals in the Stu-Fac. During their 12-hour journey, the trio played word games and reminisced.
After settling Gray into her new home at Kendal at Oberlin, a life plan community, Sadique and Larivee caught up with Keagan Tan ’20 and Elliot White ’19, who both attend Grey’s alma mater, Oberlin College. Gray has since enjoyed new adventures, but says she still feels connected to CA. “One of the things I loved about teaching at CA was having so many talented and congenial colleagues,” she says.
As for Sadique, she savored every second of the trip. And if it hadn’t been for Gray and Larivee, she says, “I don’t think I would have learned to drive.”
Extending Grace
For Director of C&E Grant Hightower, common trust is indispensable to striving for equity
In his first year leading the Community and Equity (C&E) Ofice, Grant Hightower is partnering with Robert Munro, dean of academic program and equity, to help Concord Academy become the more equitable school its mission envisions. Before joining CA in July 2021, Hightower, also an experienced consultant, was an administrator in the Reading and Wellesley public school districts in Massachusetts, where he helped teachers develop anti-racist and culturally responsive instructional practices and worked to empower students. This year at CA, Hightower has introduced the C&E theme of “extending grace.”
Why did you want to come to Concord
Academy? Coming from the public school environment, I didn’t know CA existed. Something in the position statement made me take a look, and I saw that community and equity work had been going on here in a formal way for well over a decade. The interview process was rigorous, but also fun and energizing, and I fell in love with the possibilities I saw for CA.
How do you approach DEIJ (diversity,
equity, inclusion, and justice) work? I don’t call it DEIJ. I call it good human work. How do we honor humanity in all its differences? How do we stop thinking along the good/bad binary? At CA, we’re working on a whole-institution strategy to center equity. We’re looking at how we communicate, at policies, and hiring and retention and professional development. We’re bringing in speakers, providing in-house programming to give tools to our staff and faculty, and we’re also helping students understand their agency and speak with peers about changes they’d like to see at CA. Most importantly, we’re fostering community.
Why did you choose “extending grace”
as a theme? Extending grace is an attempt to align common trust with another commitment in CA’s mission: striving for equity. We cannot strive for equity if trust is eroded. As humans, we are going to make mistakes, so how do we experience conflict as a natural pat of growth? What can happen when we forgive others, and ourselves, for inevitable missteps? To me, extending grace means that, even against transgression, my aim is to support you and I trust that your aim is to support me. It isn’t an end goal: It’s an entry point into harder conversations.
How do you approach difficult cover-
sations? Part of my work is to help parse out attitudes around systems. Privilege is inherent in institutions like CA, but can we shift from considering power as a zero-sum paradigm, where for me to have means others can’t have, to seeing power as a more fluid thing that can be shaed, that can allow others to access what they need? Sometimes pushback comes from a sense of not wanting to get below the surface. The question for me is how to honor those voices at their core, which isn’t hateful or spiteful but just unwilling to change. Fear is where a lot of us live. One of my hopes is that we can become a school that leans in to create
