While its official acronym is the Multicultural Student Achievement Network, students of color describe MSAN as a place to come together and uplift one another.
ARHS senior Gael Buford attended this year’s MSAN conference in Arlington, Virginia, hosted by the Alexandria Virginia School District. Buford described the yearly trip as “important because it teaches and influences the group of people who go.”
The students who attended were sophomores Juliana Albo and Alhassan Abdel-Maksoud; juniors Jasper Ekwere, Fernando Aguila Leiva, Ziomara Salomon-Fernandez, and Nada Armoush; and seniors Buford and Lilian Wambura.
Dean of Students Mary Custard and ELL teacher Rosa Gomes led this year’s conference as MSAN’s advisers.
Wambura said that even though it was “nerve-racking” to “participate in a panel This slideshow could not be started. Try refreshing the page or viewing it in another browser.
, what I gained from it was very positive.”
The trip lasted four days; it started on Saturday, November 8, and ended on Wednesday, November 12.
During the conference, ARHS students met with guest speakers such as three-time Emmy nominated and award-winning spoken word artist Trey Baker and a founding member of MSAN, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, a former professor of Urban Education at University of Wisconsin, Madison and the author of The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children and Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms.
Buford said he enjoyed the whole conference and that he particularly loved meeting Trey Baker.
“He spoke really beautifully, and was really outgoing toward Amherst in general,” said Buford. “He seemed really invested in our cause.”
The scholars worked on an action plan, while there, something they bring back each year as a way to make positive changes to the climate and culture at ARHS and to improve the education experiences of students here.
“We will be meeting soon to talk about doing a Culture Day at the school,” said Wambura, who sees this idea as having the potential to “bring people together outside of their bubbles.”
Students are chosen to participate in MSAN after being nominated by their teachers.
Buford said he was really grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it. “The most important thing to me is learning about your roots and culture,” he said. “MSAN was important [to me] because I got to talk to a lot of different mixed-race students like me, and I learned a lot about their culture.”
Wambura agreed that it was overwhelmingly positive. “I think it was an amazing opportunity to get you out of your comfort zone, and you get to interact with many new people,” she said.
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