Our Diversity is Our Strength
Students from the Geography Club and from Student Council’s PR Committee posted a world map at the foot of the staircase by the main entrance earlier this week. Attached to the map is a basket of pushpins and a request for students to add a pin to any locations connected to their heritage. Just a few days later, the map has now come alive with hundreds of multicolored pins. Yesterday afternoon, I joined some students gathered around the map analyzing the data – noticing the significant coverage of Europe, East Asia, South Asia, and parts of North America; tight clusters in East Africa, Central America, and the Middle East; and scattered points throughout the map. The story it tells is a beautiful one of a local school composed of and enriched by cultures from around the world.
We are proud that BUA is a place where families and students across cultures feel at home. That is part of our strength and a great differentiator for us. So many of our families have recent immigration experiences in their histories. Our students talk and write about their cultural heritage and family traditions, weaving that into their academic work, art, and social lives. In a way that might seem counterintuitive, being at a place where there is such freedom to share and celebrate individual identities – rather than atomizing us – helps create a cohesive whole. It helps us recognize our common humanity and creates the space to reinforce those key beliefs we share: the centrality of kindness, joy in curiosity, and the transformative power of education.