North Cook News

A presentation at an upcoming summit on adolescent health originally entitled “Race & White Privilege” has been changed to “Race & Well-being,” and the co-chair of group sponsoring the summit says that the change was requested by presenters.

“We had not received any negative feedback about any of the programming,” Lauren Bonner, assistant principal for students services at Loyola Academy in Wilmette and co-chair of Crisis Response Network of the North Shore, told North Cook News. “ETHS [Evanston Township High School] chooses a theme to focus on each school year, and this year's theme is race and well-being. We asked them to present on race and white privilege as that topic was requested by the participants via the survey we gave at the end of last year's Summit. The change was made from ETHS to better align with the presentations that they have been doing this school year.”

The Adolescent Health Summit: A Conversation for North Shore Professionals sponsored by the Response Network is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 13 at the New Trier Northfield campus from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The registration fee is $40.

A flyer advertising the summit listed “Race & White Privilege" as one of the topics for discussion, but a program of the summit showed that the title for the presentation on race had been changed to “Race & Well-being.” Other topics include vaping, social media and motivational interviewing.

Bonner said that the seminar will “have a student panel comprised of four to five high school-aged adolescents from this area that will share their unique vantage point of our topics for this year's summit.”

Most of the participants will be “first responders, school administrators and counselors, social workers, private practice therapists, police social workers, and so on,” Bonner said.

The program for the summit says that “Delving Deeper: Race & Well-being will engage in a deeper look at the interconnectedness of race and well-being, reflecting on our own identities and biases, intersectionality of student identities and students’ strengths. We will also look at healing-centered engagement, restorative practices and sustaining our practices as we address an increase in the number and complexity of students’ needs.”

One New Trier parent said that the presentation on race reminded her of “white privilege” seminar day at New Trier, an all-day event for students held each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“I never understood how that fit in with other classroom subjects,” said Tracy Kearney of Glenview, who has two children attending New Trier. "And I don't understand how white privilege fits in with talks on vaping and social media."

Backlash led to New Trier canceling the seminar after the 2017 event.

This week in the Evanston-Skokie School District 65, students are participating in "Black Lives Matter (BLM) at School Week.”

“During the week of Feb. 4, 2019, we are looking forward to educators embedding lessons about black history, intersectional black identities and institutional racism into the curriculum,” the district’s website said.