by AIELOC Leadership Team | Mar 21, 2025 | Blog
Friday, March 21, 2025
The Association of International Educators and Leaders of Color (AIELOC) strongly opposes any proposal to dismantle the United States Department of Education. As an organization dedicated to advancing equitable and inclusive education for all students, we firmly believe that the Department of Education plays a vital role in ensuring access to quality education, protecting civil rights, and upholding educational standards across the nation.
Dismantling the Department of Education would have devastating consequences for millions of students, particularly those from marginalized and underserved communities. The Department is responsible for administering federal financial aid programs, enforcing Title IX and civil rights protections, and supporting historically underfunded schools through initiatives such as Title I funding. Without this oversight, the risk of educational inequities and disparities would increase significantly, leaving many students without the resources they need to succeed.
Furthermore, the Department of Education provides essential support for teachers, administrators, and school districts, offering research-based best practices, grant opportunities, and policies that help drive student achievement. Its role in collecting and analyzing educational data also ensures that lawmakers and educators can make informed decisions to improve learning outcomes nationwide.
Education is the foundation of our democracy and our economy. Eliminating the Department of Education would undermine decades of progress in expanding access to high-quality education and closing achievement gaps. We urge ALL to reject any efforts to dismantle this crucial institution and instead focus on strengthening its ability to serve students, families, and educators.
We welcome the opportunity to engage in further discussions on how to enhance our education system while maintaining the necessary federal support and oversight that the Department of Education provides.
by Kanako Suwa, AIELOC Fellow | Mar 12, 2025 | Blog
This weekend, I attended a DEI exchange in Laos, hosted by Vientiane International School, for the second year in a row. One of the workshops I took part in was about seeing autism and ADHD through an equity lens, during which the facilitator, Jonathan Norlin, asked us to peruse stories about individuals who lived with intersectional identities; AuDHD/female, AuDHD/POC, and AuDHD/LGBTQ+. I naturally found myself curious about the stories of queer people with autism and/or ADHD and while listening to them speak so candidly about how their neurodivergence affects their queer identity or vice versa, a seed started to grow in my brain. How does MY neurodivergence (ADHD) affect my queer identity?
I’ve given a lot of thought to my sexuality over the last few years. I’ve even recorded a monologue about my queer discovery journey. In it, I talk about how growing up, I had “crushes” on boys and girls – my attraction to both genders was never a question, even when I struggled to put a label on it. Things clicked once I discovered the term “bisexual” through Tumblr, and since then, I’ve identified as bisexual, pansexual, and queer. Bisexual, because that was the label I stuck with for so long. But pansexual because that is more inclusive of trans and non-binary people. And queer, because it allowed me to continue the self discovery without putting myself into a box, and because something still felt amiss.
As we got older and everyone around me began dating seriously, I felt no sense of urgency or need to find myself a romantic partner. Living in SE Asia, it is so easy to meet travellers who are passing through the city, people who are here for a fun time but not for a long time. That, to me, was enough. I went on dating apps, swiping left and right, and honestly enjoyed messaging “strangers” and finding out new things about new people, but I also never felt real interest in grabbing coffee or going on an actual date. Conversations from dating apps would fizzle out, once they realised I had no intent to meet up with them in person, and I always closed the apps feeling a slight heartache and confusion. Why am I speaking to strangers on the internet, on an app designed for finding true love, when it never went beyond a few messages?
After being diagnosed with ADHD, my therapist told me about the spoon theory in the neurodivergent community. The Spoons Theory, by Christine Miserandino, is this idea that we all start with a certain number of spoons to start the day, and each activity you engage in takes spoons away from your pile. Learning about The Spoons Theory early on in my ADHD journey allowed me to rationalise my lack of interest in “going on a date” as a lack of spoons. I thought that by the time the end of the day rolled around, I would have no spoons left to doll myself up for a date or to spend an evening with a stranger because social interactions take a lot of spoons for me too.
This rationalization gave me a way to explain my lack of interest in dating, almost blaming my neurodivergence and its challenges. And even though this afforded me a little bit of comfort, the confusion and wonderings about myself, and my sexual and romantic identity, didn’t really dissipate. Because if I’m being honest, it wasn’t always true that I didn’t have the spoons to go out to dinner or do other activities after work – on average, 2 days out of the 5 work days, I had enough spoons left in the day to go to the gym or go to dinner, or even do both sometimes. So this “excuse” I had built in my head about the spoons were beginning to collapse and I started to think that I was broken for not having any interest in something everyone around me seemed to find easy – most of my friends are married now, even the ones who “swore off” dating a few years ago.
Now, I’m no stranger to the emerging terms in the queer community. I spoke to my therapist about the possibility of me being aromantic, someone who experiences little to no romantic attraction, but that didn’t really sit right with me either. Because I had crushes and been in relationships, and even though none of it amounted to a long-term committed relationship, I still thought I felt attracted to the people I was dating.
But as I sat in this workshop listening to neurodivergent queer person describe themselves as neuroqueer, that seed in my brain began to take a life of its own. I thought specifically about my crushes and relationships, through an ADHD lens, and started to realise that they may have actually been one of my “hyperfixations”. A hyperfixation is an intense occupation a person with ADHD may have towards a certain subject or activity, and in my case, these crushes were my hyperfixations. I thrived on the dopamine rush I got from talking to my crush or getting attention from them, but they never evolved into anything substantial or long-lasting, because just like a hyperfixation meal can feel wrong all of a sudden, the crushes would also disappear overnight. Dating apps gave me hits of dopamine that my brain was craving, because of the notifications on my phone, the excitement of meeting new people, and, with an endless amount of people to swipe through, even simply matching with someone felt like a game.
While I haven’t entirely let go of the idea that it would be lovely to find a partner to share life with, I now feel more comfortable using aromantic as one of my labels, leaning towards the “having little interest in romantic relationships” side of the spectrum. I recognised that my past crushes and relationships were truly based on my need for attention and dopamine, more than true romantic feelings. Looking back now, I also notice a pattern in my break-ups. It was always because I lost interest. Because the relationship became too familiar and I lost that excitement around being with that person.
Upon further reflection, I realize now that I probably care for my friends and even my students more than I cared for my romantic partners, and that should’ve been a sign. I’m always interested in what’s going on in my friends’ lives. I love hearing about their new accomplishments. And I definitely feel an immense amount of pride and joy when students share their achievements. I care deeply for friends and students, and I do try to give all of my love, because I’m not incapable of feeling love. It’s just that romantic love has never really been an interest to me and I didn’t realize it because I kept finding other explanations for why I wasn’t wired the way most of my friends were.
So unbeknownst to me, ADHD has been affecting my sexual / romantic identities for the longest time, probably even before I was diagnosed. And if it hadn’t been for DEIx25 and Jon’s workshop, I wouldn’t have actually sat down to think about how neurodivergence affects queer identity for me, so thank you to VIS and to Jon!
Kanako Suwa (she/her)
LinkedIn / Instagram / Website
by AIELOC Leadership Team | Feb 18, 2025 | Blog
The Association of International Educators and Leaders of Color (AIELOC) acknowledges the challenging times ahead as we navigate a landscape marked by uncertainty. In light of recent federal guidance concerning the awarding of grants to educational institutions and organizations, AIELOC would like to reaffirm its unwavering commitment to protecting our community and advancing our mission.
As outlined in the recent communication regarding Executive Order 14173, AIELOC understands the requirement for grantees to certify compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws and the stipulation against operating programs that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) that violate these laws.
While we acknowledge the complexities introduced by this directive, AIELOC remains steadfast in its belief that fostering our values, beliefs, and focus on a culture of dignity, respect, learning, and fairness is essential to the educational experience and the well-being of our communities.
AIELOC’s Position:
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Commitment to Culture of dignity, respect, learning and fairness: AIELOC believes that well-being and care are fundamental to achieving educational excellence. We will continue to advocate for practices that support these values within our community.
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Support for Grantees: We understand that the new certification requirements may pose challenges for our partners. AIELOC is committed to providing guidance and support to help navigate these changes while ensuring compliance with federal regulations.
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Ongoing Advocacy: AIELOC will continue to advocate for policies that enhance visibility, recognition, and support for the needs of students, educators, and leaders globally.
As we shift to understanding the evolving landscape, it is crucial that we stand together to protect the values that define our community. AIELOC will continue the important work we have set forth to do, advocating for opportunities and the well-being of all members of our community.
As we move forward, AIELOC encourages open dialogue and collaboration among all stakeholders. We invite our partners to reach out with any questions or concerns regarding the new federal guidelines and how they may impact our collective mission. For more information about AIELOC and our initiatives, please visit www.aieloc.org.
by Kevin Simpson | Nov 4, 2024 | Blog
Here’s to Braving Yet Another School Year
Sneha Choubey, AIELOC Intern
Now that the season for exams, burgeoning workload and unbelievable stress about our futures has arrived, I would like to say: That’s just school for you. Don’t you just love it?! Because I do.
I’m Sneha Choubey, a Grade 11 student at an international school in Germany, and for me, school has become a place where I can discover myself… however, it wasn’t always like that.
I’m from India and I lived there for the first 11 years of my life, but when COVID struck and my dad’s business in Europe landed in a precarious place, we uprooted our lives in the matter of a week and shifted to Poland, and everything as I knew it changed.
There I was, in an unfamiliar country, far away from home.
My home, a country with the same customs, same rules, same languages as me.
A country where people didn’t look at me weird when I walked on the street and changed the route they were on just because I was near them.
One time, as a stupid joke worthy of my 7th grade self, when an old couple kept changing the way they were walking because of me, I would too. If they went left, so did I. If they went right, I was right there with them. It was funny watching them bounce between two sidewalks just because of me.
It was funny, and it was sad.
It felt like a fever dream at first. Everything was different. I went to a school where most of my classmates were white, where everyone mainly spoke Polish, where people mimicked my accent and made fun of my country, where a teacher repeatedly touched my hair, and where I didn’t feel like I could ever belong. Everything was different and I couldn’t cope with that, so I shut it out.
I put my head down, went to school everyday, came back home and took solace in the online world.
I made some friends, but when I got the opportunity to move to Berlin, I took it immediately.
I don’t do well with change, but I knew I needed one. So, after two years in Poland, I left.
You see, that school didn’t give me anything I could use to grow as a person, so I had to get out.
Even if it meant changing my life… again.
Berlin was a new experience. It was multicultural and fierce. I hadn’t ever seen anything like it.
My new school’s website stated that it housed students from over 70 countries, and I was excited.
I felt like I could finally find my place and find myself. But I was in for a rude awakening.
In this school, discrimination ran rampant, and there were barely any consequences for it. The school’s administration found it all too much to handle, and their efforts couldn’t scratch away more than a percent of the ignorance and inaction persistent in school. There were teachers who fought against it all, and then there were some who allowed it all to happen because they didn’t know how to handle it.
It broke my heart. I really had thought this place would be different.
I felt hopeless and defeated until I saw an announcement about a lunchtime club called the Social Justice Committee (SJC). I joined it on a whim, not knowing that it would change my life.
I met people who were trying to change our community and foster inclusivity at a local and global scale.
I learnt the value of projecting my unique voice and not hiding it, and most importantly, I finally found my safe space where I could learn who I am.
I found a mentor in Ms. Kristina Pennell-Götze, I found my people, and I found myself.
I found the activist inside me. I found the changemaker inside me. I found who I’m meant to be.
After joining the SJC, I also joined the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) and therein became a part of our school’s forums for student agency, activism, and advocacy. I was later appointed the leader of the two groups in Grade 10.
The SJC comprises a group of students and teachers who are committed to raising awareness about all social and political justice issues, advocating for people and marginalised communities, changing, and fostering an environment where everyone feels valued, empowered, and celebrated for who they are.
The group initially started off as a BIPOC affinity group in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and has since achieved a lot, despite the struggles it faced in establishing itself.
In the past four years, we have released over 30 monthly zines that tackle and myth-bust several societal prejudices and celebrate the diversity in our community, created murals in honour of heritage months, and various learning materials for the school. We’ve organised multiple events, ranging from month-long activities for Black History Month (BLM), Hispanic Heritage Month, and Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Month, to selling bubble tea to raise money, taking the lead in our Wear Red Day in support of the Show Racism the Red Card (SRtRC) campaign, and much more.
We’ve written articles for TIE and InterACT, recorded a podcast with the Unhinged Collaboration, and have attended and presented at conferences with the GSA, such as AGIS’ first student-led DEIJ conference in March 2024 and two of AIELOC’s annual virtual conferences (1 and 2), as a part of their ‘Let them Lead’ series that features student voice and agency. As a collaboration with the GSA, we have also taken the initiative to address the inequities in the IBO through creating a petition to keep LGBTQ+ students safe and hosting an open meeting with over 100 RSVPs to discuss ways of creating meaningful and systemic change in our IB community.
We’re a team. We work with each other, and many advocacy groups in and outside of school, such as the GSA, Green Team, Sunflower Club, our staff’s DEI team, other international schools, and even organisations such as AGIS and AIELOC. We’re blessed to be supported by so many people.
Support, in fact, is all we ask for from our school. Yet, we don’t receive as much of it as we need.
Recently, students had their access to email out to all teachers restricted, which has proved to be a severe roadblock for the SJC and GSA because we send out a steady chain of notices, updates, and zines weekly.
A new rule that was meant to declutter inboxes has ended up interfering with student voice, since we’ve lost our ability to email our teachers collectively and talk to them about something important.
We’re trying to manoeuvre our work around this block, but our alternative plan of asking teachers to forward our messages along in their emails isn’t working either. Ultimately, we think that a school that prizes student voice and agency so much should employ another method of organisation that doesn’t cut students out of a vital communication channel and silence their voices more than they already are.
That’s the SJC boiled down in a paragraph or two.
Now, the GSA has been standing strong since 2007 (even before I was born!) and has always been a safe space for queer folk and allies to thrive and be themselves. Every weekly meeting consists of sharing personal anecdotes and memes, listening to queer music, and giving each other queer art and literature recommendations. But that’s not all we do. We celebrate and spread awareness about internationally recognised queer celebrations, such as National Coming Out Day (we displayed pride flags outside [OUTside, coming OUT, get it?] of windows or classroom doors), Transgender Day of Remembrance, International Pronoun Day (we sold pronoun pins in over 20 languages!) and the Day of Silence for IDAHOBIT. We’ve hosted several GSA Movie Nights for PYP students with the theme of inclusivity, diversity, acceptance, and love in all its forms, and have hosted a ‘Rainbow Room’ centred on expressing yourself through art for the PYP Cultures Day. We’ve also held presentations and panels on gender, sexuality, discrimination, and the importance of being an upstander for all MYP students (which didn’t go well at all…). We’ve spearheaded Pride Month in our school through scheduling activities throughout the month (arts and crafts, love graffiti, book read-alouds, a genuine mini-Pride Parade, you name it!) and have had the honour of being selected as the PTA grant winners, which allowed us to take a Queer Walking Tour around Berlin-Schöneberg. We’ve had a lot of fun, but there’s also been times of tragedy.
When Nex Benedict was assaulted and murdered last year, we were all at a loss of words.
They were a student going to the washroom, just like us. And they died as a result of their assault wounds.
We felt unsafe. Honestly, we always have. We hid it behind witty banter and sarcasm but we felt scared.
And angry. We know homophobia and transphobia persists in our world, but this was a stark reminder that schools were no different. Not that we forgot that, of course. We just tried to avoid it.
We’d had enough. We sent out an email blast to all of our teachers, expressing how unsafe we felt and urging them to take action, as our teachers and as global citizens.
We barely got a response. They didn’t care. We felt unsafe in school, a place where one learns and grows and flourishes into who they will become, and teachers didn’t care that some students were put in danger.
I’m tearing up as I write this. It is heartbreaking and enraging that nothing has changed since then.
We raise our voices because we need to disrupt to be heard. We want change, need change, and demand change, yet those who should care are deaf to our pleas and cries. It gets to me. It gets to all of us.
Since our teachers and leaders weren’t willing to listen to us, we went about it another way. Inspired by the NOH8 campaign and the Coming Out Monologues, we decided to create a Call to Action video (find attached the script), and all GSA members came together to share our thoughts and feelings, and hoped it would reach those who haven’t taken action and used the power they have good yet.
Again, no one cared. One teacher even suggested we provide training/learning materials and lead more workshops with staff so they could learn about it. So that they could learn about something they should’ve already known. So that they could receive more support than the ample amount we’ve already sacrificed our privacy and feelings for. So that they could start to do something we’ve begged for for YEARS. Once, we were approached with the task of writing down all the microaggressions and discrimination we’ve faced as scenarios for the teachers so they feel more connected with learning about them and how to face them. They wanted us to harvest our emotional experiences and traumas for distant adults so they could experience catharsis: “Oh my god, I had no idea this was happening in our school!”
Well, you would’ve known if you listened to us, or to anyone, really.
We’re students – literal children – and just because we do a lot of social justice work, that doesn’t mean it is our job to teach the adults about how to be compassionate teachers. It isn’t our responsibility, it isn’t something we owe them. We shouldn’t have to put in so much work to try to be safe in school.
So, in a nutshell, that’s us. The SJC and GSA. We’re people who go through this every day.
We get frustrated, discouraged, and silenced. We feel stressed, aggravated, and very tired.
Despite that, we don’t give up. We persevere. We stand through another day, and we stand together.
We stand because we want to and because we have no other choice: If we don’t fight, who will?
If we don’t fight, who will look after those who experience one injustice after the other?
If we don’t fight, when will change be brought about? How will we break old patterns and start anew?
If we don’t fight, how will we all move forward in a better direction?
So, we fight.
I’ve changed a lot since I’ve joined the SJC and GSA. I used to be scared and sheltered, and liked to repress all the things that made me different, which didn’t make me feel comfortable with myself at all.
I used to be scared of all the things that made me different from those around me, but now I cherish them and I couldn’t be prouder of them.
And as for what my hopes and dreams are? That’s hard. For now, it’s to make it out of IBDP alive.
But I know I want to be a part of the change. I want to tear down and rebuild our world, to whatever degree I can. And it all starts here at school. This is where I learn how to do it.
School has become a place for discovery. I was thrust into this unsafe and prickly environment, and I expected to experience hell (which at some points, I did), but I found my community, my passion, and myself. Each heartbreak, breakdown, burnout, fight, and want to give up has taught me something vital. There is a reason why our parents say there is a lesson to be learnt in all experiences, good or bad…
To all international school students, I imagine you face the same issues we do and you’ve had enough.
I understand how hard it is. I know how it eats away at your sanity. I feel you, which is why I’m here to say that we’re all here. You’re not alone. Even if we’re across the globe, please know that there is someone who feels the same way you do and is fighting the same fight you fight every day.
We’re all here. And we’ll make it out and enter the world as better people (while maybe angering all the bigots who come across our path while we go about it…).
So, without any further ado, welcome back to another school year! We have a lot of hurdles and obstacles in front of us, so stretch a bit and get your head in the game, because we’re going to win it.
You’re going to do great, so just have faith and continue fighting. We’re all right here with you.
