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.