Portrait by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
AURORA | Between the pandemic moving the school from virtual and in-person learning and navigating a world after a year of racial violence and demanding justice, finding a way to put together a Black History Spirit Week has required dedication and creativity for Smoky Hill High School students.
But they banded together and hosted the Spirit Week at the end of February.
The students are part of the Diversity Leadership Team, a student club at Smoky Hill. Club president senior Brandy Nalyanya said the spirit week was created last year because the students were unhappy with the school’s official offerings to observe Black History Month.
“A lot of us were dissatisfied with the celebrations that our school was doing for Black History Month, and so we kind of took it on ourselves to create a spirit week,” said junior Rohan Guddanti.
Putting together the spirit week took a lot of “trials and tribulations,” he said, including the fact that ‘Black hair care day’ drew some questions from school officials and parents.
However, the group was happy that it was able to put something together, and resolved to do even more the following year. Then, the pandemic arrived.
Despite having limited classroom time this semester, the group created two spirit days that students in each cohort could participate in, held a virtual Black history trivia night and put together an art showcase for Black students.
One spirit day was an HBCU day, where students were encouraged to wear college gear to express support for the value of higher education, especially at HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities).
The other was a ‘Blackout day’ where students were encouraged to come to school wearing a t-shirt expressing support for racial justice.
The group created a T-shirt saying ‘Black history month is every month’ that it sold to students for $15 each, donating the proceeds to the Colorado Black Health Collective. Overall, it raised over $300 for the group.
Nalyanya and Guddanti are both interns with YAASPA, a local organization created to help empower students of color to be active in their communities. Through YAASPA they connected with a fellow intern at Hinkley High School, who organized the Blackout day and sold shirts at his school as well.
The students said the week was a partial success, but expressed disappointment with what they described as a lack of support from district officials.
For each day of the week, Nalyanya had created announcements to read over the PA about different aspects of the spirit week. But on Blackout day, school and district officials who previewed the announcement told the students that they were not allowed to read the announcement.
The announcement, which the group shared with the Sentinel, discussed the death of George Floyd and the protests against police violence that took place over the summer.
“Simply put, police brutality is an issue in this country,” it read. “We do not live in that society that Dr. King so beautifully displayed for us in his I Have a Dream Speech. If we did the list of names of Black people who have died from police brutality would not be as long as it is. If we did the three simple words Black Lives Matter would not be as controversial as they are.”
Nalyanya said the district was vague about why she was not allowed to read the announcement. In an email to the Sentinel, Cherry Creek spokesperson Abbe Smith said that the message was “a powerful statement about Black Lives Matter and police brutality.”
However, she said the group shared it with the school late the night before it was going to be read, and “there was some concern about the late nature of the message and wanting to be able to provide the appropriate space and resources for students to have healthy, productive conversations about race and social justice.”
That was frustrating for the group as well, because Guddanti said the group had also wanted to put together conversations about racial justice in the classroom that day, but received pushback from the administration.
“I believe I was told that they said ‘you can’t say stuff like that and not have a conversation about it,’ which was ironic because we wanted to have “stop the silence” conversations,” Nalyanya said.
Smith said Smoky Hill’s principal is “engaged in discussions” about how to provide time for students to have guided conversations about race.
That was one aspect of what students said was a surprising lack of discussion of Black Lives Matter overall. When school resumed in the fall, senior Nawal Assougdam said she expected there to be more conversations about everything that had taken place over the summer.
“I think that because of the events I expected there to be a lot more room for conversations, just for it to be acknowledged more, but it wasn’t,” she said. “It was almost as if it didn’t really happen.”
Assougdam said she got the feeling that some teachers were afraid to express direct support for Black Lives Matter because it was too political, and they didn’t want to get criticism from the school or from parents.
“I wish as a school district they were able to create a space where it’s known that you’re allowed to be unequivocally like ‘hey my Black students’ lives, they do matter. I saw what happened this summer and I want to make sure that I can say that loud and proud,’” Nalanya said.
“I feel like the whole black lives matter was up in the air. Everyone was just kind of standoffish about it, which was sad to me,” said senior Jaenalyn Simmons.
Guddanti described Smoky Hill as diverse, but “not always the most inclusive,” despite the fact that the majority of students are students of color.
He said he worries that the school administration will take credit for the existence of the spirit week, even though it did little to facilitate it.
The group created a list of “call to action” items for the school, community and the media that include “having administrators actively involved in planning inclusivity events,” “acknowledging the power of giving students resources to utilize their authentic voices” and “embracing all aspects of Black life and Black voices, and not just the struggle.”
Despite the setbacks and the limitations of pandemic schooling, the students said they were proud of what they were able to accomplish and hope they paved the way to do more in the future.
“The idea was to leave a legacy and shift the culture in our school and the community,” Assougdam said.