Waking up to Sisterhood: Creating Community for Girls of Color in Boarding Schools

• In Event: At the Intersections: Leveraging the Strengths of Girls of Color in Schools and Communities

Abstract

Paper/ presentation summary: The narrative explores how creating a co-shared space is central to identity development and the success of girls of color in predominantly white boarding school institutions.

Objectives or purposes
Examine how emotional ownership of a space impacts belonging in an institution.
Demonstrate how belonging in an institutional space translates to success in other aspects of student life.
Demonstrate how belonging in one institution instills a sense of belongingness beyond one institution.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
An adapted model of positive youth development for adolescent girls of Color, which recognizes the strengths of girls of Color rather than their deficits. This is a reflection from the field that is now reviewed through the framework lens to determine the usefulness and impact of methods employed for effective community building.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Qualitative data from lived experience at a New England boarding school. Feedback from former students - written in response to a survey inquiry and the author's notes from the lived experience in working with said students.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
As noted in the prior section, data sources included author notes and feedback from former students through conversations and written surveys.

Results and substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
This is collected from former students in university or post-college/working via phone calls and survey responses. Subjects advise on the program's positive impact on their lives since graduation from the primary institution.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
As academia is immersed in an increasingly divided discourse about supporting students of color, educators struggle to navigate achievement gaps. This narrative is essential to the conversation about shaping students from a strengths-based, human-centered model where they contribute and own the structuring of the community and the successful navigation of predominantly white institutions.

Author

• Loris Nadene Adams, National Cathedral School