On October 8, SHS students and staff participated in an all-day event aimed to motivate and engage SHS to take action in the world. Ms. Waters, advisor of the Human Rights Coalition club and history teacher, started Global Citizen Day three years ago and has been involved in its organization for the past three years. Global Citizen Day has evolved from a three-period long event, that consisted of about twelve workshops to an all-day event which consists of forty-four workshops. Prior to the first Global Citizen Day in 2013, there was a similar event called Upstander Day. The Global Citizen Day workshops are inter-disciplinary, meaning that they cover diverse topics ranging from LGBT Rights Around the World to Immigration: Global Issues to Holocaust Survivor. History teacher, Heather Waters, stated the purpose of Global Citizen Day is “to offer a selection of workshops that will engage faculty, students, and our community showing them what role they can take part in” and to advocate Scarsdale High School’s motto, “Non Sibi.”

Due to the tremendous of work required to organize such an event, a committee of history teachers, including Heather Waters, Fallon Plunkett, Carlos Bedoya, Maria Valentin, Margaret Favretti, Eileen Cagner, and Nicola Minchillo, are needed to organized the event this year.  Waters believed that such as an event is essential to show students how to be active in the world and to lay a foundation for being active global citizens in the future. “Being global citizens is expected of them in order for them to be leaders in college in whatever field they enter,” added Waters. Furthermore, by inviting guest speakers such as former teachers, alumni, or people from non-governmental organization, SHS is able to “have an ecosystem outside of school,” or “an extended community,” added Favretti.

Many SHS students who attended these workshops came out of them moved and inspired by the speakers. “Well I was glad we were able to set aside some time apart from schoolwork during the day and learn more about the issues and happenings in our world,” stated Olivia Leone ‘17. Furthermore, some of the speakers resonated with SHS students because of similar experiences they had in common. “Because my grandparents also survived the Holocaust, it moved me. In addition, the fact that he could not retell his experience without crying especially moved me, hearing him talk about the heinous acts of the Nazis made me really emotional, in addition to the fact that he was emotional about it as well,” stated Ariel Kachuro ‘17 after listening to Holocaust survivor Peter Somogyi. Global Citizen Day was a special occasion at SHS that allowed both students and staff to learn more about ways that they, too, can take action in the world.

by Samuel Cremieux