Millwood School students attend prejudice awareness summit

courtesy of Betsy Latham

Eight Millwood School middle school students, along with two teachers, attended the Prejudice Awareness Summit (PAS) held on the VCU campus on Thursday, Oct. 15.

The intensive day-long workshop is for middle school students and designed to increase awareness, knowledge, and acceptance of ethnic and cultural differences sponsored by the Virginia Center for Inclusive School, the Junior League, and Wachovia/Wells Fargo. Since its inception, the PAS has provided training to nearly 2,000 middle school students from the metropolitan Richmond area. On average, 28 schools participate in the program annually, each sending eight students and one or two adult sponsors, usually teachers, guidance counselors, or administrators.

The PAS curriculum takes participants through a process of awareness to action. Students learn to recognize prejudice and intolerance, and to respect others. They work closely with their peers from a wide range of ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Trained adult and high school facilitator teams guide the students through small group learning activities that explore personal experiences with discrimination and develop conflict resolution skills. Students and educators develop follow-up plans to take back to their schools to share the PAS message with the larger school community.

Students who attended included Ellie Miller, Stephanie Kiehl, Morgan Norge, Alex Shedd, Brittany Beckwith, Fernando Pascual, Marianne Millischer, and Julius Moten. The students came back to Millwood energized and ready to share their ideas about prejudice awareness with their classmates. They will be presenting a skit at the next middle school morning meeting.