Meaningful Preparation Brings Black History Month to Life
While honouring and celebrating Black History Month is an exciting and enriching time, it requires significant preparation and collaboration to get our program off the ground. I have the pleasure of being one of two staff leads working with the Black Students’ Association (BSA), a group that takes considerable pride in producing meaningful programming that is educational and reflective of our core values, such as respect, honesty & compassion. This is no small feat, but as they say, “many hands make light work”.
We started brainstorming themes and ideas for this year’s Black History Month back in September. The students were keen to build on the impact of the Changemakers series we established in 2025, which led to this year’s theme, “Cultivating & Carrying Culture”.
The boys expressed interest in learning from a range of Black professionals as they embark on their own career paths, and thought this would be helpful for other students as well. They also wanted opportunities to learn about the diverse backgrounds of those within our community, since we have Black-Identifying students from various African, South American, and Caribbean countries. To honour this, we set out to plan multiple divisional touchpoints throughout the month to offer as many new experiences and fresh perspectives as possible.
From drumming and dancing in the Lower School to financial literacy and yoga in the Upper School, all eleven school-wide events from this year’s Black History Month fell within one or more of our “experience pillars”. These pillars—academics, Character-in-Action, wellness, community & culture—were designed to support experiential learning, be age- and stage-appropriate for students, engage our staff and faculty, and align with the School’s values and vision. Furthermore, regular meetings with our Academic, Belonging and Library teams helped us confirm the content and messaging for each event.
Our hope was to honour, celebrate, and champion the history and future of Black Canadians in a way that was honest and authentic to the Crescent community, and the feedback that we have received from students, staff and faculty has reflected that. The BSA is proud of the work that we have produced so far and we are excited to keep building onwards and upwards as we close out another fantastic month of programming and start to look towards next February to bring more powerful programming to the school!
