Tabor Academy Hosts 13th Annual Asian American Footsteps Conference

Every spring, students from independent schools in the New England region gather to engage in community building and learning as part of the Asian American Footsteps Conference (AAFC). Tabor Academy was honored to host the conference this year and welcomed over 360 students from more than 40 institutions to campus on April 13. 

Founded in 2011, the Asian American Footsteps Conference is a daylong series of empowering student-led workshops, select speakers, activities, and networking opportunities for Asian, Asian American and mixed-heritage Asian students attending independent secondary schools in New England. It creates a welcoming learning space to explore current issues and engage in discussions about the many cultures they represent.

The conference is hosted by a different institution each year and is spearheaded by a student leadership team at the host school. Tabor's team of fourteen students took on all logistical aspects of the conference, including marketing and communications, registration, workshop solicitation and selection, and day-of operations.

Planning committee co-leader Haisu "Sue" Zhao notes that the planning process was a welcome challenge that required balancing the added work of the conference on top of their day-to-day academic and extracurricular commitments.

"We divided the planning team into four committees - logistics, communications, workshops, and marketing and media and had one adult supervisor oversee each committee. As a student-led planning process, I have learned to be resilient and proactive, actively reaching out to adults and student leaders for support. I felt very grateful to see all of us coming together towards the final stretch" Zhao says.

This year's theme was How We Tell Our Stories and featured more than 50 student-led workshops including:

• Brushstrokes of Identity: Asian American Stories Through Art
• Fluent in Culture: Exploring Connection to Culture Through Language
• Does Cultural Purity Truly Exist? China & Japan's Cultural Interaction
• A World on a Plate: How Food Unites Cultural Identities
• Asian Influence on Global Economies: From Silk Road to Silicon Valley

The Keynote speaker was Tessa Hulls, an artist, writer and self-described adventurer. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal, and her comics have been published in The Rumpus, City Arts, and The Margins. Her current project, Feeding Ghosts, is a graphic memoir that traces three generations of women in her family across a backdrop of Chinese history to explore the complicated ways that mothers and daughters both damage and save one another.
 

By fostering an inclusive environment that celebrates cultural diversity, the event helped participants reflect on their shared history while also celebrating their unique cultural expressions. The conference's multi-faceted approach ensured that participants were equipped with the tools to engage in meaningful conversations with each other, promote advocacy, and celebrate the resilience, creativity, and power that comes from a unified community. 

Reflecting on the success of the conference Zhao says, "All of us managed to problem-solve with collective wit and pulled together with great energy and enthusiasm. It was really rewarding to see each room bubbling with conversations, art making, dancing, or whatever activity they were doing and it was truly a pleasure to hear people commenting how great the workshops were."