[MUSIC PLAYING] ASHANTI BRANCH: Last time I was in this building was, I think, 2018. And so I just came up and I was like– as we turned around, I’m like, oh my god, there’s the mask.

LAURYN STEPHENSON: Yeah.

ASHANTI BRANCH: And then, this is when it all happened. I was like– and I got super excited.

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LAURYN STEPHENSON: The Masks We Wear was a project I did in my 10th grade humanities class. It was inspired originally by a talk I had heard Ashanti Branch do three years prior to this project.

I had heard him speak about his work in Oakland with students, and his project was speaking to students about masking. And I really wanted to incorporate that into my class. It was part of a longer semester-long project about truth. And I really wanted to start the year off speaking to students about their truth and helping them to discover their authentic selves within our school community.

The reason I wanted to bring this project into my humanities classroom, not as an extra piece, but as the content, is because I do think that SEL is imperative. I think that engaging in identity work is also about developing who you are. And that’s one of the biggest competencies of high school.

ASHANTI BRANCH: And I thank you for doing that. I am passionate about– I know it’s hard. It’s hard conversations. It’s hard because it’s hard. It’s hard work, you know?

I think that’s– heart work is hard work too, you know? It’s not just the academic work that’s hard. Talking about this stuff that’s in my heart is hard if I believe that no one cared.

LAURYN STEPHENSON: The standards I used were the Teaching and Learning for Social Justice website. So we did a couple of the standards based around increasing empathy for others, and also, understanding that people are going through things that you don’t see, just like you’re going through things that they don’t see, and to be proud of your identity even with all of that.

ASHANTI BRANCH: Young man whose mask– the way he drew it, when I first looked at it, based on, like, if you look at volume, he wrote a lot less, but it was really powerful what he wrote around that one eye. Like, he rewrote some things like, the darkness is overcoming the light. He really related that to his own life. I mean, that’s super powerful, right?

And students, when they can come to the place and, like, let me just– let me try and explain it to you. Let me show you, try and do my best to explain it to you. And to be like, oh, I would have missed all of that. Right? I would have missed all of that.

I don’t want to make assumptions, right? So what do you want me to know? Like, what are you willing to let me know about you so that I can at least understand you?

LAURYN STEPHENSON: They know that people are making assumptions about them, and they know that a lot of those don’t match up with who they see as their own identity. So, like, putting it out there, like, what are you? Who are you behind all of that? But to say, like, hey, that’s not me, and then, recognize, oh, those assumptions that I’m making about others, that’s not you either.

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