D-E’s first Upper School Assembly of the year—which tapped into our “shared history” living in Englewood and the surrounding areas—was presented this week in Schenck Auditorium by Mr. Joel Lee ’17, Assistant Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging. “My inspiration for the presentation was having learned about Englewood history in eighth grade [here at D-E] and that having a deep impact on me as a student and person living in Bergen County,” he says. The assembly focused on activists who protested de facto school segregation in Englewood during the Civil Rights Movement; the “redlining” of racially diverse areas that were deemed “hazardous”—a misinformed belief that Mr. Lee recalls continued into his childhood when he was cautioned to avoid places “beyond the train tracks”; and how D-E was a school ahead of its time in terms of its desegregation efforts. Mr. Lee shares that it’s important to see history not as a big, abstract concept, but as something tangible that impacts the places we call home, work, and school. It was a well-received, thought-provoking assembly to kick off the school year.
