Twenty students from Andover attended the annual Asian American Footsteps Conference at Governor’s Academy.
A group of 20 students traveled to Governor’s Academy to attend the Asian American Footsteps Conference (AAFC) on April 14. The AAFC, first founded in 2011 and hosted annually, encourages high school students from a diverse range of independent schools in New England to engage in the workshops and activities provided. This year’s conference included workshops surrounding the theme “Creating Our Narrative.”
The conference was organized into three parts, consisting of time for lunch and two workshops. Angela Zhao ’26, board member of Asian Society, was one of the 20 students who attended the AAFC this year. Zhao reflected on the reason why students like herself were interested in participating in the event and her takeaway from a speech by Simon Tam who spoke about his own experiences to the Asian, Asian-American, and mixed-heritage Asian students.
“A lot of people, including myself, went for the opportunity of meeting other Asian-identifying people in different schools, especially in high school because we’re all around the same age, and it’s just a really good experience to branch out to new people… We had a keynote speaker called Simon Tam. [Through his speech], I learned [about] the power of art and activism together… The second workshop I went to was about Asians in STEM… It was really interesting to know the [actual] statistics since the stereotype is that all Asians do STEM… [However], the statistics showed that about 17 percent of the STEM field is Asian, which may not seem like a lot,” said Zhao.
Darren Xu ’25, who has participated in the AAFC for two years in a row, reflected on how this year’s experience differed from the previous year. Xu applauded other aspects of the event, such as the cuisine, but also hoped for more time to interact casually with others and the school campus.
“This year, [the AAFC] split all Asian students into affinity groups, so I was able to join the Chinese affinity group and [meet] people there… After joining the AAFC this year, I was more interested and inclined to join Asian affinity groups such as the Asian Society on campus… [Also], the food was great at Governor’s Academy… I’d like to see more of that for sure. I think it would be better if students would have more time to walk around the campus because that was something I really wanted to do, and I didn’t have time to do that,” said Xu.
Aya Murata, Assistant Dean of Students and Residential Life, served as club advisor to the Asian Society from 1994 to 2015 and emphasized the importance of creating space for Asian students to delve into their identities and share their unique experiences. She hopes Andover can continue fostering such opportunities for all of its diverse communities.
“We need to create spaces for these kinds of conversations that have to do very specifically with the Asian experience in the United States [of America], whether that’s coming from an Asian international student perspective, an Asian American perspective, or the mixed-race Asian experience, given the large constituency of students that we have here now, and that’s obviously grown over the time that I’ve been a faculty member here. Just trying to create opportunities and experiences for our Asian students to really think about their evolving sense of identity in their spaces in terms of their racial and ethnic identities, especially if they’ve been in a primarily homogenous setting prior to PA,” said Murata.
Fumi Kimura ’25 appreciated how the opportunity allowed him to reconnect with old faces. Kimura also addressed the areas in which the conference could improve for next year to develop a stronger interscholastic network.
“What was really nice was that I have friends in other schools, and so, it was nice to reconvene and get in touch with them [through the conference]. Some of them I haven’t seen for two years, since middle school, so it was very fun to reconnect and talk about experiences… There were so many people, I think Ms. Murata said there were 400 people, and at the end of the conference I only knew ten of them. If there was a time to really interact and get to know people, I think that would be very interesting,” said Kimura.
