Last year, the MLK ASM Keynote Speaker was award-winning author Angie Thomas
To the casual onlooker, dissonance about jazz or internet slang may not seem to relate to the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. or his legacy. However, this MLK Day, these will be just two of thirty topics that students will have the opportunity to explore in connection to MLK through student and faculty-led workshops.
Char Esty, Coordinator of the Office of Community and Multicultural Development, expressed her enthusiasm for this year’s diversity of student-led workshops, emphasizing their contemporary relevance. She connected MLK Day to the current political and social climate, highlighting the significance of this year’s themes in addressing contemporary issues and concerns.
“Thinking about the current political and social context, especially with Inauguration Day and MLK Day being on the same day, we have a couple [workshops] that link those two major historical and political kinds of landmarks. So talking about access to education and political polarization, talking about Trump’s tariffs, ones that are really contemporary and pertinent in that way. I think [they] are exciting for this year,” said Esty.
Cate Cummings ’26 was one student who highlighted the inclusive range of topics for this year’s MLK Day workshops. She emphasized the importance of addressing disparities recognizing the workshops as an opportunity to foster understanding and inclusivity within the Andover community.
“What I’m most excited about is to see how my peers, and especially those in my grade, are trying to create workshops that are all-inclusive. That will be something that’s interesting for all of us, even if some of us might not fit into the certain demographic that the workshop is about. I think that it is really important to educate everyone about the racial, sexist, ageist, ableist, and other disparities that we’ve been facing forever, and even though we’re much more improved than before, there’s still so much we can learn about coming from a diverse community,” said Cummings.
Having run a workshop on Chinese geopolitics for MLK Day last year, John Fernandez-Suarez ’25 appreciated the freedom of the workshop program as it allowed him to delve deeper into specific, nuanced topics in his presentation. He shared his thoughts on the MLK Day program and the main idea of his workshop titled “Many Masks of Zorro.”
“The core message of my program is to show how different stories can be used by different people and how [Zorro the vigilante was] originally taken out of context, serialized and commercialized and eventually reclaimed by Latino Americans… It’s important to tell stories, and it’s important to track how stories change and mold depending on how people need them to,” said Fernandez-Suarez.
He continued, “I hope to tell through my two years of doing [these workshops for] the Andover community that if you have a really interesting idea that can relate to Martin Luther King Jr. and his ideas in fighting for a better world and social justice, you can really put it into a presentation and you can have a lot of fun presenting it to the wider school community.”
Karen Douyon, Teaching Fellow in the Theatre and Dance, will be covering a workshop on the histories of Black theater. Connecting her experiences with MLK Day to the workshop program, she appreciated how it offers an opportunity to engage with the Andover community on a higher level.
“MLK Day has always been really important for me. I’ve done a lot of different things in the past, whether it’s community service, working with my school, or running an MLK Leadership Summit at my old school. It’s always been a passion of mine to get involved and do things in whatever community I find myself in, and it was just a no-brainer for me to try and find my way into the MLK Day workshops. Whether [I’m] engaging in workshops that students are putting on or outside members coming to speak [and] be a part of one,” said Douyon.
She continued, “Natalya Baldyga, [Instructor in History] and I are going to do as much of a deep dive as we can into the histories of black theater that often go unnoticed or underappreciated… We plan on talking about how it’s really important to discuss how we got here and how these creative individuals transcended the constraints of white culture, especially in theater, TV, film, writing plays, and creating spaces [while] not having the ability to have access to resources in the same way.”
In reflecting on the purpose of MLK Day and its connection to Andover’s campus, Esty explained how in addition to recognizing the fight for civil rights, it provides an important opportunity for Andover students to grow and learn something new.
“The mission of [MLK Day] is just to acknowledge the ongoing fight for civil rights and for social justice on campus and beyond, and so we really love to highlight those. This is the only day that people are required to participate in programming connected to identity, social justice, civil rights, and multiculturalism. That’s something that’s really, really exciting. So that’s the big framing. We hope that by having different offerings and speakers, there’s something for everyone to enjoy, take away, and learn, because there is always something to learn,” said Esty.
