Maysoon Zayid

by Polly Kimberly

Springside Chestnut Hill Academy sophomore Jaelyn Wingard knew it would be a long shot when she invited actress, comedian and activist Maysoon Zayid to be the keynote speaker for SCHout, a multi-school disability conference she was working on.

Zayid is an internationally renowned standup comedian whose performance schedule is intense – she once performed in Greece, Israel, and Toronto in the space of three days. But Zayid has cerebral palsy, as does Wingard, and when she received a letter in which the aspiring student expressed her hopes and dreams for the conference, she couldn’t say no.

“I never do stuff like this,” said Zayid, whose domestic speaking fee was significantly above the budget for this fledgling, student-run conference. “But Jaelyn’s letter was so authentic, I had to come here.”

“Since a young age, I’ve wanted to find other people who have similar struggles as I do, so that we can talk and understand one another,” wrote Wingard in her letter to Zayid. “This year, I decided to start a conference for disabled high school students. This way, all disabled students in the area can converge and identify ways that our problems can be overcome.”

As the conference took shape throughout the spring semester, Wingard and other student leaders decided to broaden the scope and attract as many high school students as possible, representing all abilities, who were interested in the topic of diversity.

The student corps of SCHout facilitators was a group of 10th through 12th graders who had already sharpened their facilitator skills leading school discussions and activities around issues such as racial identity and socioeconomic status as part of Martin Luther King Day programming and the Upper School’s annual Day of Understanding. In its final design, SCHout 2016: Access and Opportunity spotlighted ability, but explored many other identifiers as well, using the themes of access and opportunity to frame students’ thinking about how various pieces of an individual’s identity affect his or her access to resources and opportunities.

This past Saturday, Wingard’s dreams and hard work came to fruition as approximately 90 students gathered in the SCH Academy auditorium to listen to Maysoon Zayid deliver a wickedly funny standup routine that contained serious messages about the value of diversity, the necessity of developing an authentic ethos of inclusion, and the very simple advice, “Don’t be mean.”

Leaning forward to emphasize this point, Zayid went on, “The next time you’re thinking of writing something mean on social media, just YouTube ‘cats and cucumbers’ instead. I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.”

Following Zayid’s keynote, students dispersed into small groups, where student facilitators led participants through a story exchange designed to cultivate empathy, a provocative discussion about disability as a social construct, and various social action workshops created around identifiers such as race, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation.

“I learned so much at SCHout,” said Parker Kimberly, a Moorestown Friends School ninth grader who attended. “At the end of the day I understood so much more about people with disabilities. And Maysoon Zayid was amazing. I feel blessed to have heard her speak.”

Wingard, who in addition to having conceived of the conference, was a student facilitator, commented, “I can’t stress enough how relieved I was that people were open to the idea of ability and also how open and enthusiastic and honest people were all day. Especially in my group, I was happy about how in-depth we got about various topics, which is what I’ve always wanted. I had hoped for people to be interested and engaged in learning about ability, and that’s exactly what happened!”