Hana Adham hopes she's inspired teachers at her Waterloo school to make classrooms more inclusive

Hana Adham has spent the last four years working to address systemic racism in her school.

Adham moved from Pakistan to Calgary when she was 10 years old, then to Waterloo in 2017. The Grade 12 student at Laurel Heights Secondary in Waterloo has volunteered for various groups and last spring, ran a conference for teachers, talking about racism in the classroom and how they can be more inclusive.

Adham joined host Craig Norris on CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition to talk about the steps she has taken to help eliminate racial discrimination in classrooms.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Craig Norris: Tell us about some of the work that you've done in your school to help address systemic racism. 

Hana Adham: I actually joined the leadership group in Grade 10 and my first role was as a diversity and inclusion person. So I had to make sure that everything that we were doing was inclusive to all communities. So if we did St. Patrick's Day, I had to make sure that we also did celebrate Holi and EID. 

I also helped start the [Black Student Union] and they were looking for allies. And it was the perfect opportunity because I just started the Tree mentorship and scholarship program. So I was looking for more experience and insight into student experiences in that particular school in Laurel Heights.

I also was an active participant in the Female Empowerment Movement Group at our school. So far, that has been my journey. 

Craig Norris: That is some great involvement. Tell us a bit about your personal experience in classrooms. What about that led to you to host an anti-racism conference for teachers? 

Hana Adham: My Grade ten history teacher, I love him, he's amazing. And we literally talked about everything from the partition of the subcontinent to like fishermen in Ireland. It was all over the place.

And we were allowed to explore everything that we wanted to. It changed my perspective on how included I felt in this classroom.

I just put an extra effort in that particular class because I wanted to, and I felt just so welcome there that it just changed my whole idea on how I see schools in general. 

Craig Norris: What conversations have you had with your fellow students? 

Hana Adham: I put out a survey at the start and I got about like 70 responses and there were quite a few common themes: Teachers were not letting students explore themes that they wanted to, where like they had the opportunity to sit in places like history and even in English exploring different, diverse authors.