Stay Connected

Nine Sandia Prep students walked away with some powerful knowledge and momentum to create positive change from the recent Fifth Annual New Mexico Diversity Conference for Youth.

The students were among 300 teenagers from around the state who attended discussion groups and workshops on such topics as suicide prevention, student rights, what it means to be an immigrant today, dispelling stereotypes of modern Native Americans, and more.

Planned entirely by and for students, the conference at Highland High School was an opportunity for students fighting for inclusion and social justice to come together, learn from experts on a variety of issues, and brainstorm projects to improve their schools and communities, according to the Youth Celebrate Diversity New Mexico board.

“The main thing that I got out of the conference is that as a teenager, I have the ability to change the way people treat each other by creating ripples of acceptance and equality in my environment,” says Sandia Prep freshman Lucy Tyroler '26.

Prep junior Vivian Thompson  added, “I learned a bunch of new things that I can apply to real life, such as my rights as a student and how to identify racial disinformation. I wanted to attend this conference because I wanted to learn how to create a more diverse community for Prep.”

Head of School Heather B. Mock and faculty member Shanna Wix also attended. “After the sessions, we met back up as a school and talked about what the students had learned in their sessions and how they could apply that to help the Prep community,” Wix says. “It was really inspiring to see them all and hear their thoughts and ideas.”

Prep participants were: Jacob Gutierrez '24, Vivian Thompson '24, Samia Dominguez ’23, Katie Stuecker ’23, Sonya Patel ’23, Liam Andrews '25 , Elizabeth Hermina ’23, Lucy Tyroler '26 and Isabelle Sauerman ’23.

Patel is co-chair of the Youth Celebrate Diversity board, so she helped plan and lead the conference.  "I originally heard about this conference when I was in ninth grade from Empower Prep, and it was nice to be in a space with like-minded young people who wanted to make a change in their community, and that I is why I applied to be on the student board," she explained.

One of the workshops she attended that had a big impact on Patel was called "Don't Forget Your Body and Soul: An Intro to Somatics and Healing Justice," given by Giovanna Burrell. "Through this workshop/presentation, I learned how fighting for social justice can take a toll on your body not only mentally, but also physically; and what it means to be on a healing journey from various systems of oppression that continuously create harm," she says. "I learned how a lot of oppressive systems purposefully separate us from our bodies and healing journeys and how to divest from those oppressive systems."

Prep sophomore Liam Andrews '25 said he attended the conference because he wanted to "get better at being in social situations" and "try to just be a better personal overall."

"The most powerful thing I learned was how our identities are formed," he shared. "You don't really get to choose your inheritance or your background, but it's what you have to live with. Part of that is accepting who you are, acknowledging the good and the bad of who you are, and staying true to your identity without distancing yourself from it."

Tyroler said the most powerful message she heard at the conference was that antisemitism is becoming more common “but that we, as youth, had the power to combat it by promoting change in the way that we speak and act.”

Thompson agreed, adding: "The most powerful message from the conference for me personally was that we don’t have to wait to start creating change. We can start now.”

You can watch a KOAT-TV news story here in which Sonya Patel is interviewed.