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SPECIAL EPISODE: “Fight for What Doesn’t Fit: Celebrating Students’ Identities, Interests, and Unique Qualities” At the 2019 NACAC national conference in Louisville, Kentucky, Jabari Sellars, a middle and high school humanities teacher at the Sienna School in Silver Spring, Maryland, spoke of the unique interests and experiences of Gen-Z students, our most diverse generation yet. He called on college counselors and admission professionals to “fight for what doesn’t fit” in the standard college transcript. He also asks us to “fight for what doesn’t fit the narrative” and to challenge preconceptions and stereotypes that prevent us from seeing students as they truly are. _____________________________________________________________________ Jayne Caflin Fonash: Hello and welcome to the College Admissions Decoded podcast, an occasional series from the National Association for College Admission Counseling. NACAC is an education association of more than 15,000 professionals at both secondary and post-secondary schools who support students and families through the college admission process. I'm Jayne Caflin Fonash, the president of NACAC. I'm also an independent college consultant who worked for more than 24 years as a public high school counselor in Loudoun County, Virginia. In September of 2019, NACAC held its annual conference in Louisville, Kentucky where the members in attendance heard a remarkable speech from a remarkable young man. His name is Jabari Sellers and he is currently a middle and high school humanities teacher at the Siena School in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is also, in his own words, a proud nerd. Jabari's talk, which you are about to hear is called “Fight for What Doesn't Fit.” In it, he explores some of the unique interests and experiences of today's Gen-Z students, our most diverse generation of students yet. He calls on college counselors and admission professionals to fight for what doesn't fit in the customary college transcript, to recognize students' interests and achievements NACAC College Admissions Decoded: “Fight for What Doesn’t Fit: Celebrating Students’ Identities, Interests, and Unique Qualities” 1 in an untraditional media such as contemporary film and music, as well as underappreciated art forms such as comic books. He also asks us to fight what doesn't fit the narrative and to challenge the preconceptions and stereotypes that prevent us from seeing students as they truly are. Here is Jabari Sellers at the 2019 NACAC national conference. Let's listen now. Jabari Sellers: Peace y’all, peace y’all. How y’all doing this afternoon? All right. Alrighty. Thank you so much for having me here. Thank you president Alice for that very warm welcome and that great introduction. So very, very quickly, I don't want to repeat everything but a little about myself. Yes, my name is Jabari Sellers. I am a humanities' teacher at Siena School in Maryland, where we are serving students who have diagnosed language-based learning differences. I am an English teacher. I am a U.S. Government teacher. I'm also the advisor for our journalism club in our newspaper. But above all things, whether I'm in the classroom or outside of the classroom, I am a proud queer black nerd. Absolutely. One thing that the bio did not have, however, is the fact that last year I served as the assistant to the director of my school's college admissions program, not assistant director, assistant to the director. I was on my Dwight Schrute for a second. Okay? That was because I was just a teacher who wanted to help out my colleague, shout out to Maryanne Carpenter, our director, and I didn't want to step on any toes. I didn't want to get in the way. So after one year, I gained such a great appreciation and a little bit of an understanding of all of the work that goes into helping our students in our families with this process that can be arduous, that can be fulfilling, and is rewarding. But I want to rest assure you all, I am not that person, and I know we all have that person. I'm talking about that person who has just a little bit of experience and then says, "Oh, you know, I'm a master at this." I'm talking about that person who maybe takes one trip outside of their country and then comes back an expert on communities and people just because they did one tour. Or that person who takes one semester of a language and then declares themselves fluently bilingual. I am not that person. So I'm telling you that I am coming from a place of limited knowledge and limited experience within college admissions. But from that place of limited knowledge, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for all of the efforts and hours spent with our families, all of the one-on-one conferences that turn into therapy sessions in your offices every single day. And Lord knows we all need some therapy. NACAC College Admissions Decoded: “Fight for What Doesn’t Fit: Celebrating Students’ Identities, Interests, and Unique Qualities” 2 I want to thank you for making ways out of no way for our families. And so, one last time I want to say thank you for what you do for our students and our families before they begin college, while they attend college, and after they graduate college. Thank you all so very, very much. Now I have a confession to make. So when I heard that I would have the privilege and the honor of speaking with you, I had a decision to make y’all, and I had to decide exactly how many of my hot takes on current events I was going to share with you while I had time on stage. Because I mean, let's keep it real, this is the National Association for College Admission Counseling. And as our loved poet Laureate and Martha Stewart's BFF, Snoop Dogg says, there's so much going on in the LBC. Sometimes it's hard. So I had to decide exactly how many of my opinions would I give on such topics as, well, I don't know how a privileged family with equally privileged children could feel like a fair shot was outside of their legal reach. It was only two weeks you-all. 14 days. A mere fortnight. They out here playing games. Or I could talk about how our underprivileged parents of color, oftentimes pathologized, arrested, jailed, fined for also pursuing that elusive fair shot. Come on now. Or maybe I could talk about what it says about our country and how we see women when only the mothers make the headlines, whereas the fathers and the men who are part and parcel to this don't get that same kind of scrutiny. Quite shameless, but I'm not going to talk about any of that. Not because it isn't important, but because brighter minds and stronger voices, minds and voices that are in here right now, have been talking about that throughout this week and years before. So, I'm going to stick with what I know. I'm going to stick with who I know. And in this case, I'm going to stick with the parents that I know. My mama n‘em, also known as Delphine and William Sellers. Look at him, you-all, they just celebrated their 37th wedding anniversary this summer. And what I know about my parents is that it took one week, only one week in eighth grade for my parents to change the way my teachers saw me, forever. It took one week, one week in eighth grade for me to go from, "Jabari," to, "Oh Lord, there goes William and Delphine's boy." Real quick. So, I want to tell you all that story, and it starts off in a great time in all of our lives, seventh grade. So, after a rough seventh grade, or as I'm sure we can all agree to just call it seventh grade, y’all remember seventh grade, right? That time when we knew everything, and all the changes that were going on with us and the world weren't that big of a deal, and nothing was too overwhelming. Right? NACAC College Admissions Decoded: “Fight for What Doesn’t Fit: Celebrating Students’ Identities, Interests, and Unique Qualities” 3 So after that rough seventh grade, I started eighth grade in all standard level classes. Now the year prior in seventh grade, I was in the AG or academically gifted level classes for my core classes. So that means AG English, AG mathematics, science, and social studies. But this year, for whatever reason, I was now in all standard level classes. Now for me at 13 years old, it didn't matter if it was a standard level, honors, enriched AP, IB. I see school, at that age as nothing but a distraction from the three things that are most important in my life, video games, comic books, and my cartoons, with the occasional slice of pizza. So at 13, it really didn't matter that much to me, which classes I was in. And so for the first couple of days, I was cool. That is until my mom found my class schedule half folded up, half crumpled up in the front pocket of my book bag. Now I don't know about y’all, but ever since I was a little, little, little kid, I have tried so hard to memorize all my parents' mannerisms and their reactions to things.

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