With the third Monday of January being the federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., City High will once again hold a day of learning designated to the holiday. Due to weather conditions and Covid-19, this annual activity has not been held in-person for more than two years.

“The idea [of this day] is that we all will be actively engaged in the day of learning and celebrating Dr. King and everything that he stood for,” Bryan Parker, one of the coordinators of the event, said.

Originally meant to be held on Thursday, January 20, the learning day had to be canceled due to extreme temperatures.  The date has been rescheduled for the first Thursday of the third trimester, March 3.

The first half of the learning day will start out with the same schedule for all students. After reporting to their advisory classrooms to check over schedules, students will listen in on meaningful discussions with two guest speakers, Dr. Micheal Benitez and Doug Christie. 

During these webinars, questions will be posed for classmates to discuss. Each guest speaker will share their roles in establishing racial equality as well as their encouragement on how students can participate in promoting diversity in their own communities. 

“This year is kind of a hybrid of the two [previous Days of Learning], where we’re having two district speakers, but also having the on-campus led sessions,” Parker said. “There’s more ownership from everyone involved, and people have the choice of choosing some impactful and powerful areas they want to dive into.”

After the morning guest speakers, lunch will be held for one hour, with juniors and seniors allowed to leave campus. The afternoon will be broken into three sessions, where students will attend the activities they have selected.

“There will be some new sessions that are offered, as well as some fan favorites, like Andre Wright’s Humanize My Hoodie movement,” Parker said. “One [session] that will be new, The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, will look at a documentary of a composer who put together this piece of music and dives deep into the conversations that need to be had around that. I think that session will be really powerful because it looks at how we bring up the conversation and how we approach subjects that are very delicate and serious to talk about. There are a couple of sessions in the afternoon around that as well.”