College and Career Specialist Holli Selman notes that International Baccalaureate student Andrea Agola expresses her zest for life, social conscience and leadership skills fearlessly and prolifically with great poise, creativity and genuine caring. Holli Selman describes her as a force for improvement and change in the areas of intercultural understanding and race relations as well as a role model for other students.
Andrea attributes her leadership skills to helping her younger siblings and nine years in the Girl Scouts, where she recently received the Gold Award. Andrea’s mantra is from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian writer, who said, “When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.” This implies that one story isn’t the only story.
In 11th grade, Andrea was inspired by a Black author on a required reading list. She realized that the most authentic interpretation of views, cultures and ideological values come from authors embedded in their own cultures. In her opinion, the authors on the school reading lists were limited and didn’t represent the school audience.
She founded a club at Robinson called R.E.A.D. (Representation in English Allows for Dialogue) and became its first president bolstered by a committee of students from varied backgrounds. They meet regularly and have been reading and discussing books of special interest. They have polled the English teachers, with the full cooperation of the head of the English Department, to learn what criteria are used for making curriculum selections.
R.E.A.D.’s mission is “to collaborate with English teachers to increase POC (person of color) representation in the English curriculum.” The club’s intention is to cultivate awareness of the importance of diversity and inclusion in education, and inspire new perspectives on social issues and the experiences faced by the POC community. The club hopes their actions will lead to more respectful dialogue on social issues by combating racism with art.
“Education should be a steppingstone to viewing others respectfully,” Andrea said. “It can act as a bridge for understanding ethnic and racial differences by uniting everyone around the cause of seeking peace and positive resolutions through understanding of differences.”
Andrea hasn’t limited the goals of R.E.A.D. to Robinson, but has helped organize a Fairfax County chapter of Diversify Our Narrative, a national non-profit organization that seeks to address the imbalances of materials taught in schools, especially in the areas of racial justice and history.