November 19, 2019 held a special promise for the Riverdale community: a day off classes. However, One World Day proved to be so much more. On this day, high schoolers listened to poetry, wrote stories, attended workshops, participated in improv, and even indulged in a donut wall and a chocolate fountain, all with the goal of coming together as a community to explore storytelling. 

Ms. Phyllis Dugan, the Coordinator of Experiential Education and the mastermind behind One World Day, explained that a day like this “is important to reset and to think about deeper learning.” Unlike a normal school day, where Ms. Dugan believes students are very focused on completing specific tasks for specific goals, One World Day creates “a space where [students] can...enjoy the process of learning and...the people around [them] and not feel like [they] have to be in a space of performance to get to some certain expectations.”

Ms. Dugan also hoped One World Day would help Riverdale students come together. The theme itself was a community effort. After last year’s event, students were sent a form in which they could reflect on the day and suggest a theme for the following year. After multiple students wrote that they would be interested in it, the administration landed on storytelling. 

Photography teacher Mr. Peter Simon, who ran the workshop “Every Picture Tells a Story,” appreciated the theme because he believes “storytelling permits everything: it permits you to invent stuff, it permits you to imagine stuff, and there are hundreds of ways to go after it.”

With the theme in place, Ms. Dugan asked teachers if they’d be interested in leading workshops and asked students about workshops they’d enjoy. She then reached out to outside organizations to find different perspectives around storytelling. Finally, she placed students in workshops they’d be interested in. Ms. Dugan worked hard to make sure everyone would have a good time. For example, when some students only filled out one top choice in the Google Form, she went into Veracross to see which classes they took and placed those students in workshops that aligned with their interests. 

The day ran very smoothly, and Ms. Dugan did learn from the experience. Juniors and seniors started off with a Food Extravaganza. In this activity, students used their phones to respond to prompts from a projector, asking them to share various things, like stories about that morning in five words. Ms. Dugan reflected that students did not take the activity seriously, and she will have to think about other ways to create shared group experiences for students.

Leading up to his workshop, Mr. Simon was nervous to work with students that he didn’t know who might not understand what he was trying to get at. However, his group was successful, and he explained, “It was amazing; it was so impressive and very varied.”

Students, too, appreciated their workshops. Junior Marie Shpilrain felt that both of her workshops, “Walk in My Shoes: Storytelling through Virtual Reality” and “The Art of the Game: Storytelling Through Board Games,” gave her a chance to explore her story through different lenses. Shpilrain explained, “I think it’s really interesting how two completely different things were able to combine together…to tell stories.”

Junior Richard Diamond also attended the board games workshop, but explained, “I didn’t really see how [storytelling] factored into my activity, but [it] was really fun.” In contrast, he did not enjoy his other workshop as much, which he believed did incorporate storytelling. Overall, Diamond had a positive experience and was able to embrace the break from school, but he did not think One World Day unified the community. He reflected, “It was fun, and I enjoyed my groups, but I didn’t think we came together. I think you come together in Constructing Olympics or Field Day.”

Ms. Dugan hopes to continue “to build upon that sense of community and [try] to have it spread further” in future years. She recognizes that although a lot of students enjoy One World Day, others “think it’s a waste of time.” Ms. Dugan wants to access this group and understand, “What do you want your experience to be?”

In the end, Ms. Dugan reflects, “For me, One World Day is all about the students, and I just want you guys to have a great experience.”