San Diego Star Student Is A Proven Leader, Community Builder

SAN DIEGO, CA — Star Students are found in classrooms, on concert and theater stages and at debate lecterns, and out in the community doing good things to make life better for all of us.

Here at Patch, we've launched an initiative to help recognize Star Students, and we're working to tell the stories of these outstanding kids to their neighbors.

This submission comes from Christen Tedrow-Harrison who nominated her student, Sophie White of San Diego.

Star local student's name

Sophie White

Star local student's home state

California

How do you know the star local student?

Student

Why do you believe the star local student should be recognized?

Beginning in 2019, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Sophie White in her sophomore year of high school. Sophie ran for awareness director, an elected position on the Associated Student Body (ASB). Since then, Sophie and I have worked on a broad host of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) efforts for the high school community at Francis Parker and beyond.

Sophie's position on ASB predates my time at Parker; however, Sophie brings a level of community organizing, collaboration, and empowerment for young people that was unparalleled. Not only did Sophie continue with the position's goals, but she also created fresh and much-needed new opportunities for the role, school, and broader San Diego community. Part of Sophie's responsibilities in the position is to organize student-related events and programs focused on DEIB, such as Day of Understanding, Awareness Week, cultural and heritage months or events, and more. Sophie learned so much in her two-year term as awareness director, and through her work with CASL she quickly began to strategize and resource share with other student leaders to create DEIB student leadership positions within other schools utilizing the ASB by-laws of those school communities. In the 2022-23 school year, San Marcos High School and Patterson High School will officially have their first-ever awareness director positions on the schools' ASBs.

Continuing in the vein of power-sharing in 2021, Sophie established Parker's first-ever Equity Council, which brings together student leaders of our school's identity-based clubs like Umoja, Gender Sexuality Alliance, Latino Student Union, Asian Student Union, Jewish Teens, etc. to learn about coalition building. Sophie's multiracial identity has always been something of extreme importance to her, and she believed having a place for student voice and representation for both the Asian and multiracial experience was of extreme value. As such, Sophie is a founding member of Parker's first-ever Asian Student Union. With the support of the faculty club advisor, Sophie curates different meeting topics and events for our high school students to learn about, from, and with the AAPI community.

Sophie is the type of student leader that shows up early, jumps right in and does the heavy lifting without ever having to be asked. She is a tremendous organizer, who brings attention to detail and technical skills that all social justice movements, programs, policies, and events need. Sophie is not the type of leader that keeps those skills to herself either; she builds bridges with and among other students via mentorship and recruitment for a variety of student-leadership opportunities, not only for Parker students, but within the regional and state community.

Sophie's leadership acumen and ingenuity is bolstered by her partnership with CASL, and in the spring of 2022, Sophie was elected as the CASL board president. Additionally, Sophie was one of five student leaders from Parker to spearhead the Regional Student Diversity Summit (RSDS) in its inaugural year in 2021, and she continued in 2022. She is one of the only student leaders to recruit student participants from a wide-variety of schools from across the county to attend RSDS 2022 (e.g. public, private, charter, etc.).

Sophie has also been nominated and won a number of student leadership awards such as President's Volunteer Service Award (327 volunteer hours) and Francis Parker's Mission Award (2022).

As an adult who has had the opportunity to work with many student leaders in my 16 years in education, I am in awe of Sophie's level of commitment, organization, diligence, and ability to community build.

What's one thing you want everyone to know about the star local student?

As strong of leader as Sophie is, she is also kind, compassionate and caring.

Congratulations on your achievements, and all of our best wishes to you in the future, Sophie White!

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