On September 19, the LWHS Head, Heart, Hands EIB Conference Series wrapped up its inaugural year with the "Hands" track, when over 100 students, educators, families, and community members gathered in the LWHS Library for a morning of craft, creativity, and activism. While the "Head" track sparked dialogue and the "Heart" track invited reflection, the "Hands" track was all about action: five hands-on workshops designed to turn ideas into practice. Attendees chose from:

• Roots & Reinventions, a live cooking workshop with chef bryant terry, who guided participants through building a black-eyed pea salad from heirloom beans and hyper-local ingredients while tracing the dish's roots from West Africa to the American South.
• Speaking Your Truth, a spoken word workshop with Cal Calamia, a trans marathoner, poet, and inclusivity activist; participants of all experience levels enjoyed crafting original slam performances.
• The Subject of Our Own Stories, an interactive workshop with author Kai Harris, in which participants read and crafted their own coming-of-age narratives using the Black Woman's Bildungsroman as a guide.
• Alternate Framing, a storytelling and photography workshop with artist Leia Chang, where participants brought a meaningful photograph to print and practiced sharing the memory and context behind it. (Fun fact: Leia taught in LWHS' Tech Arts department in 2023-24.)
• Your Voice. Your Presence. Your Impact, a jazz improvisation workshop with Tanya Fitzgerald, using call-and-response and guided exercises to build listening, presence, and confident communication — no musical experience necessary.

The morning closed with small-group reflection and a large-group share-out, giving everyone a chance to find the threads connecting their creative experiences.

In Roots & Reinventions, chef bryant terry led participants through a live cooking demonstration built around black-eyed peas. Cooking with heirloom beans and peak-season produce, terry traced the ingredient's journey from West Africa to the American South, using the dish to unpack how recipes carry stories — and how those stories shift when ingredients are swapped, localized, or left out. He also spoke to something at the heart of the whole series: that feeding and nourishing others can be a political act.

One attendee's reflection captured just how far that idea traveled:

"We attended chef bryant terry's workshop: Roots & Reinventions. I appreciated that he opened up the framework of recipes as being more than just a set of instructions. He explored the stories that are written in recipes and the new stories that are created when local ingredients are used, when certain ingredients are left out, etc. What resonated with me the most is when he talked about how feeding and nourishing others can be a political act. From firsthand experience, I know this issue can be very meaningful to high school students. My son, Arvid, and I had a rich conversation after the workshop."

Across all five workshops, attendees left with tools they can actually put to use in multiple creative ways—to tell stories through food, create spoken word performances, write coming-of-age narratives, share meaningful stories through photographs, and show up with more presence and confidence. This inspiring event provided participants with an opportunity to move "Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging" from the abstract to the concrete. That Saturday in the library, EIB was not merely a phrase on a page, but a room full of people cooking, writing, and creating together.

With "Hands" now complete, the inaugural Head, Heart, Hands EIB Conference Series has taken participants through dialogue, reflection, and now action — a full year of programming built to deepen the LWHS community's shared understanding of equity, inclusion, and belonging.

Thank you to everyone who joined us, and special thanks to bryant terry, Cal Calamia, Kai Harris, Leia Chang, and Tanya Fitzgerald for the generosity, skill, and care they brought to their workshops.