On Thursday join North’s JAG students for a cultural day titled “Express Yo Self.” On this day, Students are encouraged to dress in a way that expresses their culture, whether it be race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or traditions. JAG students were learning about inclusive leadership and wanted to share that with the school.

Mrs. Natalie Toney said “The past PBL or project based learning my students were studying was on inclusive leadership and diversity and being inclusive as a leader of everyone and their ideas no matter who they are or where they came from, and when we finish a project we do a public product or something to educate other people. So the students decided that they would share inclusiveness with the school, so we called it Express Yo Self to encourage students to express their own culture. And most of the time people think of culture the think like your race or nationality, but we wanted it to be even broader than that if somebody is catholic and they want to wear something that shows they’re catholic they can if someone is proud of being a women or transgender or Muslim we want them to express that.”

Throughout the day Mr. Padgett and Mrs. Natalie Toney will have fun decorations and selfie props under the tower during passing periods and lunch that you can use in your selfies. This is a day to celebrate, accept and respect each other’s differences.

“I really hope other students will be respectful, I hadn’t even thought about appropriation until today and now I’m a little worried. But I really hope students will be respectful and it’s why we’re really saying express your culture or yo culture, I hope other students won’t appropriate from other cultures” said Mrs. Natalie Toney. We ask that you take pictures with someone else from a different culture and share it on your social media with the hashtag #expressyoselfjagday.