Powerful Student Storytelling Anchors 2026 Culture & Community Week

The centerpiece of Colorado Academy’s third annual student-led Culture & Community Week, held March 16–20 throughout the Upper School, was the powerful and deeply personal stories about identity, family, and belonging shared during a performance by five courageous students on the stage of the Leach Center for the Performing Arts—in front of a rapt audience of some 400 of their peers.

Junior Jay Bhandari explained, “Not many people out there know the real Jay. People who think they know me think I’m loud, I’m light-hearted. And while that’s part of who I am, it’s not really me. I keep identifying myself with a culture that knows nothing about me. Why?”

 

Bhandari’s words came toward the beginning of nearly an hour’s worth of riveting storytelling, all focused on the week’s guiding theme, “Embracing Identities: Listening, Respecting, and Holding Space for One Another.” Throughout the winter and early spring, CA’s Culture & Community Student Leadership had worked with Dr. Camille James, Director of Upper School Culture & Community, to plan five days of activities built around this central idea.

The daily discussions, games, conversations, and presentations aimed to inspire genuine dialogue across grades, cultures, and life experiences, focusing on topics such as “Exploring Identity,” “Listening with Curiosity,” “Respect in Action,” “Holding Space for Others,” and “Strengthening Our Community.” From moments of candor in Advisory and classroom sessions early in the week, to the culminating group celebrations on the final day, students were encouraged to reflect on their own experiences and views alongside those of their peers.

 

The featured student narratives, anchoring Wednesday’s activities, drew the week’s mission into razor-sharp focus. The speakers—Bhandari, Senior Alexis Ayala Ramirez, Junior Eimi Caro, Senior Kaley Chavez Garcia, and Senior Mitchell Sindler—had put their collective performance together with the help of Haseena Hamzawala, the Youth Engagement Director of Penumbra Theatre Company, a nationally recognized organization based in St. Paul, Minn.

As Upper School Principal Max Delgado noted, “This is the third year of our collaboration with Penumbra, the only Black professional theater company in the U.S. We partnered with Penumbra because the ideas of belonging and self-expression are core to their inclusive mission.”

 

Said Hamzawala of the students’ efforts, “Sometimes these stories are really joyful, and sometimes these stories are complicated, and sometimes they’re really painful. But the important thing is that they’re their stories. They are genuine stories, and in a world where you don’t always get to say what you want to say when you want to say it, it is important that that can happen here today.”

Beneath the surface

Then, the students’ own words were center stage, as they did something quietly extraordinary: telling the truth about who they are, without pretending that identity is simple, finished, easy to explain, or necessarily comfortable or convenient for others.

They began almost casually, with friendly-sounding introductions: “Hi, I’m Mitchell… Hey, I’m Kaley… Hi, I’m Eimi… I’m Jay… I’m Alexis…”

But as Ayala Ramirez, the first speaker, noted, identity is not something one can communicate in a simple sentence; it is something you wrestle with.

“The story people tell about me is one of tragedy—a story about poor parenting, and hardship and struggle. Writing about tragedy is what I’m used to. I was taught to emphasize tragedy, to make people feel sorry for me. But that’s not the way I want to continue living,” began Ayala Ramirez. 

 

He acknowledged the hardships he and his family faced—a father struggling with a history of alcoholism, a mother disabled by a stroke, grandparents battling illness, a life of working multiple jobs just to keep the lights on and pay the rent—but he refused to let that be the whole story.

“Yes, my life is one of hardship, but it’s also one of endurance, compassion, patience, and caring. Not many people know that I was the one who talked my father out of drinking by reminding him of the man he used to be when he wasn’t. Or that I was the person who drove my grandparents to their hospital appointments before I had my license, in constant fear of being stopped by the police. I’m more than just my family’s tragedies.”

Bhandari echoed the same tension between what people see and what is just beneath the surface.

Distanced from his own family’s origins in India, he said, “I was born in America, and I was raised here, but I don’t feel ‘American.’ I see my Grandma with tears in her eyes while I read her a birthday card in my broken Hindi, and my family’s well wishes after getting good grades in school. This is who I am. But I don’t know how to express it.”

 

At school, he continued, “I smile; I’m loud and obnoxious; I make stupid jokes with others to hide my insecurity.”

The question of identity has dogged Bhandari ever since the first grade, when a teacher asked, “And what’s your identity, Jay?” 

“I was afraid of giving the wrong answer,” he said, “so I just replied, ‘I’m Jay.’”

For Caro, the complexities of identity have always been somehow contained within the seeming simplicity of her name, Eimi, pronounced “Amy.” 

“Those four letters have followed me through a lifetime of assumptions about who people think I am. When people first hear my name and see me, they usually assume one thing—I’m white.”

 

But, she went on, “My pale skin, cinnamon wavy hair, and brown eyes full of dreams don’t immediately tell the story of my family. They don’t reveal that both of my parents are Mexican, or that Spanish was my first language, or that I didn’t learn to speak English until I was four years old.”

“My own name and appearance betrayed my Mexican heritage before I could even get a chance to explain who I am.”

Family and faith

Sindler’s strong connection to his own heritage has never been in doubt. “I love Judaism. I love celebrating it. I love being a part of it.”

Throughout elementary and middle school, he recalled, “I would spend my Sundays at my synagogue studying for my bar mitzvah. … ​​I looked forward to the holidays, such as Passover or Rosh Hashanah, when I would proudly wear my kippah and sing blessings I’d been taught since I was born.”

 

But that faith now exists alongside something new, explained Sindler: fear. “My fear comes from misunderstanding about a topic I rarely mention, a topic where classification leads to hatred, a topic we try to swerve around, but that needs to be called out, so we’re talking about it. It’s Israel.”

“Judaism is suddenly all about Israel, but this isn’t a one-sided story,” Sindler noted. “I was horrified when Hamas attacked Jews across Israel on October 7, 2025, and I was horrified in the months that followed by Israel’s retaliation against Palestine.”

“What matters isn’t people’s political beliefs,” he went on. “It’s that the emotion that resonates most in all this is fear. On high holidays in the past, I got to walk into my synagogue and first be greeted by neighbors, rabbis, and friends. This year, the first thing to greet me was the sight of a sniper on the roof of our Temple, ready to shoot on sight.”

For Chavez Garcia, the ideas of belonging and identity have come to mean something entirely different from family and heritage.

“Most of you know that I have two older sisters, but only two of you in this entire audience know that I also have a brother, who came to us through family friends; even then, you only know that he exists, not who he is to me.”

She doesn’t remember much of the time when her sisters were around, Chavez Garcia explained, “and that haunts me. But Beeto, I can see every moment with him clear as day.”

 

Beeto was a perfectionist, she recounted, especially when it came to his room. “Everything had its place. His bed was so perfectly made. His jackets were hung just right, the pictures aligned perfectly. And that’s where I came in. It became my personal mission to mess it all up. I’d move a picture just slightly out of place, I’d throw his jacket somewhere else, and I’d wrinkle his perfectly-made bed. I loved watching him come home and exclaim, ‘Oh my God, here we go again!’”

But one day Beeto moved out to start his own family. “His absence destroyed me,” Chavez Garcia said.

“Just because someone isn’t related to you doesn't mean they’re not family. My brother taught me that. He taught me that family isn’t just about blood or ancestors or the people you’re technically supposed to belong to. Family to me is the people who spend time with you, the people who teach you things without even realizing it, the people who make your life fuller just by being in it. Sometimes family is the person whose room you purposely mess up, just so you can hear them complain about it later.”

Multiple selves

In looking back on their lives, all five of the student speakers have found themselves embracing something that once felt impossible: nuance, complexity, and a refusal to simplify their identities for the comfort of others.

 

Bhandari eloquently explained, “I was born and raised in Houston, a city known for its diversity and its giant Indian community. For the first few years of my life, my grandparents practically lived with us. I grew up on old Hindi film songs, delicious homemade Indian food, with my full extended family supporting me. This is one part of my identity.”

But as he’s gotten older, he continued, he has begun to think more about the difficulties his family faced. “My mom’s mother was born and raised in Mumbai; her father was from South India. When my mom was five, they moved from India to Queens, New York, where the family couldn’t find a job for a very long time. They were just another set of poor Indian immigrants living in a one-bedroom apartment in the city. This is another part of my identity.”

His father’s father who worked hard to become an American doctor after emigrating; guilt at leaving beloved friends and family in Houston—all are part of his identity, according to Bhandari.

Caro recalled, “My family called me la bonita or La Güera, the light-skinned girl. It was the way my family expressed endearment for me. … I never saw it as a limitation; I simply accepted it as a part of who I am.”

Yet as she entered high school, she felt trapped by the sentiment—just as trapped as she felt by an American culture that didn’t fully accept her.

“People in my own community began finding ways to separate me, to label me as ‘less Mexican.’ The way I dressed was considered too whitewashed. I felt hurt and confused. Why did I feel this pressure to prove something that should have never needed proof?”

At the same time, Caro noted, “I became hyper-aware of my voice, my pronunciation, my grammar, the way I spoke. I started to feel like people at school heard my accent before they heard my ideas. Before high school, I was never afraid to speak; even as a little girl, I always had something to say. I loved speaking my mind. But at school I became quiet. Not because I was ashamed of my accent, but because I was ashamed of what people assumed it meant. Every time I stumbled over a word, I remember thinking, ‘If only they could understand me in Spanish, they would know how smart I am.’”

“So I lived in between,” she went on. “In one space, I felt too Mexican; in another, not Mexican enough.”

Above the surface

But like Sindler, these students found a way to move beyond fear and confusion. 

“To belong asks for an end to hate, but hate has existed long before I was born,” he said. “It will exist long after I’m gone. There’s no speech that can end the rise in antisemitism. I am not condemning political opposition. In fact, I believe the opposite: Political discourse is necessary and healthy for growth and understanding across multiple opinions. Judaism itself notes that debate is not only welcome, but championed.”

 

“My Jewish pride and love for Israel are separate from Israeli politics. As Mark Twain stated, ‘Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.’”

Though she had always thought family was “something automatic, something that existed simply because people shared the same last name, the same house, and the same blood,” Chavez Garcia now understood, “There’s something stronger than that—connection.”

Connection, she said, “shapes the way I now see relationships and honestly, the way that I understand myself. Because of that, sometimes I call my friends my family, too—my sisters and my brothers. That doesn’t make my family any smaller. If anything, it made it bigger, because sometimes, the people who shape your life the most aren’t the ones you’re born with. Now I know family is not something you’re given. It’s something you build.”

Reflecting on his own family’s history, Ayala Ramirez acknowledged, “Yes, I’m afraid of being alone, not having anyone to lean on or anyone to support me through the challenges the world puts in front of me. I’m afraid that my father won’t be at my graduation, that he won’t see me finish my studies, because I know that right now he’s standing in a courtroom wishing that he was with his family.”

Still, he added, “I belong with my dad, who taught me how to endure any challenge. I belong with a man who tied a string to his bicycle and my tricycle to teach me how to pedal forward. … I belong with my mom, who taught me compassion, and how to forgive people even when it wasn’t right to forgive. … I belong with my older sister Sofia, who taught me patience, how to teach someone without being a teacher. … I belong with my younger sister Melanie, who taught me laughter and joy, how to smile when times are rough.”

“I know that I won’t be able to see my father for a long time, but I know that my story isn’t finished. I’ll find a way back out from here.”

Caro shared an important insight, too. “Here I am, my voice shaking, standing before all of you, afraid of the criticism and the comments that might come from sharing my experience. … But eventually, I realized something. The problem was never my name. The problem was the expectation that I should adapt my identity to fit into the way society finds it easiest to categorize me. My name confuses people because I don’t fit into the boxes they expect. I’m Mexican, yet I’m also equally American. … Both of these things exist at the same time inside me, and neither overpowers the other.”

 

“So my name Eimi doesn’t need to explain who I am. My identity may threaten social conformity and confuse people, but it does not confuse me. I am shamelessly proud and authentically myself.”

Bhandari came to his own, similar realization.

“I was afraid of not living up to my own standards of being Indian. I was afraid of not finding my purpose or my identity. For the longest time, I’ve tried to figure out my identity beyond my physical characteristics. From my very first day in first grade to this moment right now, with all of you, I’ve lived through a journey—one which has been difficult, but that’s beginning to feel hopeful.”

“I know my family gives me my identity. My experiences give me my identity, my upbringing. My beliefs, too. I’m sure my definition of identity will change during my life, but this is the beauty of identity: You most likely won’t be the same person 10 years or even 10 days from now.”

“Who knows?” Bhandari asked the audience. “Maybe this identity question isn’t meant to be answered in the first place. So, if I ever get asked in the future, how will I respond? I might tell them, ‘I’m Jay,’ just like my first-grade self did, because what doesn’t matter is your response. It’s the person who says it.”

Holding space

For 400 of their classmates, five brave CA students did not offer clean conclusions, bullet points to take away from Culture & Community Week. What they held out was something more valuable: honesty, and a vivid illustration of the value in asking questions of oneself and the world.

In doing so, they made space—for themselves, and for each other—to belong, not because they fit perfectly into one box, but because they had the courage to stand up and say who they are, even when the answer is still unfolding.