Finding The Mouth’s Voice: An Interview with Fiona Bird

In one of her early years at Four Rivers, Fiona Bird picked up a copy of The Mouth. Told that it was the school’s student newspaper, she read through it, seeing only pieces from teachers, juniors, and seniors, she put it back down, feeling that she was not exactly the target audience. Today, Bird has taken over as lead editor of The Mouth, and intends to transform it into something that is truly by and for the entire student body. Having co-led various walkouts and after years of advocating for student voices, Bird also seeks to imbue The Mouth with that same culture of activism. I sat down to talk with her about this, and from a zoom background decorated by various paper birds, we discussed activism, student representation, and an increasingly satirical world.

Let’s start this very NPR style. Fiona Bird, tell me about yourself.

Hi, I’m Fiona Bird. I don’t have much of a self these days, as I’m applying to college during quarantine, and that’s very stressful. I’m 17, I’m a senior in high school, I care a lot about what’s going to happen to my generation, I think that climate change is definitely coming and we’re going to have to deal with it. I consider myself an activist, but I definitely go about it in an alternative way, as in I think of myself as more of a James Baldwin than a Martin Luther King. I’m not giving speeches, instead I’m sort of behind the scenes, doing the intellectual and emotional work for the movements that I’m a part of, specifically stuff that I’ve done with my peers at school with gun violence. That’s what’s on my mind at this part of my life.

You’re very tuned in to social justice causes and activism. When was that instilled in you?

You know, it didn’t come on as early as it could have. I’ve always had kind of a rocky relationship with authority, throughout all of elementary school, and once I realized my power, and had certain adults telling me that I had to right to ask for what I want and what I deserve, that’s when I realized I wanted to use my creative skills and my intellectual skills to tell people what I think needs to happen in the world. With Four Rivers asking me to do that as part of the curriculum, as well as working through conflicts with the administration at Four Rivers, I accumulated a lot of practice in that. Plus, I find it really satisfying, and that’s why I want to keep doing it.

Do you have any particular stories about your rocky relationship?

I always talk about, in elementary school, there was this kid named Joey A. He had got his Kindle taken away from him for reasons that were probably good but not good enough in my mind. And I led a sit-in at my principal’s office, and I wouldn’t leave after school got out, and I didn’t even know what a sit-in was. But after learning about the Civil Rights Movement, I said oh, ok, there might be a connection, people might have done this before. But more recently, the second walkout we led, in 2019, it was tricky. There was a lot of poor communication between students and staff on the morning of the walkout. An attempt was made to compromise our act of civil disobedience with something a little more benevolent. We were rushing around that morning trying to communicate to the school what the administration was saying--it was just this group of four young women and these two white men in a small room and we just could not finish our sentences without being talked over. Obviously a lot has changed since then, but that really stuck with me.

Were there more experiences like that at Four Rivers?

I would say, in terms of communication issues, yes, you were there. In the science room. When a meeting was held for division two, which was the division having all the fiery conversations about the incident of a teacher using a racial slur. The meeting was advertised on one whiteboard in the downstairs hallway, and when I saw I said, what, I want to go to this! I missed Wellness, I showed up and sat down in the back. Eventually, the meeting deteriorated into the principal sitting on a table making eye contact with the dean over the students and talking about us in the third person. Obviously everyone was fired up, but I thought that discussion had the potential for civility. It ended up making me feel disrespected.

What do you do with those instances of disrespect from the administration?

After an upsetting hallway confrontation regarding COVID communications in which I was repeatedly talked over by members of administration, I went outside, and I was kicking rocks and wondering when I was ever going to be listened to. I felt pretty lost. I think the best thing to do is just talk to other people. Write about it, document it, make sure that people know that I’m having this experience so that if they have this experience, we can connect over it. All of the issues I’ve seen, walkouts, sexual harassment, anything, people are worried that nobody else is thinking what they’re thinking, that nobody else is having an experience where they’re being belittled. Lack of validity means that they don’t say anything about it. But connecting about those things builds power.

You’ve taken over The Mouth this year. If connections build power, what do you see as The Mouth’s role in building those connections?

Oh, The Mouth is everything. I think that social justice at Four Rivers needs to be led by the students, at least in terms of social justice regarding the students. Our student body is more diverse than our administration, and we’re all young people, and they’re not, meaning that I think our opinions on what’s going to happen to the world have a little more stake. I think that having The Mouth be a collection of student voices and opinions is crucial to that. Being able to publish your experience, and have other people read that, and understand that their similar experience is valid, is not something that can happen anywhere else at Four Rivers. It’s an all-school thing. It’s essential that everyone is communicated to, in order for any changes to be made. The Mouth being student led gives it a special way-in to inciting student action.