Blog Archives: December 2011
As the year ends
As the year ends, we want you to know how very much the National Youth Leadership Council values the community of which we are a part. The service-learning field has seen its share of heartache – the loss of Learn and Serve funding, as well as triumphs – the amazing youth leaders and their adult mentors tackling real issues and creating positive change around the world.
So this holiday season we say, “thank you” for allowing us to work with you, our amazing partners around the globe. And whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, Festivus, New Year’s or none of the above, we hope you find peace and happiness this season.
Best wishes,
The Staff of NYLC
Youth-Led Social Justice Ambassadors Training
Last Wednesday we, Johanna Keller-Flores and Anna Miller, members of Eco Education’s Youth Advisory Board, held a Social Justice Ambassadors training at Great River School. This was the second step in a series of social justice trainings for students and teachers at our school. The idea for these activities sparked from a national conference on the topic of race and white privilege that we attended in Minneapolis last April. The plan was to introduce these topics to our high school as a half-day event. Forty six students were excused from their classes from 9am to 12:30 pm to participate in the discussions, lessons, and activities that we had prepared. We began with a brief introductory lesson covering the topic of white privilege and race in America. They continued on to activities that brought awareness to where we all stand with our identities and where others stand in racial and social hierarchies. The event ended in small caucus groups that were specific to each racial identity for discussion and reflection about what the activities meant to them, what it means and how it feels to belong to a certain racial identity, and different ways that we could make a positive impact in our school and communities.
For me, Johanna, this training has been a very personal event for me, and an opportunity for self-growth. I am someone who identifies as bi-racial, and having the ideas of white privilege and racial identity with me since the conference we attended, I can feel my outlook on the world and on myself change. You see the flaws in the systems around you, but because things become more clear, the solutions also seem to be in closer reach. I wanted to share these experiences with students at my school, especially because we have such a clear majority of white students.
I, Anna, was so shocked when I went to the white privilege conference in April because I couldn’t believe that I had never learned about this in school especially since it is very prominent in society today, which added to my suprise because up until that point I had thought racism was a thing of the past and isolated cases of prejudice were the only things that remained in its place. I had never thought before, that me just being white could be contributing to racism simply by not acting and it was at that point that I made the decision to take a step against racism in America. This summer, when I went to NYLC’s National Youth Leadership Training summer camp and I had the opportunity to learn about the achievement gap. I realized that white privilege was one of the main reasons that the achievement gap had developed over the years. So in addition to bringing awareness to my peers about the issues surrounding race in America, I wanted to empower them so that they felt smart and successful in school and in life, whatever their definition of success may be.
Currently we are holding weekly meetings with students who were impacted and empowered by the Social Justice Ambassador Training and who want to help us with our next step in strengthening our school community. Our current idea is to hold a school-wide event that takes what we touched upon in the previous training to a deeper level. Additionally we want to continue working with the teachers at our school so that they feel confident in supporting our peers as they begin learning about things that may be hard to deal with on their own.
Anna Miller is an alumni of National Youth Leadership Council's 2011 National Youth Leadership Training
Service-Learning and Social Justice
Earlier this month, I attended the AchieveMpls annual Education Partners Luncheon, “High-Quality Public Schools for All: The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time.” The keynote speaker was former Minneapolis superintendent, Dr. Carol Johnson. Now the superintendent in Boston, Johnson spoke passionately and intelligently of the efforts to achieve equity in public education in the United States, and the causes and effects of persistent achievement disparities among different groups of students. She challenged the audience to do better by our young people, and outlined three key points:
- An 80 percent graduation rate isn’t good enough.
- One great teacher and a great principal won’t cut it—students need a team of caring adults working together.
- Schools alone can’t overcome the disadvantages of poverty. We need a national debate about policies that perpetuate growing income disparities if we are ever going to serve all children well.
Johnson’s passionate speech moved me and others in the audience to tears at times, and for the past couple of weeks as I’ve gone about my work here at NYLC, her words have echoed in my thoughts. It seems to me that service-learning can be a strategy schools can use to connect with all three problems Johnson identified.
Service-learning has been correlated with both attendance and educational aspirations. As an engaging educational strategy, it has the potential to help students see themselves as successful learners in new ways and perhaps help keep them in school as they discover ways to use their learning in the real world.
Service-learning has also been shown to connect students to caring adults in the community and at school. When adults see the contributions and investments young people are making through projects to solve problems in the community, they’re more likely to reach out and help children and youth when they struggle. And children and youth have more varied adults to turn to when they struggle.
And service-learning in its many guises often circles back to the issues of social justice Johnson brought forth. When students and teachers explore the root causes of why we have food shelves, the environmental effects of mining, or the consequences of unmanaged chronic diseases, they often find themselves pushing for civic action and change.
I don’t believe that service-learning is the magic elixir that can fix everything wrong in education today, but it has an important role to play in helping put young people in places where they can contribute in meaningful ways and connect to the wider world. We need their creativity and energy as our partners in making high-quality public education available to all comers.
Presenting and Learning at the Overcoming Racism Conference
This past Saturday I attended the Facilitating Racial Equity Collaborative’s Overcoming Racism Conference in Saint Paul, Minn. and presented a workshop, Engaging Youth in Addressing the Achievement Gap based off of NYLC’s Smart. Youth Solutions to the Achievement Gap. This initiative was proposed by NYLC’s Youth Advisory Council a few years ago. The YAC saw a particular nation-wide need – ameliorating the achievement gap – which they thought ought to be addressed through more specific programming. The Smart Handbook for Students and Facilitator Guide were developed by NYLC in response to this request to describe activities and suggest discussion questions regarding the achievement gap. The workbooks also include extensive resources explaining how to make a service-learning project related to the achievement gap in your community.
It was a diverse crowd at my workshop. There were many educators, youth leaders, and a few college-aged participants. We did an activity from the Smart Facilitator Guide, which participants agreed is a great way for youth to visualize the achievement gap. The activity is called The Human Race and is based around a series of questions to which each participant must respond by stepping forward or backward. The questions center on factors in the individual’s life which are out of his or her control. Take one step forward if both of your parents went to college, take one step back if English is not your native language, take one step forward if you have ever travelled to a foreign country, etc. The participants start shoulder to shoulder in a line, but by the end of the 50 questions, the participants are spread out all over the room.
The exercise provokes discussion topics starting with simply “How did you feel ending up behind or ahead of others?” to “What are these positions metaphorical of?” There was extensive discussion amongst the participants – I spoke for a small portion of the workshop, and the rest of the time was taken up with participant discussion. Throughout the workshop I was able to cite examples of exemplary projects implemented by our Youth Advisory Council, enliven interest in trainings with NYLC, and entertain questions about possible National Youth Leadership Training attendance next summer!
Throughout the day there were courageous conversations going on within the diverse conglomerate of conference attendees. I went in to the conference confident in my expertise on racism, and when I left I realized I knew much less than I thought I did. The conference endowed me with a deeper understanding of the systemic racism we talk about in our Achievement Gap workshop, but also gave a greater context for any interaction relating to a racial issue, whether at home, in public, or in the workplace.
The Value of Building a Service-Learning Environment
I was first introduced to the concept of service-learning in a sociology course I took in college. Having the opportunity then to see the readings and theories that were a part of the curriculum come alive in the community had a profound impact on my understanding of the course content. I’ve since carried that experience with me post-college to my current position on staff at the National Youth Leadership Council, which has given me the chance to share that understanding with others, particularly youth.
Earlier this fall, I had the unique opportunity to join the NYLC program staff and be a part of a service-learning kickoff event at Anthony Middle School in south Minneapolis. Though it is becoming increasingly common for schools and even entire districts to integrate service-learning into their curriculum, this was the first time I had seen a school-wide commitment to service-learning firsthand.
In lieu of a traditional day of classes, the entire sixth-grade spent the morning participating in sessions related to the service-learning activities they would be participating throughout the year. NYLC staff led several Service-Learning 101 sessions, where community problem-solving was addressed as a core concept of service-learning and students were divided into groups that dug deeper using four steps—Investigate, Plan, Take Action, and Evaluate.
When asked, some students talked about their experiences in their neighborhoods witnessing bullying or littering and how they took action, or didn’t. It was encouraging to see their faces light up in response to simply asking for their perspective and giving them a chance to express their youth voice. When we framed the idea of service-learning in this way, their small group discussions took on a life of their own.
Immediately after meeting with our main contact at the school—a teacher who organized the event—it became apparent how much planning and logistical support went into making that day a success for the students. Without the enthusiasm and attention to detail of administrators, buy-in from teachers, support from parents, and resources from outside organizations like NYLC, these students would hold a very limited view of service-learning, if at all.
In the afternoon, teachers and administrators led an evaluation and reflection session to gather feedback from the day. This gave students and facilitators the opportunity to report back on what they learned, what they will take away, and what can be improved for next year’s event.
I can’t help but reflect back on what I took away from my experience in college and think about where I might be now if service-learning had been a part of my education as early as the sixth-grade.
