Jess
“At first it was just a project…” is what one of my students said in 2004 when she was interviewed about our Student Research for Action project on school inequalities. It all started when my colleagues, Jamila, Tom, Kyle, and I started our Student Leadership class to foster student voice and social justice in a school environment that didn’t value either. It was at Brighton High School, a Boston Public School, in the fall of 2003, when Nikea told the story about her sister’s school. Nikea had spent the previous day with her sister at Belmont High School, one of the many wealthy suburban schools just outside of Boston. Nikea was furious because she had never realized how unequal public schools are until she saw it…the pool, the AP course offerings, the small class sizes, the caring environment. So we wrote a grant to fund students’ research on the subject: What are the differences between urban and suburban schools? Some answers were obvious. Others were not as obvious. For the student researchers—Bernice, Jackie, Marcos, Mekiesha—and for me, it was more than just a project.
You can watch the 22-minute movie the students created about the inequalities at:
http://www.wkcd.org/archives/JUNE/school_as_subject/index.html
And read an article that Bernice and I co-authored at: