Social Justice Student Fair
On May 18th, 2007 more than 250 students from over ten area high schools and grammar schools came together for the first annual student social justice exposition. For a first time event of its size and scope things went remarkably well. The event was organized by students and teachers over a six-month period with the Collaborative for Justice and Equity in Education out of University of Illinois at Chicago. The expressed purpose of the event was to create a space that would provide students with a forum to determine the content and curriculum in their courses for the following school year.
The expo was structured into 3 parts throughout the day. Initially students arrived, received their programs and entered a fair room where more than 50 student projects snaked throughout the room. During a one-hour period students evaluated their three favorite projects, all of which were based upon social justice themes. Some of the projects dealt with topics such as immigration, police brutality, youth gangs, segregated schools, military recruitment, infant mortality, Fidel Castro and Cuba, and HIV/AIDS to name a few.
After an outdoor lunch of pizza and fresh fruit, students reported to two workshops during a two-hour time slot. Earlier in the year classroom teachers presented students with 12 workshop options and they got to pick their top three from each set of six. With the exception of one workshop out of the 12, all the workshops were student led.
Expo organizers made certain that students from many different parts of the city and a variety of learning environments were represented. We had traditional neighborhood schools, charter schools, alternative schools and private schools attend. Students from these distinct places interacted all day long, especially in the context of the workshops. The workshops engaged a diverse range of popular themes such as Drug and Sex education, the war on immigrants, the problem of coal burning plants in Little Village, the Corporatization of Hip-Hop, students also reported back from a spring break trip to New Orleans where they helped assist hurricane survivors repair their damaged communities, among many others.
Some of my students from Englewood High worked with students from the elite private school Francis Parkers over the span of two months. Through an exchange of ideas and school visits to each respective school, students developed a series of presentations and small group sessions. Through the workshop process students generated a set of recommendations by which to improve the quality of sex and drug education for area middle and high schools. Another group of students from Englewood led a workshop and discussion on the closing of Englewood high and the relationship between school closings and gentrification. A lively cross generational discussion ensued when Whittier elementary and Lozano high students shared their stories about gentrification in the Pilsen community. One Lozano student recollected “my uncle and his family couldn’t afford the neighborhood anymore and had to go.” A Neighborhood Organization ‘The Pilsen Alliance’ helped students craft solutions to the problem. The session ended on a high note with many participants choosing to sign a letter of commitment to help in a campaign to confront the negative impacts of gentrification.
Lastly the event ended with a closing ceremony where students were awarded prizes based on their participation in planning the event; additionally the projects that received the highest evaluations were given prizes. The event finished with a bang as top flight foot-workers hypnotized the audience with their almost imperceptible quickness. Students and teachers alike left the all day event ‘tired but inspired,’ a new motto for a project that could pay great dividends in a city sorely in need of social justice. Englewood senior Nadine Liberty put the day in perspective remarking that she learned “about how pollution caused health problems and whites have more resources to confront the problem, we can do better things and come up with better solutions to fix our problems.”
