Students in Social Justice Leadership took a field trip to the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, a medium security prison alongside Project Youth, a program run by MCI-Norfolk.
From HBO’s “Oz” to Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black ” to Fox’s “Prison Break,” seemingly, cinematic depictions of prison culture are more omnipresent than ever, feeding viewers images of the “typical” inmate: dispassionate, belligerent and remorseless. Yet, several students have sought to redress the narrative, hoping to understand inmates beyond these supposedly hostile facades.
Students from the C and G-block sections of the Social Justice Leadership class visited the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk (MCI-Norfolk), a medium security prison, on Thursday, Jan. 19 and Friday, Jan. 20, respectively. The trip, which takes place annually, was organized in accordance with Project Youth, a program run by MCI-Norfolk that allows inmates to share their experiences in prison with Massachusetts students.
History teacher Kate Leslie, who teaches Social Justice Leadership, said a strength of Project Youth’s is its ability to humanize inmates rather than exploit their stories to inhibit others from committing similar crimes.
“What makes Project Youth special is that it is not a ‘scared straight’ program in which the goal is to freak kids out and ensure that they never do drugs or drink and drive,” Leslie said. “[The program] is about helping students understand the humanity of incarcerated people, their decisions and the underlying factors, whether they be poverty or drug addiction or a history of sexual assault, that contributed to them breaking the law.”
Leslie said many of the stories told by the inmates correspond to the history and concepts explored in the Social Justice Leadership class.
“I teach my students about mass-incarceration and the ways in which the prison population has ballooned since the 1980s, especially due to the “Tough on Crime” movement and the policing of drug use. All of that tends to come up in the inmates’ stories,” Leslie said. “When they discuss why they are in prison, some of them talk about drug addiction, some talk about dealing [drugs] and others talk about receiving sentences that they felt were longer than they deserved.”
Following their visit to the prison, students were taken to the Brookline Teen Center, where they formed groups and reflected on the stories they heard. Senior Alex Levy said one story in particular felt powerfully resonant. It was told by an inmate named Ian, who recounted a night during which he operated a vehicle while heavily under the influence and killed a man.
“Ian grew up middle class and spent his summers vacationing in Cape Cod, like many students in Brookline,” Levy said. “He revealed his alcoholic tendencies but explained that he never thought of himself as an ‘alcoholic,’ as he drank beers every day, not hard liquor. He said something that especially stood out to me: ‘I thought of myself as a good drunk driver.’ Although this is counterintuitive to me, I hear many of my peers saying things like this quite frequently.”
Junior Malcolm Urena said the trip changed his perspective concerning inmates and their decisions.
“When I learned about the trip, I thought that the people in the prisons were there because they deserved it,” Urena said. “But after hearing their stories, it was hard to say that these people deserved to be in prison. They seemed to be normal people who had made a mistake that ruined their lives.”
Levy said the inmates she met were dissimilar from the stereotypical traits assigned to them in popular media.
“Hollywood tends to depict inmates as tattooed people in orange jumpsuits and shackles. It also portrays incarcerated people as cold and thick-skinned. These men, however, showed a great amount of remorse and were very vulnerable while telling their story,” Levy said. “One man even started tearing up as he recalled seeing his niece, whose life he hasn’t been able to be a part of while in prison.”
Leslie said hearing inmates’ stories highlighted the often overlooked structural flaws of the country’s criminal justice system.
“I’ve seen, in the past, that students have a sense that this country is failing to create a [criminal justice] system that rehabilitates. Sometimes, we say that the prison system is meant not only to punish people, but also to help them reform their lives and learn from their mistakes,” Leslie said. “However, when students hear these inmates talk about what prison is like, they don’t hear about that rehabilitative aspect. Instead, they might hear about how inmates cannot get time with a social worker or that they have not been able to address an underlying addiction.”
Junior Eli Traub said the trip’s immersive nature gave him knowledge and opportunities that he would not have otherwise achieved.
“I think this trip is so important because of the experience-based learning. I learned more in this trip than I did over my class’s entire prison unit, not from a lack of information during the unit, but from the value of experiencing things for myself,” Traub said. “No fact or statistic about the prison system can truly give you a grasp of what it’s actually like, and by listening to men who have spent years there, I was able to learn firsthand about the injustices and systemic issues in the prison system. Only through knowing this through experience will anyone be able to make meaningful change.”
Ravin Bhatia, Staff Writer|February 16, 2023
The School Curriculum Subcommittee met to discuss the implementation of future classes for the 2022-3 school year.
The Brookline School Curriculum Subcommittee Meeting convened virtually via Zoom on Jan. 18 at 4 p.m. to discuss the introduction of new courses and adaptation of current courses for the 2022-23 school year to improve diversity and access at the high school.
Mathematics Curriculum Coordinator Joshua Paris presented a proposal for a new course at the high school: Data Science and Social Justice, which would focus on social justice issues and introduce students to gathering related data, making models and presenting.
Paris said the aim of the course is to tie math into real-world application, something that students have expressed an interest in.
“A number of teachers have incorporated social justice lessons into their curriculums this year, and the feedback we are getting from students is really positive,” Paris said.
Paris said the course will be open to all students and taught using complex instruction, a type of teaching that focuses on group work and collaboration.
“Complex instruction is a way to make sure that all students have a social standing in a class. It’s a belief that all students have something to bring to a group,” Paris said.
Visual Arts Curriculum Coordinator Donna Sartanowicz presented a new visual arts course called Artists’ Books and Visual Journals. Sartanowicz said the course focuses on expression through creating visual journals which can provide students with an outlet for expression.
“A visual journal is a place where you can practice, you can collect images and think about things. You can experiment with your ideas, and it’s a very open way to work,” Sartanowicz said.
Sartanowicz said she found low enrollment numbers and course success from underprivileged communities after looking at data from other visual arts courses.
“We need to do some work on building the diversity of our classes. We want to make sure we are teaching all students; we are making a variety of moves to bring that diversity and equity about, and [the course] is just one of those moves,” Sartanowicz said.
Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator Gary Shiffman presented the concept of a pilot Social Studies class, Global Studies, for the 2022-23 school year as a 10th grade world history course.
Currently, all students in 9th grade take the unleveled World History: Identity, Status, and Power (WHISP) course and choose from either standard or honors World History II for 10th grade. Like WHISP, Global Studies would have students taking both standard and honors credits.
Global Studies would revolve around themes, and Shiffman said that although this can lead to confusion around the timeline of events, it allows for students to form personal connections with class content and understand impacts on the present day.
“In a thematic-based course, you can get to the present and teach the past as a precursor in a way that is illuminating that past for students,” Shiffman said.
According to Shiffman, the Global Studies course would allow differentiation within a class to be based on performance instead of pre-determined labels.
“Traditionally, students sign up for an honors or standard class and there is no way to make it not feel like identification. The fact is you’re buying a ticket, and you buy the premium ticket or the not premium ticket” Shiffman said.
Science Curriculum Coordinator Ed Wiser updated the subcommittee on the process of making AP Physics courses more accessible to students by merging two AP Physics: AP Physics I & II and AP Physics C. Wiser said additional planning is required for the start of the merged AP Physics course next fall.
“We’re trying to figure out how we can restructure those first few units of AP Physics so that we can make the onboarding a little more intentional,” Wiser said.
Students and teachers benefit from consolidating courses with multiple levels in the high school, Wiser said.
“Every single time that we’ve taken courses with many levels, as soon as we’ve collapsed those, scores were the same or even better, and access was increased,” Wiser said. “Every single time we’ve reduced the number of levels, we’ve always seen success, and the other interesting part of this is that you get teachers who are able to collaborate more.”
The subcommittee plans on voting on the proposed courses at their next meeting on Feb. 3.
Anisa Sharma and Nate Parry Luff | January 20, 2022
ROSA CARAMAZZA/SAGAMORE STAFF
The Data Science and Social Justice class works to apply mathematical ideas to social justice issues students are passionate about.
As an algebra class discusses taking the standard deviation of a data set, just down the hall, the Data Science and Social Justice class is using a data set to find the intersection between math and global issues.
Taught by math teachers Danielle Thiessen, Danielle Rabina and Christopher Monschauer, the Data Science and Social Justice class was created after the teachers sent a grant proposal to the Innovation Fund. Theissen, Rabina and Monschauer hoped that this course would allow for students to apply mathematical theories to topics they are passionate about.
Thiessen said the idea was derived partly because most math courses offered are more theoretical.
“Because data science ties into the world around us so much, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity for the math department to cover a course on social justice. Every other course has a class on social justice and we didn’t, and it was really hard to tie social justice into the algebra curriculum,” Theissen said.
Senior Dylan Krakowski said they were drawn to the class after learning it intertwines two topics they are passionate about.
“I didn’t want to take just a ‘normal’ math class. I really like using math in real world scenarios, and I also pursue social justice in the real world—I try to live my life in a way that benefits humanity. So I was like, ‘kill two birds with one stone,’ and take the class,” Krakowski said.
Rabina said class is spent working on various projects that will eventually teach students how to complete the data science cycle. According to Rabina, the last step of the cycle is for the researcher to share their work- the backbone of the course,
“The data science cycle encompasses what a data scientist would need to do to complete a project. You start with asking the questions, then you gather data and then you might go back and fix your questions based on the data you see. Once you have your data, you have to learn how to take this huge amount of data and analyze it,” Rabina said. “Then, you create some way to communicate what you found to the world around you.”
The class’s first unit will culminate in a project that centers around gun violence during the summer months in Boston. The idea for this project was born after Thiessen, who lives in Boston, noticed an uptick in violence this past summer. At the end of the project, students in the class will analyze the patterns established through the data, and ultimately will make recommendations to the Police Commissioner of Boston based on these patterns.
Rabina said the data science cycle is helpful to analyze local events.
“We were talking about what happened, and thinking about how we could involve it in the curriculum and what factors may have led to this increase in gun violence. This is actually part of the data science cycle: noticing things in your world and asking a question about it, then gathering data, then drilling it down to a clear idea. We thought this could be our first project, and that’s how it was born,” Rabina said.
Prior to this major project, students are completing smaller projects in which they learn different skills pertaining to data science. Krakowski said one of the highlights of these projects has been that it is up to the students to decide which direction they want to take them.
“Students have a really big voice in the class, which is one of the ways in which they’re intertwining social justice into their curriculum. They’re allowing a lot of student power and student decisions to choose to work on something which we are passionate about,” Krakowski said.
Thiessen said one of the key qualities of the course is that there are no prerequisites; the class is open to all students.
“I recommend this class to any student who is coming out of standard, honors or advanced,” Thiessen said. “Any student who wants to learn more about statistics and data science from a more hands-on experience and is eager to learn about social justice. We built this class wanting it to be for everyone.”
Ava Varrell, Sports Managing Editor|October 21, 2022
GRAPHIC BY AVA VARRELL
Displays of students’ art made in the Engineering Innovation and Design class are scattered around the school, like this one, which can be found on the first floor of the STEM wing.
Creativity and team building are at the heart of a unique class split between a robotics classroom in the STEM wing and a workshop in the Unified Arts building.
In the Engineering Innovation & Design class, students learn about engineering and problem solving through interactive processes with the help of constructive peer feedback to adapt their ideas.
Engineering teacher Aubrey Love said when he was first creating the class alongside ceramics teacher Andrew Maglathlin, they hoped the class would be able to complement other engineering classes by incorporating the nuances of art and collaboration.
“We wanted to incorporate critique, the idea that you are working with other people and their ideas are relevant and valuable,” Love said. “Then, we wanted to maintain function; we wanted to solve problems in a functional way as engineers should, so the final projects that we created for the class meshed function and form.”
Love said the collaborative environment that the students work in prompts much of the success and creative ideas found in the class.
“A student’s foundational knowledge is important, but it’s not just about what brilliance you have in your head but what pieces of knowledge you can pull together. Being able to talk to other people and come up with ideas as a group is huge,” Love said. “Collaboration is being able to listen to other people’s ideas and find value in them and not saying ‘let’s agree to disagree because I like my idea.’”
A unique quality of the class is the environment. Senior Maxwell Hatchett said he enjoys that the class generally feels less like a technical engineering course and more like a problem-solving class. He said the laid-back but extremely productive environment is one of his favorite parts of the class.
One of the class’ major projects is the cardboard chair project. The challenge is to create a full-size functional chair that could be used by anyone, employing only 10 pieces of cardboard.
“We brainstormed a bunch of different ideas and designs and finalized them before working on bringing the chair to life using the tools and materials available to us,” Hatchett said.
Senior Joshua Heinstein said the cardboard chair project requires an iterative design and construction process considering the difficulty of scaling a 2D material, cardboard, into a 3D design. The class teaches students to accept given constraints and adapt to them.
“We couldn’t just design the chair in the 3D modeling software, push a button, and have it printed. We had to brainstorm and design cardboard that could be cut and then assembled into the final product which is a much more involved process,” Heinstein said.
Working within the boundaries set by the project, Love hopes that students who go through his classes are able to embrace new concepts and better observe the world around them through the lens of an engineer.
“I’m hoping people understand humility in their design ideas. High school teaches you often that what’s in your head determines your worth, and I’m trying to move kids past that,” Love said. “There are great ideas that exist all around us; we just have to go out and find them, and then try to bring them all together to form a solution.”
Engineering Innovation & Design fuses art and STEM
Connor Quigley, Staff Writer|June 15, 2022
TAEYU KIM/SAGAMORE STAFF
For members of the Turkish and Syrian diaspora, Feb. 6 will mark a day of mass destruction and devastation. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake along the Turkey-Syria border left millions displaced, thousands dead and put reconstruction costs in the billions.
Within a week of the disaster, students in Global Leadership, an elective course designed to educate students about modern-day challenges across the world, shifted their efforts to aiding the crisis. The class organized fundraisers, set up donation centers and spread awareness around the community.
Sophomore Sasha Harwin, a student in Global Leadership, said that despite the project being teacher facilitated, students took initiative and led the fundraising process.
“When we learned about the earthquake, we dropped everything else and immediately started to brainstorm ways we could help Turkey and Syria. Going in, we already knew there were going to be donation aspects, but we also wanted to put a big emphasis on spreading awareness around the school,” Harwin said.
Due to the urgency of the issue, the class had minimal time to prepare and organize logistics. They ultimately broke up into four separate groups to cover all bases: awareness, publicity, in-kind donations and monetary donations. Harwin said that each student was able to choose their own group, and everybody remained passionate about their work.
“The whole thing came together so fast and everybody stayed accountable,” Harwin said. “It’s a real and dire issue, so everyone was willing to help out in their free time.”
Harwin was a member of the awareness team, and gave presentations to World Language classes to generate more attention on the issue. Harwin and her team also reached out to all Brookline Public Schools to set up more donation centers. Despite only successfully connecting with Baker and Florida Ruffin Ridley school, she said that the team still managed to amass nearly twenty large bags of clothes, tents and blankets.
The class initially planned to send the in-kind donations to the Turkish embassy; however, their recently updated donation requirements forced the group to look elsewhere to donate. Harwin said that although she is disappointed with the unexpected change, she is still happy to know that they are able to donate everything to Cradles-to-Crayons and On-the-Rise, two local and dedicated organizations.
“It still feels so empowering because for most projects we do, we just talk and learn about big disasters in the world, but this felt so real because we’re actually going to make a difference for the first time,” Harwin said.
For junior Yoni Tsapira, a member of the monetary donations team, fundraising was also a new experience that he said will stick with him. His group managed to raise over $9,000 dollars through a GoFundMe page in two weeks and was only a few hundred dollars short of their ten-thousand dollar goal. He said that the GoFundMe is still active, but the class is planning to deposit their donations to UNICEF soon, a United Nations agency dedicated to providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children.
“It’s really cool to know that we as high school students can have a real impact,” Tsapira said. “If you think that you’re just a teenager and can’t do much, well, you can—because we just did something.”
Global Leadership teacher Roger Grande said that overall, he considers the fundraising efforts to be a major success for reasons beyond just the money raised.
“It was great that we achieved our goal, but it was so powerful because the students saw what they could do; it was both a real life effort and a classroom effort,” Grande said. “What I wanted them to take away from this project is what I want them to take away from this class in general: that they are insightful, their thoughts are real, and that they are powerful; that they are changemakers.”
Sophia Su, Staff Writer https://thecypressonline.com/ | April 7, 2023
The surge of the COVID-19 Omicron wave is threatening to shut down many businesses and school events. Despite the surge, Brookline Lens is adapting as they persist to fulfill their clients’ requests.
Launched in the fall of 2019, Brookline Lens is an optional semester or full year course which provides students the opportunity to produce free photo and video projects for the high school and the greater Brookline community.
These projects include an informational video on Tappan Green, a mini documentary for the Brookline Recreation Center and a video for the PTO.
On Jan. 12, Brookline Lens had to cancel their launch party for the second time in a row due to issues with COVID-19.
IMG_3984Gallery • 4 Photos
Bezawit O’Neill, a junior who is one of the project managers, said that the launch party was meant to advertise Brookline Lens to students interested in joining and future clients who may want their services.
“I was part of the group that was in charge of the slideshow presentation,” O’Neill said. “If people wanted some project done or seniors wanted their senior portraits, it was supposed to be an outreach for them to know that Brookline Lens is there to provide that help if they needed it.”
Lori Lynn, a teacher for the course, said it is difficult to plan a virtual launch party event because it was challenging enough to produce the projects.
“We really feel like it’s something that will be better in person. So this year, we’re attempting to do it. It’s tricky because we’re prioritizing our projects for clients,” Lynn said. “But we hope in the future to have some kind of in-person event where people can meet us and learn about what we do.”
Thato Mwosa, another teacher of Brookline Lens, said she hopes to reschedule and plan the in-person event when Omicron dies down.
“We feel like the next couple of months is really for promoting the things that we’ve always wanted to do,” Mwosa said. “We’re going to launch and make sure that people know that we exist, that we’re a great class and we offer students a great opportunity for hands-on learning and to contribute to the community.”
To compensate for the lack of a launch party, Brookline Lens has found other avenues to advertise. Students in the social media team and marketing and advertising team have been working closely to promote Brookline Lens on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok and Twitter, while the website management team has been organizing Brookline Lens website.
“We are thinking of ways that we can advertise what we do and get the word out,” Lynn said. “We want people to know that if they have a project in mind or need help with photos or videos, they can come to us. We’re getting there. But I think there’s still a lot of people that need to learn about us.”
Senior Kamini Bhadauria, a student in Brookline Lens, said COVID-19 caused delays in her project.
“It has slowed down the process of the projects. We’re heading into filming our Brookline Rec video project, but because of COVID-19, we’re very unsure about when we’ll be able to film and interview people,” Bhadauria said.
Despite COVID-19 affecting the students’ experiences in Brookline Lens, students said they are glad that they are able to learn about photography, filmmaking and how to communicate with clients.
“It’s a great experience that you can use in any field that you’re going to do when you move on with different levels of high school or also college,” O’Neill said. “I think for any student, if you have any interest in filmmaking or photography, or even if you don’t and you just want to experience something new, I’d definitely say Brookline Lens is a great experience.”
Lynn and Mwosa said they hope that Brookline Lens grows and that they can be a pillar for those who may need their services.
“We have so much potential, and we hope that more and more people come to us,” Mwosa said. “We want people to just know that we’re here to help and understand that when they come to us, they’re also giving students an opportunity to learn, to work with clients and to develop their skills.”
Brookline Lens provides clients with free photography or videography services. Clients can offer to pay a stipend. To request their services, reach them at brooklinelens@gmail.com or at their website Photo Video Productions House | The Brookline Lens | United States
Brookline Lens seeks to be flexible amid COVID-19 issues and cancellations
Allen Yu, Staff Writer|January 25, 2022
PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY LORI LYNN AND THATO MWOSA
Students learned about the threat of microplastics in the environment and specifically in water supplies with a lab on Nov. 15.
Four thousand miles is not enough to stop the Global Leadership class from connecting with Brookline’s sister city, Quezalguaque, Nicaragua.
Global Leadership aims to help students gain more experience and knowledge in solving world issues. On Jan. 31, they will begin the Tap Challenge, which lasts for 10 days and encourages students to use reusable water bottles instead of plastic, single-use ones.
Global Leadership teacher Roger Grande said before the start of the Tap Challenge, students learned about Quezalguaque and its specific water-related needs.
“We learned about their water insecurity: that many people in one of the hemisphere’s poorest nations do not have regular and easy access to potable, clean water,” Grande said.
Junior and Global Leadership student Agnes Shales said although Brookline and Quezalguaque are many miles away from one another, the Tap Challenge brings the two together. Money donated to the Tap Challenge will be given to a fund in Quezalguaque to help with their water security efforts.
“We’re a city in possibly one of the areas of the world with the best water. We are so incredibly lucky that we aren’t forced to pay for water in the same way that they do there,” Shales said. “As their sister city, we can take responsibility for improving the planet and helping out. We try to do this by reducing our use of plastic water bottles because it’s an example of our privilege, damaging the Earth in ways we don’t need to be.”
Junior and Global Leadership student Zoe Raybould said the Tap Challenge allows students to practice leadership skills as they each have individual roles.
“We’re learning to be leaders on a global scale and to have the outreach that affects people all over the world, not just in our small community. But at the same time, we want to make a real difference in both of our communities,” Raybould said.
Shales said the Tap Challenge permits her to help another community while honing leadership skills for the Global Leadership class.
“We are a class that focuses on development and leadership skills and issues facing the international community. I think that finding a way in which our lives tie into that, through the sister city project, is a super interesting take on that,” Shales said. “Usually projects are about areas that we didn’t have a real impact on before. I think this is a way to make an impact through the global lens that we’ve been trying to cultivate in our class.”
The Global Leadership class conducted a lab with the help of two Boston University graduate students, Caroline Fleming and Jenna Rindy, on Nov. 15. The lab centered around small plastic debris called microplastics and their negative role in the environment.
Rindy introduced the microplastics lab by explaining how chemicals enter the environment through plastics not being disposed of properly.
“Plastics are made of chemicals and as they get exposed to things like rain, they release chemicals into our environment. A lot of those chemicals are really toxic,” Rindy said. “The issue is that they can enter our soils and be really harmful for what grows and lives there. These plastics are also harmful for animal life, land and sea.”
According to Grande, the purpose of the microplastics lab was to demonstrate the danger plastics pose to coral, which connects back to the Tap Challenge.
Junior and Global Leadership student Dan Hernan said that the microplastics lab prepared students for the Tap Challenge because they learned about microplastics’ harm to the environment.
“The microplastics lab we did was almost like a smaller version of what we’re going to do with the Brookline High School community,” Hernan said. “It was bringing awareness to students in the class about the prevailing and dangerous force of microplastics in our own water supply.”
Audrey Garon, DEI Editor|January 21, 2022
Students in Racial Awareness understand the importance of engaging in conversations about race at the high school, as this influenced their application.
Senior Elliot Lazarova-Weng applied for Racial Awareness because he believed a course centered around conversations about race was necessary to his education. He also noticed a disturbing absence of these discussions within the mainstream curriculum. Yet, the course fell short of what he had envisioned.
Currently the course is led by math teacher Hayley Wells and science teacher Karen Wong. As outlined in the syllabus, the goal of the seminar is to explore the complexities of race and racism, yet Wong has a slightly smaller personal objective.
“At the end of the year, I just really want to see that students have gained just a little bit more knowledge and a little bit more awareness than they had in September,” Wong said.
As discussions surrounding race continue to be integrated into the school’s curriculum, some faculty have discussed making Racial Awareness a graduation requirement. Wong confirmed that this has been an ongoing conversation within the administration. She said that this addition would not happen in the near future.
Racial Awareness is an elective course where a group of sophomores, determined through an application process, explore the prevalence of race within national, local and high school communities.
Founder and METCO Coordinator Malcolm Cawthorne originally thought of the course while taking a professional development class on race and equity. This resulted in a new revelation for Cawthorne.
“I realized in my classes that there wasn’t a lot of structured space for kids to have conversations around race. My feeling was that kids actually really wanted to have those conversations,” Cawthorne said. “I think more importantly they wanted to have some type of structure. One of the scary things when talking about race is that people are afraid of saying the wrong thing. But if there’s a teacher there, if there’s a structure there, that provides a sense of security for some.”
Years after Cawthorne led the course and new teachers have taken over, seniors Lily Lockwood and Alejandra Mineo-Levitsky said the class might no longer achieve Cawthorne’s goal. Lockwood said many students don’t elect to take the course with the same intentions, which thoroughly affected the culture within the classrooms.
“I think a lot of people took it because of the free blocks and the field trips, and because it would make them look good, not because they actually cared,” Lockwood said.
Mineo-Levitsky said students of color, including herself, were disproportionately targeted to be used as facilitators.
Mineo-Levitsky shared that as a Latina person, she felt much of her time was spent educating her peers.
“It felt like for me, as a Latina, a lot of the time was not really spent in a positive way for myself. It was mostly educating other people, which was not really what I signed up for,” Mineo-Levitsky said.
Lazarova-Weng said he found that class discussions often didn’t go past surface level when exploring race. He observed that the class catered more towards protecting Caucasian students’ comfort.
“In terms of race, you are never going to feel comfortable so long as you’re actually talking about it. I don’t think that it’s a topic you can explore and learn about without being uncomfortable. But I think that’s the whole thing with BHS. They always want to build safe environments,” Lazarova-Weng said.
Sophomore Ivy Fawcett, a current student in Racial Awareness, said she is experiencing a positive atmosphere in her classroom. Fawcett said a culture has developed where students are able to have differing opinions and educate each other as well as themselves.
“Personally, I’ve always felt like I’ve been able to speak my mind. I know that if I say something incorrect or that doesn’t align with someone else’s ideas, someone will correct me or at least do a good job of staying kind,” Fawcett said. “I personally believe that it should be mandatory, because I’ve learned so much from it.”
Lazarova-Weng said for any requirement to happen he thinks there needs to be more focus on how the course may affect students of color.
“While I think it’s important to have courses like this, if we were to make it mandatory, there are students who have gone through trauma surrounding their race, who do not want to go into school and have to relive that. I think it needs to be a choice whether you want to deal with that in school or not. Especially for students of color, some people just want to go to school and be able to forget and focus on their learning,” Lazarova-Weng said.
Lockwood said she had conflicting ideas about the class being required. She said while the content was important to learn, the element of it being a choice was a key component.
“If you force people who don’t actually care, who don’t actively want to learn, then you have such an unhealthy class environment, and you don’t actually learn any of the things that you’re trying to emphasize,” Lockwood said.
Racial Awareness class sparks conversation
Molly Louison, Staff Writer|January 9, 2022
KYLA FREY/SAGAMORE STAFF
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