JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST
Catching Up with the Racial Awareness Seminar

Catching Up with the Racial Awareness Seminar

Malcolm Cawthorne and Kate Leslie, co-teachers of Brookline High School's Racial Awareness SeminarThe Racial Awareness Seminar is a year-long sophomore elective that was seeded by the 21st Century Fund in 2016-2017. This seminar-style class is designed to foster students’ capacity to reflect on and speak effectively about racial identity, and to create a learning community that embraces and is empowered by the rich diversity of identities and perspectives at BHS.

The following is an update submitted by teachers Malcolm Cawthorne and Kate Leslie in February 2017:

The Racial Awareness Seminar has been working toward the goal of understanding the complexities of race in the 21st century. Recently, our focus has been on students’ own racial identities. To think more deeply about this, we have been examining groups historically and currently viewed as “races” within the United States.

We have used the past to focus on the present. Students grappled with the idea that the only Asian identity box that could be filled in on the U.S. Census was “Chinese” until the 1900s. We saw how the growth of Chinatowns in American cities created a “one-size-fits-all” approach to immigrants from Eastern Asia, and we discussed the complexity ignored by this approach. For example, we recognized that the Middle East is also in Asia, and racial identities are sometimes connected to religious faith. These observations fueled exhilarating discussions.

A student explained the seminar’s effect in a reflection: “In the past quarter my thinking about race has changed so much! In Racial Awareness the way that we learn is so impactful. . . . Instead of being able to pinpoint certain things we learn every day, like parabolas and ionization, I can feel how I’ve changed as a person over time. In this class I’ve learned things like how to have a discussion about race. I’ve learned what racism really is and how to see it. I’ve learned how to have a voice in my head that goes against the one that makes assumptions. And most importantly I’ve been able to learn about other people’s experiences and what we have to change.”

In addition, this year’s students feel it is important to become leaders and share their knowledge. Five of our students joined the Anti-Defamation League in its work with Brookline High after the recent incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism. Two students have created an organization to examine Institutional Racism at BHS. Many students were involved with BHS’s “Asking for Courage” day in December.

This activism is organic. Many of our students have been inspired by the class to do “personal work,” outside of school. Students have attended meetings, movie showings and programs to gain a greater understanding of the issues. Some have worked to reach into communities they feel have been mis- or under-represented. Some have begun to read more for broader understanding. To bring it to the present, the kids are “woke.”

— Malcolm Cawthorne and Kate Leslie

A Conversation with Aubrey Love & Andrew Maglathlin

A Conversation with Aubrey Love & Andrew Maglathlin

Aubrey Love and Andrew Maglathlin

A conversation with Aubrey Love (Physics) and Andrew Maglathlin (Art) about Engineering Innovation and Design, the class they are currently developing with support from the 21st Century Fund

21CF: Let’s start with a description of the new class.

Andrew Maglathlin: Sure, well it’s still in process. The course is going to be co-taught by myself and Aubrey, so we’ll be combining my art background with his science/engineering background. The exact plan is a bit of a moving target at this point, but we know that project-based learning and collaboration will definitely be key elements of the course.

Aubrey Love: We want to bring together that STEAM side of things; we want students to experience engineering and problem solving, and also design and aesthetics — both at the same time. Nailing down exactly what we’ll be able to do is a little tough. There’s a huge scope, and we’re still trying to figure out what we can reasonably accomplish in one course.

21CF: How will this new class differ from the other Engineering classes at BHS?

AL: Currently we have Engineering the Future — that’s a freshman course that is run just in Career & Tech Ed. And then there’s Engineering By Design, which I teach. The name refers to an engineering design process — it’s a step-by-step method for how you go through an engineering problem-solving process. It feels like a misnomer a little bit since there’s no artistic design aspect of that class. So now I’m really trying to take that course to the next level. Kids in my course collaborate, they problem-solve, it’s very project-based. Every challenge that I put them through requires them to work their way through research, prototyping, designing, and developing a solution, but never do they spend the time and energy needed to worry about the aesthetic side of design. And that’s where Andrew comes in. His expertise will help students think about the user end. They’ll have to think about what people say, feel, experience — not just the functionality of the thing.

AM: Function and aesthetics will definitely be a huge part of the curriculum. Also it’s really important to us that students will actually be creating things, executing their designs. They’ll need to see their projects through from start to finish. That’s going to include presenting their work to other people, so they’ll need to learn how to do some drafting and present their ideas visually.

AL: Presenting to different types of groups is key. Some of it’s going to be as if they’re creating proposals. For example, maybe they’d show their design proposal to a craftsperson, like maybe a woodworker, and ask if that person would be interested in building their designs. Or say there’s something they want to provide the community — they’d need to be able to present their idea to the people who’d be in a position to implement it. Or even just presenting something to peers — how do you present in each case? They’ll need to understand how people perceive their ideas so they’ll know how to best communicate those ideas.

AM: They’ll need to understand how the user will benefit from whatever solution they’re proposing for a particular problem, so they’re also going to be gathering feedback. They’re going to be researching things for the projects themselves, but we also want them to research the market. Like if you came up with an idea for a cell phone case, how would you go about moving from creating it on your 3D printer to getting it produced? For each project we’ll be looking to introduce different ideas and tools that will help them learn about involving the community, and working in different kinds of teams.

21CF: Do you already have some specific projects in mind?

AM: We do. The goal is to give them a broad question so that they can approach it in whatever way interests them the most. The parameters and guidelines that we’re planning to give them will probably be a little more open than what they’re used to.

AL: The example we started this whole course with was an idea for a bridge project. We asked the question: How can a bridge be more than just a mode of transportation, more than just a way of getting from point A to point B? We sort of went through the project a little bit ourselves. We were interested in the community aspect, and we thought about the Braga Bridge.

AM: Yes, the Braga Bridge down in Fall River. Fall River is an old mill town, and we wanted to somehow offer something to that community. Our idea was to create a park that comes off of the bridge, so that people could stop and enjoy the view. People could go up to a green-space over the Taunton River, and maybe there’d be a place to get coffee, or a performance venue or something like that. We thought it could make a good tourist attraction to bring people to that community. Another idea was based on something we heard about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I’m not 100% sure this is true, but apparently there’s a team of painters that are always painting the bridge. And so maybe if you’re a student who’s more interested in robotics than green-spaces, you could design a bridge that has robots that can move around it and scan it, and also paint it, so it would be a self-maintaining bridge. Or maybe you’re thinking about materials. Maybe your idea is to build a bridge out of easily found materials, which could connect two places where the people don’t have a lot of resources. The idea is to have a big question that students can pursue in a variety of ways. Hopefully every student, every group of students, is coming up with something different.

21CF: What kinds of students do you expect will be drawn to this course? I imagine there will be plenty of engineering students, but do you think there will be any art students who may want to dip their toe in the engineering pool?

AM: You know I think so, and we’re thinking hard about exactly how we want to write up the course description because we want to have a very balanced class, with students that have different skills and interests. I believe if the students understand it correctly then there will be plenty of art students interested in taking the class. They would have the opportunity to use all kinds of tools to create — we have 3D printers, computerized routing machines, laser cutters, and things like that. I’ve done a little unofficial research and presented the possibility to my students in Ceramics and Sculpture. A lot of them seem very interested.

21CF: Are there any other programs, local or national, that inspired you to design this course?

AL: The first one that really caught our attention was NuVu. They do a lot with project-based learning, and also, I think, with art and design. Learning about that school made us realize that there is an entity out there that caters to kids in ways that we don’t. It’s an indication of what we’re missing, and we wanted to provide this element of education here at BHS. We also have a lot of kids that go on to another level of education, and we don’t feel like we’re necessarily setting them up in a perfect way, because they don’t know how to use their hands. They go into a mechanical engineering degree or something like that and they don’t have the right skill-set. They have an incredible background in AP sciences and AP math, but something’s missing. I think all of those things proved to be the stimulus for this. We’re hoping to provide a better general high school experience for a lot of kids.

21CF: And how about the “makerspace”? Do you think that might be available for use outside of class?

AL: The space issue is going to be its own monster. Next year there will be 60-80 kids in the space for five or six blocks during the day. We want it to be open for kids to come and do work outside of class — independent project work. We would also love to make it available for teachers to bring their classes in for small projects. It’s already kind of happening with our Woodworking classes and Engineering the Future classes. Manning the space is going to be a huge issue, but yes, we’d love the space to be available to kids as much as possible.

AM: We would love it if kids could come in outside of class, and even outside of school, because so many students are bogged down during the school day with all their courses. The dream would be that it is open for a period of time outside of school, giving the students that are in the course, and hopefully other students too, the opportunity to come in and further their projects. There’s only so much they can do on their own without the 3D printers, laser cutters and other specialty tools.

21CF: Other than the high-end machines, what kinds of tools do you expect to have in the space?

AL: We want kids to be able to realize their ideas in a variety of ways. That’s going to include things from glue guns to hammers to drills to sandpaper. We have the luxury of having inherited a lot of hand tools from the automotive shop, which used to be in this space. The nice thing about having space in the UA building is that we have amazing resources above us and next to us.

AM: The technologically advanced equipment is really important, but it’s not everything. One of the really amazing things about creating this course and creating the makerspace is that there’s no set way of doing it. We’ve visited some different spaces, and the more we see the more we realize that everyone is doing it a little bit differently. Over at Newton North they have “greengineering.” That happened because there were certain conditions, and certain people over there that made it right for them. Here at Brookline we’re really tailoring it to our expertise and what we think the students should learn, and what they want to learn. And I think the course will constantly be changing and evolving, because if you’re not innovating it’s pretty much over. It’s done.

21CF: This seems like a really huge undertaking. Do you think you’re on track to actually have something ready for the fall?

AL: The course will evolve based on the kids that show up. And so our job really is to set them up with the right questions and then support them as we move forward. So we’ll be ready as long as we get to a place where we feel comfortable figuring out how to assess kids and support them in a real way. Project-based learning takes some doing, and some practice for the teachers. We don’t want to give them the answers or be too supportive, because we want kids to go through the experience of trial and error. And so that’s what we’ll be focusing on in the next couple of months. We need to figure out how much freedom we can give kids and still have them walk away with something. We don’t want everything be theoretical.

AM: Not at all. We want them to be creating things. If it’s too open-ended we’re worried that they won’t get to that point, so we’re trying to figure out how to be supportive enough in defining the project so they end up with a finished product, not just something made out of string and cardboard.

21CF: Before I let you go, I’m curious about what you each, personally — as teachers and as individuals — hope to get out of this experience.

AL: Coming from a science background, and even just my natural tendencies, I’m all about problem-solving in terms of functionality. And how that translates in my classroom is, my kids end up with a lot of ugly stuff. They’re constantly asking me to help them with the aesthetic side of things, but I feel unable to support them in a way that’s beyond my own personal taste. And that’s frustrating, because I feel like I’m only giving them a partial experience. They really should be thinking about both the structural and aesthetic aspects of developing a project. So that’s something I hope to learn from Andrew. I’d like him to help me understand how to ask the right questions and help kids make the right decisions beyond the physical structure. I look forward to being able to watch Andrew do what he does; see what he says and what he doesn’t say. The hardest part with project-based learning as a teacher is you have to know what not to say and what not to teach — what things to tell the kids and what things to let them experience on their own. And I think that nuance is what I’ll be learning the most from Andrew.

AM: A couple of years ago the two of us worked together on the STEAM project, and we really clicked because we’re both constantly trying to figure out how to make things more efficient, how to get them to work, and we were thinking a lot about our projects and our courses. But we think about things differently, and Aubrey’s coming from the physics side and the science side, which is something I’m not terribly familiar with. So I think the two of us coming together is a great match for teaching engineering and innovation. Aubrey understands materials in a particular way — he understands things like force. I understand materials more from hands-on experience. Aubrey’s really a lot more technologically advanced than I am, so when it comes to the computer modeling programs I’m definitely going to be learning a lot from him. But also his character is a huge influence. He’s a really grounded person, he’s very thoughtful, and that grounding and that methodical approach really helps me to get a grasp on what we’re doing.

AL: And that’s an added benefit to co-teaching in general: regardless of the skill sets within our content areas that we bring, we’re different teachers. You learn from watching other people teach regardless of who’s bringing what knowledge base. I think our different backgrounds naturally lead us to being different types of teachers. What we demand every day of our kids is different. Our interactions with kids on a one-on-one basis is different, so I think we’ll learn a lot just about teaching from this experience. It’s a really great opportunity.

21st Century Fund launches novel courses

21st Century Fund launches novel courses

Leon Yang

Outside of classrooms throughout the high school, the 21st Century Fund has put up signs to display the various programs and classes they have helped fund.

Rachel Vin, Staff Writer
November 10, 2016

While many kids sit in class answering questions from  traditional textbooks, visual arts teacher Thato Mwosa watches her students’ eyes light up as they work. Each one learns new skills and expresses themselves creatively as they make their own mini-documentaries for the newly introduced History as Film course.

This new course, as well as many other courses in the high school, was created by a teacher, and was put in motion with funding from the 21st Century Fund, which supports teachers in developing new programs for the high school. According to the fund’s mission statement, its purpose is “to empower the BHS faculty and community by fostering a culture of innovation and supporting the development of new ideas.”

By supporting new and creative courses, the fund provides both students and faculty with opportunities to advance their experiences beyond traditional methods and curricula.

Elizabeth Zachos, chair of the 21st Century Fund, said that one of the Fund’s main purposes is to supplement the high school in a way that is generally not offered.

“It’s about bringing learning opportunities to BHS students that are not typically available in a public school setting,” Zachos said. “Also, it’s about providing teachers with an opportunity to develop professionally outside the normal structure of teaching.”

Junior Liam Downey was involved in two 21st Century Fund courses last year: Global Leadership and Racial Awareness. Downey said that the structure of these classes was more unique than traditional academic courses.

“It’s definitely diversified the way I’m learning because you tend to learn along five courses, but these don’t really fit into any of those lines,” Downey said. “There weren’t a lot of notes or tests. It was more of a discussion based classroom.”

According to Spanish teacher Astrid Allen, who is also the Fund’s program liaison, teachers with ideas for new courses will often approach her. Her job is to help them build a proposal for this potential course or program, and this will later be presented to the Fund’s program committee.

“Part of my job is reaching out to the whole school community to find out if anyone has any innovative ideas that they want to move forward in some specific way and to bring that proposal to the program committee of the 21st Century Fund,” Allen said.

According to Zachos, if funding is approved for a new course, it typically goes through a trial period of two to three years. Some ideas are designed to be temporary programs, but for ongoing classes, the trial period tests the success of the course, which afterwards may be absorbed into the school budget as a permanent elective.

Mwosa co-teaches History as Film with social studies teacher and creator of the course Mark Wheeler. According to Mwosa, the creative aspect of the class makes students more engaged than they are in traditional history classes.

“This is sort of more active. I feel like the students are engaged and participating,” Mwosa said.  “A big part of this class is being creative. You get to learn, but you get to be creative as well.”

Last year, the 21st Century Fund started a new program for teachers to produce fresh ideas called the Innovation Fellowship. According to Allen, The Innovation Fellowship chooses one teacher annually and alleviates their class load by one or two classes, giving them time to develop a potentially groundbreaking idea.

“They [21st Century Fund] wanted to give a teacher an opportunity to really follow a really innovative idea that would benefit the whole school and community,” Allen said.

According to Downey, the individual style of the classes allow students to learn what they’re passionate about without being restricted by curriculum requirements.

“It was taught where the teachers understood that we aren’t bound by a curriculum, but instead we were free to explore our own issues that we want to explore,” Downey said.

Allen said that the programs supported by The 21st Century Fund can expand a teacher’s career as well as the students’.

“The fund provides this opportunity for teachers to do something totally different, to use their expertise to create something that benefits students at the school where they see a need,” Allen said.

Interview with Headmaster Anthony Meyer

Q: In your view, what is the Fund’s role at BHS?

A: I think the Fund’s role is to spur and foster innovation at the high school. To me that means supporting teachers and supporting really interesting ideas that would benefit kids. It could be regular classes, particular curricula, or it could be grants and programming. The Fund does that, in part, by putting really smart parents and community members in partnership with Brookline High and district staff, so we get the perspectives of smart parents and smart people in all kinds of different disciplines and industries, and that helps us think about the work that we do. When we had our breakfast Elon [Fischer] was talking about his very interesting work as Innovation Fellow, and what he heard in return were several ideas about how that work could be improved or looked at differently, and really, at the end of the day, supported. We had two premier design thinkers [at the breakfast] who’d done a whole lot of work. So, is it possible that Elon would have stumbled upon those people? Yes. Is it much more likely that the Fund helped put those people together? Yes. There’s a tremendous amount of energy and expertise in this community, and I think the Fund provides a key way to support the school using that energy.

Q: So that’s a way of bringing parents in, connecting them with teachers. In terms of drawing talented teachers into the school, is the Fund something that helps you in the hiring process?

A: Absolutely. We had a very specific example of that this year. We had a teacher who was set to co-teach Film as History/History as Film — this teacher left the school and district in the late spring/early summer — it was late in the game. It seemed like bad luck. We had a very interesting candidate for the position, but we were asking her to take less FTE to be here. The fact that one of her teaching assignments was going to be this very interesting co-teaching opportunity was an incredibly powerful draw. She ended up coming.

But to answer your question more broadly, there are so many incredible teachers here, and what has been clear throughout — at least in my history with the school, and what I’ve seen and heard — is that we find different ways for teachers to improve and increase their leadership skills. One of those ways is by creating a course or leading a program, supported by the 21st Century Fund. So Elon Fischer is a leader in this school, and the Fund’s Innovation Fellowship is a perfect way for him to work on and demonstrate that leadership. That to me is under the umbrella of retention. I absolutely believe that opportunities with the Fund help us attract and retain talented, committed teachers and support them to help lead the school. With a faculty and staff of this size you need all kinds of leaders.

Q: What challenges currently face BHS, and how does the Fund help to address them?

A: I think we need to look at all of our collaborations, all of our partners, and all the work that we do to focus on challenges. There are several challenges that come to mind. I would say the biggest is that we have a group of students who struggle here to engage, struggle to achieve in the ways we believe they’re capable of achieving. It’s not surprising that it’s the historically underachieving populations of students who don’t do as well here on various measures. It’s certainly not true of everybody in those populations, and it’s not unique to Brookline, but it’s true enough that we have an achievement gap. As we look forward to addressing that, we need to think about how to do it: How does our student support, how does our monitoring of kids increase and improve so that the net is raised higher, and the net is tighter? We need to think, instructionally, about how we’re making sure that excellent instruction targets kids who really struggle to engage. These are not novel ideas — they’re things that an institution like this is always engaged in. And I think there are opportunities with Fund courses — we can look at things that have already been experimented with in the Fund, and also programs and courses that we might want in the future, and ask how can they affect as many students as possible.

Tutorial is a really good example. To me there’s a tremendous opportunity that we’re embarking on to reconsider tutorial and think: OK, this has been a really important model. How do we use it even better and differently to make sure that we’re catching kids sooner, that we’re being flexible in the structures we’re using, and then zeroing in on re-teaching or supporting kids in what they need content-wise, as well as habits of learning? That’s what I’m interested in thinking through with the Program Committee and others: We have this course proposal, or we’re thinking about these courses — what will be the impact for the students in that course or in that program, and in what ways can those experiences be offered to more kids? It becomes an access issue. The Makerspace is a great example. It is overdue and so appreciated to have the Fund’s support to have Aubrey Love and Andrew Maglathlin work on a Makerspace. And it’s going to be a space for Engineering Innovation and Design, but then we think if we have this incredible space, and the district comes in and helps improve it also, how do we make sure that that space is accessed by as many kids as possible?

Another long-term benefit of the 21st Century Fund is that these courses might run for X number of years, but it’s safe to say that the experience of developing these courses should have long-term impact: What did we learn about how kids learn? Film as History/History as Film is not only a terrific opportunity for the students who are enrolled, but: What are we learning about interdisciplinary studies? We believe that more kids should experience that, so how do we build on this model? Many examples come to mind, but those are a few. To me, the central challenges right now are issues of equity and access.

A second and parallel issue is space. We’re moving towards a building renovation, so we’re thinking about how we organize a school that, in five years, will be over 2500 students. What does that mean about how we organize ourselves? What does it mean about the opportunities and supports we want to make sure all kids have? Then there will be the challenge of a school in the midst of a renovation: How do we continue to do what we do while having our spaces changed?

A third challenge is that there’s been a significant transition in leadership. All of these are real opportunities, and that for sure is an opportunity. It’s been great to welcome Andrew Bott and Nicole Gittens. Across the board, there’s quite a bit of change.

Q: So, tell us something about your personal interests. If you could take one of the 21st Century Fund’s classes, which would you choose?

A: Historically, if I could have taken Good Citizen in a Good Society, I think I would have loved that project-based class. It was a really interesting approach to English and History. The discussion about really meaty issues and ethics would be really interesting to me. It was thematic, so they would read things like the Tracy Kidder book Mountains Beyond Mountains, the one about Paul Farmer [of Partners in Health], and were essentially looking at: What does it mean to be good? What does it mean to make decisions that are mindful of others? What does it mean to foster those same values in a community or in a society? Also certainly the Racial Awareness Seminar. Having the opportunity to be guided and supported around thinking about identity and racial identity — to do it in a highly supportive, small community, very intentionally doing work that we all pay lip service to — would be really incredible. Frankly, seeing the super-motivated young people who are involved, I would want to be a part of those classes, not only because Malcolm Cawthorne and Kate Leslie are awesome teachers, but because cool, smart, thoughtful students are working to wrestle with really important topics. Also Film as History would be really neat. I don’t have any technical skills, and I would love that. It’s a co-taught history and art class, and I think many kids are probably coming to it from one side or the other, but to have a passion for history and story, and then be able to learn some of the technical skills behind film-making would be awesome.

Q: OK to finish up — and I hope this isn’t too personal — but the Gala-Rama is coming up, with bowling at Jillian’s. I assume, being a mid-westerner, you’re a pretty good…

A: Oh, I can bowl! In fact there was a bowling alley in Minneapolis that Earl Anthony owned — he was one of the great bowlers of the ‘80s. I used to go there when I was in high school, and I joked that I was “the real Anthony.” I wasn’t in a league, but my high score was probably somewhere in the higher hundreds — 160, 170. But that was in my high school days. I think now I’m… beatable.

Faculty Position Update: Stephanie Hunt, Social Studies and African American and Latino Scholars teacher

Faculty Position Update: Stephanie Hunt, Social Studies and African American and Latino Scholars teacher

Social studies teacher Stephanie Hunt has taken on the additional role of teaching in the African American Latino Scholars Program. Hunt carries an enthusiasm about the program as she prompts her students to think about their own identity as scholars.

What is your position?

I am part time in the social studies department and part time working with the scholars program. I am currently teaching the sophomore scholars seminar.

What was the process of getting selected for that role?

I had applied for the scholars coordinator position and it worked out where Dr. Lemel was hired and there was money in the budget to bring on another teacher in a part time fashion so my love for scholars was alive and it is still present so it made sense for me to take this opportunity and even though it wasn’t the opportunity that I had initially sought, it was a great opportunity to still be connect with the program.

What do you do in a day to day class?

The sophomores get PSAT help twice a week and then the other two meetings they are with me in seminar. Currently we are looking at the identity of a scholar and my goal is to provide them with a more comprehensive view on what a scholar looks like and to provide them with examples of scholars that look like them and that have similar experience, obstacles, and successes that they do. So right now it’s all about exposure and defining or even redefining what it means to be a scholar and what it means to be a pioneer in your community

Do you think teaching scholars classes has affected how you teach your other classes?

I think what has had an effect on me is last year Dean Poon and Ms. Ramos came up with this idea of the identity curriculum. It’s about getting the students more connected with what they are learning whether it be in history, english, math and science. The goal is for students to feel like they are connected and represented in what they learn in the classroom and I think that has definitely impacted my view of curriculum. With scholars I have more flexibility to play with things, but even with my modern world history classes I feel like when I am looking at my curriculum I am thinking “Okay, in what way can we bridge the past and the present. In what way can we bridge these subjects with who our students are”.

What are you hopes for the future of scholars?

My hope is that more students know what the scholars program is. I fear that the broader community only knows it by name and does not know enough about what they do, who they are, and what their accomplishments are. My hope is more visibility. I would love scholars to get involved in other programs as well. I want the program to grow. If the program grows, that means that more and more students are hitting the requirements. Our expectations aren’t lowering, but students are meeting them and that’s a testament to the support staff that work with scholars and a testament to the students that continuously are bringing each other up and helping each other succeed.

Lauren Mahoney, Sports Writing Editor

What’s the Big Idea: World Cafe continues race related discussions in the greater community

What’s the Big Idea: World Cafe continues race related discussions in the greater community

Around 70 residents of Brookline attended the “World Cafe” in the Schluntz Auditorium on May 4. The purpose of the event was to create a conversation about race-related issues in Brookline, and discuss what our responsibilities are to solve them. Participants included high school staff, town government members, parents and community members.

The 21st Century Fund in collaboration with the BHS PTO, Steps to Success, METCO, the Brookline Interactive Group and members of high school faculty presented the series “What’s the Big Idea” to kickstart conversations around race in the greater Brookline community. The World Cafe was the third part in their series.

In the World Cafe, tables were set up around the room with a packet at each table. Each page of the packet was headed by a driving question, and the rest of the page was blank. The attendees were divided into groups and given 10 minutes to discuss the question at each table before switching.

These groups then wrote down their main points of conversation on the blank page. John Lang, who hosted the Cafe, stressed the importance of respect and understanding. He said he did not want the conversations to lead to a debate, but rather to create a safe space where everyone could say what was on their mind.

“Listen,” Lang said. “We may hear things that don’t sit well with us. Despite other people’s different values, we have to agree to be our authentic selves. We have to give ourselves the opportunity to hear one another. Ask yourselves ‘Am I going to give myself the opportunity to learn something from someone that I didn’t know before.’ Give yourselves the opportunity to be challenged by other people’s thoughts, beliefs and emotions about us as individuals, and the systems in which we work and how these systems include people.”

The first question was, “Why is diversity and inclusiveness beneficial to a community?” Around the table, people agreed that communities are better and stronger with differing backgrounds. Sophomores Sophie Arnstein and Lena Harris said that knowing people from diverse backgrounds can help disprove stereotypes and break apart ‘single stories.’

“It’s really easy to be ignorant when you’re not forced to interact with people who are different,” Harris said.

The group also agreed that having a more diverse community increases compassion. Having more teachers of color in school, for example, could ensure that every student had a staff member whom they could relate to.

The second question was, “What are some challenges of having racially diverse and inclusive communities?”

The second group acknowledged  the challenge of creating a comfortable environment where people have permission to talk about more challenging race-related topics. One table member believed that it is easy to treat people as separate countries and it can be difficult to know how to approach someone. Group members also believed it can get exhausting to talk to someone in a way that both respects them and gets the point across, and that it is really easy to offend people.

The third question was, “What are the responsibilities of town residents to promote racial diversity and inclusion and to remove biases?”

Headmaster Deborah Holman said that people have to understand resolution can only be achieved through commitment. She said the most important thing is to continue holding events such as the World Cafe and continuing conversations on race, even if things do not always feel harmonious. There was also an agreement that the government can play a role in stimulating inclusiveness in the community and could do a lot more to create visibility and opportunities for engagement. Town residents also have to be informed and ask the right questions.

The fourth question was, “In what ways will you be involved to solve these responsibilities?”

The group agreed it was the responsibility of everyone in the community to bridge polarizations between groups and create inclusiveness. A group member said, “The problem with a highly educated community is that everyone thinks they know everything.”

At the end of the night when everyone came together to discuss the questions, the general consensus was that it was a very successful event, even though there weren’t too many differing opinions. Many also expressed hope for another World Cafe in the future.

Valentina Rojas, Arts Writing Editor

w

Contact

  • bhsinnovationfund@psbma.org
  • 617-713-5201
  • 115 Greenough St Brookline, MA 02445

Follow

Connect

Newsletter Subscribe

Quicklinks

© 2024 BHS INNOVATION FUND