Our national politics are divided and angry in ways that often seem beyond our control. The division does not just stay “over there,” but extends to the community and school level.
I worry about the kind of environment this creates for young people, growing up in a world where there are so many things incomprehension and contempt for everyone’s humanity. And yet, as educators know all too well, despair is not an option when we are in front of students every day.
This is why we must think about the levers of change that we TO DO when changing the whole situation seems out of reach. For example, we have very close school districts that are separated by some of the same differences that tear us apart nationally: rural districts next to suburban districts, racially diverse districts next to homogenous districts, wealthy districts next to economically distressed ones, conservative-leaning enclaves next to liberal bubbles.
By bringing our closest neighbors together, we can lead a smaller-scale, more achievable version of the change we would like to see in the country. We can use the tools we have – our connections to neighboring districts, our skills in working with youth – to help our students become a bridge. Cross-community school partnerships can be a local response to the discord raging around us.
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This shouldn’t be difficult: many of us know teachers, administrators, or parents in neighboring neighborhoods. We can be part of the same professional associations, sports conferences or scientific competitions. Our teachers or principals may have met in college or worked together earlier in their careers.
We can start by leveraging these connections to bring our students, who in many places grew up only short drives from each other, into alliances and relationships with each other.
For a decade, I have engaged in this exact experience. I am a professor of education policy and co-founder of the Metropolitan Community Project, nicknamed “Metro,” a suburban city-school partnership based in Chicago. We started the project by leveraging the kind of network I mentioned above: convening a gathering of teachers and community organizers who had taken the same college courses, collaborated on service projects, and more.
Some members of our group teach at “Taylor,” a low-income public high school in Chicago, or participate in efforts to uplift the community. Others are teachers at “Wyndham,” an affluent suburban public high school just 25 minutes away.
We first met over the summer, at the Taylor High School library, to develop the intentions of our project and outline a cycle of student meetings for the coming year. At the start of the school year in the fall, teachers recruited volunteers from their classes and from after-school clubs. Now, each year, about 30 students attend Metro, evenly split between Taylor and Wyndham. The diversity of the students comes from the combination of two very distinct schools.
Metro follows the rhythms of the school year. In the fall, our cross-district group meets and we send students on a scavenger hunt to break the ice. When they return, the teachers and I present information about how schools and districts operate, and the history and policies behind their inequities.
Then, each school group meets individually to think about how to tell their story: what they like about their school, what their school needs. They think about what classes, clubs, and parts of the building they would like to include on a school tour.
Then the suburban students visit the city school for a day, and later the city students visit the suburban school for a day. Student hosts take their visitors into small groups, where they listen to lectures in progress, hang out in the gym, and observe lunchtime in the cafeteria. They also take a lunch break, then leave to finish the tour. At the end of the school day, there is space to debrief what they notice and, once they have seen both schools, to address the similarities and differences.
After seeing the lack of resources between their schools and meeting new kids, Metro students still want to do something. In the spring, the educational organizer helps them determine where to focus their energy for change. Students are trained in strategy: they practice pleading their case, writing a public letter or obtaining a signature.
Metro’s action campaigns begin toward the end of the school year. Throughout our history, urban and suburban students have gone door-to-door in their communities, presented a Student Bill of Rights to parents, and met with state legislators to advocate for equal school funding. Before we leave for the summer, we have a small closing ceremony to celebrate the year and our partnership.
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What makes this cross-community partnership work is that students spend more time together, throughout the school year and sometimes longer, to better understand each other’s lives inside and outside of school and to build deep trust. Metro is also intentionally designed so that students from both districts can take action together on issues that matter to them collectively.
What we hoped for – and discovered – is it empathy, true understanding and solidarity emanate from these ingredients.
Teaching is a fundamentally hopeful profession. Refusing to give in to a climate of distress and division should be part of what it means to “not abandon children.”
Cynthia Taines is an education professor, Chicago resident, local school board member, and author of the new book “The metropolitan community: a partnership for equality beyond the educational gap.”
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
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