Beyond Self
Teens Speak
Students present on social justice issues in a course-culminating Teen Summit
by Robin L. Flanigan
Sometimes it pays to go straight to the source.
After teaching an adolescent education course eight times at Nazareth College, Associate Professor of Adolescence Education Brian Bailey '01G, Ph.D., last fall pitched his syllabus to have students not only learn about teenagers, but with鈥攁nd from鈥攖hem.
The result: 15 Nazareth students and 17 students from Spencerport, Irondequoit, Fairport, and Rochester high schools enrolled in Adolescence Development and Social Justice, which looked at gender identity, racial segregation, stereotyping, and other topics teens deal with on a regular basis.
鈥淲e know learning is much deeper when kids are engaged in the community, when it鈥檚 thoughtful,鈥 says Bailey. 鈥淭his is the most meaningful course I鈥檝e ever taught.鈥
It鈥檚 also as democratic a class as Bailey could make it. Except for a few non-negotiable rules, all decisions about content are made together. For example, the class is split into five groups that look at the various social constructs that define present-day adolescence. When the group in charge of academic content for the week was the one focused on education鈥攊n particular the relationship between district lines and school choice鈥攊t shared an article about what innovative classrooms look like. Bailey piggybacked on the theme with a research study on how educators are creating a generation of superficial learners.
鈥淏ut we didn鈥檛 want to stop with learning for ourselves,鈥 explains Bailey, who had volunteer help with the class from a Brighton High School teacher and a retired Rochester City School District teacher. 鈥淲e said, 鈥楬ow can we spread an idea like this to the larger community?鈥欌
The answer to that took months of planning and resulted in contributions to the Rochester Teen Summit, in which high school and college students used music, research, journalism, poetry, film, performance, and other art forms in 10- to 15-minute public presentations about teens and social justice. The presentations were modeled after TED Talks, video-recorded discussions about innovative ideas popularized by the nonprofit organization TED.
鈥淲e get to be creative and share our thoughts about things that people don鈥檛 usually want to hear,鈥 says English literature/adolescence education major Zach Smith 鈥15.
At times, tackling tough subjects like racial stereotypes in class, even among each other, was uncomfortable. (Diversity among the high school students鈥攅ight of them white, nine of them black鈥攚as intentional.)
鈥淲e want to increase understanding,鈥 says Bailey. 鈥淲e made it clear that no one sitting in that classroom created these conditions, but we have the power to change them.鈥
More than 200 people learned how to do just that at the summit, which drew presenters from as far away as Pittsburgh. The 11 presentations included five from Bailey鈥檚 class. More personal than preachy, sometimes funny and often poignant, they challenged the audience to rethink the way school district lines are drawn, question assumptions about people based on skin color or street address, realize that the words used in passing to describe people can have a much deeper impact than intended, and more. In 鈥淲e Go to a Segregated School,鈥 for example, students pointed out that suburban kids view city kids as inferior and always skipping school, while city kids see their suburban counterparts as arrogant and living off their parents. 鈥淲atch Your Words,鈥 meanwhile, pointed out that successful men are often considered ambitious while successful women are often described as bossy.
鈥淚t was nerve-wracking at first, but I think we accomplished more than we expected,鈥 says Maggie Enos, a Fairport High School senior. 鈥淗earing the audience reaction at the end, it was pretty clear they understood the message.鈥
Enos earned some personal accomplishments as well: 鈥淢ore responsibility, a little more maturity, time management, and quick thinking skills. I got so much more out of it than I thought I would.鈥
Required to do a senior capstone project at World of Inquiry School No. 58, Branwyn Wilkinson created a podcast about education as a social justice issue inspired by her class at Nazareth. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 really great about the class is that it鈥檚 an open environment for discussion,鈥 she says. 鈥淚鈥檓 not as hesitant to share my ideas out loud there as I have been in other situations.鈥
Bailey hopes to reproduce the course鈥檚 results on a larger scale. He鈥檚 talking to organizers of TEDx FlourCity about a potential day-long youth event that would feature TED Talks by a diverse mix of young people. And he wants to have his students assist with a film he鈥檚 making with two local filmmakers about Rochester鈥檚 Urban-Suburban Interdistrict Transfer Program, to highlight the problem of segregation and concentrated poverty in Monroe County schools.
鈥淭his experience changes who you are, and that鈥檚 the most profound form of learning,鈥 says Bailey, adding that the summit will go down as one of the best days of his life. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the beauty of this class.鈥
The students evolved together over the course of the semester, proving that they can learn from each other no matter their age.
High-schoolers 鈥渉ave ideas that I have never once thought about,鈥 says Sarah Getsy 鈥15, a double major in biology and inclusive education. 鈥淎s the semester continued we grew not just [separately] as high school students and college students, but instead as just a class full of peers.鈥
Robin L. Flanigan is a freelance writer in Rochester, New York.
College, high school, and elementary school students warn the Teen Summit audience to "Watch Your Words."
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