"It's good to hear from people with different perspectives, that's how you learn." - Clover Park High School Senior

Folks, there's some serious youth violence going on in our communities these days.....but today I saw some youth taking action, and it was awesome - Kids at Clover Park High School, south of Tacoma, have to do a service-learning project, and they have to do a culminating project in their senior year. So one of their teachers had this brilliant idea: get kids to pick an issue they care about, research it, and create a Public Service Announcement for it....So the process was something like:

1) brainstorm lots of social justice issues going on in the community
2) pick three.
3) research. pick one you think you wanna learn about. (they picked issues like: humnan trafficking, media propaganda, school violence, gang violence, gay rights, domestic violence, etc. Note that kids came up with these, not the teacher.)
4) with the other kids who picked that issue, research it. find out community organizations who are working on this issue and volunteer your time there. create a video public service announcement.
5) at PSA night, show film and invite community partners to school fair, where 500 folks show up. Also, some groups are continuing their work with the community partners, and some community orgs are really using the PSAs the kids created. how cool is that?

It was AWESOME to hear from kids who said they didn't know much about the issue they picked and then the project changed their whole perspective on that issue and for some of them, on their life's direction. Again, how cool is that? It was awesome to see a teacher doing what I think is the point of education: Give kids space to learn about what they want to learn in a way that's meaningful not just for them, but for their communities.

So their teacher was Ms. Robles, and she rocks. She deserves major props for coordinating the project...And the assistant principal was there too, and she also deserves major props for supporting it.