In reflecting back on their experience, our students affirmed the value of this important work and their own power as changemakers:

“I learned that it doesn’t take a lot of people to make a big change. As long as you are committed and willing, anyone can make a change.”

“My group felt that we were strongly educated on our topic and know that we can make a change. We learned how to educate others about our topic by sharing our experiences and by trying to help them develop their empathy for those who experience poverty. We had the participants in our workshop do a simulation that them in the shoes of someone living in poverty. While they were playing this game they exhibited frustration and seemed to truly understand the difficulty people in poverty face. Even though the school time we were given to work on this project is up, I would like to continue working on this issue. I can continue to work for change that will help this issue like the raising of minimum wage to $15 dollars. I can also continue to volunteer at food pantries and soup kitchens with friends and family.”

“After going on fieldworks for the DO stage, we needed to share our work to inspire others. We learned that if you feel that something is wrong in the world, you can’t force others to make the change. You have to make the change yourself. In the beginning of the social justice project, we were a little doubtful that kids our age could make a difference. After going on fieldworks, we realized that adults will and sometimes prefer to listen to kids. We were often the only kids at conferences or rallies, so we raised some attention from adults. Even though the project has come to an end, our fight for social justice hasn’t. Our group has vowed to constantly recycle, use public transportation, eat locally grown foods and turn off electricity when possible. If everyone does small things to help change climate change, a big difference will be made.”

“I learned that being a changemaker means you have to help other people. Sharing our topic by teaching is very important because people can’t help if they don’t understand. The result of people understanding a problem might spark something for them to help. I will continue to work with people outside the school to raise awareness about imprisoned journalists outside of the United States. Even doing simple things like signing a petition helps out a lot.”

“As a result of my experience as a change maker, I learned that children can do most anything they put their minds to, and that the smallest action on the smallest of whims, when multiplied, can have a huge effect.”

“For us, the Teach-In was a part in a very long important process. Throughout this project visiting organizations and doing hands on work made us realize that making a difference isn’t always as simple as making a donation to a cause. The process of learning from your experiences can last for a lifetime. What was interesting to me is that even after the project was over I was driven to keep spreading awareness and talking about not only my topic, but about how I learned I can make a difference. It’s a few months after the project and I still find myself working to make a difference in my community. I didn’t only learn that I can make a difference, but I realized that it is important for every student to have the opportunity that I did. I believe that this project has changed me forever and I am driven to continue make people aware that they can make a change in their community.”

The Choosing to Participate Project culminates with the planning and running of a Teach-In in the spring where eighth graders share what they’ve learned with the greater LREI community. The day’s events are always exceedingly well-executed, but, more importantly, the eighth graders challenge other middle schoolers to think deeply about a range of important social justice issues and ask participants to consider how they too can make a difference. In many respects, this final “share” is also aligned with the “do” phase as the goal of the Teach-In is not simply to offer insight and reflection on the eighth graders’ work, but also to inspire and call to action the other members of the school community. In preparation for the Teach-In, the eighth grade teams develop interactive workshops. These workshops go through an iterative design process and are refined based on feedback that they receive during the prototyping process. This process requires students to think about their audience and how best to design the learning/action experience for participants.

This year, on March 9, eighth grade students hosted LREI’s annual Social Justice Teach-In, the culminating event of months of research and field work conducted on human rights and social issues through their humanities studies. The teach-in opened with an assembly for middle school students, in which some eighth graders dressed as activists from history (Susan B. Anthony and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,) and urged their audience be the next generation of change-makers.

Eighth graders then ran workshops, attended by their fifth, sixth and seventh grade peers, which were planned around the issues they chose to study in depth. Groups focused on the following issues: children in poverty, climate change, education inequality, freedom of speech, gun control, health and food, overconsumption and pollution, sexualization of women, police brutality, and hunger.

The eighth graders described the field work, research and interviews they conducted over the past several months and then led the students in an activity geared to help them better understand and be inspired by the issue. The “Don’t Waste Your Waste” workshop engaged participants in upcycling used cartons and bags. The police brutality group made a mural. The Canstructing a Solution to Hunger group brought in a speaker from a local food pantry where LREI students often volunteer.

You can read descriptions of each of the workshops here and view photos of each of the workshops by clicking the link next to the name of each group below:

• Why Not a Woman
• Stop the Shots
• Don’t Waste Your Waste
• We’re More than Just an Image
• Fund our Futures
• Canstructing a Solution to Hunger
• They We’re Supposed to Protect Us
• Families in Poverty: Break the Cycle
• Speak Up, Speak Out
• Change Climate Change
• Healthier NYC

The lobby and hallways were also decorated with public service announcement posters students created in digital art to bring awareness to their topic and provoke discussion. The day of civil and human rights activism wrapped with a keynote speech from Amy Goodman, executive producer host of Democracy Now! who was invited by students from the Freedom of Speech group. You can read about her visit here and view photos here.

What are some other ways you can continue to SHARE your project with others and raise awareness of the problem you have identified?

One testament to the success and impact of this project is the degree to which the experience establishes a foundation for continued social justice engagement and intellectual inquiry as students move onto our high school program. Fundamentally, this project is about cultivating student voice and leadership in the service of making the world a better place. In reflecting on the impact that their participation in this social justice work had and continues to have on them, three of our recent graduates communicated the following to our middle schoolers:

“You just need to start small and find something to care about. It’s social justice so it’s not about us as individuals, but about us together.”

“There is one simple quote that sums it all up. ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’ So go out and be it.”

“You have to feel something. So whether it makes you feel angry, inspired, or concerned, you can turn that feeling into action.”

These wise words are an affirmation of the value of this important project at LREI. The legacy and impact of these older voices is clearly reflected in the forward thinking words of this year’s participants:

“I think one way that I can continue to share our work is to continue telling people about the work that we did. People are always surprised that as 8th graders we were able to do this and I think that not only does sharing the project raise awareness for our Social Justice topics, but also for how even middle schoolers have the ability to stand up in support of an issue and make a difference.”

“One way we can continue to share our project with others is just to talk about climate change with people we know. After the project, our group has a lot of information about climate change and how to reduce our carbon emission. We will also continue recycling, using public transportation and turning off our lights when we aren’t using them.”

“Some things that we can do to continue sharing our social justice project includes sending our workshop slideshow and interviews to community organizations who can then forward the project to a wider audience. More exposure means more appeal to social justice.”

“I think that we need to go beyond having a workshop for just the middle school. We can have each group find a conference or a meeting where they could share more about their issue. A lot of organizations my group talked with were very interested in finding out how the workshop went and how did middle schoolers respond to it. We sent a lot of organizations our findings after our workshop. If each group could have a conference that they get a chance to talk to a bunch of different people about their topic that would be a great share.”

“A way we can continue to share this project and raise awareness about the problems women face in the workplace is to educate people in our communities in different ways. One way is the Teach-In where we, as eighth graders, became teachers and taught fifth, sixth, and seventh graders about these problems and how they can help as well to change this. My group decided to create a sheet with a book, movie and petition they could read, watch and sign. This way, they could become further educated on this topic and even help make a change! Because we are still viewed as “children” by today’s society, and too young to work (we should be in school), we felt we couldn’t just walk into a place and demand change; change happens slowly, and change comes with evolution. Instead, we decided to try and figure out WHY women were treated this way and we eventually came to the conclusion that it was the history of how women were treated that led to this. It was how women used to be viewed as not equal to men, and although those views have changed, they still exist, proven by us doing this Social Justice Project. We also realized that a big problem was many people still shared these views and that it happens through something called a “trickle effect.” This trickle effect is where we grow up learning that women are inferior to men and we get into that mind-set, believing that this is true. We then become adults with these ideas and will put these ideas into effect, believing women deserve a lower pay than men, that they are incapable of doing the same things as men, that they can be treated in an unprofessional way because they are women. Another challenge women face is that they are sexualized whereas men aren’t as much so it is less likely for a man to be treated unprofessionally. We told our “students” about this trickle effect and encouraged them to treat each other as equals and to not use derogatory words like “b*tch” or “sl*t” or “incapable” because those words make people feel worse about themselves and will start to put them into the mindset that women SHOULD be called these words and that they ARE lesser because they are called these words. We encouraged them to do so and we constantly hope that they will follow those words because it’s incredibly hard to change human nature, but through the Social Justice Project, we have changed ourselves for the better and slowly started to change our natures.”