Students from Different Schools, Worlds Use Facing History to Craft Conversation about Social Justice

Marblehead, MA – “The world is not as rosy out there as it is in here,” Mike Brown, assistant principal of the KIPP Academy Lynn charter school, told a a group of students on a recent morning.

The classroom was not your typical one. That morning, 23 of Mr. Brown’s eighth-grade students were wrapping up a two-hour discussion on diversity with 23 eighth graders from the Cohen Hillel Academy’s Facing History Advisory Class. Though they go to schools only about four miles apart, the students who gathered to listen to Mr. Brown are from very different worlds. At KIPP Academy Lynn, part of the national network of KIPP public charter schools, the majority of students are minority and low-income. They come from Lynn, a working-class, industrial Massachusetts city whose diverse population includes a high percentage of immigrants. Cohen Hillel is a Jewish day school in Marblehead – an affluent North Shore town whose population as of the 2000 census was nearly 98% white.

With support from the Facing History and Ourselves' Jewish Education Program, teachers from KIPP and Cohen Hillel are hoping to make a difference to these 46 students. The two schools are in the third year of a pilot program in which the eighth graders come together regularly over the course of the academic year to discuss issues of tolerance, racism, and prejudice through the Facing History lens.

The partnership began in 2009, the same year that Facing History launched its Jewish Education School Project. The project, with financial support from the Jim Joseph Foundation, provides professional development and curricula to a network of eight Jewish day schools throughout Massachusetts – including Cohen Hillel – and in Los Angeles. The goal is to help teachers and administrators infuse Facing History’s principles and teaching practices throughout the entire school culture and across disciplines with a particular emphasis on issues connected to Jewish values and Jewish identity.

Cohen Hillel has a long tradition of community service, but a few years ago the school’s social justice coordinator, Karen Madorsky, began thinking about how she could make that experience more impactful for her students. “The children at a Jewish day school, at least during school hours, are around white, Jewish kids,” said Mrs. Madorsky, who has worked at Cohen Hillel for 38 years and herself grew up in a predominantly white and Jewish New York suburb. “I wanted to create an experience where these kids could grow out of their protective cocoons and learn about, talk with, and understand people from other cultures, other places. I wanted them to develop tolerance and more than tolerance, respect. When we don’t know the other, we have an apprehension.”

The search led her to KIPP Academy Lynn, and eventually to Mr. Brown, then the school’s director of multicultural and community affairs. In many ways, the two teachers could not have been more different. But when it came to education, they shared a fundamental commonality. “I never teach a history lesson that I cannot attach a moral lesson to,” Mr. Brown said recently. “My students will never get a good grasp of the world unless they have a good grasp of who they are and where they fit into that world. ‘How can you translate history into your life today?’ That’s what I’m always asking. If they pass all of their exams, but don’t know how to take a good moral stand on things, we have failed them.” It was exactly what Mrs. Madorsky was trying to accomplish – finding a way for her students to make connections between their Jewish selves and the world around them.

Mr. Brown and Mrs. Madorsky began working on a plan to bring their eighth graders together. “When she presented her idea, I thought, ‘This is exactly what it is,’” recalled Mr. Brown, who had heard of Facing History before meeting Mrs. Madorsky, but had never worked with the organization’s materials or teaching methods. “She was talking about what I was doing inside my classroom, but she wanted to bring it alive outside of the classroom.”

The two started meeting with teachers from Cohen Hillel and with Shira Deener, senior program associate in Facing History’s Jewish Education Program, to craft a curriculum for the exchange based upon Facing History resources. As they developed lesson plans about stereotypes, racism, prejudice, and identity, the educators became students in their own classroom.

“Here I am a black man in a room full of Jewish women,” Mr. Brown said with a laugh before turning serious. “When we get together to plan our sessions, we ourselves have to hammer out our own issues of race. Before the curriculum ever touches the kids, it touches us and it gives us a platform to actually heal and discuss our own racial issues and prejudices. That is always the first part of our lesson planning.”

When the two groups of students came together for the first time, there were obstacles to overcome. As the students went around the room to introduce themselves, Mr. Brown noticed that his students – many of them immigrants to America or the children of immigrants – began shortening or “Americanizing” their names. “For example Mustafa, who’s from the Congo, introduced himself as ‘Mus,’” Mr. Brown said. “They weren’t giving out their full names. They looked around and saw all of these white, American kids and they couldn’t change their skin color, so they changed the only thing they could – their names. I was shocked.”

For the teachers, it was a reminder that the historical examples they had written into the curriculum – civil rights, immigration, racism – were still at play, not only in the world, but right there in the classroom. “Mike turned to me and said, ‘We’ll grow them together,’” Mrs. Madorsky said.

In the three years since that first meeting, the group has come a long way. The students have joined in conversation with Dr. Terrence Roberts, an original member of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Central High School in Arkansas in 1957. They have watched films such as Arn Chorn Pond’s “Everyone Has a Story,” which explores the Cambodian genocide survivor’s immigration to America. Earlier this year they analyzed works about identity by poets such as Maya Angelou and James Baldwin, and then wrote their own poems to share.

“For me, it’s been a lot about opening up,” said KIPP eighth grader Efeose Airewele. “I’m used to just talking about myself and my own race. This has been about seeing new races and new cultures.” Though the meetings focus on issues of difference, they also allow the students – and the teachers – to recognize the similarities that unite them.

“It’s interesting to hear both of our opinions,” said Cohen Hillel’s Sophie Jacobs. “We’re so different and yet we’re both the same ages. We have different takes on the questions. They bring up points that we would never think of and we do the same. The program just betters our understanding about the things that are going on around us.”

At the group’s most recent meeting, discussion centered on issues of race and judgment. The students watched a short film about the 14th amendment and read Little Things Are Big, a story by Puerto Rican writer Jesus Colon about a decision the writer made as he watched a white woman alone with three young children struggle on a public bus late at night. Though the story was written in the 1950s, the classroom conversation soon turned to how prejudice plays out in the students’ lives today.

“It’s good to be cautious, but if you have the chance to know someone, get to know them. Get to know who they actually are,” said KIPP’s Basel Strour.

“Do you think people will have stereotypes against you as you get older?” Mr. Brown asked.

“I’m a Muslim,” Basel said, looking around at his classmates. “For the rest of my life people will see me that way. People will ask if I am a terrorist.” Some giggles erupted around the room. “Sitting in here, you may think that’s funny, but it’s true,” Basel said.

“It’s amazing,” Cohen Hillel assistant principal Sandy Freiberg said after the class ended. “We have students of so many different backgrounds in that room, but they live so close. And they’re in there having these conversations and experiences that are so difficult to have – and that they wouldn’t have otherwise. I don’t know how often our students are in a room with African American students talking about what they just learned in history and what their lives are like today. I don’t know how often any of us do that.”

"Being in a room with people of different colors and religions allows each of us to express the emotions behind everything." Cohen Hillel student Morgan Cooper said. "You can't shut that out. Hearing someone else's perspective forces us to talk about it, too."

The eighth graders understand that what they are doing is difficult. But they are up to the task – both inside the classroom and outside of it.

“When you come back to school, you really have to step up,” said KIPP’s Jas-syran Kim. “In the program, they try teaching us to be the difference, but when you leave, you have to actually be the leader and carry that out.”

As Mr. Brown reminded the students as they gathered their things and left the classroom, “Who is it up to, really, to make a difference in society?”

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Facing History’s Julia Rappaport wrote this article. For questions or tips on what Facing History is doing in your community, email her at Julia_Rappaport@facing.org.