Advisory Boards Resources

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My name is Raegan. I'm a senior at Watchung Hills Regional High School. I was definitely like the girly cheerleader type. I liked having a lot of friends and going out. Coming into high school, I kind of wanted to see a different side of myself that I wasn't really expecting.

When I first met Raegan, she was this bright, earnest woman in my world history class. A lot of the Facing History pieces are what she seemed to connect to, the social and emotional. And just placing herself in history, I could see her begin to really evolve and excel both academically but also just growing as a person.

I definitely think she saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. Today we're going to continue our focus on identity, and we are going to be making identity charts.

The Facing History curriculum, I have found for my students that it has increased their ability to inquire and think about the world. It has engaged them in class lessons. It has encouraged them and empowered them to stand up and believe that they can make a positive difference in the world.

She planted these little seeds, important lessons that have now become lifetime learning opportunities. Throughout freshman year, we continued to have amazing lessons in world history. We learned about the Rwandan genocide. We read Facing History's No Time to Think.

My favorite Facing History piece from the Holocaust is No Time to Think because the professor is so articulate and just talking about how his inaction contributed to what happened.

It's noticing and realizing the small steps one takes for something big to happen.

The photo lighting up social media, two New Jersey teens at a recent Halloween party. One dressed as a slave owner, the other as an African American slave.

I was sitting at home and my cousin had showed me a picture that was taken at the party of these two boys, and I knew that right there and then that I was going to go into school the next day and we were going to talk about it in diversity club.

Students had a lot of questions, had a lot to process. There were students who were at the party that were upset that they didn't say anything or perhaps didn't know what to say.

You want to understand how a group of people could feel that this was OK and right. I volunteered to go see the Warren mayor to invite him to the event that we were scheduled to have in November.

We had our United Against Hate community-wide event that was led by Raegan and a group of our students, and that was an event that kicked off the community's commitment. We really wanted to make it clear that was the beginning of a series of difficult conversations that we wanted to engage our community in.

Not only did I learn that injustice is something real and happens, I learned people in my class and people that I see every day face these injustices and that's extremely eye-opening for a 14, 15-year-old to understand.

So in all of our conversations about embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the district, the mascot started to come up. We needed to reevaluate the symbols that we were using and see if they were in line with the culture of inclusivity and respect that we were committed to promoting.

We knew it was going to be very controversial. So it just seemed like we kept putting it off.

Having to tell an adult or an authority figure that what they think is not really acceptable, it's hard because you're going to get backlash for that.

There was a board of education meeting to discuss it. Raegan had already set the tone. We can no longer have this mascot represent Watchung Hills.

If you don't speak out and stand up against injustices and prejudices in your community, they'll just continue to happen, and then it becomes a spiral and it continues to get worse.

The Facing History curriculum and the premise of that curriculum really shows our students the relevance of the history they're learning and how to practically apply it to be more engaged citizens. And I think these students, Raegan at the helm, are really leaving a legacy for future Watchung Hills students.

An upstander is the person in the crowd who says that's not right. They're the person who when an injustice happens, they stand up. Through everything that I did, I learned that having a little bit of bravery goes a very long way. I will always consider myself an ally. I will always consider myself an upstander. And I'll always continue the warrior way and be a kind and respectful member of my community.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When I originally was in high school if you just think of someone that's looking for something to belong to you, that's what I was when I first started.

I originally didn't see my identity and learning as something that were synonymous.

I saw them as very separate, because that's how they were being taught to me.

So for a good portion of the beginning of my career that was missing and it definitely clicked once I took Facing History & Ourselves.

I sat right over there, right by Mr. Woods' desk.

Facing History.

I first came across the curriculum in 2010.

From like the first probably 20 minutes of it, I was hooked.

We start off the course looking at universe of obligation, circles of responsibility.

How do we see ourselves as changemakers?

And the way that I try to show my students that they can do it I will share personal stories with them.

For my grandmother, education was always important.

She pretty much raised me I was with her a lot before and after school.

And she was always talking to me about making sure I stay in school.

My household was not a pleasant place.

It wasn't a place of love outside of her.

In fifth grade, I was home sick.

There was a stepmother there, she was a big part of the problem.

And two of my friends, Deval and Terrence, showed up at the door to drop off my homework, and she took the stuff from them and slammed the door in their face.

And then... she she yelled, "don't you ever bring those n-words around the house again." And I knew they were, I knew they were outside that door.

And then I had to deal with that coming to school the next day.

But in fifth grade, which connects to a lot of stuff for me.

Mr. Sisk, he showed us Roots, and I think for me, that started some of the mechanism in my brain to understand the need to teach the truth when it came to history.

He taught us about thinking about others.

You have to acknowledge what happened prior, but also what's going on in that given moment.

If you don't give people that space to do that, you're never going to reconcile with the past.

So I think something that's really good about this class in Facing History is that it really gives students that outlet that they need to mold themselves into actively doing something.

The way that Mr. Woods seeks a light in students is something that's so important.

Once we started to look at some oral histories and original writings of different Holocaust survivors, I was really able to see myself in those stories.

And you could even go back to looking at the Rwandan genocide and getting to see a systematic taking over of a country.

Really seeing that in a complex way, made me really grapple with how I wanted to see myself as a person.

Whatever role that you take on, I want you to become active to really try to make a change.

Because no matter what we learn in here, we got to take it out with us.

And we have to have those hard conversations that we're talking about.

No matter what part of the curriculum you look at, whether it's the Holocaust and Human Behavior, Reconstruction, the atrocities that took place in Nanjing.

Everything is about change because everybody has that opportunity to make those changes.

I recall going to Kean University for a tour and during that tour, an oral history presentation about the Holocaust.

And that was the first time I saw what I was doing at high school in a college setting.

After the death of George Floyd I was one of the founding members of the Voting Squad.

We created a presentation together and we thought about how this would work.

We emailed different professors.

We asked just different people everywhere if they could make sure that they were talking about voting in their classrooms.

I think the key takeaway was that it was someone that was of similar age talking about the importance of voting.

And through that initiative, we ended up winning most engaged campus.

People always want to give me credit for student successes, and I feel uncomfortable sometimes with that because yes, I help, but they were already excelling and maybe just needed a little nudge there.

So for me, I'm super, super proud of Chevon.

I mean, hearing and the stuff about the voting and just being a real active person in her school community, it just makes me really, really proud.

Mr. Woods was very intense from the get go when I entered his class, but it was in a way that felt welcoming and warm.

We worked together in our course to understand each other and have these difficult conversations because that's really the only way that you can learn and you can really hope to change what's going on.

If you don't understand each other, you can't understand the history you're learning.

Being able to have those moments that Facing History & Ourselves gives to look at the other and then look within yourself, is so important.