Goals:
- To build a community cohort of youth leaders and learners
- To establish community agreements
- To build a group identity
- To learn about Black History
- To develop critical awareness and to apply this to real life situations
- To expand vocabulary around racial justice
- To apply critical awareness to school issues
- To design and lead lessons on race for BSD elementary students
The Racial Justice Academy YES program partnered with the VT Racial Justice Alliance who hosted ten BHS students who made their home at the newly acquired Richard Kemp Center. Executive Director Mark Hughes worked with students to understand systemic racism and keep them informed on current work underway. They sat in on a Proposition 2 planning meeting. Prop 2 seeks to edit language in the Vermont Constitution to fully abolish slavery.
Youth facilitators from Up for Learning came for a youth-led workshop on leadership/facilitation.
YES students visited Integrated Arts Academy daily, collecting data on student interests, interviewing students, observing in classrooms, serving as classroom helpers and ultimately planning to teach a lesson to 3-5 grades on race.