In New York, kids are fighting to stay alive; in Seattle kids are contemplating suicide.
This is one way to describe the vast differences in the student populations I have spent my career working with. As a high school teacher for the past eight years, and facilitator of restorative justice (RJ) for the past three, it has been my honor to help guide and coach students through the extremely tough years of high school and adolescence.
I had first taught in New York, then the Seattle area. And now I was returning to New York with an expanded mindset and a new set of tools and philosophies.
Though the life of a teen in the Pacific northwest might seem the opposite of a teen’s life in the South Bronx, they’re quite similar in many ways. They struggle with acceptance, poverty, racial issues, bullying, sexual identity and a host of other concerns that seem ubiquitous and universal these days.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have found the Big Picture school model, where student ownership, interest exploration and project-based learning are the norm.
Working as what is called an advisor at Big Picture schools with small groups of students who are encouraged to find their passions and direct their own learning has changed the way I look at how schools need to function to serve our children.
[For more of this story, written by David Levine, go to http://jjie.org/will-restorati...ronx-schools/152415/]
Comments (0)