Metropolitan Business Academy ninth-graders gave teachers tips on how to be more inclusive of students of all genders — such as including students who don’t identify as male or female, and avoiding seating or grouping students based on gender.
They taught one of 28 teacher and student-led workshops Monday afternoon intended to explore ways to engage students in their own learning.
The workshops followed an announcement by Mayor Toni Harp and Superintendent Garth Harries that Metropolitan Business Academy, High School in the Community, New Haven Academy, Sound School and Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School will continue a grant-funded initiative to create personalized learning experiences for their students.
The five New Haven schools are the recipients of about $300,000 in total grants for the upcoming year from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and Great Schools Partnership’s New Personalized Learning Initiative, according to Suzanne Lyons, who works on college and career readiness for the district. The latter initiative also provides all five schools with weekly intensive staff coaching in personalized instruction, Lyons said.
The roles were switched in eight of the day’s workshops, with students at the head of the classroom and adults at the tables. Metro teacher Nataliya Braginsky let her students take the reins in showing teachers from various schools Monday afternoon the work they had done in the humanities class, and in leading participants in exercises around identity and social justice.
In the “project-based learning class,” students are “free to be an open book and express ourselves,” said student Tia Stevens. They showed the teachers circled around them a sample of the “zines” they had created — collages that represented a specific aspect of their identity.
Ross Jacobson (pictured at top) showed a page from their zine explaining that a “big part” of their gender identity is based on the fact that they don’t conform to gender stereotypes. (Jacobson prefers the pronouns “they” or “he.”) Later, Jacobson explained that the “gender binary” fitting people into the categories of just men and women, should be expanded to include “genderqueer” people, who do not fit into either option.
“Will [this presentation] change the way you interact with your students?” Aaliyah Shabazz asked teachers.
“This is not very new information to me,” said Co-op teacher Jenna Malavasi (pictured above at left). “But it’s useful to see it from a student perspective.”
The students also had participants write down common stereotypes for men and women on either blue or pink post-its. Teachers then stuck the pink post-its for women on the wall at one side of the room and the blue post-its for men at the other side.
“Aren’t stereotypes usually negative?” asked Sound School teacher Ricky Padro (pictured above at right) as he brainstormed a few adjectives.
“They can be positive or negative,” ninth-grader Shabazz (pictured above at right) responded.
Then students created a human spectrum using the stereotypes on each side of the room. They read aloud one stereotype and asked teachers to fit themselves in a gradient based on how much they identified with the stereotype. One person had written down the word “leader” as a male stereotype.
“Why did you decide to stand on this side?” ninth-grader Shaelyn Moody (pictured above at left) asked Lola Garcia-Blocker, director of College and Career Pathways.
“Because I’m a leader,” Garcia-Blocker responded. She said she was the oldest child growing up and had always identified with that trait.
But Coop teacher Steven Franklin stood farther away from the stereotype, closer to the other wall. “I’m terrible at telling people when and how to do things,” he said.
“We all fit stereotypes and break stereotypes in some ways. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing,” Braginsky chimed in.
At the end of the session, Wilbur Cross High School teacher Akimi Palitz asked the students how they would use the information they learned in the humanities class in a way that “educates and empowers students instead of making them feel that the system is stacked against them?”
Braginsky said students are also studying “resistance movements” to social injustice and working on final projects that “affect positive change” in the community.
