Students are all-too-familiar with the boring presentation structure of a professional lecturing a group of uninterested children.
Teachers, too, are not immune from the banality of this mode of information dissemination.That’s why when new Seaholm principal Deanna Lancaster was designing January’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day professional development curriculum for teachers, she decided to break out of this model by allowing the entire day’s activities to be studentlead.
The success of last year’s student- lead Martin Luther King Jr. Day activities prompted Lancaster to continue the collaboration between teacher and pupil in her inaugural year as head of the school.
Last year’s MLK Day activities included a “fishbowl” activity that had teachers silently observe interactions between selected students in an attempt to learn from them.
What makes this year’s assembly unique, however, is that it is led and designed by students with minimal interference from administration.
Partially prompted by last year’s incidents of ethnic intimidation that stemmed partially from chronic bullying, students from groups like Birmingham Voice, the Gay- Straight Alliance (GSA), and Diversity Club have been chosen to spearhead the project themselves, with the goal of creating a sense of unity within the Seaholm student body.
Flex teacher Robin Moten has been helping the group design the itinerary for the day’s activities.
“[We’re trying to] give students the chance to let [the staff] know what the school is all about – what Seaholm looks like through their eyes,” according to Moten. “An expert couldn’t offer the sense of reality that [students] possess.”
A continuing focus of the group working on the project was combating bigotry aimed towards gay students. The GSA has made strides in the past by getting the “Safe Classroom” flyers installed ineach classroom in the school. Still, homophobic tendencies continue to persist within Seaholm, according to one former student.
Openly gay former Seaholm Student Chas Chapman knows the harsh reality of being gay at Seaholm. While at Seaholm, Chapman was president of the Gay-Straight Alliance. Chapman left Seaholm last year to continue his secondary education online, citing prejudice he faced as a homosexual as one of the primary reasons for the transition.
“[Due to the bullying], I was unable to concentrate,” Chapman said. “After leaving Seaholm, I have all A’s,”
Chapman believes the Safe Classroom posters don’t go far enough.
“A majority of the time, nobody would say anything [about anti-gay bullying],” Chapman said. “The word ‘f****t’ should be taken as seriously as ‘[the N-word].’”
And even though it’s been a year since Chapman left Seaholm, three-quarters of the population that was there then still walk its halls.
Senior Timmy Christensen, co-founder of Birmingham Voice and officer in the inaugural year of Seaholm’s Kick Off Mentoring program, both of which deal extensively with preventing and addressing bullying, has witnessed many incidents of bullying during his time at Seaholm.
“Most of the bullying here takes place in the form of singling out or isolating kids,” Christensen said.
“Any kid not fitting the mold was a target,” Chapman said, echoing Christensen.
One thing everyone agreed on, however, is that the teacher compliance will be pivotal to the effort’s success.
“The best thing we can do is to make sure character education is not missing from the curriculum.” Christensen said.
Students interested in contributing to the success of the project are asked to share their experiences – both positive and negative – with the students leading the activity (members of the Birmingham Voice, GSA, and Diversity Club) so that teachers know what they are doing well and what needs to be improved upon.
At the planning meetings, students discussed how to best facilitate a discussion with the faculty that was both instructive and impactful. Teachers will get a chance to talk in small groups of other teachers and students about their approaches to handling bullying or insensitive comments in their classroom. The ultimate goal is to make bullying of the type that ultimately fueled the incidents of racial intimidation last year nonexistent.
“Ultimately,” Christensen said, summing up his vision for Seaholm, “we need to make the victims [of bullying] feel welcome and safe.”
