Corliss High School junior Mentrell Blackman says being on his school’s student voice committee showed him he had “power and strength.”
Manuel Martinez/WBEZ
Inside a classroom at Juarez High School in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood this fall, students craft a letter about the attitude and tone of some security guards, which they say creates a bad climate in the hallways.
They are proposing a meeting with the head of security and the dean. The adviser has told them to approach it diplomatically.
“First we just want to hear their side of the story,” says Kayla Romero, one of the students. “Maybe a kid’s doing something wrong in the hallways, and that’s causing them to be aggressive. So that’s why we will also want to see their perspective.”
The students say they’ll use the information to draft a plan with administrators to address the issue.
Gruff security is a common complaint in schools, one many teens feel they have to live with. But these students believe they can make a change.
They are part of Juarez’s “student voice committee,” which meets regularly to tackle the question: What needs to be improved? Nearly every Chicago public high school has a committee as part of a broader effort in the school district to change its approach toward civics education.
Over the last several years, CPS has shifted beyond a narrow focus on learning the ins and outs of government and toward helping students experience what it is like to get involved and create change.
A central goal of CPS’ department on student voice and engagement, which includes the student voice committees, is to “elevate active participation in our democracy,” according to the district’s description.
“Participating in civic life isn’t necessarily something you can just study about. You have to experience and to develop those skills and competencies,” says Heather Van Benthuysen, who ran CPS’ student voice and engagement efforts until she moved out of state this summer. She says CPS is seen as a leader in participatory civics education.
Still, there are questions about whether civics education does any good, says Anthony Fowler, a University of Chicago professor. Despite a requirement in many states, including Illinois, for schools to offer civics ed, few Americans vote, apathy is high and researchers have yet to figure out how to change that, Fowler says.
Fowler notes that better civics education is often found in schools with more affluent students, who have more agency and are often more involved civically, though it’s unclear whether civics ed is responsible for that. CPS, with its new approach to civics education, set out to interrupt this “civic empowerment gap” between wealthy and lower-income school districts and spread quality civics ed across a district where most students come from low-income families.
At 7 a.m. about 20 students sit in a circle. Jacob, a young man with wavy dark brown hair, has everyone’s full attention as he explains why the student voice committee at Vaughn wants a school vending machine.
“We figured we had never had a vending machine here … and that at other schools had them” says Jacob. Jacob’s last name isn’t being used to protect his privacy.
Vaughn Occupational High School on the Northwest Side serves 14- to 22-year-olds with cognitive and developmental disabilities. The students brought their demand to the local school council and also presented to the mayor and CPS’s CEO when they toured the school earlier this year. And, on the spot, the leaders promised to deliver a vending machine.
Members of Vaughn Occupational High School’s student voice committee show up at 7 a.m. once a week before school so they can have a say in what happens in their school.
Sarah Karp/WBEZ
Teacher Kelly Fischer, who advises the committee, says it’s amazing to see these students win.
“Often they are not asked what they think. They’re not asked, ‘What would make this better?’ ” she says. “They’re given options for things that other people feel will make their lives better.”
She says the message that they lack agency can discourage them from voting or being civically engaged in adulthood.
The committee also gives these young adults a place to talk about their challenges and find support. Jacob says being in this space is a dream.
“I love being a part of this group because we are the ones in control,” he says. “And we decide what we get to do around the school and how we can improve it to make it a better place.”
His peers snap their fingers in support. He then looks around and tells them, “I love you.”
Brenda Vences, a junior at Corliss Early College STEM High School in Roseland, says she had to be convinced to join the student voice committee. But now, she’ll never go back to being silent.
“You really got to speak on what you need, what you want,” she says. “You need to get out of that comfort zone. You need to put yourself out there.”
When the Corliss committee gathered last year, the teens talked about issues that come up a lot, like dirty bathrooms. But something else was also weighing on them.
For years, Corliss seemed left behind as it lost enrollment and programming.
Junior Mentrell Blackman says his friends gave him a hard time when he said he was enrolling in Corliss. “They were like, ‘Oh you go to that crappy school … ha ha ha.’ ”
He says that felt terrible.
As part of the Corliss High School student voice committee, junior Brenda Vences and others initiated a campaign to show the community all their school had to offer.
Manuel Martinez/WBEZ
Brenda says Corliss gets lumped in with a stereotype about South Side high schools being full of gangs and drugs.
Mentrell and Brenda say their voice committee wanted to show that wasn’t true to other young people and the community. They created a public campaign that included a video, social media and billboards.
Sheila Sterling, the dean who advises the committee, set up meetings with the principal and CPS’s CEO. The group won a $40,000 marketing grant from CPS.
They created a video with the theme, “Corliss is elite.” It features a young man, whose dreads are dyed Corliss gold, giving a tour of the school. Among highlights are a maker’s lab with a state-of-the-art 3D printer and a drone simulator. A few years ago, Corliss was named an early college STEM school.
The video went viral, and Mentrell and other students wound up on billboards advertising the school.
The students and Sterling believe the opinion about Corliss is changing. They haven’t seen an impact on enrollment yet, but Sterling says she expects an uptick as it catches on.
Regardless, the campaign made the students feel better about Corliss. It gave them faith in their ability to make a change.
“I felt hopeless when I felt nobody could hear me or hear my ideas,” Mentrell says. “So just knowing that I have the power and strength to do that makes me happy.”
Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ.
This story is part of the The Democracy Solutions Project, a partnership among WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times and the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government. Together, we’re examining critical issues facing our democracy in the run-up to the 2024 elections.
