Our national politics are divided and angry in a way that often feels beyond our control. The division doesn’t just stay “out there” but filters down to the community and school level.
I worry about what kind of environment that creates for young people, growing up in a world of so much misunderstanding and disregard for each other’s humanity. And yet, as educators know all too well, hopelessness is not an option when we are in front of students every day.
That’s why we need to think about the levers of change we do have when altering the big picture seems out of reach. For example, we have school districts in close proximity that are separated by some of the same differences tearing us apart at the national level: rural districts next to suburban ones, racially diverse districts next to homogeneous ones, affluent districts next to economically struggling ones, conservative-leaning enclaves next to liberal bubbles.
By bringing our almost next-door neighbors together, we can lead a smaller-scale, more doable version of the change we’d like to see in the country. We can use the tools we have — our connections across neighboring districts, our skills in working with young people — to help our students become the bridge. Cross-community school partnerships can be a local answer to the discord raging around us.
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It should not be hard: Many of us know teachers, administrators or parents in neighboring districts. We may be in the same professional associations, athletic conferences or science competitions. Our teachers or principals may have met each other in college or worked together earlier in their careers.
We can start by drawing on these connections to bring our students, who in many places have grown up only short car rides apart, into alliance and relationships with each other.
For a decade, I’ve been engaged in this exact experiment. I am a professor of educational policy and a co-founder of The Metropolitan Community Project, nicknamed “Metro,” a city-suburban school partnership based in Chicago. We started the project by tapping into the kind of network I mentioned above: convening a gathering of teachers and community organizers who’d attended the same college classes, collaborated on service projects and more.
Some members of our group teach at “Taylor,” a lower-income, public neighborhood high school in Chicago, or are involved in efforts to uplift the community. Others are teachers at “Wyndham,” an affluent public suburban high school only 25 minutes away.
We first came together over the summer, in the Taylor high school library, to develop our project’s intentions and sketch out a cycle of student meetings for the upcoming year. When school started in the fall, the teachers recruited volunteers from their classes and after-school clubs. Now, in any given year, about 30 students participate in Metro, evenly balanced between Taylor and Wyndham. The students’ diversity comes from the combination of two very separate schools.
Metro follows the rhythms of the school year. In the fall, our cross-district group gathers, and we send the students out on a scavenger hunt to break the ice. When they return, the teachers and I present information about how schools and districts work and the history and policies behind their inequality.
Next, each school group meets on their own to think about how to tell their story: what they love about their school, what their school needs. They brainstorm about which classes, clubs and parts of the building they’d like to include on a school tour.
Then, the suburban students visit the city school for a day, and later, the city students visit the suburban school for a day. The student hosts take their visitors around in small groups, where they listen in on classes in progress, hang out in the gym and observe lunchtime in the cafeteria. They take a lunch break, too, and then go back out to finish the tour. At the end of the school day, there’s space to debrief what they’re noticing, and once they’ve seen both schools, to process the similarities and differences.
After seeing the resource gap between their schools, and meeting new kids, the Metro students always want to do something. In spring, the education organizer helps them to figure out where to focus their change energy. The students get trained up on strategy: practicing how to make a case, write a public letter or get a signature.
Metro’s action campaigns begin near the school year’s end. Over our history, the city and suburban students have gone door-to-door in their communities, presented a student bill of rights to parents and met with state legislators to advocate for school funding equality. Before breaking for summer, we hold a little closing ceremony to celebrate the year and our partnership.
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What makes this cross-community partnership work is that the students have extended time together, over the school year and sometimes more, so they can more fully understand each other’s lives inside and outside of school and build a deep-seated trust. Metro is also intentionally designed so that students from both districts can take action together on issues they collectively care about.
What we hoped — and discovered — is that empathy, genuine understanding and solidarity emanate from these ingredients.
Teaching is a fundamentally hopeful profession. A refusal to give in to the climate of distress and division should be part of what it means to “not give up on kids.”
Cynthia Taines is a professor of education, Chicago resident, local school council member and author of the new book “The Metropolitan Community: Partnering for Equality Across the Educational Divide.”
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