Left to right, Northeast Middle School students who presented at UCLA: Avery Erling, Kai Chiba, Maesen Kirchgessner, Suzalis Benhocine, Brisseyda Alvino, Isabelle Bird Horse, Lisa Ruiz, Antoine McCoy, Anejha Fertil, Isra Ali. (Northeast Middle School)
What’s your perception of Northeast Middle School? Is it a lively, happy place where students of many races and nationalities get along well, are excited to learn and get opportunities to try things not available in other schools? Or do you see it as “ghetto,” a place where fights break out on a daily basis, a run-down piece of property filled with low-achieving kids?
That’s what students at NEMS set to find out through a survey they wrote and conducted via QR codes in the Northeaster and at Parkway Pizza and Hazel’s Northeast last year. They were aided by Dr. Nathaniel Stewart, a former Detroit middle school teacher who teaches organizational leadership, policy and development at the University of Minnesota.
As part of their graduation requirements, Minneapolis Public Schools students have to take part in Youth Participation Evaluation, which teaches them to gather information from others in the school, figure out what’s working and what’s not and make recommendations about what needs to change. According to the MPS website, YPE students choose a research question that is important to them and relates to their education, school climate and/or student engagement.
Ten seventh and eighth grade students were chosen for the study, based on the strength of a one-page essay and their grade point averages. They represented the school’s various demographics — Black, white, Asian, Indigenous, Hispanic, Middle Eastern. Isra Ali, Brisseyda Alvino, Suzalis Benhocine, Izabelle Bird Horse, Kai Chiba, Avery Erling, Anaejha Fertil, Maesen Kirchgessner, Antoine McCoy and Lisa Ruiz made up the community council.
NEMS Principal Vernon Rowe went to the kids with a single question: Why do parents in the neighborhood choose to send their kids to other schools, “Why not Northeast?”
Led by art teacher Josie Kuhn and Stewart, the students took a look at neighborhood and school demographics pulled from U.S. News & World Report: Northeast Minneapolis is 70% white; Northeast Middle School is 30% white; it’s also one of the most diverse schools in the state. Approximately 20% of Black parents are likely to send their children to schools outside the district while 30% of white parents send their offspring elsewhere.
They watched the Minnesota Experience program, “Jim Crow of the North,” and learned about redlining, restrictive covenants and racial attitudes in 20th century Minneapolis. They heard about Bishop Richard Howell of Shiloh Temple in North Minneapolis, who was the first Black student at NEMS in the late 1960s. Then they set to work devising a ten-question survey.
The students received 85 responses, not enough to be statistically valid, but enough to reveal attitudes toward the school.
“They looked for patterns in the data,” said Stewart. “They tabulated every positive and negative response. The survey revealed that respondents really didn’t know much about the school.”
Respondents, the students said, perceive the school as “ghetto.” They think there’s a lot of violence in the school, which student Antoine McCoy disputed. “There’s fights in every school,” he said. “Third and fourth-graders were fighting in the lunchroom at Webster. But we haven’t had any fights here.”
Respondents also cited low test scores, lack of extracurricular activities and a perceived lack of caring for students on the part of teachers. One survey taker wrote, “My kids need to be able to go to college, and at St. Anthony, they’ll be able to do that.” Another said they didn’t “have any nice things to say about the school.”
Armed with their data, the students put together a slide presentation, then boarded a plane for Los Angeles last November with Stewart, Kuhn and Assistant Principal Steve Paster pulling duty as chaperones.
At UCLA, ten very mature-sounding teenagers presented their information to members of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA), a consortium of university-based, pre-K-12 leadership preparation programs that support advancing equity and excellence in educational organizations. “The conference welcomes educational leaders (superintendents, principals, etc.) and researchers across the world,” said Stewart, who, as a member of the conference planning committee, put the students on the agenda.
More than 1,000 educators attended the conference, and 20 of them listened as the NEMS kids detailed their findings.
They began by introducing themselves in their home languages — Spanish, Somali, Ho-Chunk, French, Creole. The audience, Paster said, was “blown away. We had no idea they were going to do that.”
Stewart agreed. “The audience was very impressed. Lots of folks were telling me it was the highlight of their conference experience.”
Back home, as they head toward senior high, the students are preparing to hand over their research to a new group of students who will carry their work forward.
Asked about their conclusions and recommendations, student Avery Erling said, “People who have never been inside the school don’t really know what it’s like. We need to have events to bring people in to meet the students and the teachers.”
Principal Rowe told the students, “You’ve had a mountaintop experience. Now we have to get to work.” He plans to hold a series of meetings he calls “Speakeasies,” where community members can meet, learn about NEMS and help build a community around the school.
Editor’s note: Funding for this program came from grants from the American Institutes of Research and the William T. Grant Foundation through the University of Minnesota, which paid for the students’ travel and hotel rooms in Los Angeles.