The Village Nation
The Village Nation
CPSELs
1.2 Communicate the shared vision so the entire school community understands and acts on the school's mission to become a standards-based education system.
2.2 Promote equity, fairness, and respect among all members of the school community.
2.5 Provide opportunities for all members of the school community to develop and use skills in collaboration, distributed leadership, and shared responsibility
5.1 Model personal and professional ethics, integrity, justice, and fairness, and expect the same behaviors from others.
5.2 Protect the rights and confidentiality of students and staff.
5.8 Engage in professional and personal development.
This year 2011-2012 is my third fourth year as a Village Nation elder my goal is to support and advocate for African American students. We began our journey with a celebration of increased CST scores and welcomed our incoming 9th grade students. One goal of the assembly was to, communicate the shared vision so the entire school community understands and acts on the school's mission to become a standards-based education system. Through this assembly we expressed to our African American students our high expectations and reminded them about the support system they have at school.
At the beginning of December we conducted our first all girls TVN assembly. Scheduling a place to hold the assembly was one of the greatest challenges due to the fact that the school only has one venue for a large number of seats and this place is Mercer Hall. We couldn't hold it there because it was completely booked to we secured B101 a place that can only hold about 100 students. The objectives of the assembly were to empower African American girls by addressing issues such as dress, the perception of others, attitude, and sex; additionally, we wanted to provide opportunities for African American girls of the school community to develop and use skills in collaboration, to distribute leadership, and shared responsibility. This assembly became a safe space where the group could talk about various social and cultural issues with confidentially. During the assembly girls cried, laughed, shared, and due to the limited time they had (90minutes) requested a second assembly to finish this important talk.
For Valentine's Day by the request of our African American girls we held out second all girls assembly. As part of the bridge between our support programs for African American and Latino students, we invited LSU members to the assembly. 30 Latina students attended, and the feedback in LSU was positive. The objective of the assembly was to address the issues of self-esteem vs. stuff-esteem. Girls were given a kit containing the definitions of self-esteem vs. stuff-esteem, a beautiful and powerful poem written by one of our great staff members JoLeta Simmons which expresses the greatness of being who we are. Students felt safe to share because they new that this was an assembly that provided confidentiality. Girls are made these two assemblies a place where they feel comfortable and validated, thus, they requested a third assembly that will be taking place on June 6, 2012.
As part of TVN's goal to promote equity, fairness, and respect among all members and shape a culture in which high expectations are the norm for each student as evident in rigorous academic work, we took a group of 70 African American and Latino students to CSUN for a Harambee High School Conference. Here students sang the Black National Anthem, participated in college motivation presentations, took a tour of the school and participated in workshops that provided them with tools to successfully transit to college. When we arrived to CSUN I was very pleased to see that the president of Harambee is a Pali alumni who was my student for Spanish and AVID. This conference gave us the opportunity to build the leadership capacity of 10th and11th grade African American and Latino students, to increase BSU and LSU outreach to underclassmen, and to serve as mentors to these students.
