Throughout the Tri-Village community, schools aren’t just teaching students theoretical concepts in order to check off a box – they’re providing young people with the knowledge and experience necessary to become leaders and active community members. In recent years, Tri-Village students have stepped up with strong interests in clubs and organizations promoting advocacy and civic engagement.
Inspired by the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement near the beginning of summer 2020, staff and students at Grandview Heights High School came together to form the Bobcat Anti-Racism Collective (BARC).
“The purpose of the group is to give our primarily white student body a more diverse view of the world and, in particular, the Black experience in America,” says Kevin McCarthy, a GHHS English teacher and co-adviser of BARC. “The group’s purpose is to try and introduce students to those perspectives that they might not have access to.”
Monthly general meetings invite students to explore topics of race through articles and discussions.
BARC also hosts a movie series that explores issues of diversity or race or are directed or written by people of color. In the future, the collective hopes to launch a speaker series. BARC activism events involve writing letters to elected officials and making phone calls about Ohio House bills related to education.
“This group that started just from reading articles and having small group discussions has grown into this organization that is student-led,” says Bethany Black, a GHHS English teacher and co-advisor of BARC, “and they’re actually doing things to affect change.”
Black says some student members’ activism has included testifying in opposition of House Bills 322 and 327, which aim to limit public schools from teaching “divisive topics” such as those dealing with race, sex, slavery and bias, and presenting at the local school board meeting on the importance of BARC’s work.
At Upper Arlington High School, German teacher Tricia Fellinger formed Ambassadors of Change after a 2016 district initiative to train all staff in cultural competency. Inspired by some of the district training lessons, the student organization encourages students to be inclusive leaders.
Throughout the first semester of the year, Fellinger lays the foundation for students with workshops on inclusion, understanding identity, recognizing bias and being an upstander. In the second semester, students drive the programming more.
In the past, Ambassadors of Change students have lead inclusion workshops for eighth-graders. Local professional storytellers have also mentored students on how to tell their personal stories in a way that can affect change in their community.
“(A student’s) voice is important, they’re our future,” Fellinger says. “I think it’s important for them to take a more active role in their education. And that is not just in the classroom, but what happens in the hallways, what happens after school. I think it’s important for them to develop those leadership skills right now, to become advocates for themselves and for each other.”
Courtesy of Asian American and Pacific Islander Association
The Asian American and Pacific Islander Association met with Nidhi Satiani to discuss her role as a school board member.
Another UAHS group, the Asian American and Pacific Islander Association, saw students do just that. After organizing an AAPI Heritage Month celebration, students created the organization to continue celebrating that culture and advocating for Asian American and Pacific Islander voices.
“I wanted to create a community for anyone who’s interested in API history or API events around the community,” says Krish Mawalkar, senior and AAPI Association student director. “We did have a lot of groups focused on diversity more broadly, but not many groups focused on, for example, API events or things relating to the API community.”
On Instagram, the AAPI Association posts information about historical moments and upcoming events. It has also hosted interviews with influential leaders from the AAPI community, such as Nidhi Satiani, a local school board member. The association’s fundraising committee supports local organizations such as the Asian American Community Services and helped promote a fundraiser selling dalgona candy inspired by the Netflix series Squid Game.
Another GHHS program called Civic Education and Leadership Academy teaches students about democratic principles and civic engagement. The nonpartisan group is run by the WORTH Foundation, a local nonprofit, and the BARC advisors helped petition for it to come to GHHS. Students meet once a week over lunch to learn about creating change in their community.
“They learn about how to change local policy, how to have a conversation with people who have very different views from you, and how you have to sort of navigate listening to those students and those people instead of shutting them down and just writing them off as a bad person,” Black says.
Students interested in joining organizations can find more info at www.ghschools.org and www.uaschools.org.
Juliana Colant is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
