I wanted to introduce you to a couple of education activists who also happen to be college students. People often say young people are our future, but that sells them short. The activities of Mel Katz (a student at TCNJ and running for School Board in South Brunswick) and Stephanie Rivera, a graduate student at Rutgers School of Education, show that students are our present as well. 

Here’s Mel on why she’s running for school board: 

First and foremost, I am 19. Because of this, I offer a different perspective from the current Board of Education members. As a student who graduated just a little over a year ago, I am still deeply connected to the schools in South Brunswick; I also live in South Brunswick and commute to TCNJ which helps me keep this connection. In addition to being connected to SB schools, I am also a college student studying education – specifically studying urban elementary education – which allows me to study issues currently impacting students, teachers, and parents in my journey to become a teacher.

Not only am I a student, but I consider myself to be a student activist also. I am very closely involved with the education issues at the state level, and have gotten to know many of the “important” (yes, I put that in quotes because many times the “important” players don’t actually know much about education, or are totally in another world on these issues) people involved in decision making. I have testified on behalf of public education and against damaging reforms (I will expand on this in my campaign) at different venues such as the State Board of Education multiple times, the Assembly Education Committee, the NJEdMarch27 at the Statehouse in Trenton, and my local South Brunswick Board of Education multiple times also (they all sure loved me after those testimonies!).

Second, I want to also push for a more open discussion around “education reform” issues for lack of a better term. This circles most specifically around Common Core (CCSS), PARCC, and the new teacher evaluation system. I believe that the Board of Education should take a stance on the issues, or at minimum open the discussion to the public around these issues. While the board is free to discuss their concerns around these changes amongst themselves, it is crucial that they also discuss these changes with the community – key word being WITH the community. These changes in education impact every student, teacher, parent, and community member, and therefore the board as a whole owes the community to keep them involved.

And here is a clip from a wonderful interview with Stephanie Rivera that gets to her core philosophy: 

ES: You wrote a terrific post called Advocacy in the Age of Color Blindness  where you challenged the idea that it makes no different what color a teacher is as long as s/he’s great. I’m amazed that it’s even necessary to argue about this, but the *best and brightest* first mentality seems to be gaining traction.

SR: The whole argument that if students are succeeding and all of their teachers are white then it’s OK to have all white teachers really misses the point. First of all, how are we measuring student success? Is it all test scores? Because raising test scores isn’t the only role of a teacher and it shouldn’t be. What do students learn from having teachers who look like them? I really believe that when students of color see teachers who look like them in these great professions it sends a powerful message that *hey, I can do something like that too.* It’s also about the ability of teachers to understand where their student are coming from.

…

ES: So I’m using my extensive powers to grant you the authority to make one really substantive change to teacher education. What would it be?

SR: I’d add more diversity education. The fact that so many veteran teachers come out of these programs thinking that race isn’t important reflects a flaw in the way we train teachers. I know that here at Rutgers we have one class where we talk about the different cultures we may be teaching. And what a lot of my fellow future teachers take away from this class—and I find this so frustrating that it gives me chills just talking about it—is that the whole point of the class is to make them feel guilty. But that’s not the point. The point of diversity education is to help us understand the systemic and institutionalized racism that exists within our society and how it effects our students who come through that. The goal of classes like this should be to compel future teachers to want to fight for a better society so that students don’t have to experience this kind of racism.

I’ll be pointing my students to these wonderful examples of student activism.