And Justice for All

Imagine you are six years old and someone asks, “Who are you?” What do you answer? Do you give your first name? Your last? Your age? Now imagine your are 12 years old and someone asks, “Who are you?”

What do you answer now?

In first grade, the yearlong theme at GUS is Who Am I? Students learn about themselves and the living world around them by studying the five senses, the human body, and the life cycles of animals, plants, and humans.

In seventh grade, students return to the same theme, but in much greater depth.

They are ready to tackle the question figuratively, not just literally, and answer with far more than just their first and last names.

Grade 6 and 7 Social Studies Teacher Christine Draper leads the seventh graders through this path of discovery four days a week, for from 45 minutes to 75 minutes. The curriculum has changed since she first came to GUS in 1999, but the goal of understanding self and one’s place in the world has not. “We have added units on learning and personality preferences and study skills,” she explains. They see themselves as students and individual learners first. And,

then, there is a strong focus on social justice and human rights which is woven throughout the seventh grade curriculum.

The students study culture and learn that humans survive through culture, Draper explains. “Every human society has a culture and every culture is different. Your culture is not the one and only. All cultures are valid ways to be human.” To understand this fully, the students engage in a group project to prepare a friend for a year in school in another country. They need to discover everything their friend should know about food, school, etiquette, values, norms, and customs in her host community.

Units on gender, race, and class have also been added to the curriculum. Within gender, Draper says, “We look at sex, sexuality, gender identity, gender expression. The big takeaway is that sex is not strictly binary. Gender expression is all cultural. Likewise, race is not biological, just a construct, yet they affect your life as if they are real.” This knowledge is important as students further their understanding and connect to their own life experiences.

Towards the end of the year, as a cumulative project that connects race, gender, and class, seventh graders engage in a family simulation project. Each student picks a slip of paper out of a

hat with a unique marital, socioeconomic, racial, and housing scenario. They may pull out of an envelope disasters or benefits — perhaps a flood or a pair of free tickets to a baseball game — and they will need to consider the very different effects these and other life events can have on people depending on their status. The students must then create electronic scrapbooks that detail and consider each family’s relevant statistics, such as what their family can afford in terms of housing, food, vacations, cars, insurance, health care, pets, and clothing.

They even go food shopping for their simulated families, using their math and science skills to analyze nutritional values, calculate what their families can afford, and compare what different budgets will allow. The food is later donated to Beverly Bootstraps. The class also discusses why humans live in families, including for affection, a sense of belonging, economics, and reproduction. They read articles about homelessness and food insecurity and what is or isn’t being done to solve these problems. They are even asked to write a law to solve a problem in their imaginary community. The project and readings result in new and broader perspectives on social and civic issues.

Pretty heady and, perhaps, even potentially depressing stuff for seventh graders. How does their teacher prevent them from getting too down? “We balance those subjects with our project on human rights champions,” she explains. As a foundation for the class, at the beginning of the year, each student chooses a champion to write about, but the result is not a biography, but rather a thesis, says Draper. She wants them

to answer the questions, “What made it possible for that person to become a champion of human rights? Was it persistence? Support of family? A chance meeting with Malcolm X? Do I have those qualities, advantages, experiences to become a champion of human rights?” Throughout the year, the seventh graders are asked to think about “What events in the world have helped to shape me as a unique individual? Which is more important, nature or nurture? What do all humans have in common?” Now they must answer a bigger challenge about themselves. Draper requires that students choose champions who have done hands-on work for human rights, not just individuals who have given money. The papers take a long time. Not only does the project require introspection, but also substantial research, the use of sources with correct citation, and one-on-one consultation with the teacher.

In addition to the paper, students create a found object sculpture in the school’s maker space. The sculptures, in a literal or abstract way, must represent the three influences the students included in their theses. At the end of the year, they visit the Boulevard in Gloucester to view the sculptures there and consider the qualities they represent. Students then talk about the values they think should be memorialized and to whom or what they would build a memorial.

Why is the study of culture, human rights, social justice, race, and gender so necessary?

Now we’ve asked the question Christine Draper really wants to answer.

“It is important for children to see other people with empathy, to see that there are other ways to live. Our culture tends to value money over almost anything. We need to raise awareness of other values in order to thrive. We all deserve rights. We have to always bring the kids back to that. When we talk about human rights, their hearts are there. We have to keep them there.”