and the test of time and community resilience

Favaloro and Shyla Lensing

at historically low prices post World War II, allowing them to purchase homes that became highly valued in Marin County.

“Over time, these homes resell for a lot of money, [and] sometimes they’re kept in the family, so white families that stayed here were able to develop legacy wealth,” Martinez said. “By contrast, in Marin City, there weren’t as many single-family homes built, and certainly not with the purpose of selling to Black families. [Instead], public housing was built, and [the community] didn’t get to take much advantage of property taxes in the school district.

“So you see the lack of legacy wealth, and the lack of investment [in public resources] and the amenities that ‘Marvelous Marin’ [touted] for the rest of the county.

“And you saw that families [in Marin City weren’t] always able to remain in public housing, [they] didn’t get to say, ‘Now when I pass away, I bequeath my child my rental;’ that’s not how that works, right? People either had to leave, or stayed in conditions that [weren’t] as set up for success as they [were] in other spaces in the county.” Consequently, Marin City’s evolution followed a different trajectory than other parts of Marin, eventually redeveloping — but into isolation, as it consisted largely of lowincome housing.

Orianna Vaughn, whose greatgrandmother migrated to work in Marinship, attended Bayside herself and witnessed firsthand the educational gaps when compared with her sister, who attended Willow Creek. Through her attendance at Bayside MLK and her transition to Tamalpais High School, those observed inequities became experiences for Vaughn.

“[In Advanced Placement courses], there was a disconnect in how my peers who were not Black and not from Marin City were performing and how I was performing … in terms of how my peers responded to the teacher, how they spoke and how they wrote. [For instance], I didn’t know what an annotation was — I [had] never learned,” Vaughn said.

Vaughn was not alone in her experiences. In fact, because of these disparities, in 2019, the Sausalito Marin City School District received are a lot better. [They’ve] made some tremendous changes that seem to be more positive this year than last year,” Vaughn said.

Retelling and Reshaping

Beyond education, persistent efforts from community leaders have allowed Marin City to find growth and empowerment throughout the decades.

Inspired by the opportunities she was denied growing up in segregated Georgia, Gaston started the non-profit, Performing Stars, in 1990, serving low-income children through enrichment programs that included music, dance, surfing and other activities. Hodges, who worked with the Marin City Community Development Corporation to head economic development and introduce permanent housing, eventually founded the Hannah Project in 2007 to help first-

Marin City’s history.

“The telling of the experiences of Black people [in this county] was just hidden, lost stories that got out in bits and pieces, but never in a consistent way. That’s why the [Marin City 80] exhibit was so important,” Gaston said. “I have another publication that’s coming out soon [covering] 1942 to 2022 that’s really going to share [Marin City’s] history, the Black experience and also share through adversities and outside influences how the community has been resilient.”

Similar to Gaston, Hodges described a new goal that the entire community is striving to achieve: having every child be able to read in the third grade, while she continues to head the Hannah Project and the summer Freedom School.

Vaughn has plans to open up a bookstore for Marin City, envisioning a space where kids can go to be productive and creative.

She sees the beauty that Marin City offers and hopes, with new projects and initiatives, the community will shine brighter than ever.

“[Marin City] has a lot of problems, but underneath, and what many don’t see, is that there are a handful of people, both young and old, who are collaborating to make Marin City a thriving and robust community,” Vaughn said. “It just takes time and money, and it takes faith. So as long as you have people who aren’t willing to give up on it and on the kids, and you have allies who are willing to lend a helping hand, it will get better — it is getting better.” bark@redwoodbark.org

Did spell check weaken students’ spelling? Did Grammarly ruin sentence structure? Did Speechify reduce students’ reading abilities? Each of these artificial intelligence (AI) tools have provoked questions in the academic sphere in addition to increasing teacher’s expectations for the quality of student work. As a result, there was widespread concern on high school and college campuses when these new tools were first introduced.

There has been even greater controversy in the educational sector since November 2022 when OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT chatbot to the world via its website. OpenAI is the artificial intelligence research laboratory and company that developed ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool that uses data from various internet sources to research and answer questions by writing essays, poems, songs and software code. Using ChatGPT is fairly simple. All that is required is to type in a question on any topic and, in a matter of seconds, it will respond in full sentences that appear to be written by a human.

As a result, teachers across the country are worried about student plagiarism on assignments and tests. Like many other high schools, Redwood promptly banned the OpenAI website on its Chromebooks. Redwood’s educators, including history teacher Nickolai Butkevich, are also grappling with the implications of this new tool.

“Right now, I’m in a defensive crouch, and I’m freaking out a little bit, trying to limit the damage of [ChatGPT] more than anything else,” Butkevich said.

Computer science teacher Richard Foldenauer is concerned as well.

Foldenauer worries about students using ChatGPT to write or debug code.

“You would not want to make it easier for [students] to copy others’ ideas — that is pernicious because then students do not think about what they are doing,” Foldenauer said. “Generally, copying code or getting it from somewhere else short circuits the whole thinking process.”

Some students are similarly concerned about the effects of the ChatGPT tool. Junior

Jake Southern believes ChatGPT gives an unfair advantage to those who use it.

“You have students trying to do the best work they can, and they’re probably going to end up with a lower grade than someone with an AI tool that can write a professional essay in a matter of seconds,” Southern said. “You could have an Advanced Placement class with a couple of kids cheating the system to get that A [grade].”

Beyond plagiarism, there is widespread unease among educators that ChatGPT will make students worse writers as well. Evidence already suggests that American teens generally do not have strong writing capabilities. According to the

National Assessment of Educational Progress (The Nation’s Report Card), in 2011, only 27 percent of high school seniors scored at or above the proficient level in writing.

Not all teens are rushing to use ChatGPT though, including junior Varun Sanjeev.

“I have not used ChatGPT for any of my writing assignments because that gets rid of the point of school, which is to learn skills,” Sanjeev said.

But ChatGPT is causing educators to question the importance of writing skills versus critical thinking skills. After all, what is the value of writing if you do not have anything original to convey?

ChatGPT’s ability to quickly find and compile data could enhance a student’s ability to evaluate original evidence and different viewpoints. For instance, a student could better understand a historical event or assess different perspectives to arrive at a unique conclusion.

So although many teachers are concerned about the short-term consequences of the tool, some are also enthusiastic about the future possibilities ChatGPT could offer students.

“I think it will enhance learning [by] making students better researchers,” Butkevich said. “It will allow us to focus on what really matters as far as critical thinking and putting information together in a way that makes sense to present an argument.”

With ChatGPT, students will be able to demonstrate a greater understanding of the topic and ultimately draw conclusions based on their own unique reasoning process. Consequently, ChatGPT could help students focus more on what they are thinking rather than how well they are communicating those thoughts. This tool could elevate students’ academic performance and critical analysis skills beyond what is currently demanded in school.

Also, teachers may be able to use ChatGPT to generate lesson plans, class materials and different prose for students to evaluate and edit. Butkevich believes that his curriculum could become more creative and engaging as a result.

Students like Sanjeev believe that ChatGPT has to be integrated into the curriculum and blocking it on the Chromebooks does not make sense.

“Teachers’ plans should be changed and worked around ChatGPT,” Sanjeev said. “It’s going to be something that is used in the future and everyone’s going to have to learn how to use it eventually. Right now the school is just delaying the inevitable.”

Since basing a student’s grade solely on a paper, piece of code or online final exam may no longer be appropriate, teachers will likely have to turn to other evaluation methods such as oral exams.

There is little doubt that ChatGPT marks a revolutionary educational change. It also represents an opportunity for students and teachers to improve their learning and teaching in ways yet to be identified.