History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
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Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Youth voices-Three local students team up with their peers to speak out
Our Weekly - September 9, 2008
By Cynthia E. Griffin
Tired of talking and not being heard to their satisfaction, students in the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA) summer program for high school students, recently released findings from research and instead of making recommendations, the teams of students called their proposed solutions demands.
Three local students—Beverly Castillo and LaTonya Phillips both of Locke High School and Maurice McCoy of Manual Arts High— participated in the three-week paid summer program, and each said it has had a tremendous impact on their lives. Castillo, who is going into her senior year at Locke in September and found out about the program several years ago from her sister’s fifth grade teacher, said initially she was kind of skeptical.
“I didn’t want to do it,” remembers the Watts student of her first year in the program. But she did, and what she learned in 2007, galvanized her to return again this year.
In 2008, Castillo found the experience was even more enlightening. “We learned students react to things in different ways. We learned about transformational resistance and reactional resistance. And I didn’t know there were different ways to resist. I saw things that were happening to students at school and everything started to make sense,” explained Castillo, who noted that she also learned that students try to defeat the system by misbehaving in class.
“Every since I was in middle school that had been happening. That’s one way students reject what the teacher is teaching,” added the Locke senior, who also came to understand that those types of actions were self-defeating. The theme of the presentations the five student teams made this year at City Hall in the Tom Bradley Towers, was the ability for students to express their voice inside and outside school.
That ability to learn how to express your voice was one of the characteristics that drew LaTonya Phillips to the summer program. The junior was introduced to the program by her film production teacher at Locke, and like Castillo was initially reluctant about going. “I really got interested because I felt like I would be able to change something about my school. I was aware they were going to do a presentation in front of the Mayor. I felt if we really did a good enough presentation, he would listen and make a change.” And while Phillips is not certain that officials are really taking she and her fellow students as seriously as they need to, she believes it has given her a greater understanding of how to use her own voice.
“It made me realize I could actually speak up about what I feel; and then try to make a change and make a difference. It taught me not to be scared about offering my opinion.”
Phillips too, learned that the way students acted in school was reactionary behavior. Maurice McCoy, who is going into the 11th grade at Manual Arts High School in September, also said he was attracted to the summer institute by the idea of being able to have his voice heard.
He was recommended by his history teacher. “She made it seem like it was for people who were in the same predicament I was in— not really getting their voice heard, and people not really hearing what you had to say,” explained the junior, who was motivated by something that happened to him.
“I got my (tennis) shoes stolen, and when I reported it to the school police officers, they kind of just shoved me off,” explained McCoy, who said he felt the same way, when he reported incidents of harassment that happened to him inside and outside of school. As part of their project, the three local students and their institute contemporaries from Cleveland, Roosevelt, Opportunities Unlimited and Wilson High Schools searched for different places in the community and on the web where young people got an opportunity to give voice to their feelings and desires.
That search helped McCoy realize that he actually did have a voice that could be used to inform others. And that’s exactly what he plans to do.
“I’m not going to preach to them, I’m just going to inform them about youth getting a voice, about leadership,” said McCoy, who prior to the UCLA institute did not even know his school had a leadership program. Now he plans to take small steps to get involved. And in so many respects, that as much as the findings from their research, is what the students have gained from IDEA—an understanding of how each of them can use their own voice to talk about the need for change, and then do something about making changes.
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