[00:00:15] Amy H-L: I’m Amy Halpern Laff.
[00:00:17] Jon M: And I’m Jon Moscow. Our guests today are Dr. Samuel Finesurrey, Assistant Professor of History at Guttman Community College of CUNY, and Abigail Eusebio, Juliet Vargas Hernandez, and Ixchel De Dios. Abby, Juju, and Ixchel have just graduated from School in the Square, a charter middle school in Washington Heights in Manhattan, known as S2.
We will be talking about Elevating Student Voices, a participatory oral history project that they and 11 other S2 students conducted at their school. Welcome.
Sam, you and the students have referred to this project as “critical participatory action research.” What does that mean, and why is it a valuable form of research?
[00:01:01] Sam F: Well, participatory action research just means that instead of me coming and studying these students as sort of the expert, I lean on their own expertise on their own experiences, right. The three people on this call and all young middle schoolers and everybody who went through the pandemic in fourth grade, they’re experts on what it means to be 13, 14, living in Washington Heights in a way that, you know, I am not, right. And so for me to claim expertise in that without their input, I think is foolish, right. So in every step of the project. I’ve leaned on these young people to guide the project, to design the project, to conduct the interviews, to think about the questions we’re going to be asking, right. The goal of this project was to evaluate social-emotional learning over time.
I couldn’t have done it without them on a lot of levels. They ask better questions of each other. They create zones of comfort for each other. And so they’re central to the work, and I think that’s what participatory action research is all about.
[00:02:05] Jon M: And the “critical” piece of it?
[00:02:07] Sam F: We’re critiquing sort of standard methods of evaluating social-emotional learning, which oftentimes are surveys or tests. These are conversations between peers. And we think that’s a better form of evaluating where these young people are and where they’re headed.
[00:02:22] Amy H-L: Tell us about the participatory oral history project you conducted at S2. What did you do and how did you do it?
[00:02:29] Sam F: So it started when these folks were in sixth grade. I kind of showed up to their lunchroom and said, “Hey, all. We’re going to be doing this research project. Who wants to do it with me?” And the three people on this call, in addition to about half the class, eventually decided to be a part of this project, and we started interviewing them, starting in 6th grade, in their first trimester at S2.
And we interviewed them twice a year, 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, evaluating where they were at emotionally, socially, how they were handling things. By 7th grade, we brought them into the conversation. So they had been interviewed twice. And the three people in front of you, Ixchel, Abby, and Juju, they all took a class with me on becoming youth researchers, where we redesigned the project. They created new questions, they were trained in how to do oral history, and they evaluated the results. And this is really important, right. Because they are in it. They see patterns that I wouldn’t be able to see, right. I’m a 37 year old who lives in New Jersey. I am not the demographic of this school, right, which is young, largely Dominican, from Washington Heights, right. That is not a world that I understand intimately.
And so having their voices in every step of this was super important. They are the only folks who know what it means to be a fourth grader going through the pandemic, going through the racial uprisings, being in lockdown. They know that intimately, right. So leaning on their expertise, I think, was kind of core to the project.
We produced a single publication from this project, and they’ve done multiple presentations at oral history conferences, and recently to the Intergenerational Change Initiative. And some of them will be presenting at the Oral History Association coming up in October.
[00:04:20] Amy H-L: That’s exciting.
[00:04:21] Jon M: What were some of the most meaningful things that you found? And this, this question is sort of for everybody.
[00:04:27] Sam F: I’ll let them answer. They’re calling me old in the chat. That’s what’s happening right now.
[00:04:31] Ixchel D: Ixchel, and I’ll go first. I think something really meaningful that I got from this whole process was that our voices really matter and they’re really heard. Because I think that in all spaces, you always hear like, “oh, yes, feel free to share.” But I think the project really showed me that not only our voices heard, but what we say can be put into action, can actually make changes in our community. And I think that’s really meaningful.
[00:04:57] Amy H-L: Anyone else?
[00:04:58] Juliette V: So, Juju, also known as Juliette. I feel like what I’ve gotten from this whole project is that many things are possible because, if I’m being honest, I didn’t really think about this project as much. I really thought it was just me writing an essay about people’s feelings. Obviously, they matter, but I didn’t really think it would be such a big thing. And this project really showed me how many things in the world are just possible. You just really got to believe in it and you just got to really put your work into something, you know, so I feel like this project really showed me possibilities and stuff.
[00:05:38] Abigail E: Abby. So, this project showed me how much me and my peers relate to each other during the pandemic. Because even though we weren’t able to see each other for like a good two, one year span, I feel like it was pretty cool to see that people feel the same way about these things, like how I felt when I was isolated. It was also cool to start learning research abilities and writing down information from our research and like putting it into this article that we made. So that was pretty cool.
[00:06:12] Amy H-L: Tell me about the article and what you did with your results.
[00:06:16] Sam F: Oh, I could sort of give a framework. Each one of the people on this call, in addition to a number of the other co-authors, they each wrote individual sections, where they would analyze the results of Interviews over time, right. I think, Juliette, you focused on, I’m forgetting, academic anxieties. Is that right?
[00:06:33] Juliette V: Yes.
[00:06:33] Sam F: Abby was very focused on social anxieties. Ixchel is looking at sort of school structures and thinking about what it means when key members of a school depart, right, and what that means for young people. And they weren’t approaching this with like “I feel that was a part of it,” but they were approaching it as researchers. They had reams and reams of data that they were looking at. This was all anonymized, so they’re not looking at what their peers are saying, what their anxieties are. But they looked at, and they were able to produce knowledge in this way and realize that what they’re feeling in their own core, I think, wasn’t just them, wasn’t their own feelings, but that was actually a widespread sentiment. Do you guys want to talk a little bit about some of the results that you came up with?
[00:07:13] Ixchel D: Well, like Dr. Sam said, I wrote about the departure and stuff, and that kind of ties back to, like, my response for the last question. So, our 6th grade counselor had left at the ending of the year, and nobody really knew about what happened, only, like, a few people. And so I kind of collected data, how people in 6th grade relied on our counselor to like express their emotions and their anxieties. And then when that source of trust was gone because the person that they confided in had left, it made an effect on how people felt and whom could they express the emotions to when now that person is not here anymore. So yeah, that’s kind of just what I wrote about and I put it all together. Yeah.
[00:07:58] Abigail E: My part to focus on the animals. So it was like the first question of our interview process, and it was like, “Oh, what is an animal that would describe you? And what is an animal that you want to grow into?” So I had to write two different paragraphs on the responses from each of those questions.
I found stuff about social anxieties, how people wanted to like come out their shell and become like certain stronger animals. And I also found how over time, since we did it every year, how people would grow into these animals and switch their animals throughout.
[00:08:30] Juliette V: Juju. What I have wrote about in the article was how students would feel pressured, mostly by family members or maybe just in general, about their grades. I had wrote about this one quote about how this student had felt super pressured because she wanted her family and all of elders to talk good about her. She felt like if she had gotten lower than an 90 or even 100, she felt like she wasn’t gonna be good enough. You know, she really wanted her family to talk about how great she is in school. And she knows that if she doesn’t do good in school, it’s really wrong, I guess, in the family.
[00:09:17] Sam F: I could put it together a little bit. What… About Ixchel, we’ll get more about sort of the results of it because her section actually had profound impacts in the way that the school operates.
But there was real patterns that Abby noticed in terms of, like, young people wanting to be brave or strong, right, and have this ferocity. Um, a lot of them said they wanted to be a lion or a bear, so they could protect themselves.
Juju, I think, revealed something quite stark in her section where young folks, even those who weren’t doing so well academically, they wanted to do well. It’s not like an apathy that was taking over their lives, but like kind of a deep desire to do well that maybe wasn’t always achievable. And I think that was really important for educators in their school and beyond to recognize.
[00:10:05] Amy H-L: So how did the school respond to their findings?
[00:10:07] Ixchel D: So the way the school responded to it was that the students got more involved with the processes of teachers departing from the school. And to share like one story, our last year at the school in 8th grade, we had a couple teachers leave us. And after these teachers would leave, we would usually know a little bit beforehand to like mentally prepare. And even after, they got to decide all as a class, which teacher we decided was the best fit for our school community and whom we wanted to hire.
And, you know, we always got the reassurance that we can speak freely and we can give our opinions, like whether we really wanted that teacher or not. And other than that, we also had circles all together each class period, whether it was like a day or two, depending on how much time the class needed to share their feelings. The teachers would ask us questions about how we felt, what are we stressed about, what our anxieties are about, and it was just like an open space. And I think that even though it’s something small, like just having a circle, I think it really helped all the students to feel more calm going on further with a new teacher.
[00:11:17] Jon M: You mentioned Ms. Lilly, I think. Can you talk a little bit more, can you identify who that is?
[00:11:23] Ixchel D: Ms. Lilly is like our family. She’s one of the teachers that are going to the high school. Yeah, she’s just one of the staff and she also is like part of that.
[00:11:32] Abigail E: So, Ms. Lilly stepped in for Sam when Sam was, I think, on paternity leave.
[00:11:36] Amy H-L: And this is Abby?
[00:11:38] Abigail E: Yes, this is Abby. I’m sorry. When Sam was on paternity leave, so like, Lilly was prompting us to make new questions while we waited for Sam to get back until we found our dates to present at these places such as CUNY and.. What was it called? It was the nationwide thing. What was it, Sam?
[00:11:54] Sam F: The three things that they’ve done so far are the Oral History of the Mid-Atlantic Region Conference, Youth Summit NYC, and then the Intergenerational Change Initiative. Go ahead, Abby. Are you done? Do you want to talk about Ms. Lilly? I know you guys have a tight relationship.
[00:12:09] Abigail E: I do actually have something to say about Ms. Lilly. She has my whole heart. Ms. Lilly really, she presented herself super early before. I feel like that’s something that many teachers will do. I feel like it’s only because the middle school and the high school are connected, but I also feel very kind of her and nice of her for her to actually, like, participate and join our group and actually, like, help us out. She wasn’t one of those kind of teachers that just sit there and do absolutely nothing. She will actually make us do the work and stuff, cooperate, and, you know, get along and get together while Sam was gone. And I feel like she was super helpful at the time. I just want to add that not only when Mr. Sam was gone, though, so once he came back, she was still with us, and she just became a part of our group, and she was very important and helpful.
[00:13:04] Sam F: These young people have dealt with a ton of turnover at the school, and the fact that Ms. Lilly was able to kind of create these bonds that… She didn’t come until eighth grade, right, over the course of their last year, I think was very powerful.
[00:13:16] Jon M: Sam mentioned some of the public presentations that you’ve made. What kinds of questions have people asked? What are people interested in? And what have the conversations been like? What was it like when you went to talk to groups? What were they interested in?
[00:13:31] Juliette V: I think for them, they were very interested in what had caused us to come into a group and actually work together. Like I don’t know about any other age group, but I I think this is super, super young. So when most, when we presented it and we had said, like, we’re from middle school and stuff, I feel like they were in a little shock, like just how we collab together, work together to make this very big article.
[00:13:59] Ixchel D: Ixchel.To add on to Juju, I think that people like ask questions just about like the process. Cause we went from just interviewees to making like a whole bigger project and like really learning how to become a researcher. And I think that interested people and sparked questions and curiosity.
[00:14:17] Jon M: What are some ways that each of you have changed as a result of participating in the project? We’ll start with Sam.
[00:14:27] Sam F: I mean, I just feel so honored that they let me in. You know like it’s such a warm thing. We came. We were wearing masks at the beginning. Nobody saw my face. Um, it was pretty wild. And I’m a historian, so this isn’t social- emotional learning. I have become an expert in sort of teaching oral history as a method, but my experience with middle school was being in middle school, right.
It wasn’t an academic initially. And so, um, I have learned so much about the obstacles and anxieties these young people have that kind of crowd their world. And the fact that these three in front of you and so many more that we’ve been working with are becoming amazing human beings despite all the things that they’ve had to go through. They were fourth graders when the world ended, right. It’s hard to imagine, I think, for some of us older folk, what it means to be on lockdown in those formative years, particularly in a place like New York City, where it’s not like you have a lot of space, right. Like everybody’s living in apartments. And the cyber-universe that they’re all dealing with also is just something that we never had to deal with. Their strength and their ability to kind of overcome some of the obstacles and anxieties that were real and scary left a profound impact on me. I am a father of two. And I really hope that my children can sort of have the perseverance and strength and grace and intelligence that I’ve seen from from these young folks. So I’ve been able to work with.
[00:15:51] Jon M: Who else would like to respond? What are some of the ways that you feel that you’ve changed as a result of working on the project?
[00:15:58] Abigail E: Abby. I feel like I’ve always been a pretty extroverted person, but this project has allowed us to get better in our public speaking skills, since we’re going to all of these events and presenting our work. Also to empathize with each other, to understand what each person’s going through, so you can like write about it and get everybody’s story out there and a lot of like documentation, transferring the results onto the article and writing about it.
[00:16:26] Ixchel D: I agree. I’ve learned to present better and I’m still working on it, but it’s helped me be more open and confident speaking to other people.
[00:16:36] Juliette V: To add on for me, I feel like now I project my voice way more than I used to. My voice was [inaudible] for no reason. Juju, by the way. And I feel like like this project made me present more projects a little bit better and project my voice, pay attention to the audience, look at the audience, you know, all the little steps and stuff. So I feel like now I’m not scared to present anymore. I used to be super scared. I’m okay with presenting now. So yeah.
[00:17:11] Sam F: And next month, these young folks are going to be published authors, right. They have an article coming out in the Middle School Journal. That’s something that I didn’t have until the end of graduate school, right, when I was in my third, like the fact that they did it.
And they earned it. It’s not like… They wrote, they did the research, they did the analysis. They are real researchers at age 14. And that’s something that will be with them forever.
[00:17:31] Amy H-L: That’s great. Do you think the project was helpful to the students you interviewed?
[00:17:35] Juliette V: I’m just gonna be super honest. Juju. I feel like for some students, yes, they get closer with the interview especially. Like I know that some of us did interview our friends or just interviewed others and it did cause a closer connection. But I also do feel like some other students just really didn’t really care about it. Because, you know, we’re teenagers, we’re teenagers, I mean, we don’t really care about anything. But some people, I feel like they found better connections with others, and just some really just really didn’t pay too much mind to it.
[00:18:07] Ixchel D: Ixchel. I do agree in some sense to Juju, but I think whether people thought they liked it, it did still affect everybody. So, maybe It’s true, like, some people didn’t really show that they really cared that much about it, but I still do think that at the end of the day, it affected people in a positive way, that people grew to see, wow, like, things are changing.
[00:18:33] Abigail E: Abby. Especially with what Ixchel mentioned earlier with the staff thing, now we get to have an input on what staff is hired for the school. I feel like that is a way that it’s changing. So like it affected us.
[00:18:45] Amy H-L: Are there questions that we haven’t asked you that you’d like to talk about?
[00:18:49] Sam F: Abby, you have an interesting kind of… I’ve heard you talk about sort of the process of confidentiality and how that framed everything. And if you spoke to that, I think that could be useful.
[00:18:59] Abigail E: One of the main things in this project was confidentiality and how we were able to anonymize everybody’s results and like give each person a number. And I feel like that was a very important part of the project because it allows students to share more information because they know it’s not going to be spread anywhere. So the interviewer can help the interviewee feel comfort within them to like explain and share their struggles.
[00:19:26] Ixchel D: Yeah, so Ixchel. I think that for me personally, I felt like I could be more vulnerable and share more of like my personal experience because I know that nobody could be like, oh, Ixchel said this, Ixchel said that. It was just blank student said this and it made me more safe in voicing my opinion.
[00:19:46] Sam F: To explain sort of the way that it was structured, so interviewees were assigned a number that was traceable over time so that we could see the evolution of an individual. while not revealing the identity, right. So nobody, nobody had like the master key of who’s who. And I didn’t use it, but it’s so that we could trace folks over time and we could watch the evolution that these young folks enjoyed during middle school.
[00:20:12] Jon M: Thank you, Dr. Samuel Finesurrey of Guttman Community College and Abigail Eusebio, Juliet Vargas Hernandez, and Ixchel De Dios, graduates of School in the Square.
[00:20:24] Amy H-L: And thank you, listeners. Check out our website, ethicalschools.org, for more episodes, articles, and our new video series, “What Would YOU Do?” If you found this podcast worthwhile, please share it with a friend or five. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and give us a rating or review. This helps others to find the show. We post annotated transcripts of our interviews to make them easy to use in workshops and classes. Contact us at hosts@ethicalschools.org. We’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Thread. Our editor and social media manager is Amanda Denti. Until next week.