| Sayre High School Students Organizing Despite Obstacles |
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| Written by Anthony Robinson | |||
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When I first started high school, I didn’t have any school pride. After I joined PSU, I started standing up for my school. I want to make Sayre the best it can be and a place where every student wants to come to high school. I want to shed light on all the work that Philadelphia Student Union (PSU) members at Sayre have been doing and on all our accomplishments! This year I am a sophomore and I joined PSU last year. Before I ever joined PSU was out in front pushing to get Sayre’s library open after being closed for over a year. Last year we worked with Project Grad to get a peer mentoring program started up. We worked to make sure every student had a book in every class. We also helped to build trust and communication between students and school police. Along with our library campaign we met with school leadership to make sure that even after our library opened, there would be books, computers and resources inside for students to use and do projects. Last year we spoke up on behalf of all students about the importance of up-to-date books and learning materials. The School District worked with us to ensure that books were distributed at all schools. As a result, new books were dispersed to teachers and students. Many students, especially ninth graders, noticed and appreciated the new textbooks. Last year, we trained school police because of some violence we had at our school. There was a “riot” at our school because of a big misunderstanding between the school police and the students. Students and adults made serious mistakes. We wanted to change the climate and we felt that to do that the school police and students needed to look at each other as human beings. So we put together a workshop to build communication and trust. The idea was to get students involved in the professional development of school security so that we can stop problems before they start. The great thing about the workshop was that we looked at the conditions facing both students as well as school security officers, so that we could see common ground. We want to work together. We as students talked about the issues that we face in the school and community. We don’t always feel valued or heard as young people. They told us how it is hard to be school police and how they get disrespected and are underpaid. So they understood how hard it is for us as students and we understood how it is hard for them as schools police and we both agreed to treat each other better. So far this year we have not been permitted to meet in our school. This has hurt a lot of students at our school who feel like they got punished for taking leadership. What can we do about this problem? Maybe we can come to an agreement to let us back in our school. But this is not stopping us from doing our job as Student Union and we are still recruiting members and working to expand our workshops with school police to impact climate in schools that need it. We need your help to get us back in our schools. This year Sayre got new school police officers that have not been trained by students and the whole misunderstanding might happen again. Adults have made it harder for us to organize, but we will continue to fight for our education at Sayre high school. •
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