Fostering Literacy among Youth Book Drive

Our advisory recently sponsored a school-wide book drive in partnership with the middle school Black Student Association to support the program Fostering Literacy among Youth (F.L.Y.). This is an organization that brings books to children ages 10-18 at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, located in Chicago, IL.

We spent two weeks making flyers, creating book drop sites, collecting and counting the books, and then packing them for transport. The various ways students chose to spread the word was impressive: one student wrote an announcement for the school bulletin, another put an announcement in her bulletin at her church, and yet another approached teachers who were carrying out "spring cleaning" in their rooms. Our collective efforts made the book drive a huge success--we collected a final total of 929 books!

Collecting books...

and more books...

counting and packing the books for transport!

UCLS Middle School Diversity Day

On January 26th, 7th and 8th grade students participated in a day-long workshop that addressed issues of equity and diversity in both the school community and larger society. Students participated in whole group activities as well as small group discussions surrounding aspects of diversity. These activities and discussions were facilitated by Lab School faculty members, current lead facilitators from the NAIS Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC), and U-High students who have attended SDLC in the past.

The 8th grade workshop focused on questions of identity: How do I identify myself? How am I identified by others? How can we work to make this school more accepting of the various identities in our school?

8th grade students displaying their poster from the Creating Empowerment and Change activity

The 7th grade workshop explored issues of inclusion and exclusion: Who is included/excluded in our school and why? How does language promote/hinder inclusion and exclusion? What can we do to make this school a more inclusive place?

7th grade students writing responses to the question "How can my teachers and peers make this school environment more comfortable and inclusive for me?"

7th grade students taking time to journal during small group discussions

Please feel free to share your reflections, comments, or experiences about this day.

LeAlan & Lloyd: An Update

Many of you may have questions about what happened to LeAlan and Lloyd after Our America and what they're up to today. Here is a link to an interview (The Changing World: Out of the Ghetto) that LeAlan gave in 2008 where he reflects on the Our America experience and shares his current interests and projects.

Listen to the interview and post a response with your comments, reactions, and questions to LeAlan's story.

Be sure to put your first name, teacher's name, and class period on your post.

Exploring the Color Line: Chicago's South Side

Read the essay and view the attached photo essay in Mother Jones Magazine. Then write a paragraph response in which you connect issues discussed in this article to many of the issues of racial boundaries that we read about and discussed in class in the past few weeks.

You many want to write about A Raisin in the Sun, Our America, or any of the articles and poems we read. You might also consider the images we discussed such as The Great Migration series from Jacob Lawrence or the photographs in 12 Million Black Voices.

Please sign your post with your first name and class period.