Help wanted

photos: last year’s seventh grade talking with Meg Sullivan of the Manton Avenue Project about community building through the arts, with Sharon Morris of Omni Development Corporation about affordable housing, and with Harrison Tuttle and LaJuan Allen of Black Lives Matter RI about gun violence, policing and the experience of people who are unhoused.

The Gordon community is huge, and it’s filled with smart, generous people.

This magic comes into play every year as seventh graders tackle their spring research papers.

The assignment is to research a way on how to make positive change in a community. It’s a very mission-driven theme, and one of the students’ sources has to be a personal interview with someone working directly in their area of interest.

This year’s students are choosing to research:

Animal abuse
Puppy mills
Cosmetic testing
Juvenile incarceration
Prison conditions
Mental health care in jail
School to prison pipeline
Cleaner transportation
Global warming
Invasive species
Keeping oceans clean
Making chemicals safer
Sustainable farming
Gay and straight alliances in schools
Violence against women
Income inequality
Book banning
Homelessness
Moral philosophies of technology companies
Nuclear testing
Targeted killings
World hunger

If you or someone you know has experience and passion around one of these topics, and is willing to spend twenty minutes with a Gordon seventh grader (Zoom is OK!), please reach out to Tamar Paull of the seventh grade team at tpaull@gordonschool.org

The magic of this community has been on full display this week, as seventh graders met with interview subjects for their spring research papers.

The assignment has been a research project on how to make positive change in a community. It’s a very mission-driven theme, and one of the students’ sources has to be a personal interview with someone working directly in their area of interest.
 

above: Gordon theater teacher Meg Sullivan sat down with a seventh grader to talk about arts education and her work at the Manton Avenue Project.

Student topics include reproductive rights, capital punishment and prison reform, racial violence in policing, gun violence, the experience of homelessness, building affordable housing, animal rights and welfare, education reform, LGBTQ+ advocacy, climate change, gender equity, improving arts education, the school to prison pipeline, affordable healthcare, anti-semitism and mass incarceration.

The call for experts went out in the Gordon network, and students have spent the week connecting with activists, organizers and professionals who are working on these issues every day.