Milwaukee Sherman Park Turmoil - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - jsonline.com
Their words will be gathered into a book that will be shared with the adults in their lives and the broader community.
"Kids need a voice," said Lonnie Anderson, longtime principal at Sherman.
"We want them to know that they have some control over their lives and that they have a voice," he said.
"I think if the kids who were involved in the unrest … felt they had a voice and felt they were being heard, it probably wouldn't have gotten to that point."
MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver has urged schools across the district to make space for similar conversations.
Teachers, social workers and counselors will be watching particularly for any signs of trauma in the students.
Kids manifest it differently, said Sherman's school psychologist, Faygie Hellman. Some will act out; others will grow quiet or anxious.
"We never want to do anything that re-traumatizes our students," said Hellman, who lives in the Sherman Park neighborhood.
She says the events in Sherman Park in some ways have united everyone at the school.
"Any one of us experienced some kind of trauma around knowing, 'How could this happen in our city?' " she said.
Sherman, 5110 W. Locust St., is one of four Milwaukee Public Schools chosen this year to take part in the White House's Turnaround Arts program, a national initiative aimed at bolstering struggling schools through the arts.
Unlike many MPS schools, the vast majority of the 460 students enrolled this year live in the surrounding community. And, like most others in the district, its students are predominantly low-income and children of color.
There is a tendency among public school critics to dismiss schools like Sherman, with its dismal showing on standardized test scores, as all that's wrong with MPS.
Hub of innovation
The truth is, its students perform no worse than those in many schools — public and private — that serve similar students. And Sherman is a hub for a number of innovative programs aimed at developing the whole child, some of which are being implemented across the district.
The Turnaround Arts program is just the latest. The school offers on-site mental health services as part of a broader partnership with Children's Hospital of Wisconsin's Project Ujima and the Sojourner Family Peace Center. Its teachers and other staff have been trained in the elements of social-emotional learning — how, for example, to teach children self-control and responsible decision-making — and how to reach students who have experienced trauma that affects children's ability to learn.
It's all part of a broader effort by the district to promote culturally responsive teaching practices and school policies.
"It's really just good teaching," said Latish Reed, a former UW-Milwaukee professor of education who was hired in January to oversee MPS' initiatives tied to culturally responsive programming.
"It's about putting the student in the center and making sure we're meeting that child's needs," Reed said.
It is a philosophy that could serve the entire community, Anderson said, if everyone could get to the same page.
"If our leaders, our community activists, really valued the work that was happening in the school district, the schools could be a lighthouse," Anderson said. "And our families would benefit tremendously."
Sherman has seen a flurry of activity over the last two weeks as it ramps up for the start of school.
Volunteers, some inspired by the news, showed up to offer their services — cleaning, painting, carting supplies. Renee Washington, a Sherman parent and part-time employee at the school, spruced up a garden on the grounds. Teachers have been calling to get in early and set up their rooms, and a group of seventh- and eighth-graders showed up to help and serve as ambassadors.
On Thursday of last week, two men painted the chain-link fence surrounding the playground while a hooded beekeeper extricated a massive hornets nest from a tree.
"We're really sprucing up the building," Anderson said. "We want it to feel safe. We want our kids to see that it's not a burned-out building. It's not something that's been destroyed."