The Navigator

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WE VOTE! YCCS Students 1,400 Strong and Counting…

The Youth Connection Charter School (YCCS) has challenged its more than 4,000 student population to become more civically engaged and to be a part of the growing millennial voting community. As a result of this call to action from Executive Director Sheila Venson, YCCS launched the Civic Engagement Challenge. Out of this program, a group of students dubbed the Global Majority Youth Rising (GMYR), led the charge and hosted a successful youth-driven Gubernatorial Forum and Voting Drive during the 2017-2018 academic school-year.

This student-organized and led gubernatorial forum featured a panel of Illinois Governor and Lt. Governor candidates that included Ra Joy, Litesa Wallace, and Tio Hardiman. The forum commenced at the YCCS Greater West Town campus located on Chicago’s west side. The themes of Immigration, intra-communal violence, education, and policing took center stage as the poised student moderator, Chyann McQueen of CCA Academy, firmly held the governor panelist to their allotted response time.

“This was the best forum I have ever attended,” said Lt. Gubernatorial candidate, Litesa Wallace, shared with a group of blushing GMYR students. With only 3 percent of millennial voter turnout in the last election, this event marked a significant shift in youth engagement regarding voter participation.

A major highlight of this event included a voter registration drive that targeted the hundreds of potential student voters among the YCCS network’s 19 campuses. Student representatives announced their campuses’ achievement in registering student voters. With placards in-hand, each campus proudly displayed the number of registrants they were able to secure. “Youth Connection Leadership Academy…210!” , “Latino Youth High School…196!”, As the announcements rang out the unwavering peer support filled the room as all the students shouted in harmony “We Vote!”. A credit to the YCCS organization, in total the voter drive registered over 1,400 new voters. The GMYR efforts to garner new voter registrants will continue into the summer expanding into the communities surrounding its 19 campuses throughout Chicago’s south and west sides.

Phillip Peterson
Youth Connection Charter School

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A Life Altering Experience: Transformational Learning that Impacts the Whole Classroom

Working as a Youth Connection Charter School (YCCS) Civic Engagement (CE) campus leader for the past three years has made a significant impact on both my personal life and professional practice as a teacher. In my experience, being involved in civic engagement has forced me to challenge the way I view institutions, systems of government, misconceptions, stereotypes, discriminatory practices, and other societal ills. As a teacher, civic engagement has helped me to shape a learning environment for students that encourages a sense of community, trust, and openness. Providing a safe space for students to explore and discuss the issues they care most about has helped to build a level of connectedness among the students, and has influenced transformative learning experiences.

The growth that I have witnessed in students has been a combination of developing and the further development of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation to make a difference. In the most recent civic engagement challenge, students were able to demonstrate these skills by creating dialogue to change the narrative about the misconception of intra-communal violence being only an issue of “black on black crime”.

My students created a new narrative by shedding light on the root causes of “Black on Black” crime, and its direct correlation to poverty. They were able to research and explore poverty in depth and learned that it is systematically made up of politics, economics, and discrimination that is intergenerational.

Also, students were able to forge new relationships with organizations in the North Lawndale community that are directly working to combat the issue of poverty, and reduce violence.

Participating in the civic engagement initiative has ultimately lead to a shift in mindset and behavioral changes that were life altering for us all!

Audrey Haywood
CCA CE Campus Leader

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LGBTQ Rights in School

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) education and human rights violations were the priority of study at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS). For the Youth Connection Charter School Civic Engagement challenge, Campos students in the Civic Engagement cohort surveyed their peers to identify primary concerns around LGBTQ human rights violations. Then the group assessed the survey results to determine critical areas to create or change school policy or state law.

The most impactful component of our students’ experiences was their visit to the Illinois capitol. Students visited Springfield to lobby politicians, focusing on LGBTQ rights and had the opportunity to voice their concerns to State Representative Omar Aquino!  The experience was one of the highlights of the Civic Engagement challenge.

At the culminating event, they won 2nd Place!  The Civic Engagement team gave a compassionate presentation and shared their own stories of LGBTQ discrimination experiences at their former schools and explained why this topic was so important to them.  Also, they reported their research findings and demands for justice so LGBTQ students will receive a fair and equitable education.

Zoraida Tanon

PACHS CE Campus Leader

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Shot’s Fired! Building a Generation of First Responders

Navigator Editor’s Note:  Kimberly Hopson sat down with Alumna Amber Banks to talk about her experience in school and as a Civic Engagement intern.  After losing more than a few friends to gun violence this year, ‘shots fired!’ has become a part of Amber’s daily reality. In the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, Amber described a tree surrounded by stuffed animals, candles, and pictures near her home that memorializes a deceased youth.  She and her peers have continuously experienced the mourning of relatives and friends, yet have adjusted their reality to react to the loss of young people to gun violence as commonplace occurrences akin to the resounding blare of fireworks on July 4, the awakening buzz of alarm clocks in the morning, or the familiar shrill of school bells ringing in the halls.

Amber credits her experiences, as a YCCS civic engagement intern, for helping her find and use her inner voice to respond to injustices, and putting her on the right path. Amber began as an intern in the 2016-17 school year with Westside Holistic Leadership Academy (now YCCS-West) and continues to work with the civic engagement interns as an alumna.

“I am proud to be a YCCS graduate and a second-year Civic Engagement Intern,” Amber shared, “If it were not for this experience, I would not be aware of the deafening noises of violence which have been muted by antipathy, helplessness, and hopelessness.”

“The YCCS Internship has helped me come up with solutions to not only stop gun violence but to also get my peers to be more aware and join the movement to help stop it,” Amber proudly stated. “Exposure to civics was part of my awakening. Internship participants learned their rights as citizens, duties to their community and the impact of their voting power on politics and legislation.”

“Ultimately, we are the voice for our peers,” Amber continued, “this internship helped young people like me, ages 16-21, become aware of the political system. As we vote each year for our president, governor, mayor, and city council members, we determine who should be in office and who will represent our voice.  Being an intern also gave me more insight into what’s going on around me. I can proudly say, I’ve become more aware. Because of the program, I have become more independent and more outspoken about situations regarding politics, education, and violence. I learned that all of these issues are connected, whether we are aware of it or not.”

“I gained insight about my peers and my community, about the systemic issues that promote gun violence, and the political process. As a team, we interns reached out and made calls to our aldermen, joined press conferences and public meetings to voice our opinions, and we registered student voters, encouraging them to get out to the polls! It was eye-opening!”

Reflecting on her path moving forward Amber responded, “Our first step is to start making changes by confronting the issues in our own communities and schools, and then work our way up. Our voices must be heard! That is why being an intern was revealing. I wouldn’t have learned as much as I know now without it. I had amazing mentors and inspiring colleagues, which made this experience even greater. I’m so grateful and blessed to be a part of something that not only changed my life, but also the other interns and the lives of the people we touch.”

After graduating, Amber was not sure of her next steps. Now, she plans to attend Malcolm X College to study nursing, building on the pharmacy technology training she received while attending Westside Holistic Leadership Academy (now YCCS-West). “Interning has made me want to continue being involved in meeting the needs of Black and Brown people, to change systems of oppression throughout our nation, and to inform others about the importance of voting so their voices can be heard.”

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Rowing Forward in Life and Society

Tara Montgomery, an alumna of the Innovations campus of Youth Connection Charter School, is a highly acclaimed student-athlete at San Diego State University.  Tara, now a junior, was recently named a recipient of the esteemed Arthur Ashe Jr. Sports Scholar Award, selected from over 1,200 nominated minority student-athletes across the nation, representing 37 collegiate sports.  The announcement was in the publication Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. Continue reading “Rowing Forward in Life and Society”