2008 Mikva Civics Fair
Over the past year, more than 1,000 Chicago high school students have worked on Issues to Action (ITA) projects. Following the six-step ITA process, students analyzed their communities, chose issues that are important in their schools and neighborhoods, researched their issues, set goals, analyzed power, developed solution strategies and took action. This year's projects addressed a wide range of issues (winning projects are starred):
BEST High School
Predatory Lending - Financial Literacy ê
In these hard economic times, we educated others on how payday loans and tax collectors take advantage of individuals in low income areas. We also looked at how a street's economic status changes as the neighborhood changes.
Big Picture High School: Back of the Yards
Big Brother Big Sister for Positive Change ê
We want to make a positive change in the community. Our mission is to create a Big Brother Big Sister program to reduce violence in the Back of Yards community by building positive relationships and mentoring opportunities for the youth.
Brooks College Prep
Restoring Justice: Brooks Peer Jury ê
In order to develop new methods for dealing with student discipline and other issues, we are developing a school-based peer jury for the 2008-2009 school year.
Challenging the Status Quo
At Brooks, students' expectations are not being met by the curriculum and overall environment. We are striving to create an atmosphere where students, teachers, staff, and parents work together to reorganize the present school structure.
Roberto Clemente Community Academy
Lobbying to Reduce Violence
We wanted to reduce youth violence by improving educational opportunities. We traveled with CPS to Springfield to support an Illinois bill that would limit the number of handguns that a person could purchase, as well as to support legislation that would improve school funding equality in our state.
Curie Metropolitan High School
Sophomore Forefront: Littering/Tagging/Recycling
We have chosen to save our school's ecosystem. We aim to not only change our surrounding environment, but to preserve and purify it through awareness, conservation, and prevention. Our goals are to eliminate excess use of paper, remove tagging and graffiti, and create a clean environment within our school.
Sophomore Forefront: Enhancing Unity
Our goal is to create an environment where students and teachers are able to bond on a more personal level. Also, we want to create a heightened sense of teamwork between students and teachers in order to create a positive learning environment for everyone here at Curie High School.
Sophomore Forefront: Special Needs Students ê
We've decided to raise awareness and funds to help support the students with disabilities at our school compete at the Special Olympics. We have completed numerous fundraisers and raised the overall awareness of special needs students' situations by advertising our fundraisers.
Junior Forefront: DIDJMAS - Super Fantastic 6
We have been working on a number of toy and clothing donation drives in conjunction with various organizations. Our goal is to provide clothing for the needy in the community that will ultimately improve their lives.
Junior Forefront: Sexual Education for a Better Future
Our group is working to spread awareness of the consequences of unprotected sex. Our goal is to run a workshop for students on various subjects such as STDs, teen pregnancy, and abortion. We hope to ensure that teens are better prepared to make decisions that affect their futures.
Junior Forefront: United Nations of Curie (UNC) ê
UNC spreads diversity awareness and tolerance throughout our student body and is hoping to end the trend of segregated cliques. We are creating a new Curie tradition through International Week. The UNC has also completed a successful fundraiser and made posters of different cultures and nations.
Senior Forefront: Helping Hands
Helping Hands was established to better lives through fundraisers and drives. We are a nonprofit organization that donates all proceeds to the issue at hand. We try to tackle issues that don't immediately affect Curie but that may prove to be a hurdle in the long run. We target actual students, help the homeless, and even address national issues.
Senior Forefront: Life to Walls ê
Our mission is to motivate the students of Curie to attend school by adding life to the walls of the academic building, in this way making Curie more inviting. In exchange for Service Learning Hours, students are painting murals that will be placed throughout the building.
Senior Forefront: Pulaski Traffic ê
Our group began in 2005 in order to improve the safety of street crossing for both Curie and community members. This year, we initiated the RED=STOP (Reaching and Educating Drives / Street Teen Outreach Program) Campaign to inform students, staff, and parents about the dangers of the road.
EXCEL Academy
The Homeless Dinner Party
We began with an art installation that raised awareness of the root causes of homelessness and then met with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. They showed us how to promote laws for affordable housing and job training for youth. We're now planning a fundraiser for homeless youth.
Parental Involvement
Our original goal was to establish a Parent Resource Center, but then we realized that our real issue was getting more parents involved with our school. We developed recommendations for how the school can improve public relations with respect to parents.
Study Hall/Student Lounge ê
We proposed the implementation of a study hall and student lounge at our school. Students are in need of a safe haven after school, a safe space that offers resources and interventions for all students.
Josephinum Academy
Awareness to End Domestic Violence ê
We developed a campaign to educate the school about domestic violence in an effort to promote a more just world. We posted and maintained a bulletin board, distributed educational materials, and made a video.
Littering Team ê
Our group worked with the administration at the school to place more garbage cans throughout the hallways. We involved the rest of the school in decorating the garbage cans and sponsored various Earth Day events.
John F. Kennedy High School
Motivating Students Toward Success
We began by asking, "How do we motivate students to be more successful in school?" This question led us to address impediments as well as motivations. After a lengthy approval process, we're now surveying students to get their answers to our question. One change we'd like to make is to prevent tardiness through countdowns during passing periods.
Kenwood Academy
Ladies Lounge
The Ladies Lounge Civics Board has spent the year addressing three issues this school year: attendance, conflict resolution, and the relationship between fathers and daughters or, more generally, the need for male mentors for young women.
King College Prep
Extracurricular Activities for All
Recent research has shown that participation in extracurricular activities increases student potential. Our goal is to make students aware of the myriad of activities at King through an extracurricular fair held at student orientation, with the aim of enrolling all students in at least one activity. We surveyed students to assess interest, held a fair to raise awareness, and proposed to our principal annual implementation of the fair.
An Improved Lunchroom for an Improved School Culture
We are working on changing the environment at King by redesigning the lunchroom's aesthetic and culinary offerings. Our hope is that a more inviting lunchroom and appealing meals will give students an incentive to do well at school.
Morgan Park High School
3rd Period Sociology: Combating Teen Pregnancy ê
We are creating a project geared towards stopping teen pregnancy in the greater Chicagoland area. We are focusing on increasing teen awareness of contraceptives, as well as sexual education.
4th Period Sociology: Campaign for a Safer Environment
Violence is affecting so many youth in our community and is steadily increasing. We, the students of Morgan Park HS, are campaigning for change and a safer environment.
North Lawndale College Prep
Peace at NLCP: Save Our Schools (S.O.S.) ê
We continued the work started last year to build a culture of peace at NLCP. We shifted the focus to students' role by launching the Save Our Schools (S.O.S.) Campaign, which includes peer mediation, students checking other students on fighting, and peace promotion. To kick S.O.S. off, we held a peace march and vigil on the anniversary of MLK's assassination and a Think Peace Day with workshops and an assembly.
Orr Campus
CHAMPS in Reducing Stress
Members of CHAMPS, Orr's student health club, identified stress as a primary health concern in the Orr community. Our project examines the impact of stress on the school community and identifies possible solutions to reducing stress.
Francis Parker School
Breaking Through Segregation in Chicago
Through social arts partnerships with schools in different neighborhoods, we have developed relationships that cross boundaries established and cemented by racist social policies.
Wendell Phillips Academy
Charting Our Futures: Vocational Education
Our goal is to add vocational classes to our school. We continued our work from last year by meeting with parents, writing letters to decision makers, and planning a presentation with the LSC.
Al Raby School for Community and Environment
Healthy Meals for Healthy Minds
We are working to bring healthier lunch options to Al Raby. This will help students focus better during their afternoon classes and increase academic achievement, as well as help students maintain healthier lifestyles.
Expanding Extracurricular Activities
We would like to expand the range of extracurricular activities offered at our school in order to incorporate more students and staff members into the school community. Extracurricular activities will also help keep students out of trouble after school.
School of Entrepreneurship
Self-Empowerment at SOE
This project is about self-empowerment. We created a survey to determine the level of self-empowerment, or high self-esteem, within the School of Entrepreneurship. Our findings will be used to create a self-empowerment curriculum for use in advisory classes next year.
Basketball Before School
We believe that it is important for students to have access to the gym before school. We worked to determine why the gym is not available and how we can change that. The point of opening the gym to students is to provide a positive place for students at the beginning of the day rather than have students roaming the halls or coming late to school.
Social Justice High School
SOJO Recyclers
We want to have a cleaner academic building so we started a recycling program at our school. Every week, our club unites after school to collect the paper in recycling bins. We hope to eventually recycle more products and demonstrate to Chicago that the students in Little Village and Lawndale care about the Earth. We want to set an example for our community.
William Taft High School
Peer Jury for Taft
Students need an avenue of restorative justice as motivation to change bad behavior. We are aiming to establish a peer jury at Taft in order to change the system of justice at our school.
Increasing Eagle School Spirit, Involvement, and Reputation
We examined the appearance of our school, school funding, and attendance of school events. We also surveyed students to find out what they liked and did not like about the school. Our plan is to propose to the LSC, principal, and faculty the need for themed sporting events, painting the school, and allowing sport warm-ups to be considered as part of the dress code.
TEAM Englewood
Tackling Gang Violence
We did a school survey to find out the biggest problem in the Englewood community, and students unanimously selected gang violence. As a result, we put on a school assembly that included a skit demonstrating the impact of an accidental shooting and a forum with actual inmates who were in jail due to gang violence.
