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Georgetown PeaceJam Scholars Update: GU + KIPP + PJ = <3 |
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Posted 6/12/2010 at 10:58 AM by Sarah T |
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PeaceJam in Washington, DC, began just last year on Georgetown's campus. I spent the summer of 2009 working to form a partnership between KIPP High School in Anacostia and Georgetown University. Throughout this past year, PeaceJam has grown in membership on campus, and we have worked to establish ourselves as a student organization. We now have official club status, and have been traveling to KIPP for the past semester.
Our partnership with KIPP is very strategic. KIPP stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, and it is a system of charter schools that runs all over the country in low-performing areas. KIPP is designed to engage kids in school, prepare them for college, and keep them out of trouble. It does this through extended school days - from 7:00 AM until 5:00 PM - with mandatory extra-curricular activities integrated into the day, and innovative teaching methods that keep kids interested. When I first learned about KIPP, I thought that PeaceJam would be a perfect fit. KIPPers (KIPP students) are required to complete a community service quota every year, and PeaceJam's participatory model meshes very well with KIPP's model of engagement and empowerment. I approached the KIPP staff with a proposal to have PeaceJam fulfill KIPP's community service requirement, and they accepted enthusiastically. We worked out a program with weekly visits from Georgetown students where they would conduct "class:" discussions, activities, debates, etc centered around current issues and their solutions. One Saturday every month, we would take the KIPPers on day-long service trips that tie into what we discussed in class.
While we have had small begnnings, our vision is that PeaceJam will be required for all KIPPers at the Anacostia high school. Each year from freshman to senior year will be a different theme. All freshmen will learn about the environment, sophomores HIV/AIDS, juniors poverty and hunger, etc. As the program develops, we plan on creating leadership positions for the KIPP students as well, handing over responsibilities such as planning the Saturday service events to the KIPPers in order to give them more control over the program and teach them leadership and responsibility.
We have started with a small team of about ten PeaceJam mentors at Georgetown and a pilot class of 6 students at KIPP. We tested out our program model and curricular design on this class, and got very promising results. This past year, our focus was on the environment. Our service sites were park clean-ups and invasive plant removal, giving the kids a chance to get outside and get their hands dirty. The KIPPers reflected at the end of each service event, and their words were powerful and moving.
This coming year, we look forward to expanding into the sophomore class. While we do not have the capacity to support the entire freshman and sophomore classes, we will have more Georgetown mentors and more classes of KIPPers. The process has been slow and at times difficult, but KIPP has been a wonderful partner and the Georgetown students on board have been fantastic: enthusiastic, creative, and flexible, working hard to make this program what it is now. While we have only completed one year with one class and one project, we look forward to spreading PeaceJam's message of service and empowerment to the rest of the KIPP high school in the coming years.
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