What is Civic Engagement at TBS?

We hope this comprehensive blog post provides you with that answer! To gain a deeper knowledge and understanding of the civic engagement work happening in each classroom, please feel free to reach out to me or to your child’s teachers.

Civic engagement can start with noticing how environments, beings, and communities are doing – how their situations differ, whether they are surviving or thriving, how they are feeling, what they need.

From there, civic engagement can take many forms. From attending a neighborhood meeting about the local park, to starting a campaign to reduce water usage among local businesses, to using research to illuminate multiple perspectives on community issues in search of effective solutions — there are so many ways to get involved.

In all cases, civic engagement requires rigorous goal-setting, planning, action, and reflection – all of which increase children’s agency and help them move from dependence to independence.

Starting Early: Deepening Understanding of Real World Problems

At The Berkeley School, civic engagement starts as early as preschool. This year, our transitional kindergarten students (known as “Explorers”) learned about the complexities of food access. Teachers led the group of 4- and 5-year-olds through the five stages of service learning:

• Investigation – The Director of the Berkeley Food Pantry came by to speak with the Explorers about who is served and why. Drawing from this visit, as well as from other discussions, the Explorers presented their new findings to the other ECC classrooms.
• Planning & Preparation – Students thought about a meaningful action that could make a positive impact and meet a real community need.
• Action – They spearheaded a food drive that resulted in 194 pounds of goods for local neighbors. The Explorers followed with a trip to the Berkeley Food Pantry to help stock the shelves.
• Ongoing Reflection & Assessment – They reviewed together, noting how much and what types of food were needed (canned items, pasta & rice, no candy) and how food access needs remained, even after their action.
• Demonstration & Celebration – By sharing the results of the food drive collection and offering thanks to those who contributed, students honored the fact that they couldn’t have made the impact they made without the help of others.

The Explorers now understand and are able to discuss clearly the concept that some people have food while others don’t. They also understand that we are fortunate enough to have what we need and therefore are able to contribute to our neighbors who may not have as much.

Context & Content: Using Academic Skills to Tackle Real World Problems

This year, TBS 7th graders worked with Math Action, a nonprofit that empowers young people to use mathematics as a tool to understand – and seek solutions for – the most pressing global challenges of our time. After learning about the global refugee crisis and about life in a refugee camp, students were tasked with designing an optimal refugee camp. To do so, they had to utilize complex mathematical concepts like scale factor as well as think about the UN guidelines for refugee camps. Working in smaller teams that focused on one camp feature (such as water sources, hygiene centers, or gardens), students created a scale-model of a complete camp that maximized space, and accounted for the daily needs of its inhabitants. To further their learning, they visited a Doctors without Borders exhibit in Oakland and, on the same day, shared their model with a panel of experts and other local schools participating in the project. The following student reflections sum up their experience:

“This project totally changed the way I thought about the refugee experience and made it so much more real than I was really willing to acknowledge.”

“I did not realize how easy it is to take math off the whiteboard and transfer it into reality/society.”

Our elementary students gain a civic and social awareness about the community around them, appreciate the impact of their choices, and continue developing their sense of agency in the world that requires further and deeper engagement. After the devastating hurricanes last year, the third grade classroom (Temescal Creek) turned their study of weather events and the water cycle into a design challenge: using materials from the Maker Nook, how can we construct a house that will adapt to hurricanes? Students jumped right in designing in their S.T.E.A.M. journals and constructing models. Some houses had moats and others had floatation devices with anchors so they wouldn’t float away. Temescalians also partnered with TBS teacher Kimly who has family in Puerto Rico to help facilitate several supply trips. Their work in that regard is ongoing.

Fourth and fifth grade students at TBS combine their study of marine science with service learning by participating in a yearlong cleanup project of the Bay and local waterways. In partnership with the Shorebird Nature Center, students investigate the impact of pollutants on marine life and the environment and internalize an understanding of stewardship while moving through these five stages of service learning:

• scientific exploration of marine life,
• planning the ways in which they can effect change,
• participating in the action of cleaning up the Bay and waterways,
• reflecting on human impact by auditing the contents of each cleanup,
• and celebrating the positive change that their work has created.

Student Leadership as Civic Engagement

TBS offers students three elective opportunities that promote further development of agency, collaboration, and leadership.

The elementary student council members constantly think of ways to improve student life in our school community. With a desire to increase inclusivity on campus, last year’s student council launched a student art contest encouraging classmates to design new gender-inclusive signs for our bathrooms. The council then asked our facilities department to produce the winning design and replace the old signs.

This year, 34 Middle Schoolers opted into We Club, an extracurricular that offers students the chance to be changemakers through self-directed service learning projects in areas they’re passionate about: like hunger and homelessness, disaster relief, human trafficking, access to health care and education, animal welfare, and LBGTQ+ rights. WE Club students develop and implement a project from start to finish. Last year, students raised awareness among their peers and local community, partnered with organizations supporting their causes, and fundraised more than $35,000 toward their charitable causes.

As an Ashoka School, TBS is dedicated to cultivating a spirit of activism within our student body. Each year, a group of students we call the Ashoka Team are chosen to lead social justice initiatives within and beyond the school walls. Last year’s Ashoka Team raised awareness about the Black Lives Matter Movement with a “Wear Out The Silence Campaign”. This student-led and -driven campaign paved the way for our school community to engage in (sometimes difficult and uncomfortable) conversations about racial justice/injustice with students, faculty, and through our parenting adult community.

At TBS we’re not just dedicated to civic engagement, we’re dedicated to the practices and structures that support early, ongoing, and meaningful civic engagement. And those are:

• An anti-bias education rooted in the social justice standards of: Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action.
• Teaching and learning that includes and continually refines curriculum aligned with these standards, while employing and refining culturally responsive practices, in order to meet the needs of students from a variety of cultures, communities, and backgrounds.
• Service learning as service experiences, integrated into classroom curricula, that include the examination of power, privilege, and oppression. Service learning means engaging in activism to change social and economic systems in support of social and environmental equity and justice.

Students who attend TBS graduate with the academic skills and personal qualities necessary to be successful in high school, college, and – most important – in the rest of their lives. That’s important to know. It’s just as important to know that we develop those qualities in a schoolwide context of civic engagement. That context ensures that our graduates will use their skills and qualities to make a positive difference for their communities – now and in the future.