All year long, John Carroll students have been tutoring eighth graders in multiple Cleveland schools and helping them with a year-long project. Each eighth grade class in those schools is split up into groups of 3-6 students who choose a social justice issue that they are passionate about. Some examples include homelessness, gang violence, female roles in sports, police brutality, and many more. Those are some pretty heavy topics for 13 year olds, huh?
Well, this was my first semester involved with this program through John Carroll’s Center for Service and Social Action and I wasn’t really sure what I was walking in to since I started halfway through the year. Now that it is all said and done, I wouldn’t have had it any other way! This Friday, all the individual group projects will be presented at a summit in front of a panel of judges on JCU’s campus. As a tutor, I will be guiding my group and watching them present their project twice and acting as a mentor for them throughout the day to keep them on schedule and focused.
Each project used to be presented on a tri-fold poster board and this year is the first time those tri-folds are translated into PowerPoint presentations. Some of the aspects included are background information and research, a survey, and an action plan. The action plan is truly the most important part because it shows the eighth graders, as well as the judges, exactly what they did to help the social justice issue they chose. Whether that means they simply made the community more aware of the issue or actually solved the issue on local terms, these students have been hard at work!
I am so excited to be able to participate in this event and see my group succeed after watching them work hard all semester and finally see their work come to light!