This year, Big Class asked New Orleans youth to respond to the parish-wide school board unification by asking questions such as, what is the purpose of school?
After visiting over a dozen New Orleans schools and receiving writings from students in grades 1-12, the inaugural class of the Young Writers’ Council—our application-based writing program for teens—combed through the submissions, selected common themes, and chose those pieces that best represented their individual themes.
Whilst pulling themes, the YWC made another discovery: most of these pieces were written about, for, or to teachers. The audience of the book shifted, and the YWC quickly realized that in addition to students, they wanted this book to be for and by teachers as well. After all, isn’t it our teachers who are closest to us? Although it’s oftentimes administrators and unseen entities that create rules, isn’t it up to the teacher to enforce?
This is where you come in.
The YWC invites teachers from all over New Orleans to contribute to this year’s Good Troublemakers’ publication. Keeping in mind the themes (listed below) chosen by the YWC, please respond to one (or several) of the following questions. Don’t worry about penning the next Great American Novel; we’re asking for short, personal responses.
Themes:
Problems Outside Our Textbooks: How mental health and problems at home affect performance in school.
Sticks, Stones, & GPAs: How bullying affects performance school. Addressing the fact that both students and teachers can be bullies.
Raised By the Bell: Identifying a student’s journey throughout school and how they become disinterested and apathetic by high school.
Chosen Family: When does school become like family? When does that line become blurry and how can teachers be both professional and friendly?
It’s All About Protocol: How can we increase understanding between students and teachers? How does trauma affect a students’ ability to handle stress and triggers? What happens when you share your trauma with your teacher and they still write you up.
The Rules We Need To Break: Who comes up with the rules? Why do we have them? When do rules become arbitrary? When does the “crime” not fit the punishment?
Missed Opportunities: What happens to the artistic student in a school with no art class? The aspiring computer geek with no coding classes? How do missed opportunities hurt students in the long run? What crucial role do teachers play in filling this gap?
Questions:
1. What is the purpose of school?
2. What is a moment you felt anger, sadness or disappointment in school?
3. What is a moment you felt great joy at school?
4. What is a time school didn’t give you something you needed?
5. Choose a theme below to respond directly to.
Please send all questions and submissions to shannelle@bigclass.org, no later than January 9, 2018. Your name, school and personal information will not be published and will be kept confidential.
After the Confederate monuments came down in New Orleans, Homer Plessy Community School third graders authored a book of their ideas for new monuments for our city—monuments for all people.
In classic Big Class fashion, we concluded the project with a reading and publishing party where students held their completed book in their hands and celebrated with friends, family, educators, and community members.
Thank you to Homer Plessy Community School, partner teacher Amy Dickerson, Cartoon Network via 826 National, and Teaching Tolerance.
Purchase Courageous, Eccentric Diverse: New Monuments for New Orleans here.
After the world lost Prince, Big Class and DJ Soul Sister collaborated to celebrate the creativity, self-expression, and poetry that inspired so many.
In 2016, friend of Big Class DJ Soul Sister hosted Revolution: A Prince Celebration to honor Prince and his timeless artistry, generously donating a portion of the proceeds to our free writing programs.
The following year, we teamed up with Soul Sister to elevate youth voice and forge a connection between Writers’ Room students and Prince’s powerful legacy.
In the 2016-2017 school year, 100 11th graders in Eric Parrie’s US History class at Carver High School collaborated with Big Class and acclaimed writer Kiese Laymon to write a book of their own personal histories.
History Between These Folds is a collection on family, neighborhood, identity, and New Orleans–reconfiguring how we think about ourselves in relationship to broader sweeps of history.
“If every American book published in 2017 were written by eleventh graders in New Orleans, the world would be more loving.”
–Kiese Laymon
On May 23rd, 2017, we marked the release of History Between These Folds with a publication party at Cafe Istanbul.
Families, friends, and community members came together in support of New Orleanian youth and their writing.
On December 12th, 2017, we came back together with four of the book’s authors and Kiese Laymon at G.W. Carver High School for a special reading and conversation.
Four authors—Ashley, Octavia, Paris, and Tiarra—read their pieces from History Between These Folds and then sat down to discuss the book, New Orleans, and the future.
You can learn more about this special project, watch a promotional video, and hear audio of the December 12th reading and conversation here.
In Big Class tradition, we celebrated National Poetry Month, youth voice, and the unifying power of pizza on April 21st, 2017.
Since 2014, the Pizza Poetry Project has celebrated National Poetry Month and the power of youth voice by publishing poems written by young New Orleanians ages 6-18. This year, Pizza Poetry Day was part of the first ever New Orleans Youth Poetry Festival (NOYPF). Big Class teamed with New Orleans Youth Open Mic (NOYOM) to host the inaugural event. NOYPF included readings and workshops for young poets.
Many of 2017’s pizza poems were written through Big Class’s Poets In Schools free workshops, where poets worked directly with students in classrooms. Some teachers led their own poetry lessons, and submitted poems online. In total, Big Class received over 550 entries from students across the city. A teen council selected 20 standout poems to become the 2017 Pizza Poet Laureates.
On Pizza Poetry Day, Big Class partnered with some of the best pizza joints in town to publish these amazing poems onto pizza boxes for delivery and pickup. Pizza eaters and poetry readers posted their poems on social media using #pizzapoetry17.
Huge thanks to our 2017 Pizza Partners: G’s Pizza, Garage Pizza, Mid City Pizza, Pizza Delicious, Reginelli’s, and Theo’s.
During the 2017 NBA All-Star Weekend, Big Class collaborated with Cartoon Network, the NBA, and 826 National to explore the intersections between coding and storytelling.
“Through other Big Class programs, we’ve never done something where they [students] get to bring their stories to life on the screen.”
Using contemporary learning skills and supported by a team of volunteers, 24 New Orleans elementary students created original stories that they transformed into interactive animations using the coding program Scratch.
Over the course of the three-day mini camp, students were able to expand their writing skills and learn simple coding to bring their unique stories to life, expanding their interactions and relationships with writing in our ever-evolving technological world.
Students’ final animations were shared during a special presentation to the NBA community on February 16, right before the All Star Weekend 2017 here in New Orleans.
Thank you to our friends at Cartoon Network, the NBA, and 826 National for collaborating with us on this exciting project!
The 2016 election of Donald Trump evoked emotional responses across personal and political spectrums.
In the months that followed, New Orleans youth wrote letters in response to the election—to friends, family, their future selves, America, and to Donald Trump himself.
On November 9th, 2016, the day after the presidential election, Big Class staff visited a first grade classroom and asked, “What does a great America look like?” Amongst the responses, we heard “take care of bugs and animals” and “sharing and having fun”. These young New Orleanians made us hopeful, made us laugh, and made us think.
From there, Big Class began to realize the magnitude of what New Orleanian youth had to say about the direction of our country, and the necessity to amplify these voices on a larger scale. We held letter-writing workshops in classrooms in schools throughout New Orleans, at the Gentilly branch of the New Orleans Public Library, and collaborated with students in our own programs.
This collection of letters culminated in I Want You To Know Something About Me—Big Class’s first publication of 2017, released on January 15th (right in time for Inauguration Day). These letters range from angry to hopeful, and offer powerful insight into how we can move forward as individuals and as a country.
Contributing youth authors shared their work at Writers’ Resist New Orleans, an event in collaboration with with PEN America, as part of a international day of readings championing freedom of speech, and the power of expression to change the world.
Dear America,
I am a young African American. I stand for justice. In this life, I stand for equal rights. I stand to be a powerful woman. I want to be treated the same.
Having a new president, I feel like I am denied as a woman. Trump judges us as women. I’ve been bullied and as a young girl it pushes me, but I am powerful, intelligent, and smart.
I want a better country! I stand in, and I demand justice!
“Homer Plessy deserves a monument because he doesn’t have one and he’s brave and strong with words.” —Jibril
“Crawfish need a monument because the crawfish are the food of the state. Crawfish are yummy to some people and lots of people eat crawfish here in New Orleans.” —Nataleigh
“Ellen deserves a monument because she is awesome. How do you feel about Ellen DeGeneres?” —Blake
Written by third graders at Homer A. Plessy Community School and filled with who and what they believe should replace the Confederate monuments in New Orleans, Courageous, Eccentric, Diverse is now available for purchase!
Ms. Amy’s third grade class spent two weeks selecting, researching, and writing with Big Class volunteers and staff. They also made original art pieces for the book, showing what their monuments would look like in place of the removed Confederate ones. From Ruby Bridges to alligators, Trombone Shorty to beignets, pelicans to Eli Manning, this book is a celebration of a new era of New Orleans’s public space—space meant for all people.
Click here to order Courageous Eccentric, Diverse in time for the holiday season.
12th grader Nia Gates has been interning at Big Class for the 2015-2016 school year. We asked her to write about one of her favorite experiences of her internship, and she wrote about the “Code Your Story Workshop.” Read about her experience:
Nia works with a student during “Code Your Story.”
In December of 2015, I joined Big Class as a part of its Youth Advisory Council. From there, I began to meet amazing artists, be shown new opportunities, and was able to hone my skills in many things, even beyond poetry and photography. Being an intern for Big Class was an entirely new and different experience for me. My position with Big Class became about working behind the scenes: instead of being just an addition to the book, you become a creator, a publisher, a promoter and far more.
One of my favorite opportunities as an intern was working with middle school students from Sylvanie Williams School. Big Class collaborated with Cartoon Network to bring a workshop called “Code Your Story” to the school. It was a 3-day workshop and within the first two days I was able to watch these young minds express themselves through creating stories in which they got to animate.
Being able to watch the ideas sprout from the students, watching them explore and beginning to learn and understand the website all to bring together their own stories was breathtaking. The classes of “Code Your Story” began with the students sitting with a Big Class instructor and collectively creating a protagonist to then turn around and create their own. After the development, students took their ideas to Scratch where they began to animate their protagonist and create a new story around them. The second day they created an antagonist and a storyline to follow between when animating their heroine and villain.
Seeing their minds in motion, showed me that what I do at Big Class has true worth. Giving youth the opportunity to express themselves as well as the tools to find new things they may enjoy or new opportunities they can create for themselves.
Being a part of the Big Class gives me the chance to be a bigger part of my community. It has set me on a clearer path for my future in education and nonprofit work.
