Brian Jones spoke with Stephanie Pacheco (17) and Jazmine Cobham (15), two members of Teens Take Charge, a youth-led organization that is fighting against inequality in New York City’s public schools. Stephanie and Jazmine spoke about their experiences as students, how they got involved in activism, and some of the campaigns in which they are involved. Teens Take Charge has a broad vision of change, and both students have campaigned against discrimination in schools, for police-free schools, for culturally relevant curricula, to end screened admissions to high schools, to save and expand the city’s summer youth employment program, and more. They also reflected on the challenges of organizing and what they have learned in the process.
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Organizing With Teens Take Charge With Stephanie Pacheco and Jazmine Cobham
Transcript of “Talk Out of School” podcast on February 17, 2021
Guest Host Brian Jones with Stephanie Pacheco and Jazmine Cobham, members of Teens Take Charge.
Brian Jones
Hello everyone, good morning. My name is Brian Jones, and I'm filling in for Leonie Haimson today hosting Talk out of School on WBAI 99.5 FM, and wbai.org, a show about issues affecting public schools in New York City, New York State, and nationwide.
My guests today are two local youth activists Stephanie Pacheco and Jazmine Cobham from a group called Teens Take Charge, a youth-led organization that works on many issues, but the core as I see it is their fight against inequality in New York City Schools. In a moment I'll ask them about the hows and whys of their activist work. But first, some news. On Monday, Betty Rosen New York's Interim Education Commissioner and an educator with some 30 years of experience was appointed to the role of New York State Commissioner, the state's top education job, and the first Latina to hold that position. The Centers for Disease Control released a blueprint for opening the nation's schools, including measures such as correct mask usage, physical distancing, and contact tracing.
But critics are concerned about the blueprints, lack of specific ventilation requirements to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in school spaces. Furthermore, the guidelines do not require teacher vaccinations, as a prerequisite to opening schools in an op-ed published over the weekend in the Washington Post, physician and parent Leana Wen wrote, "Growing evidence suggests that schools don't contribute substantially to community transmission, but that doesn't mean they don't pose individual risks to teachers and staff. And while it might be that a student is safer in school than in an unmonitored childcare setting, it defies common sense to say that a teacher, especially one who is older or has underlying medical conditions, is just as safe in a packed classroom, as they are doing remote instruction."
A new nationwide poll of members of the American Federation of Teachers finds that the majority support the return to in-person learning provided at-risk staff have the flexibility to work remotely, and those returning to classrooms have access to vaccinations. In New York City, the majority of families of the City's 1 million public school students have thus far elected to have them learn remotely, but middle school teachers are being prioritized for vaccination during this mid-winter break so that roughly 60,000 middle school students can return to in-person classes next week. Outbreaks of COVID-19 have closed some 700 New York City school buildings for at least 10 days since the winter break.
And lastly, Karen Lewis, leader of the Chicago Teachers Union passed away this month at age 67. She was a chemistry teacher who co-founded a union reform caucus called the Caucus of Rank and File educators, or CORE. As part of CORE, she ran for the presidency of the union in 2010, promising to democratize the CTU, and to fight school privatization and union busting. The CTU's seven-day strike in 2012, which Karen Lewis led, was an earthquake in American politics, boldly calling out inequality in the country's third-largest school district as an apartheid system, and publishing a landmark document of the union's positive vision for changing it called The Schools Chicago's Children Deserve. Karen Lewis and the striking teachers earned the support of the majority of parents of Chicago school children, and inspired educators nationwide, myself included. Karen Lewis, presenté.
And now, I'm so excited to speak with Stephanie Pacheco and Jazmine Cobham. They're both members of Teens Take Charge, a youth-led activist organization fighting inequality in New York City schools, among other things. Jazmine is 15 years old, a sophomore at Medgar Evers College Preparatory School, and a student leader in Teens Take Charge. Stephanie Pacheco is 17 years old, a senior in a Manhattan High School, and is a member of the steering committee of Teens Take Charge. Welcome, both of you to Talk Out of School. Thank you for being here, especially during your break.
Jazmine Cobham
Thank you for having me.
Stephanie Pacheco
Yes, thank you for having us. Glad to be here.
Brian Jones
So excited for this conversation. Well let's start with how you first got involved in Teens Take Charge. I hope that a lot of teens will listen to this and might have stories similar to your own, but what's the path that led you to getting involved. Stephanie, let's start with you.
Stephanie Pacheco
So I joined Teens Take Charge a little over two years ago now. And I joined because from start to now, coming to a close from start to finish, I've experienced a lot of adversity throughout my high school experience as many Black and Brown low income youth in the system do. And at the time that I joined, I was seeking to conceptualize some of the things that I had been going through. I knew that they were unjust, and that it shouldn't have been happening, but I wanted to find out more, and find out more about this system that is harming me and other youth in my community. I wanted to talk to people that were just as angry about these issues as I was, and fight so no other student ever had to go through something that, or, or go through the things that I was going through that other students in the South Bronx where I'm from, or Harlem where I go to school, have to go through.
Brian Jones
Can you list some examples of some of the harms that you experienced?
Stephanie Pacheco
Yeah. So, I have been pretty vulnerable to I guess this deeply embedded perception of good and bad schools. That's something that has been like replaying in my head like though my high school experience. I wrote about it when I applied to college. It's something that has really impacted me. I've been to both what has been perceived a good school, quote unquote, and a bad school, quote unquote, and my experiences were vastly different. In fact, I thrived in the school that was being perceived as bad, but it was only bad because it was in a very low-income area, and populated with low-income Black and brown youth so people thought it was bad, not because it was actually a bad school.
And the school that I transferred to my sophomore year, when I joined Teens Take Charge, is perceived as being a good school. It's massive, it has more resources and opportunities, and though it still has a lot of students of color, it is very different. But I've done really poorly at that school. I haven't been "good student." But I believe that the definition of a good student, of an optimal student, just inherently doesn't include super low-income students of color that are coming from poverty that are coming from complicated circumstances it doesn't include us because we're not always able to have 90% averages all the time, and I certainly wasn't. Just being stuck in that dichotomy, existing in a school system that doesn't want you to succeed and is good at not having you succeed, that general experience is really harmful. And that's why I'm in Teens Take Charge and why I've been here for two years.
Brian Jones
Wow, so you've experienced the inequality between the schools. You moved between schools that had vastly different resources.
Stephanie Pacheco
Yep, I did.
Brian Jones
Thank you for sharing that. Jazmine, what about you? How did you first get involved in Teens Take Charge, and why?
Jazmine Cobham
Well, I don't have a story like Stephanie, but I got involved with Teens Take Charge because of email I got about the organization. And after researching the organization and what they did, I felt as though this was organization for me and this should be a part of my love for activism, kind of started in seventh grade when I was selected to become a United Nations Junior Ambassador. And from then on I learned, and I educated myself about everyday hardships that I frankly didn't even know existed. So, this is my first year at Teens Take Charge, and although I don't have that much experience with Stephanie, I'm happy for many more years to come.
Brian Jones
Fabulous. And so, you got any email. Wow, so I guess, sending out emails works, it was just a cold email like, "hey this. Here's an organization you should join it."
Jazmine Cobham
Yeah, and at first I was kind of, I didn't really think all that much about it because I was like, do I really want to commit to an organization, but then I was like, just take that step and look at it, just look at it and now that was like the best that I've ever made. So I'm really glad I did that.
Brian Jones
Fabulous, and what's your school experience? Do the things that people talk about in Teens Take Charge resonate with your school experience or is your school experience different?
Jazmine Cobham
Well I kinda have a different school experience, because it's kind of like the opposite, because the school I go to is pretty much an all Black, all African-American school, and it's not really diverse, and I feel like that's one of the points that I'm going to be talking about later, about diverse teaching staffs. And it's really good to learn about Black history but we still need to learn about Hispanic history, ancient history, and that's something that should be accommodated in the curriculum, so that's one of the things that I'm fighting for.
Brian Jones
Okay, well actually let's talk about it now. One of the things I remember when I first encountered Teens Take Charge a little while ago, I was struck by the way the group was trying to bring back and change, almost change, the meaning or the association with the word integration. And I know that when I bring that word up with people, especially people of color, bristle at that word because in many parts of the country people had a disempowering experience, or you know there's a history of integration, meaning that Black schools were closed or Black teachers were fired, or Black principals lost their jobs, let alone, of course this stiff white resistance to integration, which really meant that in places like New York City, it never happened. So you've got this all-around resistance to this term. And yet, Teens Take Charge seem to be trying to bring it back. What's your thinking about this? Well let's start with you, Jazmine. What does integration mean to you? Is that what you see yourself as fighting for?
Jazmine Cobham
Well, although we do want to fight for integration, integration is just not a one-and-done victory because after integration there's many more things we have to do after that. For example, after integration happens we still need things such as diverse teaching staff, like staff that looks like the students who go there. And even if you were to get that, we still need culturally-responsive curriculum that accommodates history of all types of cultures and religious backgrounds. And even if we were to get that, we would still need the actual textbooks and workbooks that accommodate these types of work, and that's where we get into resource equity, and resource equities still a big problem here in New York City.
Brian Jones
Right. What are your thoughts about this Stephanie?
Stephanie Pacheco
I have many thoughts about this, this is something that I think about often in this fight for educational equity. I think integration to me means like having a strong focus on a redistribution of resources that is what's super important to me. And I think it's essential that we're constantly thinking about how we're going to center, and amplify and uplift the most marginalized communities in this City, meaning low-income Black and brown neighborhoods. And that often means redirecting the conversation of educational equity because over the past couple of years, oftentimes the conversation has been, "how do we get more Black students into District Two schools and Upper Manhattan to make sure that those white students aren't going on to become racists or to continue being racist in their lives?" Rather than having the conversation be the "South Bronx is home to the poorest congressional district in the country. How do we make sure that those students are doing well?" Because systemically they have not been because that is what the system is setting us up for.
So redirecting that conversation to not center the District Two schools and the white students, but to center the students that are barely surviving in this system, if they're surviving at all. I think that in the fight for integration and educational equity, we need to make sure that we're centering the people that we want to win, right? And that means taking into consideration that bristling that people of color have when talking about integration and sitting with that and understanding why that is, and understanding that if we're going to have any victory that is a win for everyone, especially people of color, we have to take into consideration that doubt, because that's a survival thing. Yeah.
Brian Jones
Right, absolutely. I mean if people have had an experience that was disempowering, and I know that many students, students of color, who get admitted into majority-white schools, or into these "good schools" have traumatic experiences in those spaces. And so one of the things I've heard Teens Take Charge argue is that it's not just about moving bodies around, but like you say it's a more holistic question about resources and about changing the culture of school, so that there's, as Jazmine was saying, diverse teaching, changing the curriculum, making a broader transformation in schooling. I know you all have campaigns and working groups that work on issues like police free schools and things like that. Can you talk about some of that work that's going on that might not yet be on your website but is part of what you're working on right now? Let's start with you, Stephanie. Can you talk about the police free schools campaign?
Stephanie Pacheco
Definitely. So recently we were finally able to get a group of people working on getting police out of school. Given the uprising that happened last year in 2020, and the tragedies that we've seen hit the Black community, that were nothing new really, we felt as though it was absolutely necessary to have a group of people within Teens Take Charge, working to get police out of schools because, frankly it is, it is killing our Black students. It is ushering them into federal prison. It is harming our students.
So right now, we weren't able to get it started as soon as we wanted to, so right now we're still in the starting stages, the planning stages. We're working to collaborate with other youth groups that have been working on police free schools for a while, amplifying their voices working closely with them, all towards the ultimate goal of removing all cops out of schools, and reallocating the resources, the money, that is used to have them in schools in the first place, that are used to have metal detectors in schools in the first place, and redistribute that to, again, the students and the communities that need it most. And we're also working to end racist disciplinary codes and zero tolerance policies that also harm our Black students disproportionately. And we just believe that that is such an essential step. And moving forward into getting just schools. I think it should be one of the first steps, making sure that Black students are feeling safe in schools, and walking out of school alive, because in the current state of our school system and of schools nationwide, that's not happening. So that's what we're working on.
Brian Jones
I've been impressed to see all of the different kinds of actions Teens Take Charge has taken up, from lobbying to press conferences and speak-outs, educational events, and even students strikes. Can you say something about what you think is going to be required to win these kinds of changes? What's it going to take?
Stephanie Pacheco
It's a hard fight, but continuing actions on the ground is very necessary. Holding space in the streets of New York City is necessary. Teens Take Charge has always worked with policy, and having policies that we want to enforce, especially this year, that there's a mayoral race going on. Making sure that we're pressuring, you know putting pressure on the people that are running for mayor and making sure that they understand that this is something that we won't tolerate in their terms. So having both elements, I think, are something that we're focusing on. Making sure that we're having actions when we can. Amplifying the actions of other youth groups fighting for police free school, making sure that, you know, until there's justice the streets of New York City don't get peace. But also working to enforce policies and making sure that these mayoral candidates know that we are not here to play.
Brian Jones
I'm sure they will know that if they don't already, as the name of your group implies. Jazmine, I know you're working on a campaign on discrimination in schools and you mentioned a little bit about it. Do you want to say more about the different manifestations of discrimination in schools that you're working on?
Jazmine Cobham
Yeah, of course. The campaign is called Discrimination in Schools, and we work on developing policies to implement in New York City schools. Some ideas we have or implicit bias trainings. Implicit biases are just stereotypical remarks that's based on things such as race, gender identity cultural background, and although these are unintentional, we should try to eliminate these biases as a whole. So we can know not to offend people in how it offends people. An example of this can be if someone were to say that this is a man's job, and we start to unconsciously think, "that oh yeah, this is a man's job and women should not be able to do it," and it's unintentional but we should learn how to eradicate it completely. Another policy proposal we have is mental health spaces because mental health is something that should really have more time and effort and money put into it, into schools. What else? We have cultural responsive curriculum, I can go on and on about that one, but I talked about that briefly before about history about different cultures, different races, different religions, and yeah.
Brian Jones
Fabulous. Well see it's, it's interesting that, you know, here we have a group of students who, you all, who've taken it upon yourselves to really look at so many different aspects of what's happening not only between schools, not only inequality between and among schools, but even within a given school, looking at the dynamics, and the staffing, and the priorities, and the curriculum. So this really seems like an expansive vision that you're developing. I guess I'm curious about some of what the City has started to do or say on these fronts, and your reaction for instance I know that the city decided to make all of the middle schools unscreened. Does that feel like a partial victory to you? I mean I know that you have a campaign to unscreen all schools, to kind of tear down the barriers that are keeping schools segregated or making some of them selective in ways that have enhanced segregation and inequality. What grade would you give the City on its effort to reduce inequality between schools?
Jazmine Cobham
I can go. I feel like this is a partial victory because we still need to unscreen all schools because I personally don't believe that students should be limited by a test score because the test score just shows the amount of resources that you had to pass that test. And that's a lot of resources that a lot of low-income students don't have. So, I don't understand why numbers on a paper or numbers on a computer should determine a child's future because those schools are the same schools that are funded the most money and it's not fair that someone can't get quality education just because they weren't fortunate enough to obtain resources to pass that test.
Brian Jones
What do you think, Stephanie?
Stephanie Pacheco
So I think that having the city unscreen all middle schools is great. I don't know why they were ever screened in the first place. Why are you screening 10 year olds? I think that all 10 year olds deserve a good middle school education. This is base level. So I'm glad that it happened. It's definitely a good step. It's a good thing. But like Jazmine said, I think it's a partial victory. I almost feel like it's something that they did to shut us up almost. "You want to unscreen schools? Here here, have it here." And I mean yeah it's good. I'd give it a four rating maybe. But, that's not it. That's not it. We need to unscreen high schools. Yeah, we need to unscreen high schools. And they need to put their money where their mouth is. If you understood, or at least pretend, to understand how unjust it is to screen out 10 year olds, you need to have that same energy for the high school process and screening out 13 year olds and understand that they all deserve a good education.
Brian Jones
Right, and you know, I mean, this is not all we haven't even talked about the specialized high schools, as this kind of highly competitive system, or you could even go in the other direction and talk about the gifted and talented, you know, quote unquote gifted and talented, tests that they administer to four year olds, to see if you're a gifted and talented four year old into kindergarten. There's a lot of competition over resources in this public school system that we have here in New York City. So, let me turn now to another question, and this is something I was also impressed by recently, was the fight last summer, about SYEP, which for listeners who don't know that's the summer youth employment program, where the city offers jobs, offers employment to tens of 1000s of young people every summer. And my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong Stephanie and Jazmine, is that last summer the plan was to cut it all together. And Teens Take Charge raised a ruckus, and actually, speaking of partial victories, won a partial victory of the restoration of some of those jobs. This is interesting because this isn't directly related to schooling but it's about the kind of life and well being of young people, of you and your peers. So can you talk about why you decided to take up this fight and what happened? How did this develop?
Stephanie Pacheco
Yeah, so, it was I believe around March-ish if I'm remembering correctly. March, early April, when the pandemic was first hitting and we were first trying to figure out what's going on. We still are, but it was announced that the Mayor was planning to cut all of SYEP, and we immediately thought that was unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable, especially during a pandemic. SYEP was already a lifeline for so many low-income students. It wasn't always that they wanted it, or at least not only that they wanted it, but they needed to participate in SYEP in order to feed their families, to pay bills, to survive. And the fact that the Mayor was going to cut that during a global pandemic that was hitting low-income, Black and Brown students the hardest, was just absolutely awful and we couldn't let that happen. So we started organizing and talking about it and like you said, causing an absolute ruckus because it was going to be so detrimental to the households that were previously depending on SYEP in order to stay alive. So that's why we decided to take on that fight and like you said it was, it was a partial victory, but it was definitely better than what was previously intended to happen.
Brian Jones
And what did you do exactly to fight back and try to try to save SYEP?
Stephanie Pacheco
So funny thing. We actually have like specific group of people that are working on the SYEP campaign and have been for a while now. I'm not a part of that campaign so I'm not as knowledgeable, as I probably could be on all the behind the scenes work. But I know that they were putting a bunch of pressure on the Mayor. We had a massive petition going. We had a lot of social media presence. We had a rally at Occupy City Hall in June. They've collaborated with other organizations like Here to Hear, a lot of things to create that ruckus.
Brian Jones
Fabulous. And now I see you're calling for universal SYEP, not even just restore what there was before, but make it universal in New York City. What would that mean?
Stephanie Pacheco
That would mean that essentially, to my knowledge, every, every person that applies to SYEP would be guaranteed a working position. So, it wouldn't be a lottery system anymore and it wouldn't be as selective. It would just be if you applied, you would have a job for the summer.
Brian Jones
Wow, so basically every New York City high school age person who needs a job would have one.
Stephanie Pacheco
Yeah.
Brian Jones
Amazing. Well you can imagine how that could be a really transformative experience, both as you're saying because of having income, but also just having those experiences in the workforce.
Stephanie Pacheco
Absolutely.
Brian Jones
Yeah. So that's a campaign, if I understand correctly, that's going to be ongoing?
Stephanie Pacheco
Yeah. Yep.
Brian Jones
Fabulous. So, we're talking all this about organizing, and I guess I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about what that means. What is organizing? How do you actually do it? Jazmine, can we start with you? What have you learned about organizing through your experience in Teens Take Charge.
Jazmine Cobham
Yeah, I can start. Organizing, well I'm not really an organized person, but with Teens Take Charge I kind of learned how to be. An example of that is we have these conference, not conferences, but calls, every Tuesday, and sometimes students get to lead some of those calls. So, I would have an agenda, what time what we're going to speak about, and like an actual run through about that and the 14 sec charts I didn't know how to do that at all. So, I feel like this is something that's really important that students get a chance to learn about. So, yeah.
Brian Jones
Fabulous. Stephanie, what kind of organizing work do you find yourself doing in Teens Take Charge or what are some of the types of organizing that you do?
Stephanie Pacheco
Yeah, so there's a lot. I think Jasmine covered one that like people don't think about often and that's organizing within the community and within your groups, which is also important. Organizing can also mean massive boycotts that we tried to put together last year to try to emulate the the massive boycott that happened in I believe 1963. My mind is kind of rusty remembering numbers right now, but sometimes it's getting thousands of people together to fight for one specific cause and find and figuring out how are we going to get those people together, what tactic we're going to use to fight this cause. Sometimes, organizing is that. Sometimes organizing is putting together an event to raise awareness in collaboration with another organization. Sometimes, organizing is creating a rally for SYEP at Occupy City Hall. Organizing could mean lots of things, but I think in general it's uniting people to fight a cause together because there's power in numbers. There's power in being strategic with your fight. And I think that's a lot of what organizing is.
Brian Jones
Yeah, I just googled it while you were talking to remind myself because I was asked, what year was that, and I think you were referring to 1964, you were very close. And it was this month it was February 3, 1964 when 500,000 students boycotted New York City public schools fighting against the segregation of the schools. Actually the largest protest of the US Civil Rights Movement happened right here in New York City. And yes, I remember that you were thinking about launching a boycott right before the pandemic hit. You were trying to build momentum. So I guess I wonder if there's a young person who's listening to this podcast and thinking, "Oh, you know, we don't have that at my school," what do they do to get started at their school?
Stephanie Pacheco
Find a group of people that are also interested in this and also angry about this, whether that be one of your teachers, or your peers, or whoever, and that comes from starting conversation. Bring it up, see how other people are feeling about it and if you find someone who's like, yeah, that's really messed up, you can be like well let's fight it together. And that's how Teens Take Charge started. That's how this massive organization, this massive movement, started. It was a group of teens that came to certain realizations about their high school experience, and was like, I don't like that. You don't like that. Let's do something about it, and it created this conversation. It created so many things, and it starts just with that, with an idea that makes you angry. And the person that's willing to fight it with you, or your own determination to do something about it. And that's how it starts.
Brian Jones
Do you ever get pushback? Do you ever get people who don't seem to be sympathetic or classmates or teachers? Do you ever run into obstacles? Jazmine, have you had that experience?
Jazmine Cobham
Well I can't really say much because this is my first year here at Teens Take Charge. But overall, there's always going to be somebody who's going to try to revoke what you're saying. There's always going to be that one person that tries to go against you. But no matter what you just got to keep pushing for it. If you believe in something you just gotta keep pushing forward until you win
Brian Jones
And Jazmine, do you get support from your teachers at your school?
Jazmine Cobham
What do you mean by that?
Brian Jones
Well I guess I'm, I'm wondering is Teens Take Charge something, are you involved in activism at your school or is your role more in regard to citywide issues where you're getting together with students from other schools?
Jazmine Cobham
Oh in my school there's not really much activism work you can do at my school personally, so Teens Take Charge is something outside of school and Teens Take Charge is made up of people from all over NYC, all five boroughs.
Brian Jones
What about you, Stephanie? Have you experienced pushback when you're trying to organize, whether it's from peers or from adults?
Stephanie Pacheco
I have experienced quite a bit of pushback. Teens Take Charge as a whole, we've had so many adults, so many parents specifically, talk about how harmful unscreening schools would be for their students. It would degrade the quality of education that their students are getting, and they'll do physical rallies just in late-October. We had a counter rally to this group of parents that wanted the SHSAT and wanted screens and were pretty rowdy about it, and it got intense. They're pushing our students around and being aggressive, you would have thought that they were parents from the 50s and 60s that were opposing integration in their student's schools. It was intense, and we get that quite often. And it's happened over the course of a couple of years in our fight.
So many people across the City really think that our segregated system and our discriminatory screens are okay because it works to benefit them. And we get a lot of that pushback. In my experience, my school has pushed against unscreening. In fact, almost exactly a year ago on Valentine's Day last year, they were going to organize - Ugh this is embarrassing. They were going to organize a rally, the staff, the principal, all of the students, literally, everybody was going to organize a rally on the steps of high school, to oppose the potential unscreening of my school. They went on Twitter, they have a hashtag, I think. They were emailing the chancellor. It was like, wow. Wow. And here I am in a corner, like, actually I think that would be really good for our school. It was ridiculous. So yes.
Brian Jones
Did you have any allies at your school?
Stephanie Pacheco
Not that I know of. Quite it quite literally, most of my school is for screening. They think that's what's best for our students and I've had teachers try to like really justify it. And I haven't quite encountered someone that doesn't think like that. I've tried to explain to them change their minds, but for the most part, yeah.
Brian Jones
Well maybe this is important if any students are listening who want to get involved, but don't think that things are promising at their school, listening to you speak, maybe the lesson is well, there's a way to connect to students from other schools, who can give you sources and ideas and teach you about organizing, even if it doesn't seem like the ground is so fertile at the moment for doing so at your own school. But I know you have other schools where people are really organized and they organize students to go on strike and all that sort of thing. So it seems like there's a lot of difference between the experiences of organizing citywide and on the school level is. Am I characterizing that correctly?
Stephanie Pacheco
Yes.
Brian Jones
Well, I know also that when you're organizing and trying to make changes that there's a lot of learning comes with that. That trying to decide that you're going to involve yourself in an effort change the way funds are forces you to read, and write, and argue and listen and do all kinds of activities that a school is supposed to be officially helping you to learn how to do and develop your skills. Jazmine's spoke about the skill of having an agenda for a meeting and leading a meeting and kind of moving logically a set of ideas, a really important skill. What would you say, and this is a question for both of you, what would you say are the biggest things that you've learned through your experience with Teens Take Charge? Is there a moment epiphany or a moment of learning or moment of growth for you that did that really stands out?
Jazmine Cobham
I think one thing I learned, one of the many things I learned, is that you have to look at things at other people's perspective because you just have a one-sided glance at things. You have to see how people view it. But for me personally, I look at other people's perspective, I see how they're wrong, so then it's just one-sided again because I'm right.
Brian Jones
Fabulous. What about you, Stephanie?
Stephanie Pacheco
There's so much that I have learned in my time in Teens Take Charge. I don't even think I fully processed all of it. It's so much, absolutely so much. I think what's coming to me right now, I learned a lot about what community is, and the power of community. The power of being united with people want to fight with you, to fight the same fight, that are just as angry as you. I think one of my first epiphanies happened very early on around the time that I first joined Teens Take Charge. We had a virtual preference one day. I think it was Valentine's Day of 2019, and it looks like Valentine's Day is repeating. But on that day, we had a virtual press conference. I was a new student. I had only been in in Teens Take Charge for about like two weeks, or something. And so I was just like sitting back and watching them do their thing and that was like mind-blowing to me. Just watching them speak so eloquently about what's going on in our school system. I just learned that I could that.
And I am doing that. And I've had other experiences when I've been performing for events, and speaking my truth in front of so many people. And I learned that that is what my community is. I learned how to articulate and conceptualize my experiences, and still an ongoing learning process, but I learned it through Teens Take Charge. I've also learned smaller skills, like we're learning how to lead a movement. And there's so much goes into that. Like you all were mentioning, even facilitating meetings. Like we had mentioned earlier, organizing events. Stuff like that, those are also things like communication skills and stuff like that and even technological skills, so many things that I learned in Teens Take Charge. And stuff the advocacy world just has in general has just completely built me up into who I am, and allowed me to involve myself in other movements, like the Black Lives Matter movement, which I've learned a plethora of things from. It's a whole new form of education, and I think it's one of the truest form of education.
Jazmine Cobham
Amazing. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that you also have an experience or give you an opportunity to throw in there your experience at the Schomburg Center, where you were telling me you also learned a lot that you brought into this movement.
Stephanie Pacheco
Absolutely. I do not go a day without talking about the Schomburg Center. I was a junior scholar at the Schomburg Center, which was amazing. Before and after that I've been to so many different events at the Schomburg Center, listened to so many amazing conversations at that stage, and now, through this computer screen. But I've just learned so much listening to Black educators, Black writers, just so many amazing conversations. The reason why I'm able to articulate myself the way that I do, literally everything that I know, or at least a lot of what I know has come from the Schomburg Center and being in that Black space where it's full of history, analyzing culture, and the current state of our country in different systems, and just all of these things. It's just been a fountain of knowledge, and also an amazing community that I've been able to learn from, and be loved by. And it also just, again, a beautiful form of education that I am so happy that I've been able to be a part of.
Brian Jones
Faboulous, I'm glad that prompted you to give that shameless plug for my workplace. For listeners who don't know, that's the Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture. It's a history research library that's part of the New York Public Library, and is an amazing place. I'll put that website also in our show notes. Last thing, I know that you have students in Teens Take Charge who are from a range of backgrounds, whether it's socioeconomic race, gender, what have you. Teens Take Charge is itself is a diverse group of learners who are going through process together. And I'm curious to know if you have any insights about you've learned about bringing such different kinds of people together and what it takes to be able to work together.
Stephanie Pacheco
I can go. I feel like this brings me back to what I was talking about about diversity because being in Teens Take Charge, I learned a lot about different people's cultural backgrounds, about different people's religions, and it's stuff that I didn't even learn from school. It's about being a part of this organization and I'm so proud that I had this opportunity here to learn about this. So I feel like diversity is something that's really important, even though people might not think so, but you need to learn about people's backgrounds. It's really important in the real world when you apply for a job, when you work with those people, you need to know how not to be disrespectful by accident. The best way to teach people from youth how to get along with everybody.
Jazmine Cobham
Thank you. What's your experience with that Stephanie?
Stephanie Pacheco
It's been beautiful. Teens Take Charge, especially at the time that I joined, and just in general, has had a great community, but it hasn't always been all rainbows and butterflies. There have been conflicts, there have been times that people have been harmed in this space because it kind of comes with the territory, putting low-income Black and brown youth with wealthier, white youth that have never ever crossed paths before for until they stepped foot in Teens Take Charge. It happens, and we've had to learn how to make sure that we're working through those conflicts while still centering our most vulnerable youth and making sure that they still feel empowered. And it's another ongoing conversation of how we make everyone comfortable and safe and welcome in Teens Take Charge and be able to present themselves their full selves. It's an ongoing conversation in all honesty, and that's a side of our world that not many people see, but we're working through it, and still making sure that we remember that we're here for one cause and in order to get there, we have to make sure that we're doing right by each other.
Brian Jones
It also occurs to me that while you're fighting to change the schools, you're also creating a kind of learning space that is many of the things that that you're fighting for, or are contained in the space that you're creating. My last question is what does winning look like? What are some of your visions of what school could be in this City?
Jazmine Cobham
A win for me would be a culturally responive curriculum, diverse teaching staff, mental health resources because you want to make sure that students go into school knowing that they're safe, and that they're protected and if something that's wrong, they can go to an adult, and they won't be turned away. Police free schools, as Stephanie mentioned, because we need school that are safe for students, and we won't need police officers to make us feel safe.
Brian Jones
Same question to you, Stephanie. What does winning like?
Stephanie Pacheco
Oh my gosh. I have to re-amplify what Jazmine said, police out of schools. There's also making sure students have all the resources even outside of school to make sure that they're able to be fully present, that's something that I wish I had. Making sure that schools are unscreened and there's not another barrier that students have to break down to get a good education. Making sure that schools have the resources that they need, all the books and technology that is needed to make sure that students have what they need in order to learn. And schools that provide an environment that is loving and caring and, you know, provide a beautiful community that's centered around healing and that creates a safe space for students from whatever may be happening outside of school. There's so much that goes into what I'm imagining for schools, but that would be a win.
Brian Jones
We're gonna have to leave it there. Thank you so much Stephanie and Jazmine for sharing your work with Teens Take Charge. For those who want to learn, I'll put links for Teens Take Charge in the resources portion of the podcast and on the WBAI website. This is Brian Jones, filling in for Leonie Haimson, host of Talk Out of School on WBAI 99.5 FM Pacifica Radio. Talk Out of School is also available as a podcast. If you hear it as an Apple podcast, please leave a review, and also consider becoming a WBAI buddy to Talk Out of School by logging into givetowbai.org or by calling 516-620-3602. Leonie will be back soon with another episode of Talk Out of School by loggin. Until then, stay safe, wear a mask and take care of each other. Thank you so much for listening.