CSUSM Arts and Lecture Series: Project Aware Reflection

Amanda Bevers

Cohort B

CSUSM Arts and Lecture Series: Project Aware Reflection

Project Aware was presented to us by RBV Assistant Principal Shannon Garcia and CEO/ founder of Project Aware Reginold Washington. They were supported by Narciso Igleseas who I believe is a teacher at a school for students expelled from other schools, and Jose Villareal whom I believe is a teacher at a different school but is involved in the program. They also had two teen guest speakers one a young African American girl whose name I didn’t quite catch and an older Latino teen boy names Ramero.

They explained how Project Aware was designed by Regi while he was in prison. He noticed that there were no programs to help teach young men how to stay out of prison so he designed one. This program evolved and branched out and is not helping at risk teens find the supports they need to be successful. The program is all about approaching behavior from an education standpoint and not a punitive one. It is about figuring out why students act out instead of just punishing for it. The program has successfully been implemented at RBV high and has resulted in a dramatically lower suspension and expulsion rate on campus. They are now branching the program out to other schools in the district.

Narciso shared some personal stories and explained how it is important to make content relevant to student’s lives. Shannon gave a presentation on how we need to focus on more than just the physiological needs of students. That we need to address the high levels of need on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. She also explained the “school to prison pipeline” scenario which details the statistics of the correlation between students who fail to complete high school and people who end up in prison. She suggests that intervention is key, not expulsion or suspension.

I felt that all of the information given in this presentation was extremely valuable and important to education. I agreed with all of the points they discussed and also believe in intervention over only discipline. Out of all of the amazing speakers however I was most moved by young Ramero’s speech. He shared his personal story of struggle and triumph over his behavior and his past. I never would have guessed that such a handsome, intelligent, and charismatic youth would have been subjected to such a hard life. One of the things that really impacted me was how he was able to forgive a peer for raping his sister and attempting to murder him. If a teenager can forgive all of that, than what can’t we forgive? He taught me that night that grudges and hate are not worth the trouble. He taught me to forgive.

I am extremely impressed with this program and hope that it spreads to more districts and quickly. When I get hired at a school this is one of the first things I look into trying to get my school to do.

Links:

CSUSM Arts and Lectures Series

Project Aware