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| Mandela High School:
Piloting a Bridging Multiple Worlds Approach
In the summer of 2003, a new small high school, Mandela High, was conceived in East Oakland, California. Prompted by persistent underachievement, high dropout rates and serious intergroup tensions in the neighborhoods surrounding it’s large comprehensive high schools, Oakland Unified School District embarked on a major reform initiative to break the schools into smaller autonomous ones that would be more conducive to supporting students. Mandela High was one of five small schools that emerged out of Fremont High School.
Mandela High School is tremendously diverse. In the 2005-06 school year, 25% of its 354 students identified as African American, 12% Asian, 2% as Filipino, 58% Latino, 2% Pacific Islander, and 1% as White. Of this population, 64% speak a language other than English at home, and 39% are designated English Learners. The school serves a primarily low-income neighborhood with 79% of the students qualifying for the Free or Reduced Lunch program.
Like all the schools in the initiative, Mandela’s journey to becoming a small school began with the assemblage of a design team to determine the approach, theme, and curriculum emphasis. Familiar with the work of California Tomorrow, the Mandela design team enlisted CT staff to help create a high school dedicated to developing future leaders with the skills, awareness, and knowledge to bridge cultural differences and to participate, lead and thrive in a diverse society. During a two-day retreat to design a program based on this vision, the Mandela team and California Tomorrow staff pondered: What would a school look like where young people’s cultures were honored and acknowledged as an asset? How can we foster healthy cultural and linguistic identities for our school’s young people? How can we design our school to bring together students across differences in race, language and culture? As the dialogue went on, the Bridging Multiple Worlds concept took shape.
Over the course of the next three years, the Mandela staff in partnership with California Tomorrow would develop and infuse eight components supporting the Bridging Multiple Worlds vision throughout the school. The goal was to offer students multiple ways to learn key concepts and competencies, and also the opportunity to amass work towards a new “Bridging Multiple Worlds Certificate” upon graduation from high school.
Mandela High School’s Eight Bridging Multiple Worlds Components
- The Bridging Multiple Worlds After School Club
This was the very first Bridging Multiple Worlds approach to be implemented at Mandela and it validated for school staff how interested students were in opportunities to focus on these issues so core to their lives. Created as a bi-weekly after school leadership club, participants explored the Bridging Multiple Worlds concepts of identity building, social justice issues, and cross-cultural awareness. They learned about different cultural and ethnic forms of music and how they influence each other, created informational and fun bulletin boards around the school commemorating cultural and ethnic holidays, recruited other students to participate in Bridging Multiple Worlds, made presentations in Advisory classes, and conducted school-wide surveys to illicit fellow students’ ideas and desires related to creating an inclusive climate on campus. It was through such a survey that the after school participants learned that Mandela students wanted to have the content of the after-school club expanded into an elective course. With the results of the survey in hand, the after school participants approached the school administration and lead the effort to institute the Bridging Multiple Worlds elective course described next.
- The Bridging Multiple Worlds Elective Course
A year-long elective course was designed and offered to students to immerse them in academic study, dialogue, reflection and experiences core to the Bridging Multiple Worlds leadership competencies. The curriculum focused on exploring personal cultural identity and developing awareness of others' cultures and languages; learning about historical and contemporary examples of activism and movements for cultural rights, civil rights, and social justice not taught in most history or social studies courses; developing cross-cultural skills and applying those skills in the school and community; and developing a critical lens to examine the conditions in the students’ community and society as a whole along with strategies to create change. The course engaged students in reading, conducting research, keeping journals, writing papers, field trips, critical analysis of videos and films, art projects and discussion. Through participation in the four-unit sections of the course, students were able to complete materials required for their Bridging Multiple Worlds portfolio. Twelve students signed up for the new course and their response was overwhelmingly positive, as the quotes throughout this booklet reveal. California Tomorrow staff co-developed and taught the course in the first year, with Mandela faculty taking the lead thereafter and adapting the curriculum as the school evolved.
Course Outline
- A Bridging Multiple Worlds Advisory Curriculum
All students at Mandela attend a 40-minute school-wide advisory period four days of the week. Mandela developed a 6-week thematic curriculum to be taught during this advisory period on the themes of culture, language, family history, identity, stereotypes and demographics. Activities in the curriculum included defining what culture and identity are comprised of, exploring and understanding the demographics of Oakland, and understanding the harms of using stereotypes.
- Infusion of Bridging Multiple Worlds Concepts into Existing Courses and Curriculum
Each teacher at Mandela was given the opportunity to meet with California Tomorrow staff to either create new units and assignments or align their existing course curriculum to foster the Bridging Multiple Worlds competencies among their students. For example, in 10th grade English, the teacher assigned students to argue for or against a recent global issue for their required persuasive essay. Similarly, an autobiographical paper required in the English Language Development class was reframed to focus in part on cultural identity. In Social Studies, the teacher incorporated a new unit on human rights during International Human Rights Month. During African American History Month, the art teacher introduced an activity on creating African masks, among other activities throughout the school. All of these efforts helped to infuse Bridging Multiple Worlds concepts throughout the school, while the students who completed the assignments could use them to fulfill various requirements in their Bridging Multiple Worlds portfolios.
- Community Service
California requires high school students to complete community service hours in order to graduate. This fit well with the Bridging Multiple Worlds emphasis on youth developing leadership skills and contributing to their communities. In order for students to be eligible to receive the Bridging Multiple Worlds certificate at graduation, Mandela instituted a requirement that they complete half of their community service hours in a placement using cross-cultural and/or bilingual skills, and the other half serving their own cultural communities. Bridging Multiple Worlds student interns developed a directory of community service placements that would require bilingual and/or cross-cultural skills for students to complete their mandatory community service hours.
- Travel
It has long been an accepted educational principle that students gain valuable cross-cultural and linguistic skills through travel. It is common to hear of higher income students traveling all over the globe, but many public high school students rarely have a chance or the means to leave their neighborhoods. Students in the Bridging Multiple Worlds School Club and elective course traveled to Angel Island to learn about the history of Asian immigration to California. Another trip took them to schools in a nearby wealthier community where they were able to compare and contrast their lived experience with their peers in more resourced areas. Students also participated in a two-day Farmerworker Justice Tour arranged through Global Exchange; here they traveled to rural Salinas, California to learn more about environmental justice issues such as the plight of laborers in the fields, the differences between organic and traditional farming, and the efforts of labor unions to improve and protect working conditions. Upon return from each of these trips, students wrote reflections to insert into their Bridging Multiple Worlds Portfolios.
- Bridging Multiple Worlds Portfolio
As mentioned, the “Bridging Multiple Worlds Portfolio” was instituted at Mandela for students to compile activities and assignments completed over the course of their high school years. Students present their portfolios as seniors to become eligible for the Bridging Multiple Worlds Seal on their diploma. Assignments in a student’s Bridging Multiple Worlds portfolio might include, for example, a translation piece to demonstrate biliteracy, an identity collage, an essay on an example of oppression, writeups of cultural events attended, reflections on travel, and an autobiographical essay.
- Bridging Multiple Worlds Internship
California Tomorrow created a Bridging Multiple Worlds internship within the organization for three Mandela students in the last year of collaboration with Mandela High. The goals of the internship were for the students to develop and implement three meaningful school-wide cultural events, research and produce the Community Service Directory with interesting placements for students to use cross-cultural and bilingual skills, plan a special Bridging Multiple Worlds graduation ceremony for the first graduating class, and contribute to the development and writing of a publication explaining Bridging Multiple Worlds. The Bridging Multiple Worlds interns planned a school-wide African American Jeopardy Tournament in honor of African American History Month, created a student friendly information sheet with important facts regarding the recent Immigrant Rights movement, and an Advisory Activity around understanding and celebrating Lunar New Year.
Over the course of the three years of the California Tomorrow/Mandela partnership, more than 200 students – more than half the school -- took part in at least one of the components of Bridging Multiple Worlds. Bridging Multiple Worlds students had the opportunity to be a part of a learning community where they were not seen just as learners, but also as teachers themselves, where the knowledge they brought to the classroom was valued, and where they were encouraged to share their life experiences and thoughts. In June of 2006, Mandela High School celebrated its first graduating class of some forty students, including eight seniors who proudly earned the Bridging Multiple Worlds Certificate, having amassed a body of work and experiences testifying to their mastery of the Bridging Multiple Worlds Core Competencies.
Crucial to the success of Bridging Multiple Worlds at Mandela was that it was tailored around the unique interests, goals and population of the school. The strongest picture of the impact and potential of Bridging Multiple Worlds education can be found in the voices of the young people who have had the chance to participate. The quotes throughout this booklet are those of students who participated in the Mandela Bridging Multiple Worlds elective course, including seniors who completed years of work qualifying them to receive the Bridging Multiple Worlds Certificate with their diploma. |
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