Currents in Education
York Middle School Civil Rights Team strives to make a difference
By Virginia L. Woodwell
York Middle School students, members of the 77-member Civil Rights Team, work to assemble a Christmas tree for the Moquin Family Festival of Trees to be held at St. Aspinquid Lodge as part of York's Festival of Lights. The tree will display photos of people the students respect and admire, with one-word descriptions of the quality admired. The project is part of a long-term effort to work preventively against prejudice and bias-motivated violence.
Photo by Virginia Woodwell
The 77 fifth- through eighth-graders bustling about there were members of the school's Civil Rights Team, coming together to execute a major project: the assembly and decoration of a special Christmas tree.
When they were done, the tree would be hung with 77 portrait photos contributed by each child, the people pictured representing each child's choice of somebody he or she respected, with each photo labeled with one word signifying the reason for that respect.
The tree will then go to York's St. Aspinquid Masonic Lodge to become part of the first Moquin Family Festival of Trees, which will be part, in turn, of the town's Festival of Lights on Dec. 2.
With other donations, the tree will then be auctioned off and the proceeds contributed to "The Angel Foundation," a community fund designed to provide needy York families with necessary, confidential help.
On Tuesday, some of the children were assembling the tree and working to get its lights functioning while others had begun mounting their photos for hanging and still others were scouring the Internet on their laptops, searching for just the right photo.
On Tuesday, sixth-grader Megan Shusta, 11, said that she was contributing to the tree a photo of "My nana," and that the word she associated with her was "loving."
All the students were working under the helpful eyes of adult facilitators Cyndy Dow and Judie Hogan, who explained that Maine school civil rights teams first emerged in 1996, prompted by the intention of the state Attorney General's Office to address civil- and human-rights issues preventively.
Legally, Hogan explained, that action has its basis in Maine's Civil Rights Act, part of the Maine Human Rights Act, which "prohibits violence or threat of violence, and/or property damage or threat of property damage based on bias related to a person's race, color, sex, physical or mental ability, religion, ancestry, national origin or sexual orientation."
A total of 200 Maine schools have become involved in this preventive approach, starting with high schools and middle schools and now including elementary schools, Dow said.
In York, she added, the high school, middle school and Coastal Ridge Elementary School are all now involved, with the middle school dating its participation back to 1997.
"Our mission," said Dow, "is to do whatever we can to support an environment in which kids feel safe, comfortable and welcome."
When the call went out, a few weeks back, to form this year's civil rights team, the response she got, Dow said, was "awesome."
Last month, on Oct. 31, 10 members of the team - three each from grades 5 and 6, and two each from grades 7 and 8 - joined 600 other southern Maine students in Saco for a training session sponsored by the Maine Attorney General's Office. The students who went, bolstered by a video about the training, then reported back to those who hadn't, and the entire team met together for the first time during the week of Nov. 6.
"We're expanding to look at unkind behavior," Dow said. "Last week's challenge was helping kids and adults realize that it's not okay to say things like 'Oh, that's so gay!'"
Dow was echoed by Hogan, who said, "We want to focus on how we treat each other - that is, with respect, compassion and kindness. We want a school where we are valued for who we are."
Dow reported that, through an arrangement with the Portland-based Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence (CPHV), some students will also be trained to be peer mediators.
The Civil Rights Team, Dow said, is now in its second year of association with the CPHV, which was founded in 1999 by Stephen Wessler, an attorney now serving as the organization's executive director whose past experience includes both private practice and work in the Maine Attorney General's Office.
"CPHV," its literature states, "develops and implements programs in schools, colleges and communities to prevent bias, prejudice, harassment and violence, and engages in advocacy to prevent bias-motivated violence."
Parent advisors assisting Dow and Hogan with the York Middle School Civil Rights Team are Anastasia Maertens and Trish Mazur.
