Penn students and local high schoolers study together to improve a neighborhood
May 22, 2009 - "Working at West Philly High puts a human face on the theories we study in class," says John Puckett.
A professor at Penn GSE, Puckett is describing what students take away from his Research as Public Work seminar. Co-taught with Elaine Simon, director of Penn's Urban Studies program, the class brings together Penn undergraduates and students from West Philadelphia High School (WPHS).
The West Philly kids are enrolled in the Urban Studies Academy, one of four theme-based academies carved out of the large inner-city high school just blocks away from the Penn campus. In Puckett's class, they work with Penn undergrads to develop ideas for the academy's urban studies curriculum and to develop school-based public work projects in the neighborhood. The high school kids' academic growth is addressed as well, of course: they are pushed to use higher-order analytic and communication skills to accomplish the projects they work on.
For the Penn students, this class gives them a rare chance to apply classroom knowledge and skills to real-world challenges. They get hands-on experience collaborating on interventions to benefit West Philly High and the surrounding neighborhood. "The Penn students are really advocates for these kids," says Puckett.
In last year's Research as Public Work seminar, the class worked out a plan to develop and maintain a vacant lot near the school as a community garden and gathering spot. As part of their work for the seminar, WPHS students surveyed their neighbors, cleaned the lot, and designed to scale an architectural plat for the rehabilitated lot, and developed a budget and timeline for completing the project. As the students explained in their project proposal, "Throughout the year we discussed urban issues, and for our final project we are putting everything we learned into fixing the 49th and Chancellor St. vacant lot."
In the fall of 2008, a new class of WPHS students undertook a research and community-organizing project to address the problem of the Croydon, a vacant apartment building adjacent to the high school. Why had it been allowed to deteriorate? What did the community want for this site?
To give them the tools to answer these questions, Penn students traveled each week to WPHS to guide the high school students in developing a survey instrument and in conducting research. With that help, the students constructed and conducted surveys and analyzed the results. They also learned how to use PowerPoint and other programs to develop a presentation on their findings.
In their final presentation, the WPHS students argued persuasively that the Croydon should be torn down and replaced with a new community center. Although disappointed that work hasn't begun, the students made a convincing showing to a rapt audience.
"That's really something," explains GSE doctoral student Leslie Rogers, "that they got that many people to listen. Even their city councilwoman came."
Now, because of their work, adds Puckett, "there is new interest in demolishing the building — and that's quite a feat."
In the spring semester, the students' work took a different tack. With its four academies — and an impending move into a new building — WPHS Principal Saliyah Cruz "hired" her students to "brand" each academy with its own distinct identity and logo. After talking with students and teachers in each of the academies, the seminar students worked with their Penn colleagues to develop criteria for the logo of each academy. Two graphic design students from the university have taken on the final designs as a summer project, and the new logos will be unveiled in the fall — as a new class of Research as Public Work students begin their own project.