High School Students Gather for Black History
program sponsored with History Museum and
St. Louis Rams |
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Congratulations to over 50 high school students who gathered last Thursday evening at the Missouri History Museum for a unique and interactive Black History program. It was jointly sponsored by the Museum, the St. Louis Rams, and Civitas. Students from the following schools participated:
Crossroads, Maplewood-Richmond-Heights, Metro, Miller Career Academy, Rosati-Kain, S.L.U.H., Soldan International Studies, and Webster Groves. The program was both explanatory and interactive. Students toured the museum's "St. Louis in Black and White" exhibit with most engaging information from a docent. They also saw a clip from President Barack Obama's inaugural speech.
Students heard from knowledgeable panelists and were able to ask them a variety of questions. Over the final forty-five minutes of the program, students from different schools met in groups of ten and brainstormed ideas for improving race relations in the St. Louis community. They then shared their ideas with the entire group. All suggestions were recorded and will form the basis for ongoing discussions and additional activities. These will include other schools in the St. Louis area.
Panelists & Breakout Session Facilitators included: - Chris Draft, Linebacker, St. Louis Rams
- Reena Hajat, Director, Diversity Awareness Partnership
- Priscilla Hill-Ardoin, community activist
- Dr. Jonathan Smith, Professor, St. Louis U.
- Bob Wallace, Executive VP, St. Louis Rams -- confirmed [Panelist]
Thanks so much to a remarkable coordinating committee that includes: St. Louis Rams: Evan Ardoin, Cassidy Cleveland, Michael Yarbrough
Missouri History Museum: Melanie Adams, Alex Detrick
Below are photos from the event. We will have a link to more pictures next week from the Rams Gallery. |
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Rams linebacker Chris Draft, a graduate of Stanford University, addresses students. |
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Rams Executive Vice-President/General Counsel Bob Wallace facilitates discussion. |
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Chris Draft responds to a question. |
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Participating student describes suggestions for St. Louis from his group. |
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Chris Draft and student share thoughts on improving St. Louis. |
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Plans Proceed for next Pulitzer
Global Gateway Project |
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The topic for the third and final Pulitzer Global Gateway project for 2008-09 has been settled. The theme is "Women, Children, Crisis" and is unlike any of the previous six. |
The Pulitzer Center's Global Gateway presentation for spring 2009 (April 20-23) addresses the issue of women and children in crisis, drawing on Pulitzer Center reporting projects from three different regions -- Nepal, Iraq and eastern Congo -- and addressing topics that range from rape as an instrument of war to the abuse of young girls through entrenched patterns of indentured servitude. Much of the reporting is already available on the Pulitzer Center site, under the specific project web pages. By early April we will produce an interactive web portal that showcases key elements from each project and that will also contain lesson plans and the opportunity to engage directly with the journalists and with other Gateway participants. The featured journalists coming to St. Louis are as follows: (1) Meredith May, the veteran feature writer for the San Francisco Chronicle (and a professor at Mills College/Oakland) who reported this winter on child indentured servants in western Nepal; http://www.pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=90(2) Alaa Majeed, Iraqi former McClatchy Baghdad bureau reporter, winner of the 2007 Courage in Journalism award, and collaborator with her husband, journalist David Enders and with filmmaker Rick Rowley on their many documentaries on Iraq. She is just back from a month in Iraq, successful after three years in trying to get her two sons, 7 and 10, out of the country; http://pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=36 (3) Michael Kavanagh, just completing his third month-long trip to eastern Congo for the Pulitzer Center. Michael is primarily a radio journalist, with reports on NPR and PRI/The World. He also produced video reports for WorldFocus, the new weeknightly program on foreign affairs for public television. http://pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=58 This is going to be a powerful presentation, with compelling video from each project and journalists fresh from the field. Alaa Majeed will be accompanied by her sons and all three journalists bring a deep personal commitment to the subjects they have covered. We will be presenting all three journalists at an event Wednesday night 4/22 at Washington University and we hope to do another combined presentation at one of our partner high schools Tuesday night 4/21 (an event that would be open to all Gateway students and teachers as well as parents, other students and the general public). Between Monday and Wednesday (possibly Thursday) the journalists will fan out individually to as many of the participating schools as possible, so that participants will have the opportunity for in-depth discussion in small groups. Work on refining the program continues as Arthur is in Washington, DC today to meet with Pulitzer staff. |
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Several Urban Studies Programs on Horizon |
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Nearly thirty students have indicated interest in Civitas' Urban Studies "Go-Team" the week of June 8. We will have more information on the program in coming week as the plans become more solidified.
In the meantime, we want to pass along information to students about the Young Planners Network Conference to be held in San Francisco from June 4-7. We thank former Civitas staffer Ryun Miller for this information. |
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Deadline Passes for Essay Contest College and high-school students entered an essay contest to win a trip to Washington, DC later this month to attend the "Next Steps to Peace, Sustainability, and Justice" conference sponsored by the Citizens for Global Solutions. Competition is tough and at press time the winner has not yet been selected. We will inform you of the decision next week. For more information on the conference, click here. |
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Independent Film at History Museum In light of the Pulitzer Global Gateway "Water Wars" project and the Civitas "Green Deal" conference, we thought that you might be interested in a film coming up at the Missouri History Museum. It is "Taking Root," the story of a Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, whose simple act of planting trees grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, protect human rights and defend democracy. It will be showing this Thursday, March 5 from 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM |
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Upcoming Civitas Events
(Actual events in bold -- always subject to change when change occurs!) Black: High School Blue: Middle School
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| Date | Time | Place | Activity | Sat.,
03/07/2009 | 9:00 AM -
11:00 AM | Crossroads (map) | Discussion #12 | Sat.,
03/21/2009 | 9:00 AM -
11:00 AM | Crossroads (map) | Discussion #13 | Thurs.,
03/26/2009 | 9:00 AM -
12:00 PM | Creve Coeur Gov't Center (map) | Middle School M.U.N. #1 | Sat.,
03/28/2009 | 9:00 AM -
11:00 AM | Crossroads (map) | Discussion #14 |
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What's Civitas? See video below: |
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Civitas simulation on "Carefully Getting out
of Iraq"
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