Like many middle schoolers, Abriella Shinn would rather be outside than sitting in a classroom. Especially on a sunny day.
Buying a whiteboard and stools to turn STEM Middle School’s plaza into an outdoor classroom would cost just $477, the eighth grader suggested. For $1,700, she and her classmates could upgrade the outdoor classroom with a party tent and a heater, making it an all-season solution to the problem of school-day confinement.
“You wouldn’t want to be stuck in a classroom all day, every day, so why would kids want to be stuck in a classroom?” her classmate Kay’Leigh Sibley asked.
The outdoor classroom proposal and others were part of the first Changemaker Challenge, a project for select eighth graders that’s intended to help students investigate issues they’re passionate about.
See the list of Changemaker Challenge projects that are moving forward and receiving funding.
Abriella and Kay’Leigh’s team’s pitch got top marks from a group of seventh and eighth graders who gathered, along with school administrators and community partners, to see what eighth graders suggested they could do to improve Akron.
The semester-long program is the latest expansion of Akron Public Schools’ college and career academy model into middle schools. In the fall, all 1,332 eighth graders across the district gave a two- to three-minute speech about a topic they cared about. This spring, 145 of those students were able to put those passions into action, finding problems in the city they wanted to solve. While the district had the capacity for 30 students to participate at each of APS’ nine middle schools, not all students invited to take the class chose to participate.
Across the schools, the students researched topics as diverse as middle school bullying, elderly loneliness and access to hygiene products. They worked alone or in teams to present their ideas, complete with a prototype and a budget. And at each school, one idea is moving on to a May Changemaker Summit, where teams are guaranteed at least $500 to see their idea come to fruition with the help of a community partner.
“That money does more than just buy items. It’s the beginning of engaging them in an ongoing process, which I think is super valuable,” said Tina Boyes, the Ward 9 City Council member who partnered with Innes Community Learning Center students on their proposal to beautify and improve Prentiss Park in Akron’s Kenmore neighborhood. Her son, Drew, is an eighth grader at STEM Middle School and participated in the Changemaker Challenge as well.
“The money itself is proof that this is for real,” Boyes said. “It’s not just a school activity anymore.”
At Hyre CLC, students plan to publish a book using actual stories of students’ experiences with bullying. They surveyed students to collect the stories. They also want to share resources for students at Hyre and throughout the community.
Kathleen Mockensturm, the assistant youth services coordinator for the Akron-Summit County Public Library and a partner with Hyre, said she’s talked to students about self-publishing and plans to put them in contact with a local author. She said she could see the “From the Eyes of the Bullied” book being placed in the library’s local authors’ section and used in classrooms across the district.
“To show them they’re valued and to give them money to back their ideas is really powerful,” Mockenstrum said. “I think it’s really great.”
‘All the ideas are worthy’
The middle school experience in Akron Public Schools centers on understanding the role of nonprofits, and the Changemaker Challenge begins by asking questions about the city’s needs, said Patrick Gerber, a team guide and adventure curator with TomTod Ideas, which provided the curriculum.
Students talk about how they might implement change in their communities, he said, and what they’re passionate about. The intention is to focus on inquiry-based learning.
TomTod teaches them that the solutions they propose have to be new and better than what’s already available, needed and wanted by the community, and able to become real if they’re to be viable projects. Gerber said he sees the money, provided by the Akron Community Foundation, as seed funding for the ideas. Of the nine projects moving forward, four will get $500, four will get $1,000 and one will get $4,000. The payouts will be determined not by which group has the best presentation, Gerber said, but by where the money will do the most good.
“We think all the ideas are worthy,” he said. “It’s about how much money it needs to have an impact.”
At Innes CLC, the entire 10-person class worked on the proposal to revive Prentiss Park, so students knew their project would move on to receive funds to solve some of the issues they surfaced. With $500, they plan to partner with Keep Akron Beautiful to clean up graffiti on the playground and remove prickly bushes, replacing them with native wildflowers. They would also partner with Garfield CLC carpentry students to build benches.
If $1,000 is awarded for the project, students plan to resurface and repaint the cracked basketball court. And if they receive $4,000, they want to add backboards to the dilapidated court, as well as an air pump and a water fountain. They’d also like to build an inclusive swing set, since the existing playground isn’t accessible to people with disabilities.
Boyes also applied for the Akron Parks Challenge, where $150,000 could be available to help remake Prentiss Park. She said because of her engagement with Innes students, she included ideas in the application that otherwise would not have been brought to her attention.
A lot of what students learn in school is theoretical, said Justin Plas, the academy coach at Innes. So having leaders like Boyes ask their opinions on an issue that could impact the community was a powerful experience, he said. That was the case for Lavynder Richardson, an Innes eighth grader who said working on the Prentiss Park project gave her more confidence.
“I think of myself as a leader,” Lavynder said. “I could do more stuff when I’m still young.”
‘People are actually listening’
Eighth grader Stephawn Bradley-Muhammad led a tour of the run-down Prentiss Park, pointing out the “messed up” roofs on the vending booths, the poor condition of the tennis courts and the graffiti on the playground.
“It’s only teaching little kids bad stuff,” he said.
Other students commented on the fact that the park was often full of litter and devoid of the festivals their parents recalled attending there. They wanted it to be used in the way it had been in the past.
One of the most impressive parts of the first year of the Changemaker Challenge is that students are genuinely investigating issues that they care about, said Jason Labovitz, the program manager for college and career academies for Akron Public Schools. He said students have been focusing on mental health issues and other salient topics; one group at Buchtel CLC proposed efforts to help people recovering from addiction get jobs.
While that idea is not moving forward to the summit, Labovitz said it’s clear partners are hearing the suggestions students are surfacing. One Buchtel partner, he said, latched on to the fact that a lack of IDs was a barrier to some people with addiction issues getting jobs and said that was something they could assist with.
“People are actually listening,” he said. “There are a lot of real issues scholars are willing to address and want to talk about.”
‘This is the very thing we need’
“Of course I wanted to make them all happen,” said January Miller, the vice president of education for the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park. “Those projects are certainly things I would like to support, I would like to see go somewhere.”
Miller, who attended the STEM Middle School presentation, said she plans to take all the proposals from that school to park leadership. Those include the outdoor classroom and the idea that’s moving forward to the summit, an app that gamifies cleanup of the CVNP.
“These are things that should definitely be discussed,” she said. “Having adults really listen to them, it’s very powerful.”
The students agreed. Anna Musakhanyan, who worked on the outdoor classroom proposal, said she felt more respected after participating in the class. Abriella said it made her realize she could share her ideas and they would be heard.
Their teacher, Anne Harmon, is STEM’s gifted-intervention specialist. Along with academy coach Brenda Leighton, Harmon said she expects to write grant applications to try to help fund some of the ideas that didn’t advance.
The students, too, said they expect to see the fruits of their efforts, regardless of the end results of their class projects. Larry Vancant III, a STEM eighth grader whose group proposed adding mile markers and art to the Towpath Trail, said he sees how the Draw the Next Mile project could be viable.
“It doesn’t have to be a school thing,” Larry said. “We can make it work just for us.”
Boyes, whose son Drew worked on the Next Mile project, said she still thinks the proposal is a good idea and that she intends to connect the group with the Better Kenmore Community Development Corp., which proposed a similar signage idea in that area. She said she’s already seeing the ripple effects from both Drew’s project and the one at Innes.
“It encourages more creativity than it does regret,” Boyes said of those projects that didn’t move forward. “This is the very thing we need to encourage citizen involvement.”
‘A sense of ownership’
The path wasn’t always an easy one, and that, too, ended up being rewarding. STEM eighth grader Kenny Sidoti said his group didn’t go through the process of creating their Clean to Win app without arguments, but that helped him learn coping skills and teamwork.
Sidoti said, too, that the app that will represent STEM at the summit wasn’t the group’s first idea – there were some “more ridiculous” ones that he preferred early in the process. But in the end, he said, he’s confident his team’s idea can help make the world a better place.
It impressed school and other leaders for the same reason. Harmon, the teacher, said giving people points for picking up litter that are redeemable for CVNP swag could change the way people volunteered at that park, and potentially across the National Park Service. She said it had the potential to be the most “world-changing.”
The district’s next challenge will be to keep the students involved into their ninth grade year, as they disperse to different high schools, Labovitz said. He said following through, and showing them how their ideas evolve and are implemented, will be crucial.
Part of that falls to the Akron Community Foundation, which is convening the other nonprofit partners. John Garofalo, the vice president of community investment for the foundation, said there is no end date for the project.
“As long as the dollars are being used efficiently and effectively and making a difference,” the funding will continue, he said. “The fact that these kids are taking an interest in what’s happening in their community, it gives them a sense of ownership. Hopefully, they want to get more involved in the future.”
The eighth graders on the Clean to Win team said it was hard to explain how excited they were about the impact they might have. Anthony Cucuzza said he was glad to be able to say he had a hand in a project that could help the community, while Leah Robitaille said it was worth working through her doubts about the project’s viability.
“Seeing that we were able to do something like this, it definitely gives me more confidence in my abilities,” she said.
Editor’s note: Additional photographs were added to this post after it was initially published.