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Amped family, we are so pleased to formally introduce you to our two newest program managers: Mr. Zach Williams and Dr. Reva Hines. Both Zach and Reva add incredible value to our team, and we are proud to celebrate them with you!
What do you most enjoy about your role at Humanities Amped, and what are you looking forward to? My role at Humanities Amped allows me to work collaboratively with other educators who are passionate about youth development beyond just academics. I love working with young adults in these critical moments of their socialization, and Humanities Amped allows me to address the whole human that walks into our doors. Our young people are expressive, talented, and intelligent but do not always get to showcase all three aspects. I love that we provide a space for that and that they are developing a loving community with our guidance.  Why does the mission of Humanities Amped matter to you? The Humanities Amped mission matters to me because the public school system does not always have the resources or capacity to foster the aspects of healing justice, radical imagination, or beloved community. The unfortunate reality is that many students do not feel as though they are truly part of the community they engage with on a daily basis, let alone having the power to heal what ails the community or that they have the power to create a new reality for that community. Since our focus is not individual academics and competition for opportunity, our students can become more well rounded as community leaders who have the capacity to claim their humanity and humanize others.
What do you most enjoy about your role at Humanities Amped, and what are you looking forward to? I enjoy being a part of Humanities Amped's learning community which offers a safe and brave space for our youth to be their authentic self all while accentuating their academic, personal, and social-emotional skills through healing and restorative practices. I am looking forward to cultivating and sustaining practices that build our youth to be the next generation of change leaders in our communities.  Why does the mission of Humanities Amped matter to you? It is important for the youth to have a platform to grow. That's why Humanities Amped matters to me. It allows for just that to happen. You can catch Zach and Reva facilitating Transform Yourself Studio on Mondays and Wednesdays after school, conferencing with students who need support throughout the day, or offering guidance to students in Dreamkeepers as they navigate their options for after high school. Are you looking to support Amped financially? Head to our support page to donate today! We cannot do this work without you. Are you looking to get involved with Amped? Our call for volunteers is still open!
Amplifying ELA Classrooms is a project that will take place during the Spring 2022 semester at Broadmoor High School and specifically focuses on supporting the English Language Learners who make up 21% of the Broadmoor community. Volunteers will be matched with a Broadmoor teacher and work with them in their classroom throughout the semester on a weekly basis. You do not need special training to join this initiative, but you do need commitment, a heart for youth, and at least three hours a week that you can volunteer at a consistent time. Sign up by following the link below! If you have questions, please reach out to rhines@humanitiesamped.org.
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 Amped Studio Afterschool at Broadmoor High School kicked off at the end of September with a lot of love and excitement in the air. On Mondays and Wednesdays students gather after school for Transform Yourself Studio, a supportive community that gives students space to set goals and provides them with the homework help, social emotional skills, and tutoring support they need to reach those goals. At Transform The World Studio, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, students are invited to apply their talents and gifts to be the change they want to see in the world. 
Enrollment filled up quickly, and after just a few weeks of programming we are already seeing the impact of careful attention to building beloved community together. Our first few weeks were focused on establishing a culture that is driven by young people: students created agreements that align to our core Amped values and reflect how they want to treat each other, and be treated, in Amped Studio. A student "culture keeper" reviews those agreements at the start of every session. This commitment to honoring the norms we set together is one way that students are claiming Amped Studio as a space for themselves to practice beloved community, healing justice, and radical imagination not as lofty ideals, but as everyday ways of being together that change the world.
Students in Transform Yourself Studio engaged in an exercise to set visions for the lives they most want to live in the future. They then created goals for how they want to use their time in tutoring studios on Mondays and Wednesdays to help them achieve their vision. After the first time breaking into tutoring studios, one student shared in our closing reflection that she now feels "hungry" for the science test that had previously felt like a chore. By aligning student-driven goals with a supportive environment to reach those goals, we hope to amplify hope across campus. One day at a time, Broadmoor High students are experiencing real paths to achieving their dreams.  One afternoon in Transform the World Studio we asked, "What does your own creative studio space look like?" Students wrote poems and drew pictures, made collages, and opened up to a deeper conversation about what it feels like to be in a space where you can truly express yourself. After a group conversation about pronouns and gender identity grew from the group's dialogue, one youth asked Dr. West, "Where were you all last year? I've really needed this."
We are so grateful to be grounded this year at Broadmoor High School where we're able to build this beloved core of youth leaders who will contribute—and are already contributing—so much to our world. Amped Studio is amplifying our own hope for the future of our work as we imagine possibilities for the rest of this school year and beyond. Big dreams and visions are welcome at Amped Studio, and we can’t wait to see them bloom!  If you would like to make a contribution to Humanities Amped, please follow the donate button below. This work is not possible without you!
Amped family, we are thrilled to introduce to you the newest member of the Amped team, Dr. Leslie T. Grover! Dr. Grover brings to her work as Program Director two decades of experience in youth programming, indigenous research, social justice organizing, curriculum development, and community engagement. She is an avid social justice scholar and has published extensively in the fields of race equity, health equity, and community engagement. In 2016 she was appointed as an Interdisciplinary Research Leader with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as well as community outreach specialist for U.S.-Cuban relations. She is also a creative writer, and her first novel debuts in Fall 2022.
Dr. Grover's enthusiasm for the work is contagious, and we are so grateful for the expertise and compassion she carries. As Program Director Dr. Grover will plan and implement initiatives like Community Care to provide social and emotional learning and restorative supports, as well as dynamic leadership opportunities, to the students we serve. The start of each new school year is always a busy time for us, and 2021 has certainly been no exception. The East Baton Rouge Public School System’s new social and emotional learning initiative fits so well with Amped’s commitments to healing centered and culturally responsive learning, that they’ve asked us to create a social and emotional learning community lab school. Humanities Amped is excited to share with you that we are now in residence at Broadmoor Senior High School! As you know, our work can only thrive in community, and this move to a single school site means that we will be able to work deeply with students, teachers, administrators, and families, as well as EBRPSS, to realize the vision of a community lab school for social and emotional learning. Over the last month we have engaged with faculty and staff to begin drafting a vision for what we’re calling Broadmoor’s radical imagination of what education can and should be, and we look forward to the start of Amped Studio Afterschool in which we invite students to to transform the world, through project-based action research, and to transform themselves, through tutoring and supports.
We have also been hard at work making our space in the Broadmoor Galley warm and welcoming. We are enthusiastic about the district’s and Broadmoor’s commitment to social-emotional learning and look forward to building with our new Broadmoor family!  If you would like to support the mission of Humanities Amped by giving, we invite you to follow the link below. Your contributions will help us to continue to transform our space on Broadmoor's campus and develop our programming. What's New at Humanities AmpedWe’re hiring for two positions: Program Manager (full-time) and Program Leader (part-time, Amped Alumni preferred). Send your cover letter and resume to hiring@humanitiesamped.com by September 17 to apply.
 Starting in March of 2021, Humanities Amped has released a series of think pieces celebrating the first of our three core values: beloved community. As we head into the bustle and promise of this new school year, we are excited to share the last installment in the Beloved Community series with you.
TOGETHERNESS IS CHANGE WITHIN A BELOVED COMMUNITYTareil La'Kisha GeorgeWe sometimes forget the most important thing about being human is change. We have the ability to change whatever we want, but we seem to forget the importance of relationships, patience, and vision. One thing that I observe about us as humans is that we adapt. We learn adaptation from our environment. Adaptation isn’t a bad thing; for example, the poisonous Primrose has made a special adaptation so it could survive in desert-like areas. Humans are like the Primrose. We adapt to live, but why don’t we normalize changing the world, so we don't have to depend on adaptation to Survive?
 In Amped, we often have our students create their own Norms, which give them the opportunity to set up their own rules to live by within the classroom. One Norm that students often request is ‘Active Listening’. Active listening is the biggest part of the listening and understanding skill. If you are actively listening, you are opening your mind to be more understanding of what’s going on in the space. As part of teaching, once you understand, the next moving part is to now focus on transforming what you have learned or relearned onto the next, but how and to who? This is where teaching and those three relationships start to develop. We have to see teaching as a way of better communication that recognizes students as unique individuals. We are taught that we should use what we have learned in the future, but learners may miss what is being taught based on how it is given. For example, you wouldn't teach a four year old the same way you teach a fourteen year old. You must have the balance between patience and understanding of their differences in order for them both to understand what is being taught. This also plays a role in relationship building. Without a relationship with those you are teaching, you would have a hard time being heard and understood. Being the listener of the youth, which can change the direction of better communication within the community, forms a relationship of understanding which can propel the sense of a Beloved community.
Amped Summer is in full swing! We started off the season with three weeks of summer programming that served a diverse group of youth from around the district. Our Amped Summer campers ranged in age from 13 - 19 and represented 11 schools! During week one students set the norms and values they wanted to uphold as a summer community. They made vision boards, got to know each other, and engaged in a variety of workshops hosted by Amped Instructional Specialist Destiny Cooper, ICARE Specialist Aubrey Jones, and peer-counselor Tonja Myles. Former therapist Wanda Kuo led an intergenerational dialogue on mental health as well as a virtual yoga session. 
During the second week, teachers and community members were invited to join students and summer staff as we watched the Grace Lee Boggs documentary American Revolutionary. Dr. Anna West facilitated a powerful workshop in which Amped youth and “elders” exchanged stories with one another. Later that week Dr. Leslie Grover and Dr. Reva Hines of Narrative4 led active listening sessions and theater exercises. They also gave students disposable cameras for an auto-photography project.  In the third week, Amped board member Dr. Andrew Kuo set up his portable recording studio so students could record the poems, songs, podcasts, oral histories, and other projects they had been working on. Summer Amped concluded with a DreamKeepers College and Career Readiness Institute. Representatives from Southern University, EBR’s Office of Career and Technical Education, LSU, and BRCC led workshops and presented about their institutions to help students prepare for the futures they desire. 
To get a true sense of the Summer Amped experience, we invite you to read this “I Remember” poem, written by one of our campers during a virtual writing workshop. I Remember by Imani Morris, 8th gradeI remember the sweet smiles of everyone’s faces on the first day of camp I remember the sweet taste of star cut apples I remember us all being shocked at some of the things we saw in the American revolutionary documentary I remember the big group introductions I remember the snacks we managed to eat in 1 week I remember the deep conversations of our small groups I remember the acceptance of others stories I remember the crying laughing of my group for the theatre activity I remember using up 20 disposable camera shots in 1 day I remember sitting talking to sydni while we waited for our mothers I remember using up the whole break trying to figure out the board game clue I remember doing a recording for the first time I remember the messy clothing left behind from tie dye I remember the endless debate on whether it’s shein or she in I remember trying to come up with rhymes when we rapped And, I remember the people I met along the way -I.M With the close of Summer Amped, we are moving gratefully into a time of collective rest by taking a shared hiatus from June 19th - July 19th. Our team at Humanities Amped is invested in long-term, sustainable, collective care, and we know that commitment begins right where we are, in our own lives. Showing up for ourselves means being intentional about slowing down and resting. It’s how we re-ground ourselves and build our capacity to show up for the long run. It’s never an easy choice to care for ourselves. There is always so much to do, and for those of us whose work is caring for our communities, we often feel like it is never enough. And yet we know that if we want to show up wholeheartedly, we must invest in our own restoration. We hope to come back to you filled with energy, insight, and imagination. You, dear ones, deserve nothing less than our best selves! See you in late July. :) Love, The Amped Team  When Estrella, Sydni, and Imani witnessed their classmates and friends struggling with mental health and mental health services at school, they knew they wanted to create a pathway toward change and support. In order to reimagine in-school responses to students’ mental health needs, the trio of Amped Apprentice Leaders worked collaboratively with each other and their mentors to develop an action-research project: throughout the spring semester they facilitated dialogue, information sessions, and problem-solving circles driven by data they collected from their peers and community about mental health and Baton Rouge schools. Sydni, Imani, and Estrella were able to share their important findings with multiple community audiences.  "In my experience, my school was worried about my grades and not my mental health. My school seems to care more about things like dress code than they do about mental health,” Sydni told me, as we prepared for the trio to lead an intergenerational community circle. The three middle school students walked me through their project: their motivations, their driving questions (“How to decrease the stigma around mental health in schools and school systems?”), and their own personal stakes relating to mental health awareness and services in schools. They had already facilitated their circle twice before engaging our Beloved Community circle participants, and they were ready to facilitate it a third time for our community.  The seeds for this CPAR (critical participatory action research) project were planted in Amped Studio Afterschool, where we gave young folks in our community the space and opportunity to share and explore their own mental health struggles and triumphs. In Humanities Amped, we often find ourselves asking what comes first: civic engagement, community building, or storytelling? Imani, Estrella, and Sydni prove that they run alongside each other as three interconnected root systems that nurture us, carry us, and support us. Through this support and their friendship and commitment to their community, the trio created a dynamic, well researched, and heartfelt presentation.   Even though our plans for this year did not include a student research conference as they have in the past, Imani, Sydni, and Estrella saw and acted on an opportunity to illuminate, articulate, and educate. They presented their research project three times: at Roots Camp, at the Educators Rising State Conference, and at the Humanities Amped and Baton Rouge Community College Beloved Community Check-In Circle. Through mentorship, support, and readily available platforms and pathways, Imani, Estrella, and Sydni were able to implement their vision for change as thought leaders in our community. Through scaffolding and framework support, they were able to offer us all a performance of possibility: with a whole community supporting and rooting for us, we can enact the change we need.
At Humanities Amped in 2021, we are celebrating the first of our three core values: beloved community. As we look toward the future and its challenges, this aspect of our organizational vision, to nurture a dynamic, beloved community of lifelong learners and civic leaders, has never felt more essential to our individual and collective well-being. Over the next few months, we will release a series of think pieces reflecting on the theme of beloved community and how it shows up in our work at Humanities Amped. Click here to learn more about the heart of beloved community, and read on to learn about one way it shows up in our work.
Beloved Community in a Virtual |
| To me, building a beloved community felt like it had to happen in person to be meaningful. But to my surprise, these last few months of Amped Studio virtual after school programming have demonstrated that a beloved community will form because people will want it to. On Mondays during DreamKeeper office hours, we form community when students have the opportunity to ask questions about topics they are most interested in, ranging from future careers, physical and mental health, and gendered double standards in sports. Since we serve five different schools, students from across campuses have had an opportunity to engage with one another in conversations that are relevant to them. While we have an Amped staff facilitator helping guide the overall dialogue, the students are the ones taking ownership of the conversation. In the virtual space of DreamKeepers I’ve often found myself feeling like I have the great fortune of tuning into a podcast run by extremely passionate middle and high schoolers. Amped staff Diana Aviles and Tareil George follow up on Wednesdays with tailored career and college readiness workshops, inviting alumni to engage with current students and give their perspective of life after high school. Through these visits the beloved community is expanded across generations of Amped students, renewing energy to both groups. | What would community building look like when we could not sit in a circle or toss a ball or snack together in the same space? |
But to my surprise, these last few months of Amped Studio virtual after school programming have demonstrated that a beloved community will form because people will want it to. | The camp counselor in me often wants to play games as a means of building community. And while the focus of Tuesday Tutoring implies an emphasis on academics, the virtual games we play on Tuesdays have largely become a motivating factor for students to get their homework done ahead of time. We have certified science, math, and English teachers available to help students with their homework, and students do take advantage of this opportunity to work one-on-one with a teacher. However, my favorite moments on Tutoring Tuesdays are when Ms. Burbank and Ms. Hammond join community volunteers and students in the game room to play trivia. Or when Mx. Araneda does a science experiment demonstrating the electrocution of pickles just for the joy of it. Teachers getting to have fun with their students is a radical form of beloved community, especially in this era of ultra pressurized, high-stakes testing that strips both students and teachers of the joy of learning. |
And finally on Thursdays, our students continue to go deeper into conversations about mental health and ways that students can offer peer support to one another. In December, a group of students designed and facilitated a mental health wellness workshop for youth at Big Buddy who have since requested to have other cross-collaborative virtual activities. And even though we did not have a critical participatory action research project planned for students this year, one organically emerged from our afterschool program: the constant conversations around mental health and the concern students have for one another’s well-being were fertile ground for three middle school students, Imani, Estrella, and Sydni to embark on a research project around the gaps in mental health services in school. They designed a survey with the help of teachers and have shared their findings at two local conferences - Roots Camp and Educators Rising.
| A virtual, intergenerational, cross-campus beloved community formed through Amped Studio despite the Zoom fatigue, a global pandemic, and many other barriers that unfortunately kept other students from being able to join in. This year we have watched our beloved community expand across the interwebs and reach students, teachers, staff, and volunteers in a meaningful way I had not thought possible. I’m very happy to have been proven wrong about my perceived limits of community. | Teachers getting to have fun with their students is a radical form of beloved community, especially in this era of ultra pressurized, high-stakes testing that strips both students and teachers of the joy of learning. |
In the spirit of amplifying youth voice, I believe the best way to close is to leave you with the words of 13 year old Sydni, an Amped Apprentice Leader who has found in Amped Studio space and support to thrive:
"I am so grateful for Humanities Amped giving me a space to just be. If I want to improve my grades, we have Tutoring Tuesdays, and if I want to start preparing for high school and college they provide me the resources to do so in our Dreamkeepers sessions. We have meaningful discussions in every class, but those discussions can really grow on our Thursday classes and I'm also able to express my thoughts in the form of writing on Wednesdays. I'm very appreciative of Humanities Amped for letting me grow.” •
"I am so grateful for Humanities Amped giving me a space to just be. If I want to improve my grades, we have Tutoring Tuesdays, and if I want to start preparing for high school and college they provide me the resources to do so in our Dreamkeepers sessions. We have meaningful discussions in every class, but those discussions can really grow on our Thursday classes and I'm also able to express my thoughts in the form of writing on Wednesdays. I'm very appreciative of Humanities Amped for letting me grow.” •
At Humanities Amped in 2021, we are celebrating the first of our three core values: beloved community. As we look toward the future and its challenges, this aspect of our organizational vision, to nurture a dynamic, beloved community of lifelong learners and civic leaders, has never felt more essential to our individual and collective well-being. Over the next few months, we will release a series of think pieces reflecting on the theme of beloved community and how it shows up in our work at Humanities Amped. Click here to learn more about the heart of beloved community, and read on to learn about one way it shows up in our work.
 | Our fourth Beloved Community reflection was written by our executive director Dr. Anna West. Over the span of twenty years, Anna has co-created multiple community youth organizations, including Humanities Amped, that focus on the intersection of humanities and social justice. She is proud to have been raised in an intergenerational network of youth organizers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she remains committed to nurturing our community’s collective genius so that we all may thrive. awest@humanitiesamped.com |
Transformative Youth Work Begins
with Beloved Community
ANNA WEST
Today there is a girl in Baton Rouge who rides the bus to school, eats breakfast and lunch in the cafeteria, goes to her four 9th grade classes, and rides the bus home. Maybe this year she wakes up and eats breakfast at home, logs on to her Chromebook, and clicks the Google link to see her teachers and classmates in little boxes on the screen. Whether in-person or virtual, she goes to school and carries many things with her that are not evident on the surface: A talent for art. A quick wit. A grandmother who is her rock. A little cousin who she loves. A parent struggling with addiction. Memories of sexual abuse. A recent fight with a bestie. A new crush. Who asked her at school today, “How are you doing, really?” and then listened to the answer?
In my youth, that question was asked more often by a peer than an adult, it was passed in the hallway notes that my friends and I wrote and read with all-consuming relish. As a teen, I pretended to not care about adult attention. However, the way I edged into my parent’s bedroom at night as they were getting ready for bed, at a time when they had nothing else going on, told another story. It was a tradition my son later repeated in his high school years, making his way into my room to pet the dog and tell me about whatever was on his heart. Young people want us to see them; they don’t want us crowding their space, but they want us to have space for them.
In my youth, that question was asked more often by a peer than an adult, it was passed in the hallway notes that my friends and I wrote and read with all-consuming relish. As a teen, I pretended to not care about adult attention. However, the way I edged into my parent’s bedroom at night as they were getting ready for bed, at a time when they had nothing else going on, told another story. It was a tradition my son later repeated in his high school years, making his way into my room to pet the dog and tell me about whatever was on his heart. Young people want us to see them; they don’t want us crowding their space, but they want us to have space for them.
| I often wished my son had gotten more opportunities to connect with adults at school, to be listened to and recognized in a more spacious way. But in his experiences of school, much like my own, a spacious sense of belonging and connection did not happen much in classrooms. It was more likely to be found at the back of the school library on a second lunch shift where, feeling shipwrecked and marooned, young people form their own world inside the world. Some youth get this connection after school, on sports teams or in youth organizations, like the youth poetry workshops I’ve participated in and facilitated since I was a young adult, spaces where rounds of sharing and witnessing make our lives and hearts visible to one another. Anyone who knows what it feels like to belong in beloved communities like these, however they were formed, holds something very sacred, something healing for the world. | Young people want us to see them; they don’t want us crowding their space, but they want us to have space for them. |
The heart of what I know about holding those spaces didn’t come from any formal training. I learned about these things on the margins and unmapped peripheries, in the community playdays that took place in a cleared field next to the Roosevelt Street projects where as a child I was thrown up on a blanket held by many hands. What I learned in those spaces was the practice of accompaniment. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador gave us this term, “accompaniment.” He used it to describe an approach to social justice that is rooted in solidarity with those who are most harmed by injustice. Accompaniment means walking together, knowing one another, acting for and with one another. It means asking “How are you, really?” and holding space for the answer.
"Accompaniment" means asking “How are you, really?” and holding space for the answer. | Without accompaniment, dehumanization prevails, and with it, a perpetuation of violence. At its essence, institutional violence is the denial of personhood. It is what happens when we replace human mutuality with the priorities of control and surveillance. What is the outcome of that dehumanization in schools? Approximately 30% of students in low income schools and districts across the country, mostly concentrated in Black, indigenous, and immigrant communities, are pushed out of school before graduation and into the school-to-prison nexus that feeds on that 30% |
Abolitionist educators, whether we call ourselves that or not, are those of us who are searching for ways to accompany young people as they make the passage through the many uncertainties and vulnerabilities that come with being young, especially for those whose identities are denied or marginalized. This year, our practices of accompaniment have been challenged in very real ways. A school librarian I know recently posted on Facebook that she was reduced to “a puddle of tears'' after spending a little bit of time with that “collection of kids who were always [previously] in the library.” The ways we find ourselves being with another in the in-betweens and underneaths of formal schooling, what Fred Moten and Stefano Harney so beautifully describe as a “way of feeling through others, a feel for feeling others feeling you” (2013, p. 98), is what we yearn for most this year. Being-togetherness is where transformative youth work really happens.
The blunt pressure to produce better school performance scores through pseudo-efficient assembly line approaches to teaching and learning can create a tremendous short sightedness, ultimately pushing young people out of school. We have to challenge forms of teaching and learning that propel young people further and further away from the safety net of relationships. If you really listen to young people, families, and educators, we are all in agreement on this: relationships are the ground from which all else grows. In other words, when we systemically lose sight of that 9th grade girl and how she’s doing in the fullest sense, we lose sight of everything that matters.
The blunt pressure to produce better school performance scores through pseudo-efficient assembly line approaches to teaching and learning can create a tremendous short sightedness, ultimately pushing young people out of school. We have to challenge forms of teaching and learning that propel young people further and further away from the safety net of relationships. If you really listen to young people, families, and educators, we are all in agreement on this: relationships are the ground from which all else grows. In other words, when we systemically lose sight of that 9th grade girl and how she’s doing in the fullest sense, we lose sight of everything that matters.
| The challenge to our sense of connection during this pandemic sits on top of the challenge that already was: how do we slow down and figure out how to nurture forms of being-together in beloved community as an essential and vital part of what school can be? The answers to this question are plural and are best woven into the daily fabric of school life as an essential part of the curriculum and cultures, not a stand-alone or after thought. At the heart of Humanities Amped’s learning community, we are doing this kind of weaving together with students, teachers, administrators, and families in our local public schools. Our aim is to humanize schooling and restore personhood to young people for whom that personhood has been too long denied. | how do we slow down and figure out how to nurture forms of being-together in beloved community as an essential and vital part of what school can be? |
That change has to be grassroots and systemic at the same time. Our work with restorative practices has intersected with EBRPSS’s efforts to adopt restorative practices. Likewise, we are proud to stand among the many Baton Rouge youth programs that foster positive relationships and social emotional development through mentorship, the arts, athletics and civic engagement. These are community resources that should be taken seriously as vehicles for well-being in school as well as out. One might say that when educational leaders prioritize those resources, they are prioritizing the “whole child,” except that the rhetoric of the “whole child” falls short of the urgency and importance that these communities of connection provide. After all, anything less than a “whole child” is actually a dead child. We want to urgently and critically prioritize that young people are able to live.
There are many ways to build accompaniment into the everyday places where young people already are. Every young person deserves the space to be seen and heard, and creating that space at school is not only possible, it’s how we keep our beloved youth alive, connected, and thriving. •
There are many ways to build accompaniment into the everyday places where young people already are. Every young person deserves the space to be seen and heard, and creating that space at school is not only possible, it’s how we keep our beloved youth alive, connected, and thriving. •
At Humanities Amped in 2021, we are celebrating the first of our three core values: beloved community. As we look toward the future and its challenges, this aspect of our organizational vision, to nurture a dynamic, beloved community of lifelong learners and civic leaders, has never felt more essential to our individual and collective well-being. Over the next few months, we will release a series of think pieces reflecting on the theme of beloved community and how it shows up in our work at Humanities Amped. Click here to learn more about the heart of beloved community and why it matters so deeply to us.
  | Our third beloved community reflection is a collaboration between Destiny Cooper and Emma Gist. Destiny is the Amped liaison and instructional specialist at East Baton Rouge Parish School System. She has been National Board certified since 2012 and earned her M.Ed. from LSU in 2014, the same year she co-created Humanities Amped. Working with multiple schools, Destiny leads teachers and students in creating the classrooms and schools that their communities desire. dadams@ebrschools.org Emma is an Amped instructional coach and Outreach Coordinator. She has been with Amped since 2018 and has worked to strengthen Amped's approaches to restorative and project-based learning. She holds an MAT from USC and is currently a PhD candidate at LSU studying literacy practice in secondary English classrooms. egist@humanitiesamped.com |
Passing the (Virtual) Talking Piece
Destiny Cooper & Emma Gist
As students walked into our very first Amped class in 2014, they chose their place in the circle. With the intention to question schooling as it is and its corresponding structures of power, we welcomed our new students, established June Bug Productions’ story circle process, shared our seed stories, and listened in awe as person after person shared their story with this group of near strangers. From within that circle, where we offered our stories and established shared power as equal learners and teachers regardless of age or degree, we began to build a Beloved Community.
Throughout the year our students realized more power and self-trust by vulnerably building community, grappling with academics, and leaning into social risks. We noticed, however, that challenging existing power structures provoked people’s insecurities and hopelessness, which in turn led to an increase in conflict between and among teachers and peers. After attempting to use the tools from our combined decades of classroom and youth development experiences, we realized that we needed a more structured and purposeful method to build a positive community and prevent conflict, not just respond to it.
Throughout the year our students realized more power and self-trust by vulnerably building community, grappling with academics, and leaning into social risks. We noticed, however, that challenging existing power structures provoked people’s insecurities and hopelessness, which in turn led to an increase in conflict between and among teachers and peers. After attempting to use the tools from our combined decades of classroom and youth development experiences, we realized that we needed a more structured and purposeful method to build a positive community and prevent conflict, not just respond to it.
| We experimented with circles over the next three years as a consistent means to ground our Beloved Community in our values. Circles call us into trust and courage: trust in each other to hold space for us and courage to share pieces of ourselves with one another. They challenge us to practice authentic inclusion by making a collective agreement to name for each individual’s voice an intentional, dedicated space and to commit to deeply listening to one another, which is itself an act of love. | Circles challenge us to practice authentic inclusion by making a collective agreement to name for each individual’s voice an intentional, dedicated space and to commit to deeply listening to one another, which is itself an act of love. |
We learned to use circles to build community about four times more often than to respond to harm and dedicated more time to using circles to live our values, process our challenges, and celebrate our triumphs. We not only saw less conflict, but we also witnessed more student ownership and growth as young leaders.
As we developed our students’ capacities to design and facilitate circles for their peers and adults, we also incorporated circles into professional development sessions, staff meetings, and community events because in Amped circles are not a trendy classroom strategy: they are a practice that allows us to live in our values while in relationship with one another.
As we developed our students’ capacities to design and facilitate circles for their peers and adults, we also incorporated circles into professional development sessions, staff meetings, and community events because in Amped circles are not a trendy classroom strategy: they are a practice that allows us to live in our values while in relationship with one another.
In Amped circles are not a trendy classroom strategy: they are a practice that allows us to live in our values while in relationship with one another. | In March of 2020, along with the rest of the world, the work of Humanities Amped was halted when public schools in Louisiana were closed indefinitely. Even in the depths of this uncertainty, we chose to respond actively: from our socially-distanced virtual spaces, we developed infrastructure to convene our Beloved Community in online circles based on the needs that our young people articulated. The mechanics were not uncomplicated--we were challenged to get in contact with students without reliably seeing them in the classroom everyday, we stumbled through the use of new platforms, we discovered Zoom fatigue along with our participants. Even so, we continued to find the cultivation of our Beloved Community worth the work of carving out inclusive spaces for human connection. |
Translating processes for in-person circles into virtual spaces requires, like any virtual transition, adaptability. At the most basic, entering a virtual classroom and assuming a place in a grid of icons is enormously different from the experience of entering a classroom and taking a seat in a physical circle, where Beloved Community is concretized as the best version of seeing and being seen. Based on our experiences, working through these challenges, we have developed the following guidelines for hosting circles in virtual spaces:
The Virtual Circle Process
1. As participants enter the virtual room, the facilitator(s) create, record, and announce an order of speakers, sharing the list of names with participants using the chat function. If people enter the room late, their name should be added to the circle order.
While circle orders are obvious in person, online spaces require a circle order that can be visually referenced throughout the process. Explicit circle orders provide structure and clarity of expectations.
2. The facilitator welcomes the participants into the circle, reviews the circle guidelines, and explains that although the “talking piece” may be invisible, its function of ensuring only one person speaks at a time still applies. The facilitator explains that to simulate passing a physical object from person to person, each participant will verbally say “I pass the talking piece to [next person in the speaking order].”
Using the phrase “I pass the talking piece to…” is a way to distribute facilitative power to the circle participants, who control the process without waiting to be called on by someone who is “in charge.”
3. The facilitator presents the first question or prompt. If the facilitator’s name is first in the speaking order, they will model the process of responding and passing the talking piece. Alternatively, they will ask the first person in the speaking order to begin in the process of responding and passing.
While the facilitator may model the process, when possible, it can be effective to approach a trusted and willing participant ahead of time and ask them to be the first to answer.
4. After offering their response, each participant passes to the next person in the speaking order. If a speaker forgets to pass, the facilitator can prompt, “And you pass to…”
Rather than simply calling on the next person, this strategy empowers the participants to guide the circle process.
5. If necessary, the facilitator reminds the participants that it is always acceptable to pass on a question or prompt. The person passing should simply pass to the next person in the speaking order.
Circle processes are not effective if participants feel forced to engage. We operate within our value of trust when we allow people to decide whether or not they want to share.
6. The last speaker in the circle always passes back to the facilitator or first person in the circle order. The facilitator then offers an opportunity to share to anyone who passed.
Often, participants who passed initially will feel ready to share once everyone else has spoken. If those who passed are still reluctant, the facilitator can offer the option of borrowing from, or echoing, someone else’s response. However, it is important to allow participants to pass a second time if they do not want to respond.
7. The facilitator then presents the next question or prompt. The participants respond using the same circle order and processes.
While this round may begin with the same person as the previous round, the facilitator might choose someone else to go first, or ask for volunteers. Whoever’s name is last in the circle order would simply pass to the person whose name is first
8. After the final round, the facilitator thanks the group for engaging the circle and celebrates any challenges that were met.
For example, the facilitator may have offered a challenge of 100% participation by the end of the process. For a challenge like this, it is important to recognize that participation may look like an out-loud response or a response in the chat.
While circle orders are obvious in person, online spaces require a circle order that can be visually referenced throughout the process. Explicit circle orders provide structure and clarity of expectations.
2. The facilitator welcomes the participants into the circle, reviews the circle guidelines, and explains that although the “talking piece” may be invisible, its function of ensuring only one person speaks at a time still applies. The facilitator explains that to simulate passing a physical object from person to person, each participant will verbally say “I pass the talking piece to [next person in the speaking order].”
Using the phrase “I pass the talking piece to…” is a way to distribute facilitative power to the circle participants, who control the process without waiting to be called on by someone who is “in charge.”
3. The facilitator presents the first question or prompt. If the facilitator’s name is first in the speaking order, they will model the process of responding and passing the talking piece. Alternatively, they will ask the first person in the speaking order to begin in the process of responding and passing.
While the facilitator may model the process, when possible, it can be effective to approach a trusted and willing participant ahead of time and ask them to be the first to answer.
4. After offering their response, each participant passes to the next person in the speaking order. If a speaker forgets to pass, the facilitator can prompt, “And you pass to…”
Rather than simply calling on the next person, this strategy empowers the participants to guide the circle process.
5. If necessary, the facilitator reminds the participants that it is always acceptable to pass on a question or prompt. The person passing should simply pass to the next person in the speaking order.
Circle processes are not effective if participants feel forced to engage. We operate within our value of trust when we allow people to decide whether or not they want to share.
6. The last speaker in the circle always passes back to the facilitator or first person in the circle order. The facilitator then offers an opportunity to share to anyone who passed.
Often, participants who passed initially will feel ready to share once everyone else has spoken. If those who passed are still reluctant, the facilitator can offer the option of borrowing from, or echoing, someone else’s response. However, it is important to allow participants to pass a second time if they do not want to respond.
7. The facilitator then presents the next question or prompt. The participants respond using the same circle order and processes.
While this round may begin with the same person as the previous round, the facilitator might choose someone else to go first, or ask for volunteers. Whoever’s name is last in the circle order would simply pass to the person whose name is first
8. After the final round, the facilitator thanks the group for engaging the circle and celebrates any challenges that were met.
For example, the facilitator may have offered a challenge of 100% participation by the end of the process. For a challenge like this, it is important to recognize that participation may look like an out-loud response or a response in the chat.
We first began implementing these online circle practices on a large and consistent scale at our fully virtual Amped Summer Institute. During these two weeks of deep community building and learning, Amped educators, staff members, and youth engaged regularly in circle processes. Teachers who participated in circles in the Summer Institute haved designed and facilitated circles for their classes, opening up spaces for each student to see and be seen, to express their ideas, and be honored for their contributions.
We first began implementing these online circle practices on a large and consistent scale at our fully virtual Amped Summer Institute. During these two weeks of deep community building and learning, Amped educators, staff members, and youth engaged regularly in circle processes. Teachers who participated in circles in the Summer Institute haved designed and facilitated circles for their classes, opening up spaces for each student to see and be seen, to express their ideas, and be honored for their contributions.
| Regardless of the space we have learned that circles and circle protocols disrupt existing power structures between youth and adults as well as among peers. Whether sitting in a physical circle or participating virtually, circle structures level power by making space for equity in voice, choice, and contribution. In this sense, circles are not the end, but the means to the end of teaching the community how to make values-aligned choices. | Regardless of the space we have learned that circles and circle protocols disrupt existing power structures between youth and adults as well as among peers. |
The following protocols are fundamental to the formation and ownership of positive community and should be honored in the translation from in-person to virtual and hybrid spaces:
Because we believe in the power of circles both in the classroom and beyond it, we have continued to implement them across our organization: we have designed and hosted circles for teacher reflection, for community connection, for district-wide professional development, in staff and board meetings, in collaborative planning sessions, and in after-school settings. By committing to these practices, especially at a time when virtual life has felt, for many, unproductive and miserable, we have been able to shape interactions that center trust, inclusion, and joy. •
We invite you to visit our Amplified Classrooms curriculum on our website for more information about our use of circles, an element of restorative practices, in Amped spaces. Click below to learn more about circle protocols, to access circle templates, and to view professional development videos about applying circles for a variety of classroom contexts.
- Design a majority of circle curricula to teach values and build Beloved Community, rather than as a response to harm
- Build trust and position students as active agents by honoring the choice to pass
- Develop shared responsibility between students and teachers for the circle’s success by posing a challenge (e.g. 100% participation at least once)
- Generate engagement by accepting people at their level of participation: honor the chat as well as speaking out loud, and when possible allow choice in regards to turning on cameras. At the same time, ask students to consider the community effects of these choices.
Because we believe in the power of circles both in the classroom and beyond it, we have continued to implement them across our organization: we have designed and hosted circles for teacher reflection, for community connection, for district-wide professional development, in staff and board meetings, in collaborative planning sessions, and in after-school settings. By committing to these practices, especially at a time when virtual life has felt, for many, unproductive and miserable, we have been able to shape interactions that center trust, inclusion, and joy. •
We invite you to visit our Amplified Classrooms curriculum on our website for more information about our use of circles, an element of restorative practices, in Amped spaces. Click below to learn more about circle protocols, to access circle templates, and to view professional development videos about applying circles for a variety of classroom contexts.
At Humanities Amped in 2021, we are celebrating the first of our three core values: beloved community. As we look toward the future and its challenges, this aspect of our organizational vision, to nurture a dynamic, beloved community of lifelong learners and civic leaders, has never felt more essential to our individual and collective well-being. Over the next few months, we will release a series of think pieces reflecting on the theme of beloved community and how it shows up in our work at Humanities Amped. Click here to learn more about the heart of beloved community and why it matters so deeply to us.
Our second beloved community reflection is from Asia Reese, Humanities Amped Community Educator, Program Manager, and Serve LA corps member.
Our second beloved community reflection is from Asia Reese, Humanities Amped Community Educator, Program Manager, and Serve LA corps member.
 | Asia is currently a graduating senior in Sociology and Anthropology at Spelman College. During high school, she first became involved with Humanities Amped as a youth poet and peer organizer at McKinley Senior High. Asia is a Community Educator at Belaire High School and at Amped Studio Afterschool and also leads special initiatives, including the BlackFutures: A Sankofa Series city-wide Black History program. areese@humanitiesamped.com |
Reclaiming Black Pasts, Creating Black Futures
Asia Reese
I went to school in "The Bottom" at a high school initially named Hickory Street School, later renamed The Baton Rouge Colored High School, but you most likely know it as McKinley Senior High School. I am an alumna of a predominantly Black school system and the state's first high school open for Black people, yet I only remember ever talking about Black History once every school year. The conversation, when we did have it, focused solely on a heavily sanitized story about our Civil Rights Elders: always teaching us their sacrifices, but rarely did we hear their critiques--especially the ones they made towards the end of their lives.
| Since this erasure was so normalized, it did not feel like an erasure at all. It just felt like school. Not until one day in my Advanced Placement U.S History Class did the extent of this disservice become clear to me. We had just finished learning about all of the different factors that made British colonizers, "Pilgrims," come to the United States and lead a genocide against the country's Indigenous People. We were learning about the start of the Triangular Slave Trade that began after the colonizers got settled. It seemed like we skipped a part. My classmates and I asked, "Well...what were Black people doing before the slave trade?" Despite being one of the best teachers I ever had, even she was left unequipped to answer. | Since this erasure was so normalized, it did not feel like an erasure at all. It just felt like school. |
With that erasure, dissatisfaction and disinterest began to grow. As someone who always loved school, I began to grow skeptical of its purpose if it did not aim to culturally affirm the primary population that it served. This dissatisfaction is why I think many students may leave the state, as I did, in search of knowledge--and more importantly--Beloved Community. Beloved Community is only created when the space you are in is dedicated to acknowledging the full extent of your existence: your multiple identities, your past, present, and helping you create your future.
Beloved Community is only created when the space you are in is dedicated to acknowledging the full extent of your existence: your multiple identities, your past, present, and helping you create your future. | I eventually graduated from McKinley and went to Spelman College, an HBCU dedicated to educating Black Women in Atlanta, Georgia. ALL first-year students have to take two semesters of African Diaspora and the World. It was only in college that I learned about Africa's diversity, the linkages of the practices Black folks do now to our cultural practices prior to slavery, and felt AFFIRMED in the classroom. Having Beloved Community is what helped me mature from a girl to a woman and helped me heal from the precariousness of feeling like there was a larger force determining my life that I could not name or did not know. I think about Frederick Douglas’s caution “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." I think Beloved Community may be the only way we can empower children to grow into the adults the world will need. |
| When COVID-19 provided me the opportunity to come back home, I knew that the time was ripe to push for a change. With the renaming of Liberty High School, an initiative that has been discussed since my good sister Tyari Heard--one of its original organizers--and I were in high school, I saw that the seeds of our dissatisfaction were ready to bloom. Thus, after becoming a Program Manager at Humanities Amped, I made it my mission to create culturally relevant work. We were asked by MetroMorphosis to partner with them in the release of their phenomenal article 'Black Baton Rouge Yesterday and Today.' Black History Month was on the horizon, and there was a need for programming since many of our East Baton Rouge students have not had one activity day since the transition to hybrid learning. I suggested we host a Black History Month Program that talked about what Black people have done and CONTINUED to do right here in our city. That decision was what I like to call a perfect full-circle moment: a moment where you are able to come back to a previous point of frustration or unrealized expectations and finally address them. | a perfect full-circle moment: a moment where you are able to come back to a previous point of frustration or unrealized expectations and finally address them. |
Coming off the high from BlackFutures: A Sankofa Series, my favorite part was and will always be the student engagement. From their questions, art submissions, songs, and drama performances it felt beautiful to provide an opportunity for them to learn and reflect on their history, our city's shared history and showcase their talent. However, I think the embodiment of Sankofa--reaching back to retrieve what is at risk of being left behind--came from our intergenerational conversations. Listening to revered community elder Maxine Crump ask the change-agent Myra Richardson what inspired her to get involved made me reflect on my own "How did I get here?" journey. Hearing the legendary Dr. Press Robinson ask young organizer Anthony Kenney what activism means to him felt like a question to all the youth. And, in the spirit of Beloved Community, it simultaneously provided an affirmation and call to action. It recognized our potential to change the world and forced us to consider who we are when we are creating our Black future.
Now we have set the stage for another goal. We have expanded the Black History Month narrative to reflect a localized community truth through powerful oral histories and storytelling. Still, we must push for the account that reflects many students' lived reality to not be denied to them in their classrooms every other academic school day of the year. We acknowledge the influence of the Spanish and the French. Indeed, we can make space to honor the blood, sweat, tears, and culture created by the slave and their descendants despite white supremacy. We can teach our students that slavery is not Black people's shame but our nation's unaddressed violence. I truly believe once students' history becomes accessible and an intentional part of the school curriculum, we will empower young people to see the full extent of their humanity and heal a wound that has existed since before any of us reading this were born.
BlackFutures: A Sankofa Series Black History Month Program
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