Buffalo State’s Jevon Hunter, Woods-Beal Endowed Chair for Urban Education at the School of Education, recently wrote a piece for the Buffalo News titled “Another Voice: Students need curriculum that connects to their lives.”
In the piece, Hunter details some of the work he’s done at Buffalo Prep, a program designed to help underserved youth succeed. Hunter writes that the program is, “Using the city of Buffalo as a lens to achieve our learning goals, as a form of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies while also having our students learn essential skills that will help them become researchers of their own communities and lives.”
Some of the work the students have done is laid out in the piece, including science courses organized around the way the body handles stress and English classes looking at bias in journalism. The students presented their research to the public.
“This approach to teaching and learning gives our young people purpose, and it meaningfully answers the questions our children are asking about school. Will all our children accept this response? Of course not. But it is better than the vapid reply they typically hear: ‘Because it will be on the state test.’ The children are demanding more. Let’s give it to them,” Hunter writes.
